Trade Union Bill

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am very happy to confirm and applaud what my hon. Friend said. In truth, I would be as worried if an organisation was declaring no spending on facility time as if it was declaring excessive spending on facility time. Helping people with training or with health and safety issues is not just appropriate, but vital in a well-run organisation. He will recognise, as will Members across the House, that there have been agencies and Departments—we have had direct dealings of this within the civil service—that were allowing an abuse of the system. We want to restore confidence in the system by making it clear that we need transparency. If there is still excessive behaviour, we will introduce a cap.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

In order to try to help the House understand why you feel that there is a need for this cap on facility time, could you tell the House what percentage of public sector employers excessively grant facility time and how many of them would this cap be beneficial in stopping?

[Nick Boles]

I am not at all sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether you feel that there is a need for a cap, but I think the hon. Gentleman was referring to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. If we are all brief, nearly everybody will get in.

[Tommy Sheppard]

At every stage of this Bill I have asked what great calamity there is in our land’s industrial relations that requires us to bring forward new primary legislation. I have yet to receive an answer, because of course there is none. This proposal is unique among many that we have considered in this House, because it is not a proposal to change public policy as a result of a problem that has been identified in society; the proposal before the House is motivated purely by the ideology of factions inside the Conservative party that have scores to settle, and whose antipathy towards the trade unions is manifest.

Some Conservative Members—they are not in their place at the moment—do not share that view, but overall that is where the centre of political gravity lies in the party of government. It is setting itself an attitude that will inform public policy on trade unions that is not shared by almost any other Government in Europe, or in the advanced capitalist world. Why are the Government going so far out on a limb to set themselves apart from everyone else? I accept that the Bill is now slightly less bad than it was on Second Reading, but we should be under no doubt that this is still very much an anti-trade union Bill.

This Bill is designed to curtail the expression, capacity and effectiveness of free trade unions in our country, and I must speculate about whether this is a genuine change of heart on behalf of the Government, or whether other factors may be involved in their consideration of how many fronts they can fight on at once. I wonder whether the proximity of 23 June and the referendum that will happen then have persuaded the Government that they should try not to engage in too large a conflict with the trade unions of this land, because they need their support in order to secure the Government’s position of staying in the EU. That is why we all want to see the words written down in black and white, rather than accept the spoken words of Ministers from the Dispatch Box at this time.

I am glad to say that the situation is different in Scotland. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) explained, the Scottish Government are committed to working in partnership with the trade unions of Scotland to try to build our economy towards prosperity. We believe that trade unions are a vital component of civil society. If my party is re-elected next week, we are pledged to do everything we can within the law to compromise the provisions of this Bill and to prevent them from frustrating the operation of free trade unions.

I shall engage with two further issues under consideration. The first is e-ballots. When the Government first announced their attitude to e-balloting, it sounded very much like an analogue Government in an digital age and that they were scared of the possibility of e-balloting. It is a matter of some irony, is it not, that it takes such a contemporary, modern and forward-looking institution as the House of Lords to try to persuade the Government of the error of their ways? I accept what the Minister said and I accept the Government’s position that they have moved slightly on this issue. They can no longer defend the indefensible, which would be to say that they would not allow electronic balloting in a society where it is now commonplace and the norm for most of our citizens.

I see you looking at me, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I shall try to be as quick as I can. We are concerned when the Minister tries to give himself a get-out clause. If he had come up with an amendment saying that e-balloting would go ahead unless it could be shown that there were clear and demonstrable problems for its introduction and roll-out, we might have had more sympathy with him. What he is trying to achieve, however, is to give himself a get-out clause to prevent this from happening in the future. In a post-referendum situation, he might not be so well disposed to favouring the trade unions.

The Minister also provided what I think is a thin defence when he spoke about this being a statutory matter. It is statutory only in the sense that trade unions operate within the framework of legislation—but so do charities, private companies and indeed political parties. As I say, I find that to be a very thin defence.

Finally, I want to make a point about the cap on facility time. I have witnessed some bizarre debates in this Chamber, but frankly, this one borders on the surreal. We are being asked to pass legislation to try to prevent something that the Minister accepts we do not even know exists. This is fantasy legislation and fantasy law-making. I think we should reject the proposal for a facility time cap, support the Lords amendments, reject the Government’s attempts to weaken them and, if we get the chance, finally vote against this anti-trade union legislation.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I shall be brief. I welcome the Government’s shift in position, particularly on check-off. I do not believe that check-off has any intrinsic costs to employers. For many public sector organisations, this is literally a check in a box on the payroll system. I view the shift of view as testament to the hard work of thousands of ordinary working people who take on additional responsibilities as shop stewards in their own time to support and protect their fellow workers’ rights—a task for which they are often thanked neither by their co-workers nor their employers, yet they sometimes go above and beyond in their role.

