Employment Bill [Lords]

I am not giving way. In Committee, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) was kind enough to give us a practical example, when he said:"““I was a communist when I was young, although I was not a party member. I was quite open about it. I can imagine a situation in which that could be used against me professionally””.––[Official Report, Employment Public Bill Committee, 16 October 2008; c. 79.]" We agree with his concern. The Bill's provisions seem at odds with a person's human rights, so our amendment would address that wrong by saying that party membership must have been within the 12 months prior to an individual's application for trade union membership. On the advice of a number of hon. Members in Committee, we have also tightened the drafting to include future party membership. We hope that that will satisfy other concerns that had been expressed. It seems unfair to us that the union's right to expel should last for ever. Amendment No. 10 would deal with that concern and I give notice of my intention to press it to a Division. Amendment No. 11 also addresses our ongoing concerns about the definition of what constitutes a political party, because, as things stand, there is no definition in the Bill, so we believe we are in real danger of enacting a clause that has an effect far more damaging than it should have. We need to ask at what point a person's associations become more indicative of their beliefs than their individual conduct or characteristics. Several members of the Committee noted that although they were members of one of the main political parties, they did not necessarily agree with the entirety of their party's views. We know that political parties are broad churches, but I fear that we are danger of tarring all with the same brush. The choice to become a member of a political party is an active choice and a definite action, but it might be inspired by any number of reasons. I wonder how many new Labour party members who joined around 1997 in the heyday of Mr. Blair now find themselves in a very different party, as we have seen this evening, putting forward 1970s-style trade union legislation. Clause 19 is a recipe for disaster. I agree with those hon. Members who believe that we should be worried about the British National party, but we may be missing the wood for the trees. We reminded members of the Committee that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) supported original legislation to protect communists and their fellow travellers from being hounded out of the unions, so although we can talk about countering the BNP, we must not think that legislation is the only means of doing so. It is not, and many other organisations could be caught in that legislative net. Given the position in which we find ourselves, we need carefully to regulate who will be caught, which is why we suggest limiting expulsion rights to registered members of political parties. We accept that proposal has flaws—personally, I have real sympathy with some of the ideas expressed in Committee, especially on extreme political groups such as Combat 18 or the Militant Tendency, which would fall outside my definition of a political party—but we have to understand that we are debating this on the back of the ASLEF decision. Since 1993, as the Minister rightly noted in Committee, the unions have had the power to expel or exclude an individual on the basis of their conduct. The clause deals expressly with political party membership—the very issue at stake in the ASLEF case. When we fall within the wide parameters of democracy, the spectrum of beliefs is very broad and the question becomes where we draw the line and who draws it. We must be careful not to allow the Bill to creep into areas that it is not designed to cover. The ASLEF decision dealt only with expulsion or exclusion on the basis of political party membership, not on the basis of conduct or association with a group. We must ensure that we draw the line at a reasonable place, and I believe that our amendment does just that. If we do not say that the provisions should apply to registered members of political parties, to whom will they apply—people who wear Nazi insignia or Che Guevara T-shirts or who are known to associate with extremists? I fear that we may end up with trade union witch hunts in which members who show even the slightest diversion from the party line find themselves out on their ear. As with much of the Bill, we are being forced to accept the lesser of two evils. For us, certainty is preferable. One thing is for sure: as things stand, clause 19 is inviting court cases to decide what constitutes a political party—and many extreme groups have shown themselves only too happy to go to court over such matters. The amendment will, I hope, provide less room for them to do so.