Employment Bill [HL]

Is it important that there be safeguards against abuse. A trade union is not the Garrick Club or any normal private association. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Bach, referring to various private bodies, but a trade union is not like a normal private body. That is why it is so important, why we all support trade unions and why there must be a balance with some remedies and safeguards. I think that the Government will be sympathetic to the need for some safeguards. The question is: what safeguards? The Government are saying that the safeguards are in the common law and the courts and that the individual can always go to court, but that is not a very happy outcome for trade unions. We go back to the old days when I was young and when Lord Denning was the only safeguard in the Court of Appeal in cases involving alleged abuses of trade union power. I should like to keep this as far as possible away from the courts—whether it is the European court or the English courts—and the way to do that is to write in proportionate and limited safeguards. We should not reject the whole of Clause 17, which would put us in further breach of the convention—we cannot, and should not, do that—but equally we should not have option A with no safeguards. Therefore, my search, as one would expect of a Liberal Democrat, is for a compromise—a moderate, sensible, commonsense compromise. I want to avoid a lot of union bashing in the Chamber and in the other place. Surely we can find a sensible way to go forward or reach agreement on this. It may well be that how I have tried to do it is not good enough—I am perfectly open to other ideas—but that is what I am trying to do and I have tried to explain it without legal gobbledegook. However, I have plenty of legal gobbledegook if anyone wants to have it. I beg to move.