Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-01-11
Topic: Labor
Clive Brooke (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I did not speak in the dress rehearsal on 19 November, when my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock moved a Motion about the trade unions. I was here for most of the debate and read all of it. It was generally positive and constructive and we did not get the digging in to extreme positions that we have occasionally heard during today’s debate. In particular, I read the Minister’s contribution. She said that the Government recognise, "that trade unions have a valuable role to play in developing our workforce and in ensuring that the vulnerable are able to participate in work" She stressed, "the importance of trade unions and why I believe it is right that the legislative framework needs reform … to modernise the relationship between trade unions and their members and to redress the balance between the rights of trade unions and the rights of the general public".—[Official Report, 19/11/15; col. 314.] She pointed out, as she has done today, that the Government pledged in their manifesto to undertake these reforms and bring the Bill forward and this is what you have done I read the manifesto to check what you had written and what you have brought forward. Page 18 carries about 2,000 words that cover this. There is no mention, however, of the proposal to change check-off. If the Government are supportive generally of trade unions and their aims and do not want to undermine them, I would like the Minister to explain why they did not have that in the manifesto and why it has now suddenly appeared. If she has been listening carefully to the contributions today, she will know that this is one of the changes that will seriously undermine not just what might happen with money between the unions and the Labour Party but the ability of some unions to perform That is not because there is a mismatch between the interests of the members and the unions. Previously I have seen check-off withdrawn in the Civil Service from the Prison Officers’ Association. Many years ago that was undertaken and what happened? It weakened the union because in due course the number of members went down, not because the members were opposed to the union or were not prepared to put themselves out; it was simply an issue of them not being willing to do anything more than say, "Yes, I will agree to check-off but I am not going to start fiddling around with my bank account and the rest of it or start going into other areas". It was as straightforward as that So if you are not truly about undermining the unions, you need to explain why you are going to go ahead with this quite dangerous piece of change. I rather support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale, that these are the kinds of issues where a test is brought to bear on whether the Government are serious about making matters better or whether they are being quite malicious and determined to knock one side down. I hope you are not, but on the face of things it looks very much like that. Having embarked on this little exercise, I took the trouble of going through the rest of your manifesto—the whole 81 pages—and, given that we keep hearing the Chancellor speaking about your party being the one that represents working people, I was looking to see on how many occasions you said anything about life at work. With this Bill we are talking about a much diminished trade union organisation compared to what it was some years ago. We now have barely 6 million or 7 million trade union members, yet we now happily have 30 million people at work who, for one reason or another, are not members of a trade union. I went through what you were offering the whole of the population who were able to vote, not just those who were trade unionists or non-trade unionists, and it was quite interesting to pick up some little statements where you said you were going to back people at work. You are going to work to reduce inequality—