Equality Bill

I am grateful to the Minister, who has given me a lot to think about. My amendments are probably too broad in that they would have allowed disclosure about pay to anyone, including hated journalists. I can see why that might be objectionable. Can the Minister clarify whether a trade union representative would include a trade union official officer representative of another union? Let us take the speech therapists’ case—speech therapists are in one union, hospital pharmacists are in another and clinical psychologists are in another, and there are big arguments about the absence of equal pay. Would the government amendments allow the information on the discussion of the pay of each of the three groups to be fully disclosed to the trade union representatives of each of those three unions, all within the National Health Service and all dealing with the same cluster of pay issues? Or is it contemplated to be confined only to your own trade union representative, in which case Pam Enderby could talk only to the MSF trade union representative and not to the representative of the other unions?