My Lords, I should like to pick up from where my noble friend Lord Whitty left off. The more that the British public start to understand the Kafkaesque nature of the Bill—Part 3 in particular—the more, during the pause to which my noble friend referred, people around the House, not just on these Benches, will recognise that it is an outrageous measure.
I take this opportunity to list the very onerous administrative burdens that, as my noble friend Lord Monks was saying, are going to be placed in addition to those that exist at the moment. It is a rather formidable list. This is what the Bill would do in addition to what is done at the moment: it would require unions to submit to the certification officer a membership audit certificate. Secondly, it would require unions with more than 10,000 members to appoint a qualified, independent person to act as an assurer who will provide the union membership audit certificate and carry out such inquiries as they consider necessary to provide the certificate.
Thirdly, the Bill will give new, substantial investigatory powers to the certification officer who will be entitled to: require the production of relevant documents or authorise another person to do so; require explanations of those documents from their producer or any person who is or has been an official of the union, including assurers; and appoint an inspector to investigate compliance with the duty to maintain a register of names and addresses of members if circumstances suggest that the union has failed to comply with that duty or the duties relating to the membership audit certificate.
Lastly, the Bill will give new enforcement powers to the certification officer, who would be able to make a declaration of non-compliance with duties relating to the register and subsequently to issue an enforcement order that would impose requirements to take steps to remedy the failure. Then, of course, there will be penalties at the end of that.
Where would one normally go in a democracy to find out an evaluation of such a lengthy list of new requirements? As my noble friend Lord Monks has said, it is not exactly a bonfire of red tape. One would go to a Select Committee or a Standing Committee. I think there is scope here for a Select Committee but there are different ways in which you can skin this cat during the pause. One of them is the report from the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee which says that this Bill has requirements which are disproportionate to anything that the Bill wishes to achieve. It states that,
“other than in cases of emergency, all Bills should, as standard practice, go through pre-legislative scrutiny in Parliament”.
We are touching on a really serious feature of the way this has been done.
To me, the most significant part of the Regulatory Policy Committee’s damning report is the way it puts the finger on Ministers who, for political reasons, make use of Whitehall expertise so that the business department in effect invents a problem in order to solve it. In other words, the RPC says, in terms, in the impact assessment statement—I have pity on those who have to draw it up—“What is the problem that we are trying to solve?” Because it had not been told exactly, it had to postulate what the problem was. It finds itself going around in concentric circles. In the words of the RPC:
“The IA is not fit for purpose”.
That is not to do with the probity of the people writing it. If I was a former Permanent Secretary of a government department or a former Cabinet Secretary, this would to me be a further example of the way in which respect for the quality of the Civil Service, which, from the famous mid-19th century Northcote report, has been a model for the world, has vanished. Now, civil servants are being used as footballs. It would be very useful to hear from judges, former Permanent Secretaries and others without a political axe to grind—as we obviously can be said to have.
The committee states:
“The IA is not fit for purpose”,
and that it,
“needs to provide a more detailed assessment”,
of the costs. It finds that the impact assessment probably underestimates the cost to trade unions by 100%. In other words, instead of being £400,000 it is probably £800,000. It depends to some extent on the cost per hour of a typical person responsible for those matters in a trade union. The IA puts it at £12 an hour, in line with a voluntary organisation. I may say that the houses that trade union officials live in are not palatial, but trade union officials with those responsibilities get more than £12 an hour. It is that on which we base the rest of the edifice of cost, which the Regulatory Policy Committee says is grossly underestimated.
As we go through the clauses, the case will build for the whole measure being a long way over the top. It is then quite embarrassing to have to ask people: what can we do to amend it? Frankly, the concept is so flawed and so politically motivated that actually clause stand part is the only way to approach it; you might say that about this whole section of the Bill.
Submissions have been made by individual unions. The mindset on the part of the Government is that all those unions are affiliated to the Labour Party by some wicked connection. “Did you know?”, they might say. I will be corrected if I am wrong, but in terms of the number of unions, I think that only 20% or so of unions are affiliated to the Labour Party. My noble friend Lord Whitty says that I have overestimated it, but I will say 20%. We are talking about unions being affiliated to the Labour Party, but not all unions are affiliated to the TUC. In a later amendment, I will be presenting some of the detailed concerns about the Bill from the Royal College of Nursing. It is not
affiliated to the TUC. I do not think that it will ring the same bells in the mind of many members of the Conservative Party as unions which are part of the TUC. It makes a point, which is well made in the TUC’s main submission, that people jump to the conclusion that there may be civil liberties issues in Part 2, but there are not civil liberties issues in Part 3. That is not the case at all when one thinks about the circumstances in which people can be identified in reports to independent assessors. There is no regard to information which is supposed to be private, in some cases because names and addresses are sensitive.
At some stage during this pause, between now and the new year, a process must take place to test whether we on this side of the House are right, or whether people on the other side of the House are right. It will not be easy to judge this today, but I think that the case we are putting forward, and will continue to put forward, will prove overwhelming.
5.15 pm