Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I will come to that, Sir Edward. The need for certification will cause financial harm to the unions, and we do not need it. It will not deal with the mischief that the legislation on lobbying was supposed to address. All it will do is impose an unfair financial burden on the trade unions, which rely on the subscriptions of ordinary members.

Derisory comments are constantly being made about the trade unions, but it is important to remind ourselves what they are arguing for. I get letters from unions lobbying me. For example, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers contacted me when there was talk of Sunday working during the Olympics. I also get letters from trade unions about pension rights, maternity rights, the minimum wage, health and safety, living conditions and better terms and conditions. What is there to be ashamed of about those things? What is wrong with a body arguing for those things?

Why are Conservative Members always having a go at the unions? They make it sound as though the unions are some kind of sinister organisations, but they are not. They are full of ordinary working people, and they have always fought for working people’s rights. The Conservatives should be championing the trade unions, rather than making derisory remarks about them and insulting them in the Chamber. This legislation is a clear example of their vindictive attitude towards the trade unions. The unions do not have a lot of money in the first place, but what they have will now be wasted on this unnecessary bureaucratic burden. The obligation that the Government are proposing will not deal with the mischief that the lobbying Bill is trying to deal with. That mischief relates to big business, to sinister deals and to cash being passed in underhand ways. That is what we are trying to deal with, but the Bill categorically fails on every single level.

This last part of the Bill illustrates the Government’s pure vindictiveness, and it has no purpose. We should all reject it. All Members of Parliament should vote against this Bill, and particularly against part 3. If Members really care about working people, as they all say they do, they should not allow this additional and unnecessary burden to be imposed on the trade unions. It will not deal with the mischief that the Bill was supposed to address.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

It is a real pleasure to follow the impassioned speech of the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), although I must point out that no one has a monopoly on caring about working people. I shall confine my remarks to clause 36.

I have discovered over the past three days that I am probably one of the most optimistic Members of the House, because I believe that the purposes of the Bill are very different from those suggested in some of the narratives that we have been hearing. Clause 36 introduces a clear duty to provide a membership audit certificate. I note with interest that if a union has fewer than 10,000 members, it can self-certify. Only unions with more than that number will need to certify.

I appreciate that there has been a certain amount of jolliness in the Chamber—

[Ian Murray]

Jolliness?

[Stephen McPartland]

Some Members have been teasing the Conservative party about its refusal to publish its membership figures. Clause 36 clearly states that unions with fewer than 10,000 members can self-certify. However, a Conservative party association with more than a certain amount of money will have to send its information to the Electoral Commission. That information will include membership numbers, but if they are below a certain level, there will be no need to send it. This part of the Bill therefore contains very similar provisions to those that are already in place for members of political parties, as well as trade unions.



It has been suggested that no complaints have been made under the present arrangements for a number of years. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) mentioned the possibility that people who were not union members were unable to make a complaint at the moment. I stand here as a friend of the unions. I am happy to work with them, and I am proud of the union members who come to see me, whether as union members or members of local communities or organisations. A number of members of my family are members of unions. I am also happy to work with the national unions on a range of issues—

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Are you a union member?

[Stephen McPartland]

I am not actually a member of trade union, and I never have been. [Interruption.] Hon. Members are tempting me to stray from the point. Within a few weeks, however, there will no doubt be an announcement and I will be working closely with one of the national unions, and I might well join it as a result of the work that we do together.

The perception of clause 36 is that it is a massive attack on the trade union movement, but that is not its purpose.

[Katy Clark]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are one of the only European countries that does not have a right to strike. Clause 36 comes on top of a whole range of other pieces of trade union legislation, much of which has been designed to be used in the courts by employers trying to get injunctions to stop strike action. Often, when those cases come before a full court, the employers are unsuccessful, even though they might have been successful in getting the strike stopped at the initial stage. Does the hon. Gentleman think that this clause has been designed to create yet another hurdle for the trade unions to get over before they can take lawful industrial action?

[Stephen McPartland]

The short answer is no. Clause 36 introduces a duty to provide a membership audit certificate. I genuinely cannot imagine that many of the unions will be bothered by it. The reality is that they all want to know where their members are so that they can communicate with them. Most unions do not send letters out to their members simply asking them to take strike action. They also want to sell them services and to make the union a part of their lives.

[Ian Murray]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I shall pass a membership form to him before the end of the debate. Amendment 103 allows for clause 36 to be implemented. All it does is give the certification officer the power to take out vexatious claims and to decide whether the draconian and expensive measures in the rest of the Bill should be enacted.

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Local councils around the country have to confront a number of issues with vexatious claims and are currently struggling under the freedom of information rules introduced by the previous Government. It may well be an issue that needs to be looked at further. It is a law of unintended consequences, however, and if there have been only six complaints in the last 10 years, I cannot imagine that there would have been many vexatious claims.

