Print media are privately owned and independent, though many of the national daily newspapers are aligned with political parties. The BBC runs about half the electronic media in the country. It is funded by the government but editorially independent. The move is meant to protect British journalists from the convention's privacy codes. Legislation for a long-awaited freedom of information act was postponed again in 1998, and is anticipated in 1999.
British workers are free to form and join independent trade unions.
A 1998 Fairness at Work bill proposes to boost worker rights and improve union recognition. It also grants unions automatic recognition where 50 percent of workers in a workplace are union members, or if 40 percent of workers support recognition. Intense criticism of British asylum procedures proliferated in 1998. The number of asylum seekers in the UK has increased from 2,000 in the mid-1980s to 32,500 in 1997, creating a massive overload of the system. A broadly welcomed Immigration and Asylum Bill introduced in November proposes to address this problem.