I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group. They deal with confidentiality and administrative complexity, as well as some points concerning the position of the assurer. Incidentally, I rather liked the earlier comment by my noble friend Lord Stevenson that this provision amounts to job creation for chartered accountants, of whom he is one, but I believe that it will very much benefit a small part of the population.
I shall deal quickly with each of the amendments. The Bill has been much criticised by civil liberties organisations for allowing potentially significant breaches of data protection law. A legal opinion by Michael
Ford QC, acting for UNISON, points out that under the European Charter of Fundamental Rights only a substantial public interest would justify the disclosure of this membership information. As we have said before—I shall not labour the point—where is the substantial justification in this case?
Nor is it absolutely clear that the Bill contains any suitable safeguards to protect sensitive personal data. An inspector would owe a duty of confidentiality to the certification officer but not, it seems, to the union or its members, and no duty of confidentiality is placed squarely on the shoulders of the certification officer. We are advised by legal advisers that the Bill may well not be permissible under the data protection directive, and Amendment 118E seeks to remedy that.
Amendment 118F seeks to ease the requirements on the union to appoint or terminate the appointment of the assurer and to put it in line with the terms under which scrutineers are employed to oversee union elections and ballots. Currently, the Bill tells unions to alter their rules but, notwithstanding that, the Bill’s provisions override the rules. An assurer could be removed only by resolution of a general meeting or conference. Not too many people have that requirement on them as far as auditors are concerned. It is not necessary to call a special shareholders’ meeting to get rid of KPMG or Deloitte or whoever, but there would be a requirement on a union in this area if this part of the Bill went through.
Amendment 118G would improve a union’s ability to remove an assurer who had breached the confidentiality of the union or breached certain other requirements. It stresses that the obligation is to the union and its members, and there is not necessarily a general airy-fairy commitment to give confidence to the wider world. As it stands, this provision would be extremely intrusive to the union’s right to keep its information confidential. As others have said, some of that information could be quite explosive in certain industries with more unscrupulous employers.
Amendment 118H would qualify the requirement for a system to be “satisfactory” by adding,
“so far as is reasonably practicable”,
which is very much in line with Section 24 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act.
Amendment 118J is rather important for employers, and I am surprised that some of them have not made more noise about this. The check-off system operates when the employer deducts the union’s subscription from the employee’s pay and, probably on a quarterly basis, sends the payment and an administrative charge off to the union. If the assurer finds any inaccuracies in some of the information and data that a union is holding, they may well be traceable to the employer—they may well be traceable to the payroll system or the way it is administered. In a sense, under Amendment 118J, we are asking, “What about the employer having to comply with investigations in this area launched by the assurer or the certification officer or one of his proposed inspectors?”. Amendment 118L would follow that up. It would provide the assurer with the ability to seek information from an employer for the same purpose.
Amendment 118K would put the obligation regarding record-keeping squarely where it should be if this provision goes through, and that is on a union nationally,
not on the officer in charge of data handling in the union. It is not fair to put the obligation on a branch secretary, who may be a lay person. It is not fair to put it on the East Anglia regional committee, for example. The responsibility for good record-keeping should be very much on the national office, and I ask the Minister to look at that.
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Amendment 118M stresses the obligations under the Data Protection Act, and this is also relevant to Article 11 of the European convention.
Amendment 118N refers to the test of reasonable steps that need to be taken by an assurer in the current draft of the Bill. How about raising the bar a bit and inserting the rather stronger requirement of “necessary” rather than “reasonable” steps? It is a very important matter that he or she is handling.
The purpose of Amendment 118P is to reduce the scope for the assurer to disclose information where a member is involved in criminal activity or some kind of corruption. We are trying to limit the scope of the assurer to make information available on a wider basis. At the moment, there are too many opportunities for an assurer to disclose information and perhaps data protection requirements, and thus breach the obligation to individual union members.
Those are the key points that I wish to put before the Minister. I beg to move.