Trade unions have a proud history of internationalism, and tomorrow is International Workers Memorial day—a day strongly supported by the TUC, the trade union movement as a whole, lawyers and the Health and Safety Executive. I mention this because I shall not be able to attend tomorrow’s events. I would like to pay tribute to Herbert Styles, the former Unite representative and Blue Star Fibres worker who religiously organises this event sequentially in Immingham, Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

This is a growing event, with greater attendance every year by families who are deeply grateful for the work Herbert puts in. Time is taken to remember those who have lost their lives in the course of their day-to-day work. I shall not be there to lay a wreath tomorrow, but Jonathan Spurr will be there in my place to do so. I would like to see this day recorded on our calendars. Can the Minister do anything to assist in recognising the role of trade unions and workers and those who lose their lives in the course of their day-to-day work. Can he help to get this recorded in calendars and diaries across the UK?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

I pay tribute to Lord Cormack for his work on the Bill and his words in the House of Lords. He might seem to some an unlikely hero of the working class, but in this instance he has reflected what one nation Conservatism should mean. That phrase is bandied about from time to time, but his interventions and those of other colleagues in the House of Lords remind us that we legislate not just for one Parliament but for the future. I will go on to describe why it would have been very dangerous if the Government had stuck to their original plans.

The House of Lords looked for a workable way for the Government to introduce their stated manifesto commitment without it becoming a crude and clumsy device to starve the second largest party in Parliament—the Labour party—of a long-standing source of finance from the very institutions that founded it. My hon. Friend just said this in another way, but I think that the Lords have done the Government a big favour. Had they proceeded with the original proposals, they would have created—make no mistake about it—a lasting bitterness and resentment in the trade union and Labour movement and, indeed, beyond. We are grateful for the support received from other political parties.

I have no doubt, as many of their lordships pointed out, and, indeed, as paragraph 130 of the House of Lords cross-party Select Committee report noted, that the original proposal would

“make the Labour Party more inclined to take unilateral action against the Conservative Party and its funding when next in government.”

It appears that, at this very late hour, that point has hit home with Ministers, and I very much welcome that.

The Government have decided to think again about their proposals on political fund opt-ins and have tabled amendments (k) to (n) to replace Lords amendments 7 and 8. The requirement to opt into political funds will apply only to new union members. As a result, union members who have already voluntarily agreed to make contributions will not be required to opt in again to support ongoing trade union campaigns. Existing members will be required to opt in only if their union votes to establish a political fund for the first time. The Government have also conceded on the issue of five years and have allowed for a minimum 12-month transition period for unions. Union members will be able to opt in or opt out not only on paper, but through electronic means, so it is now okay to use electronic means to opt in—we will eventually get it to apply to ballots—including online forms, emails and, potentially, texts. Unions will still be required to remind members annually of their right to opt out and they can do so by using individual communications or through their usual systems for informing members, including union newsletters and notice boards.

The Government’s amendments take on board all of the core elements in the proposals made by Lord Burns’s Committee’s report, and I remind the House that it passed the Lords by 320 votes to 172. It therefore passed by an even greater majority than that which set up the Select Committee in the first place, which demonstrates the growing support for this approach.

I still believe that the proposals for an opt-in system for political funds are totally unnecessary—that should be put on the record—but we recognise that the Government’s new proposal is a substantial improvement on the original Bill, which would have required all members to opt in within three months and to renew that opt-in within five years. On that basis, while retaining our opposition to the Bill in general and to opt-in in particular, we will not seek to divide the House on the Government amendments, given the substantial concessions they have made.

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the clear intention behind the move from opt out to opt in is an attempt by some members of the Conservative party to attack the funding of the Labour party. Does he agree, however, that our defence of the right of trade unions to engage in political activity will be more effective if we ensure that they are able to engage not just in activity to support the Labour party, but in other political action that achieves change and support, whichever party they feel serves their members’ best interests?

[Kevin Brennan]

It is accepted that there is a special relationship between the Labour party and the trade union movement, which founded the party. Of course, they use political funds to campaign in all sorts of way. I am grateful to all parties that have recognised the importance to our constitution of the political funds of trade unions and the vital role they play in our democracy. Trade union money is the cleanest money in politics, compared with some of the sources of money and donations to political parties, and long may that continue.

I do not want to detain the House for much longer, but it would be remiss of me not to conclude without paying tribute to all those who have made this change possible and worked so hard to improve this dreadful Bill. I include all my hon. Friends in our BIS Front-Bench team, including my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State; former members of that Front-Bench team who helped at earlier stages of the Bill; Members from other parties in the House who have helped to fight the good fight; and my hon. Friends in the Labour party.

I want to pay special tribute to my good friend Baroness Smith of Basildon and her team in the Lords—Baroness Hayter, Lord Stevenson and Lord Mendelsohn —as well as all the other peers from other parties and from no party at all who voted to create the Select Committee and who worked so diligently and expertly to get us to where we are today.

It is said that our constitution means that the Opposition have their say but the Government get their way. In this instance, the Opposition have had their say and, at least in part, also got their way. As a result, the legislation has had some of the most pernicious edges knocked off, even if it remains a pig’s ear.