Employment Bill [Lords]

I rise to speak primarily to new clause 6, but I also want to say a few words about new clause 4, to which I am a signatory, in order to respond to the rather weird tirade that we heard from the Conservative Front Bench on the issue. Delivering the green agenda in the workplace can be done only in co-operation with the work force and the unions, even if it just means persuading people to turn the light bulbs off when they go home. To suggest that the activities set out in proposed new section 43A(2) to the Employment Act 2002, such as consulting on the workplace environment, should not be done in the firm's time, given that the environmental reps will have to negotiate with the employer about the issue, is frankly ludicrous. I therefore support new clause 4. My real reason for speaking is to address new clause 6 and the ASLEF judgment. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I chair, a little while ago published a scrutiny report on the issue—our 17th report of the Session. I apologise to the House that the report was not tagged on to today's debate, which it perhaps ought to have been, because it deals at length with the ASLEF judgment and its implications. When the ASLEF case went through the European Court of Human Rights, the Government rightly accepted the need to amend the law in the light of that Strasbourg judgment. They consulted on two options, the first of which was effectively the option proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) and the second of which was not quite the option in clause 19. That was the right thing to do. When we scrutinised the issue in our Committee, my view was very much along the lines of my hon. Friend's view. Having practised in that area of law and written a number of union rule books, I thought that the existing safeguards were adequate. The historic safeguard is the fact that the union rulebook is a contract with the membership that is subject to enforcement through contractual law and natural justice, and more latterly through the certification officer process. We discussed the issue at some length, having the benefit of advice from our legal adviser and the opportunity to look at some of the other debates. I came to the conclusion that simply could not rely on the traditional safeguards. The first point is about the possible impact on other political parties. The debate has focused on the BNP, but the risk is that the provisions could go beyond. We have heard a pretty anti-union tirade from the Conservative party tonight, which has reverted to type. It has been said that the Conservative party is not against the objectives and rules of most unions, but the way that it is going, one could easily see it slipping into being against such things, given its anti-union attitude. In the 1950s, communists were expelled from unions wholesale, and particularly from the electricians union. So this has happened before, but to the left, not the right. That is why we have to be very careful about proceeding on such a basis. The Communist party might be a fringe party now, rather than the industrial power that it was in the 1950s, but the Socialist Workers party, for example, is very active in some trade unions and organises in those unions on a political level. We have heard, too, about other campaigners being affected. For example, animal rights campaigners might set up a party to campaign in unions involved in scientific industries, which could cause significant difficulties. We need to consider what the ASLEF judgment said. It said what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central has already described, but it also said that"““the State must nonetheless protect the individual against any abuse of a dominant position by trade unions””" and then set out the need for appropriate safeguards. It is interesting that when we discussed the issue in my Committee, Lord Morris, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, an influential trade unionist in his time and a man with immense experience of trade unions, was concerned about the lack of additional safeguards. I should also pray in aid Lord Wedderburn of Charlton, my old law professor from decades ago and probably the doyenne of trade union law, who also expressed his concerns in debates in the House of Lords about the lack of additional safeguards. As a result, my Committee proposed an amendment. A member of my Committee from the Liberal Democrat Benches, Lord Lester, also proposed his own amendment, which Lord Wedderburn thought was rather good, because it was as narrow as we could get, while also concomitant with the need for appropriate safeguards. The problem with the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central is that, while it might rectify some of the incompatibilities, it does not deal with the need for appropriate safeguards. For example, none of the existing safeguards—the contractual rulebook safeguard and the certification officer safeguard—is available to deal with a person who is excluded from trade union membership in the first place, as opposed to having been expelled. Such a person cannot go to the certification officer, and they cannot go to court for a breach of the union rules. I hope that we will pay attention to the issue of human rights in these circumstances. Sometimes, human rights can be a little inconvenient for us on the left, as well. There is clearly a positive obligation under human rights law to provide safeguards against abuse, and that is why my Committee proposed an amendment. My problem is that clause 19, as it stands, goes rather further than that amendment. My hon. Friend has made some quite trenchant criticisms of certain aspects of clause 19. I disagree with his point about the rules and objectives of the unions. Having written union rule books, I think it is pretty clear that most of them have clear objectives at the start of the rules, and that the rules are clear. They normally deal with the process, rather than the politics. The part of clause 19 that states"““ if it is not reasonably practicable for the objective””—" of the union—"““to be ascertained””" contains some rather woolly wording that we do not actually need. Also, the part that deals with the process issues contains rather more detail than is necessary. Ideally, the Bill should not have started out in the House of Lords. We should have started it off in the Commons, and it could then have gone backwards and forwards. My main concern is that we are now caught between a rock and a hard place—that is, between my hon. Friend's new clause, which I do not think is human-rights compliant, and clause 19, which probably is human-rights compliant from the safeguards point of view, but which might go a little too far from the ASLEF judgment point of view. Neither option before us is ideal. My real concern is for the Bill as a whole. If we were to agree to my hon. Friend's new clause, we would inevitably end up engaging in ping-pong with the House of Lords, and the House of Lords has made it pretty clear that it is not going to go down the route suggested by my hon. Friend. We would therefore run the risk of losing all the good stuff in the Bill as well. On balance, therefore, my view is that we should leave clause 19—imperfect though it is—in the Bill.