In most small workplace environments, a large proportion of the employees are not union members. If they are, they are often members of a variety of different unions. Most of those employees do not want to cross a picket line and have no intention of doing so. That can be a real emotional struggle for them; I saw that a lot when I was growing up in Liverpool. If a person is being called out on strike by union members in the area but does not want to strike, I think it is perfectly acceptable for such an employee who is not a union member to be expected not to cross the picket line. However, it is perfectly acceptable for them to question whether the ballot was accurate. There is personal and social pressure put on people and it is understandable.

[Mr Anderson]

The person that the hon. Gentleman is talking about has that right now. There is no point in this Bill, because the provisions are already in place: the individual can already do exactly what the hon. Gentleman says. Legislation was deliberately set up that way by Governments in the 1980s to undermine the ability of unions to take industrial action. It is already law; we do not need this new law.

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful intervention. I grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s and I remember a great deal of industrial action. I survived. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon said that the purpose of the Bill is to take things back to the 1980s so that that exists as the status quo now. I am not particularly interested in the ideological arguments going back and forth across the Committee. I genuinely believe that the purpose of clause 36 is to help people who feel that they want to make a complaint but cannot. I heard the shadow Minister talk earlier from the Dispatch Box about the possibility of a charge of £1 or £2 being exercised in respect of clause 36. I imagine that most trade unions would hate that because it would probably cost more to administer the charge than it would to send off the certificate.

The basic purpose of clause 36 boils down to transparency; it innocently says that trade unions need to know where their members are. There is a massive reality gap here. We all know from the electoral register, which we deal with every single year in all our walks of life, that the number of people moving in and out of constituencies when they move home is huge.

[Ian Lavery]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the points he is raising are already covered by the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992? Everything that he is talking about is already covered.

[Stephen McPartland]

I am delighted that hon. Members believe that everything I have said is already covered by various Acts. I am even more pleased that they are not objecting to what I have said.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the ’80s, but there has been a great deal of trade union law since that time that deals with all the issues that he has raised. He should take it from me that the particular provision we are debating does not deal with any of the matters with which he was concerned; as I say, the laws governing that already exist.

[Stephen McPartland]

I am delighted to hear that hon. Members believe that the issues I am raising have already been dealt with. That is fantastic news. However, if those issues are already dealt with, I see no reason for people to be arguing that there is no reason for this part of the Bill; I see no reason to be against it. There seems to be a lot of anger being expressed.

Not all Government Members have an issue with trade unions or trade unionists. Whenever anybody mentions the words “trade union”, it seems as if we have to have an ideological argument between the two sides of the House. I do not agree with that. We should look at the facts, and the facts relating to clause 36 are very simple: there is a duty to provide a membership audit certificate if a union has more than 10,000 members; otherwise people can self-certify.

[John Cryer]

There is a genuine point—the hon. Gentleman may or may not have taken it on board—about the big general unions. Because of the changing nature of work and the increasing casualisation of the work force, it is possible for unions to lose as much as 12% of their membership during the course of a year, so they will have to recruit 12% just to stand still. Under those circumstances, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman can imagine, keeping bang-up-to-date records is extremely difficult.

[Stephen McPartland]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The biggest challenge those unions face—it is perhaps a reason that the Bill might help them focus more resources on the issue—is simply the fact that people move home. It is not a matter of losing members of the trade union movement; it is simply a matter of trade unionists moving house between different areas. That creates a massive turnover. We all have experience of moving house and know we have to pay the Royal Mail a fee to redirect our mail for a year. Moving home is a big issue; it is one of the key problems surrounding the clause. Clause 36 encourages the focusing of more union resources on tackling the problems of membership turnover.

[Katy Clark]

Has the hon. Gentleman had an opportunity to look at how much this will cost the trade unions? Does he know how much they will have to spend on this exercise?

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady will be delighted to know that I read the impact assessment, so I understand that it will cost approximately 6p per member, which does not seem to be exorbitant. [Interruption.] I am sure we can argue about that when we get to a different part of the Bill, but I am going to keep my remarks focused on clause 36 as our Chairman would like—namely, the duty to provide a membership audit certificate. I keep repeating the point that clause 36 deals with a duty to provide a membership audit certificate. I do not see what the problem is with providing such a certificate. I cannot imagine why the unions would object to it.

[Mr McKenzie]

The hon. Gentleman is most gracious in taking interventions. He said that he agreed that legislation might already be in place to deal with the problem. His argument was to ask why we should vote against the provisions if they are already in place, but why would he vote for duplication?

