Members of the public are suffering not because of the trade unions but because of the policies of the Government. While the hon. Gentleman continues to attack ordinary working people up and down this country, people will be looking at this at home and thinking how out of touch this Government are.
I repeat that in 2012-13, significantly, not a single trade union member out of the 7,197,415 members registered with the certification officer made one complaint to him about the maintenance of the registers of members’ names and addresses—that is, not one complaint from nearly 7.2 million people. Let me emphasise that the trade unions and the certification officer work very closely together because they have a mutual interest in ensuring that processes are accurate and transparent. The certification officer’s own figures bear this out, and it is worth recording them; it is a shame that the hon. Gentleman does not have a piece of paper and a pen to write them down. Some of the figures may shock Members because they reaffirm how much of this Bill is completely ideologically driven and total and utter nonsense.
In the past five years, the certification officer has had no complaints to adjudicate on from, if we take the figure of 7.2 million, a total of nearly 40 million people on the membership registers. In fact, he has had only six complaints since 2000. Five of those were dismissed and he did not even issue a declaration on the sixth. Only 10 complaints have gone to a decision since 1987.