Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall try to answer the noble Lord’s question. This was a decision made by the European Court of Human Rights. Over a number of years, government policy on human rights issues has been that it is right for us to follow what the court says. Most people, whether or not they are critical of what we are trying to do, would agree with that, which is a starting point. But significant issues have been raised by the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Campbell, and others. Let me make the following points briefly. Clause 17 increases the freedom of trade unions to set and apply their own membership rules. Of course, where individuals believe that a union has applied its membership rules wrongly or arbitrarily, such individuals can take legal action against a trade union for a breach of rules. There may be issues around a complaint made to the certification officer about such alleged breaches of rules. Noble Lords are concerned that, despite the court’s judgment, Clause 17 provides too much freedom to trade unions, and I want to make two points about that. First, the origins of the provisions which Clause 17 seeks to repeal were found in the 1992 Act, which came into force in 1993. We are not talking about a fundamental or a longstanding feature of our trade union law. There is no evidence either before or after 1993 that trade unions have sought to expel or to exclude individuals for belonging to mainstream political parties. The example raised by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler—who is not in his place and did not speak in the debate, but posed a question to my noble friend—is a case in point. When he was a Minister and a member of the NUJ, there was no such law in existence as that which we seek to repeal. If a trade union had wanted to, it could have said that because a person was a Conservative Member of Parliament or a member of the Conservative Party he should not be a member of the union. But of course trade unions did not do that. Our case is that they will not do so if this change becomes law.