Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord who has just spoken because I can curtail my own speech, which is related to Clause 17. I wholly agree with him that there is no safeguard against abuse in Clause 17 and that the clause cannot stand part, as there is no justification for it. I have in my notes what the noble Lord said about the rules—but again, I shall not repeat it. I am totally at a loss with regard to what my noble friend Lady Miller of Hendon said about gold-plating for the trade unions. I do not understand this. I say in passing—I shall then conclude fairly swiftly—that I have very great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Bach. For many years we have discussed and disagreed in amity. In my professional past, I appeared for many trade unions, which is very surprising in that I usually appeared for the employers. I was on the cab rank, however, and if they instructed me, as they did, I appeared for them. I have always had great respect for them—and, indeed, in my early days in the House, I managed to achieve, with the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, an amendment to a Bill in favour of the trade unions against my own party. So there is no hard feeling in this debate. One has to take very seriously the fact that the measure, even if it is amended, is a change of considerable consequence to our domestic law. Therefore, it is very much the burden on those who propose the change to make good their case. I will not take time over it today, but I have considered it and I am rather concerned about how that case can be made good. In that context, I also read the finding of the court against ASLEF—I am afraid one has to do that sort of thing if one is going to take part in the debate. We should bear in mind that ASLEF is a small union of train drivers and not one of the big unions concerned in the age of mergers. The finding was that the expulsion was lawful, albeit that Section 174, "““interfered with the freedom of association””," because the trade unions had the freedom of choice about who should become and remain a member. That resulted in a proportionate judgment. That is crucial, because in some of the literature that has been sent to us it looks as though what the unions really want is an absolute position. That should never happen. It is not in the interests of the trade unions, the employers, the individuals, the economy or anything that the provision should be resolved other than by a proportionate decision in accordance with compatibility with the Human Rights Act. I am referring to this because there appears to be a misunderstanding in the letter of 27 December. I make no criticism because anyone who writes a letter on 27 December is probably not quite in their right mind. If you read that letter, you see in references to the benefit of the individual employers, trade unions, the public sector and so forth, that the dominance of absolute collective authority should be asserted. Those are my words; they are not in the letter, but that is the tenor of the letter. One must watch that. It is one of the reasons why one needs to watch with care how the amendment works; whether it can be proportionately applied and so forth. I shall not take any more time. I am grateful to your Lordships for having listened.