Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Government Operations
Lucy Neville-Rolfe (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank noble Lords for these amendments, which allow me to try to clarify on which public sector employers the regulations could impose publication requirements by virtue of Clause 12. As I mentioned, the purpose of the government amendment we agreed earlier was to provide the clarification the amendments seek. The government amendments I outlined I think go further than the concerns reflected in these opposition amendments. They also respond to the concerns voiced in the other place regarding the importance of public authorities knowing whether they will be required to publish information. I had hoped that sending a letter would help, but I am not sure it has, so let me try to respond. I say in advance that I will look at the issue again in the light of the comments that have been made this evening and the point that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made about delegated powers The first point is that since the debate in the other place the facility time regulations will now apply only to public sector employers with 50 or more employees to make sure that any burden is not placed on small employers. That will include smaller heritage institutions. In fact, this will reduce the number of employers who will be affected from the estimate which we set out in the impact assessment for this clause. Whereas some categories of public sector employer have a set definition, such as government departments, which are listed clearly on GOV.UK, there are public sector employers for which there is no such readily available definition or list The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, asked who will be included in the list of public-sector employers. When determining which bodies will be required to publish information, regard was given to those bodies, as I think she said, classified by the Office for National Statistics as public sector bodies within the national accounts. We ran into the ONS, of course, when we debated the Enterprise Bill in relation to the Green Investment Bank We propose to include within the regulations those bodies that are funded wholly or partially from public funds, that provide functions or services of a public nature, that have more than 49 employees, as I have said, and that have at least one trade union official. I agree that, "funded wholly or partially from public funds", probably needs to be the subject of my review An example is the definition of "public authority", which I understand has a commonly understood meaning, but where the precise boundaries are is not clear. There are employers whose functions are of a public nature, and which are publicly funded, that may not be considered to be a public authority for other purposes. In that respect I cannot agree with the proposed use of the term in Amendment 81, as it would not capture the appropriate range of public-sector employees or provide the clarity that we need Amendment 82 expresses the concern that regulations would be applied to, for example, private companies receiving a small amount of public funding and, in turn, the reserve power to cap facility time in Clause 13 could then be applied to those organisations. That is not and never has been our intention, as my letter explained The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, queried the position of academies. Academies are established in different ways from other publicly funded schools, but they are still publicly funded so it is right that they are accountable for how the money is spent.