Trade Union Bill

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I thought it was fair to give way to the hon. Gentleman, given that I had mentioned him a couple of times, but the best person to take those points forward is the Minister. On that point, I am happy to conclude.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

On Second Reading, I asked a question to which I have had no answer to date. Quite simply, what problem is this proposed legislation designed to solve? What calamity do we have in our land in the field of industrial relations that means that the Government of the day must prioritise this legislation? I cannot find any. The average worker in the United Kingdom goes on strike for one day every 15 years. It is therefore ridiculous that this matter should be the priority of the Government.

I believe that the only reason the Bill is before us, with so few Government Members listening to the debate, is purely ideological. I do not say that all Members or all strands of the Conservative party are against trade unions, but there most definitely is a strand that is very unempathetic to trade unions and that sees the ability of people to combine together in the workforce to prosecute their interests as an impediment on the rights of employers to make their profits and run their enterprises as they see fit. There is a hostile attitude to trade unions. That, unfortunately for the working people of this country, is the strand within the Tory party that is in the ascendency and in the driving seat in respect of this legislation.

It is a great irony, is it not, that to introduce this legislation, the Conservative party will have to have an unprecedented degree of state interference in the affairs of private enterprise? There will have to be state regulation of trade unions that is more akin to a totalitarian than a democratic regime.

I support the SNP amendments that would require consent from the local and devolved authorities in the United Kingdom for the provisions of the Bill to be implemented. In parallel with this discussion, we have been having a debate on the Scotland Bill about the competences and authorities that should go to the Scottish Parliament. In fact, we argued that this entire area should be devolved to the Scottish Parliament simply because it would mean that proposals such as this Bill would never see the light of day. However, we know that there is not a majority in this House for devolving these powers and I want it to be clear that we are not arguing for that today.

What we are arguing for goes to the heart of the debate in this country about who runs public services. It has been the will of this Parliament that many of our public services should be devolved to local and devolved administrations. It is therefore not right for this Parliament to hinder the ability of the managers of those services to deliver them by interfering and setting requirements on the most important resource that is available to them: the workforce. Just because the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) has a problem managing relations on the London underground, the rest of country should not have to suffer.

A series of amendments seek consent on each of the major provisions in the Bill. I will speak about some of those measures, but I will try not to repeat what has already been said by my hon. Friends, much of which I completely agree with. A number of mechanisms in the Bill are designed to make it harder for a trade union to win a ballot to go on strike—let us be clear about that objective. However, Conservative Members are mistaken if they think that that will make a problem go away.

It seems that among the authors of this Bill there is great ignorance about the process of managing industry. Often, if a concern or dispute arises among the workforce, and members go to their trade union and the union decides to do something, that can be a way of resolving a dispute or problem to the benefit of the industry or service concerned. The additional measures in the Bill will make it harder for unions to go on strike, but that will let problems fester and dysfunction continue, which will not benefit the trade, industry or service in which the dispute is taking place. When a union eventually passes those hurdles and gets a mandate for a strike, that strike will be bigger, longer and more vicious than it ought to have been had the matter been attended to at an earlier stage. I contend that measures that the Government think are about making it harder for unions to take strike action will have a deleterious effect on industrial relations and make it harder for the management of public or private services to deliver and get the consent of their workforce.

Given the way that the issue is being discussed, it seems that Conservative Members conceive of facility time as some sort of stipend whereby union officials spend all day organising strike action and trying to bring industry to its knees. It is nothing of the kind, and if those Members had worked in a public service for one day, they would understand that often, union stewards and officials play an extremely constructive role at local level in the delivery of that industry or service. In many ways, their role can be described as that of a welfare officer, and officials often help out individual employees who may have problems with management or at work, but who may also just have personal problems that are affecting their work.

[Jo Stevens]

When giving evidence to the Bill Committee, the general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, John Hannett, said that trade unions are problem solvers rather than problem causers. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree wholeheartedly and my experience all my working life, as both employer and employee, indicates that that is exactly the case. Facility time can be a good thing for management and industry, and for getting things done.

If a local authority, health board or whatever has a check-off facility that has been voluntarily agreed with its workers to deduct a payroll subscription for a union, how can it be okay for that to be outlawed and criminalised, when the same facility can be used by the National Trust or any charity or insurance scheme that wishes? That is frankly ridiculous and punitive in the extreme, and it belies the fact that the Bill, despite its title, is an anti-trade union Bill. Hopefully we will get an explanation for that when the Minister winds up the debate. If this is about money and the cost to the public sector, I am sure that unions will be happy to negotiate paying. As the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) remarked earlier, local authorities and others may be able to make money out of providing a service for payroll check-off.

Time is short and I know that other Members want to speak. I say simply that if the amendment is voted down and we do not agree to the consent of the London Mayor, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament, or whoever is delivering the service being required for this provision to be implemented, and that the Government will force services to do whatever they want, even if that does not make sense locally, will we not be entering into uncharted territory? The Government will effectively be declaring that they are prepared to go to war with the devolved Administrations and local authorities in this country, which they have said should be responsible for the delivery of those services.

As I have said so many times, this is one of the things in the Conservatives’ manifesto that I do not think they ever expected they would have to implement. They do not have a mandate for this, and I ask them, even at this eleventh hour, to pull back.

[Mr Anderson]

I am proud to declare my interests in relation to the trade union movement. I am glad that the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) has returned to his place, because he talked about intimidation in workplace ballots. I refer him to the last two workplace ballots run by the National Union of Mineworkers in 1981 and 1983, in very tense times. There was an 80% turnout in both ballots on taking national strike action to fight pit closures. In both ballots, more than two thirds of the members said no. Where was the proof of intimidation there?

The hon. Gentleman also claimed that my party wants to go back to workplace ballots only, but that is completely untrue. We do not want these changes, but if we have to have them, let us be serious about them. We have tabled amendments to keep workplace ballots, but we have also said, “Let’s have electronic voting.”

It is clear that this Bill is about bias. It is about blocking people like me from having the opportunity to go through the trade union movement and get the skill, the confidence, the training and the support from a trade union to become part of the political movement that the trade unions gave birth to, so that I can come in here and challenge people such as the hon. Gentleman who want to destroy the things that I believe in and he hates. That is what this Bill is about—nothing more, nothing less.

Who wants this Bill? When I was canvassing in Blaydon during the election, not one person said to me, “We want to tighten trade union legislation.” More pertinently, before the debate today, not one person asked me to support the Bill. But 431 people have written to me directly to ask me to oppose it. The employers do not want it, the workers do not want it and it is clear that the public do not want it. If this Bill is forced through, we will see more industrial unrest, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said. Disputes will not end, victimisation in the workplace will not end, health and safety abuses at work will not end, discrimination will not end and exploitation will not end.

Frustrated workers will not stand back, no matter what the legislation says. We will end up with workers being forced to break rotten laws. If that happens, I would say to members of my party and other MPs of conscience that we should stand four-square behind those workers. This Bill is nothing more than an attempt to undermine democracy. The Conservatives are even abusing the memories of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher—and I cannot believe I am saying that.