Trade Unions

Debate between Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde and Lord Callanan

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I am someone who has no particular knowledge of trade unions. I have never been a member of one and I have never seen them as particularly relevant in most of the places I have worked. Does she accept that the Bill we will debate is not anti-trade union but pro-consumer? Many of us who have no connection with trade unions get very irritated with the role of many trade unions as, first of all, they spend all their time campaigning against my party, so why should we have any respect for what they do? Secondly, they get in the way of many of us who want to go about our daily business.

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

I thank the noble Lord for that contribution. It is on the record and we will be able to remember it. I am a trade unionist; I am also a consumer, as were all my members. When I was in the trade union movement I learned a big lesson. I had 220,000 members who I was privileged to be elected to represent. Some 4% of them worked in Fleet Street. Noble Lords might have thought my union’s members were Fleet Street. Yes, they were the screaming child and they did not bring a good reputation to my union, but the other 200,000-odd members were decent men and women at work, trying to get on with a decent job. They were good, decent trade unionists, yet the union’s reputation was based on Fleet Street.

That is the very point I am trying to make on the Trade Union Bill, which, in seeking to deal with an issue that certainly exists, will take away the rights of a whole organisation representing decent working men and women. That organisation has more members than all the political parties put together and of any other organisation in the UK. Its members can join voluntarily. They do not have to join but choose to do so. One of the reasons they choose to join is that an employer who runs a workshop, for example, will probably have a full-time HR person, or someone he can refer to, and a lawyer to represent him. However, the individual worker has very little impact as an individual. Therefore, the right to combine with others is in my view one of the most important points of any civilised, free society. To do anything that damages that would damage our democracy and would take away the rights of working people.

I believe in industrial partnership and I tried to practise it as a trade unionist, as do most trade union representatives. We have heard reference to the Thatcher years. I recall Mrs Thatcher calling the trade unions “the enemy within”, giving a label to nearly 12 million working people in Britain. That was a nonsense. I see Members across the Chamber shaking their heads. I was a trade union official when that statement was made. It did not help me in my work but rather hindered me in trying to develop partnerships.

The contribution that trade unions make to this country depends on the freedom of individuals. Any economy that does not allow free trade unions is not successful. If the Government argue that their proposals will help our economy, I will challenge that—and it will be challenged in debate.

I will end with two points. Legislating to tackle a small but important problem in a way that penalises a whole sector of people in Britain is wrong and will not work. Secondly, I would like to accept the invitation of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to make friends as trade unionists across the Chamber. I look forward to working with him to achieve a balanced outcome when the legislation arrives in this House.