My Lords, neither the Minister nor I served on the committee that discussed the Trade Union Bill. However, he will be well aware, no doubt from reading Hansard, that my party made many of the proposals in what was then the Bill and is now the Act. We remain concerned about all those, including those aspects now being introduced through these regulations.
In the first set of regulations, the Government have identified within what they have defined as “important public services”—health, education, fire, transport and border security—the personnel that they believe should be covered, and so refining, as the Government put it, the list of the important public services. Within education, for example, it is teachers and head teachers but not, one assumes, caretakers, although they are very important in the running of our schools. While we are critical of the way that the Government have failed to listen to many aspects of the consultation that took place, we are at least pleased that in this one respect—in relation to ancillary workers—the Government have listened. We welcome that very much indeed.
These important public services are the ones that the Government have decided must meet not only the 50% turnout threshold criteria but also a requirement that at least 40% of those eligible to vote must have voted for strike action before it can proceed. That means, for example, that in a ballot where the turnout is just over 50%, taking industrial action would require some 80% of those voting to do so in favour. During the passage of the Bill, although we saw some merits in the setting
of a threshold for turnout, we argued against the imposition of the 40% threshold. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, at Second Reading, it is,
“a very stiff test indeed”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 79.]
It is hardly, as the Minister sought to describe it, a proportionate approach to the problem as the Government see it.
We noted at that time, and continue to do so, that business support for these measures is lukewarm. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has said that the plans are,
“an outdated response to the challenge of the modern workplace”.
Only yesterday, in the Evening Standard, we saw the results of an Ipsos MORI poll, which showed, for example, that nationwide only 37% of the public support limits on the rights of train drivers to strike, and only 35% support limits on teachers. Imposing a 40% threshold is a stringent limit. It is not a proportionate limit and it is one that is clearly not supported by the public.
As my noble friend Lord Stoneham argued during Second Reading, the 40% threshold brings with it other problems as well and would make resolving disputes more difficult. He said:
“Disputes have to be resolved through a bargaining relationship; if that is not understood, we will be led to unintended consequences. If you have thresholds, the unions will work to achieve those thresholds, so strikers could become more intransigent”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 118.]
On these Benches, we also argued that quite simply no evidence has been produced by the Government that the workers who did not vote in the strike ballot are any less willing to withdraw their labour than the ones who actually did. Of course, we noted, as many did during those deliberations, that in the 2015 general election the Conservative Party won by a majority of just 12 seats—the smallest majority since 1974. More importantly, it did so with less than 24% of registered voters. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, played a very active part in those deliberations, and I love quoting him. At Second Reading, he said,
“the current Government happily govern with fewer than one-quarter of the electorate supporting it, and fewer than 40% of those who voted”.
He went on to say:
“That tells me as much about why we need electoral reform in this country as it does about trade union democracy”.—[Official Report, 11/1/16; col. 79.]
I entirely agree with him.
8.30 pm
The Government have considerable power over important public services, but they fail to meet, by a huge margin, the 40% threshold that they are imposing on the same public services for actions that their Members wish to take. I note with great interest that in the Explanatory Memorandum we have been provided with for this evening’s debate is the claim:
“The thresholds will restore a level of democratic legitimacy to industrial action ballots, ensuring that the public have confidence that any disruption they face as a result of strike action has a strong democratic mandate from union members”.
Then we must assume, on that basis, that the Government accept that they do not have a strong mandate for the actions they are taking. How does that 40% threshold approach square with the EU referendum result? Are the Government not admitting that their hard Brexit proposals
lack democratic legitimacy and cannot have public confidence when only 37.4% of all eligible voters backed Brexit, whether soft or hard? Again, the 40% threshold was missed.
The Minister has rightly commented on your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s concerns about the failure to publish guidance in early December. I am sure that the House will acknowledge the apology which the Minister has given, but it is very much to be regretted that that was not done. The committee also made very clear that the need to provide that guidance indicated that the primary legislation was unclear. But nothing in this set of regulations or the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum has helped persuade us that what we said during the passage of the Bill was wrong. We remain of the view that the Government are quite simply wrong themselves to impose this 40% limit.
The final regulation on the list, relating to the transition period for the imposition of new rules on trade union political funding, is different, and we are very concerned about what is proposed. We were critical of the whole set of measures around this aspect of the Bill, believing that party-political funding should be addressed in the round, not looking at just one aspect of it that relates to the funding of one particular political party. We were pleased that the Government accepted an amendment requiring a transition period of at least 12 months and consultation with all trade unions that have a political fund, but it is about the results of that consultation I want to press the Minister. It is not at all clear that that consultation was meaningful. As he said, the end of the consultation is planned to be 1 March 2018. He claimed that that will allow the trade unions to make the necessary changes. He said that it was an appropriate and adequate time period, yet the Government will know, since it is referred to very clearly in their own summary of trade union responses to the consultation, that many of the affected unions have their conferences—the time at which they can change their rules—scheduled for April and May of 2018, which is after the deadline that the Government are imposing. USDAW, for example, writes:
“This begs the question: why are the Government rushing to implement legislation just a few weeks before unions are due to hold their conferences to change their rules to comply with the legislation? By rushing into legislation, without giving USDAW (and other unions) time to abide by our own rules, Government are forcing USDAW into a situation where we either need to break our own rule book—laying us open to challenge from our members—or not to abide by the legislation”.
I am sure that the Minister will respond by saying that the unions have known about this legislation for some time, that they have had time to prepare and therefore it is perfectly reasonable. But to do so will mean significant changes to the arrangements—changes to the times when they will have their major conferences, for example. The Minister knows how expensive it is to run the Conservative Party conference. He knows how difficult it would be to change the date of that conference, let alone to be able to find a venue. He will of course be aware that his friend in another place—the Minister, Mr Nick Boles—said very specifically that no measures should be taken that will prevent them being “successful for them” and certainly not,
“punishing in terms of cost”.
While we have considerable concerns about the new funding rules, I hope the Minister will at least accept that—to meet Nick Boles’s commitment that there should be successful transformation by the trade unions to these new measures, which many people do not like anyway, and that it should be done at no significant cost to them—there is a real requirement to extend the transition period, at least by six months. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.