Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, we had a long discussion on a similar amendment in Committee, as noble Lords will remember. At that stage I drew attention to one of my objections to the original amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester. I am afraid, however, that I still have problems with the amendment. I see the noble Lord nods; he realises that I do. The problem that I have is with proposed new paragraph (b) which says, "““the individual would not suffer exceptional hardship by reason of the expulsion or exclusion or any related conduct by or on behalf of the union in relation to his employment””." As I said in Committee, we do not have closed-shop agreements any more so we no longer have the power to take into consideration whether a decision of that kind will result in exceptional hardship. Generally speaking, unions now do not have the power that they once had to inflict exceptional hardship by means of withdrawal of employment and so on. This is made quite clear in the amendment, which says, ““is permitted only if””. So the union would have to take account of this before it came to a decision to expel someone under the terms of the Bill. As I said, if I had to choose between the Bill and the amendment, I would choose the Bill as it stands. It is possible, as has been indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, that the Government will be prepared to come up with a compromise, but my objection arises from imposing on the unions in proposed new paragraph (b)—