Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-03-16
Topic: Government Operations
James Bridges (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I begin by saying that I have read the previous debates and have met a number of your Lordships; I thank those I met for their time. I acknowledge the misgivings that have been expressed about this policy and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for extending the hand of friendship and co-operation on this. Before I address the point on scope, I repeat a key point to your Lordships that I wish no one to forget: it is not the intention that facility time is to be banned. As has been said—I repeat again—trade union representatives provide a valuable role in many organisations and facility time will always have a role to play throughout the public sector On scope, we are clear in our aim to cover core public bodies—employers that the taxpayer would expect to be covered by public sector transparency regulations. To meet this aim, our approach is to include public sector bodies in the regulations only if they meet the following policy aims. First, bodies that we wish to capture are already listed in Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002—I refer to both of them as FOIA. We believe that whether a body is in scope of Schedule 1 to FOIA is a good indicator of whether they are a public authority for the purpose of Clause 12. However, to include all the employers on Schedule 1 to FOIA would be too wide for our aims. I totally take the point that the noble Baroness makes about small organisations. We will filter organisations out of this list where their inclusion would not be appropriate. The regulations will place obligations only on employers with more than 49 employees and at least one trade union representative. FOIA Schedule 1 includes several bodies that do not currently meet this criterion and will thus not be obliged to follow the publication. They will, however, appear in the regulations and it will be for any such body to appropriately exclude itself if it does not meet the criteria. This is in recognition of the fact that the size of organisations and their trade union membership is likely to fluctuate over time Next, in the event that at some point in the future the Government were to identify a body that is not in Schedule 1 to FOIA and not capable of being added, we would seek to capture such a body, relying on the powers in Clause 12(9), only where the body has not been set up to function in a predominantly commercial, competitive, or market-facing way; has more than 49 employers and one or more trade union representative; and has functions of a public nature and is funded wholly or partly from public funds. Furthermore, if the Government wish to add new bodies that pass these tests, they propose to amend the Bill so that the powers in subsection (9) are exercisable by affirmative resolution. This House would then have the chance to scrutinise and debate any regulations that the Government bring forward to include these bodies that are not public authorities but carry out functions of a public nature In the light of the noble Baroness’s wish to consider the content of my letter and potentially revisit this issue at Third Reading to discuss it further, I hope that the approach set out my letter, which the Government intend to stand by, will enable us to avoid revisiting this issue in depth at Third Reading. I have already also referred to the Government’s commitment to make the extension of the list an affirmative resolution procedure before the Bill leaves this House. On this basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel free to withdraw her amendment this evening.