Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

Q 109 Going back to devolution, on which I recognise you are avowedly not an expert, take it from me that health is a devolved issue. I think my colleague mentioned that. Do you view the Bill as being concerned more with employment and industrial relations than health? Obviously, you look at it from a health perspective, but in your mind, what is the Bill concerned with?

Julia Manning: The Bill from my perspective and the interest I have in it is how patient experience would be affected by the Bill and has been affected by strikes. When we already have a scenario of shortages in the workforce and treatment being curtailed and postponed for other reasons, it is another consideration for us that would mean that people are not seen when they expect or need to be. That is my interest in the Bill.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Q 110 Can I ask you about clauses 12 and 13? They propose to change the current arrangements for facility time, and facility time operates within the NHS. What do you know about the current arrangements and what do you consider their benefits?

Julia Manning: Of facility time? I do not know about that.

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[The Chair]

Mr Smith, I have been really quite kind. You went very wide of the mark. If you get the documentation you refer to and wish to submit a new written piece to the Committee, I will more than willingly distribute it, but I am going to move the Committee on at this stage. We need to get more questions in, because we have little time left.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 163 Amnesty and Liberty are both doughty defenders of human rights around the world in terms of abuses such as torture and execution, particularly in the case of Amnesty. I do not know if you have the Bill in front of you, but subsection (8) of new section 220A, inserted by clause 8, states:

“While present where the picketing is taking place, the picket supervisor must wear a badge, armband or other item that readily identifies the picket supervisor as such.”

Are you telling me that the wearing of an armband really concerns you?

Shane Enright: Absolutely. It is a way of singling people out. It is a requirement that is absolutely unique to this group of protesters. Why should trade unionists be required to undertake a process of identification when they are protesting that others are not required to? It is discriminatory.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 164 I understand that the current code of practice says that everybody should wear an armband. That is not normally enforced, of course. Normally, the organisers of protests do wear an armband, but that has not caused particular difficulty.

Sara Ogilvie: There is quite a clear distinction that it is important we draw between when something is in a code of practice or when we do it because it is good practice and we think it will make things easier, and when there is a legal requirement for something to happen. When there is a legal requirement, there are legal consequences. The consequences of this would be not only the person identifying themselves and all the concerns we have heard about blacklisting, but also, if that requirement is not complied with, it is a reason to void the entire strike. That is a secondary consequence of this. It seems a very disproportionate response. It is those two elements.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 165 I am glad you used the word “proportionate”, because the Government could, of course, have carried on from the code and said that everybody had to wear a badge or an armband.

Sara Ogilvie: And that is in the consultation document.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 166 Which would have been difficult if someone had left them at home; it would not have been proportionate to have voided the whole strike. But surely for the organiser of a particular event, it is not too much to ask them to identify themselves.

Sara Ogilvie: I think we have to be honest about the fact that it is quite a big issue. There are so many human rights issues that we think, “Maybe these are trivial”; there is quite a lot of talk about that at the moment. But for individuals who have wanted, for example, to wear a chain with a crucifix on, that is something that the courts have said is not a trivial human rights issue. When Rosa Parks was asked to sit at the back of a bus, some people then would have said that that was a trivial human rights issue. I absolutely think that asking people to identify themselves, to risk going on a public list, as a result of which they might be discriminated against, and to jump through lots of hoops in order to exercise their rights, that really concerns me; it is not me feigning affectation.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 167 And you feel that this is completely different from a code?

Sara Ogilvie: When people choose to do something, and when people are required to do something and there are very strong consequences because of that requirement, I think that is a difference, yes, and it is a significant one.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 168 I want to go back to this picket supervisor code. If you have large public assemblies—even on things such as school trips, which I have supervised, I have to wear an orange tabard. Is it the actual armband that is causing the great objection? You might have thousands of people on the streets. Surely, just for public order, somebody needs to be able to identify who is in charge.

Sara Ogilvie: If we want to compare it, there are rules in place that govern marches and other kinds of protest. There are not rules about demonstrations; there are rules about marches. If you have a rule about a march, then the organiser must be known to the police. But that organiser could be, if you take the union example, Frances O’Grady; everybody knows who she is. If you have someone who is in a local trade union, they might not want to be known; as we have heard, there are really serious consequences. It is not so much about the organisation; it is about the identification, and the fact that that can then be used to void a whole strike.

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[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Q 224 In response to Stephen Doughty’s previous question about the Welsh Government’s previous challenges to things like the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill, can I ask you—without expecting you to reveal the content—to confirm whether you have sought advice from the Counsel General about the Trade Union Bill and its potential breach of the devolution settlement?

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 225 My question ties in quite well. It was held by the court that the agricultural wages case concerned agriculture. There is no way that this Bill could possibly be concerned with anything other than employment and industrial relations. It was argued that the agricultural wages case concerned wages but it clearly did not: the court held that it concerned agriculture. This is quite different, is it not?

[Jo Stevens]

Q 226 Have you had any discussions with your counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland about the measures in the Bill and their application?

Leighton Andrews: I start by saying that I am not in front of this Committee to divulge any conversations that have been held with our own legal advisers in respect of our position as a Government. We will reach our own conclusion as to whether this Bill from the UK Government requires a legislative consent motion. That is something we are currently considering.

In respect of the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill, I think we need to be clear about that Bill. It went beyond what was said by the questioner. What it confirmed in that case was that where an Assembly Bill fairly and realistically satisfies the test set out in section 108 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and is not within an exception, it does not matter whether it might also be capable of being classified as relating to a subject that has not been devolved, such as employment rights and industrial relations. The Trade Union Bill very clearly relates to devolved public services—that is the three obvious ones: fire and rescue, health and, of course, education under 17, but potentially others as well. This clearly cuts across the devolution settlement, and we have very strong issues that we will be raising in that regard.

In respect of relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland, officials certainly have had contact with Scottish Government officials. The legal situation in Northern Ireland is slightly different from that in respect of Scotland and Wales, but I think that there is considerable unease among the devolved Administrations about this Bill.

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[Chris Stephens]

Q 233 I will ask you a question first from the STUC point of view. Can you outline for the Committee what discussions the STUC has had with the Scotland Office on the Trade Union Bill? Do you have specific concerns in relation to check-off and facility time?

Grahame Smith: Perhaps I should introduce myself, given that Members may not know who I am. I am the general secretary of the Scottish TUC. I have had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State at the Scotland Office to discuss a variety of things, among which was the Trade Union Bill.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 234 Presumably, you do not think that industrial relations should be an English, Welsh and Scottish issue. You think they should be devolved.

Roseanna Cunningham: Yes, I do think they should be devolved. I would offer as evidence the different industrial relations picture here from what is happening south of the border.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 235 And there was a great deal of discussion about this before the devolution settlement, was there not, and Smith came down in favour of them not being devolved?

Roseanna Cunningham: That does not change my position though. My position is that in an ideal world, they would be devolved. One reason why I am arguing for that is because, quite apart from anything else, there is a different relationship in Scotland. To have our relationship adversely affected by what is going through the Westminster Parliament is unfortunate to say the least.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 236 But the fact is that they are not a devolved issue.

Roseanna Cunningham: The fact is that you are choosing not to listen to what I have to say about the different relationship within Scotland, in terms of industrial relations, and why, in our view, it would be preferable if this Bill simply did not apply to Scotland.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much for sticking with us through this very tumultuous experience.