Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Callanan on 19 December (HL Deb col 947) in which he said that "75 per cent of workers in this country are not in trade unions", what assessment they have made of whether there is a link between (1) levels of union membership, and (2) levels of workforce care and HR practices, in the private sector versus the public sector.

Statistics on trade union membership, including proportion of public and private sector employees who belong to a union are published on Gov.uk.

Trade unions can have a constructive role to play in representing their members’ interests. Strikes, however, should always be a last resort given the impact that they have on the public and we would always encourage unions to exhaust all other avenues to resolve disputes before taking this step.