Speaking from vast experience, it is always in a trade union’s interest to maintain the best possible record of its members, for a whole raft of reasons. A good trade union does not stand on its hind legs every week screaming, “Strike, strike, strike!” A good trade union needs the correct names and addresses of its members, so that it can address all the problems that society currently faces. This is not just about strike action, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly). That is always a last resort. But I will tell you something, Mr Sheridan. I was on strike for a full year during the miners’ strike, and what a brilliant year it was! I was fighting not for myself but for the wider society, for jobs and for communities up and down the country. It gives people a lot of pleasure if they are taking action and suffering greatly for those reasons. My father and my four brothers were all on strike—my mother had a hell of a job—but we enjoyed it because we were fighting for others. That is what the trade union movement is about, and that is why I get terribly upset by the constant union-baiting from the Liberal Democrats and of course the Tories.
It is in everyone’s interest to keep accurate records. Under the measures that were introduced in 1992, trade unions have to have that information for balloting reasons, among others. They normally have to send a full membership list with the annual return form, the AR21, to the certification officer anyway. The problem was that whenever we tried to take any type of democratic industrial action, the employer would say to me as the local representative, “You’d better have the right names and addresses. If you haven’t, we’ll get an injunction. Then, under the law, the union will be liable for any loss to the company resulting from strike action.” At the same time, the employer obviously had a list of everybody’s
names and addresses. A responsible employer has everyone’s name and address in order to pay them—some trade unionists might prefer to keep their identity private—so surely it should be incumbent on the employer to allow any change in name and address to be passed on to the relevant trade union so that the union can act in accordance with the law. Is that too much to ask? It is feasible, but it is a trap.
I was a representative at different levels of the union, and we would sometimes appear in front of the certification officer and often the High Court. If industrial action occurs, it might be said that somebody’s name has been spelt incorrectly or that somebody has died without people being aware of it in order to try to get that whole democratic process abolished. That is the problem with this legislation.
Many colleagues on both sides of the Committee might agree that bureaucracy is not always a dirty word. Since the Prime Minister got the keys to Downing Street, the Government have promised to cut red tape. What have we seen? We have seen the Government making it easier for people to be hired and fired for no particular reason. They have gone to work with some zeal in attacking workers’ rights at every opportunity, and they have relaxed health and safety legislation. The unions have rightly opposed all those things, which they won in the first place.
I have said before that it is funny that the only area where the Government have sought to increase bureaucracy is in the administration of trade unions. This will not be for the last time either. Unfortunately, this coalition, with Liberal Democrat support, will continue to oppose and attack not just trade union members, but many of the most vulnerable people in society. That is what they are about. As I have said, I believe that at the ballot box they will reap what they have sown. That, by the way, is democracy.
This Bill is undoubtedly about ideology. It is a thinly veiled attack on a movement that the parties on the Government Benches despise. We could move on to deal with the duty to appoint an assurer, but at this point I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South and of course the shadow BIS Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who has highlighted another issue relating to another problem with these lists. They will allow organisations to increase blacklisting, which is already the scourge of the working class. Because of information being passed willy-nilly from employer to different secret organisations, some people are on blacklists. At the end of the day, these people and their families can suffer greatly for the rest of their lives.
That is a problem with the data. The new rules will mean that three new groups will have access to individual membership details—three new opportunities for data to escape into the public domain. Several organisations have raised a concern—I have already mentioned it—about the legality of that. The trade union movement and its individual organisations have a duty under the Data Protection Act to ensure that the information they hold on individual members is kept secure, but this new legislation when passed—not “if”, because it will be passed—will prevent that from happening. There will be a legal contradiction about who is right and it will be up for legal challenge.
I think that in any other country, action such as this on the part of a democratically elected Government would be condemned as an attack on free trade unionism, and I think that that is exactly what is happening in this case. It is about time that the coalition Government sat back and paused, as they have in the past. It is time that they consulted others, got the legal position right, and then returned with reforms that actually meant something and changed something. I look forward very much indeed to the Minister’s response, which should take all of one minute.