Employment Rights Bill (Sixteenth sitting)

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 30—Repeal of Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017—

“The Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 (anaw 4) is repealed.”

This new clause repeals the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017.

[The Minister for Equalities (Dame Nia Griffith)]

We now turn to clause 71 and will resist Opposition new clause 30. Clause 71 is the final of the package of clauses to repeal the Trade Union Act 2016. It makes a consequential amendment to the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 following the repeal of the Trade Union Act 2016. Section 1 of the 2017 Act disapplied some of the provisions of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) 1992 Act, as introduced by the Trade Union Act 2016, from applying to devolved Welsh authorities. As the Trade Union Act 2016 and the relevant provisions of the 1992 Act are being repealed, section 1 of the 2017 Act is now redundant. There are also consequential amendments to the 1992 Act to remove the relevant references to devolved Welsh authorities.

New clause 30 seeks to repeal the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 in its entirety. Section 1 of this Act disapplies certain provisions of the Trade Union Act 2016 to devolved Welsh authorities. Repealing the Trade Union Act 2016 means that these provisions are no longer necessary. It is for that reason that we are repealing section 1 of the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 through clause 71 of this Bill. Section 2 of the 2017 Act is not impacted by the repeal of the Trade Union Act 2016. It prevents a devolved Welsh authority from using agency workers to replace striking workers. This Government support a prohibition on using agency workers to cover industrial action and therefore we are content to leave this in the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017. New clause 30 is therefore unnecessary and I ask the shadow Minister to withdraw it. I commend clause 71 to the Committee.

[Greg Smith]

I will focus my remarks on new clause 30, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friends the Members for West Suffolk, for Bridgwater and for Mid Leicestershire. It is good to see the Minister in her place on her first outing in the Committee of the day, and as she said, new clause 30 would repeal the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017. Prior to the 2017 Act, there was legal ambiguity in post-devolution case law of the degree to which trade union legislation was a reserved or devolved competence. Following the passage of the Trade Union Act 2016 in the UK Parliament, the Labour-led Welsh Government then passed Welsh legislation—the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017—to disapply a number of trade union measures in Wales in relation to devolved public services. The Wales Act 2017 was subsequently passed with cross-party and cross-institution agreement, and re-established that industrial relations were a reserved competence.

The Conservative-led UK Government at the time pledged to unwind the Welsh Government’s Act and reapply the full 2016 Act to Great Britain following the passage of the Wales Act 2017. However, re-asserting such common trade union law across Great Britain would require primary legislation in the United Kingdom Parliament. Given that the Wales Act 2017 established industrial relationships as a reserved competence, we would like to understand when the Government intend to resolve the changes implemented by the Welsh Government’s Act, which disapplied some of our 2016 Act. I do not think it is an unreasonable ask of the Government that we seek to resolve through the new clause.

[Dame Nia Griffith]

The point is very clear, isn’t it? In the legislation we are providing now, we are making the first part of the Trade Union (Wales) Act unnecessary, and therefore it is perfectly appropriate to put through a clause in this Bill to keep things in line with what we are doing across the UK. It is perfectly in order to have a clause that seeks to bring that particular legislation in line with the situation in which we now find ourselves.

On the second part of that legislation, as I have just said, that is already something on which we agree with the Welsh Government. We therefore see no particular reason why there should be a repeal of that legislation in the Bill, and we do not propose to do so. I suggest that the shadow Minister’s new clause is not necessary in the current Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 71 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Anna McMorrin.)