[Stephen McPartland]

I am not voting for duplication. I am going to vote for this part of the Bill. I am being informed that legislation is already in place, but I was probably at school at that time. I would love to accept what the hon. Gentleman and Opposition Members say, but I am not able to trust them. That is why I am going to vote for this part of the Bill. It is nothing personal. It is just that there has been a lot of discussion going back and forth across the Committee, but I like to vote on the facts, and the facts before me today relate to this part of Bill.

I am sure that the Chairman will be grateful to know that I am about to bring my remarks to a close. We should try to reduce some of the rhetoric. This is not an ideological argument and the provisions are not a massive attack on the trade union movement—nobody wants to see that. Trade union members are fantastic members of our society, and the trade unions have been a fantastic vehicle for societal change throughout the ages. I am happy to work with them on a variety of occasions— working alongside them, for example, at charity events in my constituency or when the national unions work on issues that are important to their members such as fair pay, tax transparency or a range of other issues.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). He declared himself an optimist about the purposes of this part of the Bill and clause 36 in particular. The problem with the Bill, as well as with this particular provision, is the gap between the declared purposes and the provisions themselves. In clause 36, the problem is that the purposes are not clear at all.

In its confused content and its incompetent and chaotic handling, this whole Bill reminds me of a previous piece of legislation that the Leader of the House introduced—the Health and Social Care Bill. I led the opposition to that Bill. It was a Bill without allies and with a remarkable range of critics that saw Lord Tebbit and the trade unions finding common ground. The Leader of House, when he was Health Secretary, was forced to pause, review and reflect upon that Bill. The same problems with this Bill surely call for the same solution.

Let me now deal specifically with clause 36 and the amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, told us that his Committee had considered the White Paper, the forerunner of the Bill, and that there had been no mention of part 3 or of trade unions. He said that, according to his calculations, this part of the Bill—including clause 36—had been published the day before the summer recess, eight working days before we were required to consider it in Committee today, and he rightly pointed out that the task of scrutinising these provisions would therefore fall to the other House.

I am not prepared to accept that, and the Committee should not be prepared to accept it either. It is part of our duty in a Committee stage such as this to exercise scrutiny in the House of Commons, but we have been unable to do so. We have been unable to do so because of the time scale, because of the lack of any wider consultation, and indeed, as we have heard this afternoon, because of the Government’s failure to provide the Committee even with some of the most basic documentation before asking it to consider the Bill. Such a degree of confusion and incompetence on the part of Ministers is unacceptable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

Absolutely none; not one.

We heard earlier from our learned friend the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee about the work it was doing to try to build a consensus across the House in addressing the points the people of this country are really worried about. That has been thrown out of the window, however, so that yesterday we discussed attacks on charities and organisations like the Royal British Legion and today we are talking about attacks on the trade union movement.

[Stephen McPartland]

Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to tell us how many unions have approached him with concerns about the certification officer and this part of the Bill?

[Mr Anderson]

No trade union has approached me about the certification officer, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said, the unions campaigned against legislation in the 1990s, but they have now accepted the reality of that legislation. They have put money aside time and again. Staff time is used up and people are employed to make sure the records are kept up to date. There is no reason to do what this part of the Bill is saying should be done, and what this part of the Bill is supposed to be about does not in any sense have anything to do with lobbying or people misusing lobbyists.

As we saw yet again today, the Prime Minister cannot stop himself: he has to attack the trade union movement, because that is part of the narrative—the big, bad trade union bosses who are controlling the Labour party, telling the leader what to do and telling us all what to do, and bankrolling us. That is absolute guff. The people being bankrolled are the Members sitting on the Government Benches, who are bankrolled by people who have no democratic right whatsoever and where there is no transparency about what they are doing. The truth is the agenda is very clear: big business is getting away with murder.

We have heard over the past few days that 1% of lobbyists could be caught by this Bill. What about the other 99% who are getting away with things? That is what the people of this country are worried about.

This is a continuation of a raft of constitutional work that has been done over the past three years: the alternative vote referendum Bill, Lords reform, the packing out of the Lords, the boundary review, the attempts to impose city mayors. They have been introduced for one reason alone: to tip the balance of power in favour of the coalition parties at the 2015 general election. It is a deliberate ploy, and people can see through it and see it for what it is. The Government want to put this Bill in place quickly so that from 8 May next year there will be a year when trade unions and civic society are banned from speaking, because the Government want to try to make people forget the mess they have got this country into and the things they have done such as introducing tuition fees and the bedroom tax, and not responding positively to the Robin Hood tax campaign. They want a vacuum in that year so no one can challenge them. The people of this country will not have that, and I am convinced that if this Bill becomes law there will be a lot of people who are prepared to stand up and break that law.