Trade Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Beecham

Thursday 25th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a fair point. Having said that, the growth of direct debit in lots of areas has continued. As I have said, I do not think we are ruling out a union accepting cash or alternative payment arrangements. We are trying to make a change of direction here within the public sector.

I was going on to say that we debated Clauses 12 and 13 earlier this week, and I indicated then that I would go away and think about concerns relating to which organisations would be in scope of the facility time regulations, so I will not seek to delay the Committee by trying to answer all the related questions that have been asked today in that area.

I should, however, turn to Amendments 94 and 97, both of which seek to limit the employers within scope of the regulations. Amendment 97 in particular would carve out our largest public sector employer, the NHS, plus local authorities, thus excluding large swathes of the public sector. Obviously, that would not deliver on our commitment to ban check-off. As I said earlier in the debate, we are looking at the impact of the skeleton regulations that we sent to noble Lords earlier this week.

[Lord Beecham]

Will the Minister explain why it is deemed necessary to impose a new arrangement on two parties, a public sector authority and a trade union, that are perfectly agreeable to operating a check-off scheme? Why is it necessary for the Government to intervene in a situation where both sides are satisfied with an arrangement, on the basis that there will be no cost to the employer? If the Government’s provision is good enough for the public sector, why are they not seeking to apply it to the private sector? What is the difference?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, the difference is that the cost falls on the public sector.

[Lord Beecham]

But the premise—the burden of the amendments that we are discussing—is there would be no cost to the public sector employer.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The answer is that I think the impact assessment says there is a cost of £7.2 million. I was seeking to answer the question that had been raised.

Amendment 92 would allow check-off to remain and replace the prohibition with a statutory obligation for ACAS to create a code of practice. As part of that, payment for a check-off service would be recommended as best practice. I return to the points made on earlier amendments: this would not deliver the commitment that we have made to prohibit check-off across the public sector. As it would not be a mandatory requirement, some organisations, as I think we have heard today, might choose not to do it while others might do so, and then one would have an inconsistency of application.

I am, however, grateful to my noble friend Lord Balfe for Amendment 93, which seeks to help us by allowing check-off to be retained wherever the employer is reimbursed. However, even where the service is paid for, I cannot accept that it is appropriate for a public sector employer to be the intermediary of the subscriptions relationship between a union and its members.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Beecham

Tuesday 23rd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I do not think we are requiring anything here; we are introducing a level of transparency, and how it would be recorded would be set down in the regulations. That is the point that I am trying to make. I can see that there could be value in a conference. Indeed, I have spoken at trading standards conferences in my time; they can be valuable. That is the sort of thing I had in mind.

The public sector as a whole spends an average of 0.14%—that is, £200 million—of its total pay bill on facility time. Civil Service transparency data is available on gov.uk, which shows the costs of facility time in Labour councils such as Bristol City Council, which spent 0.09% of its pay bill on facility time and employed 107 representatives, eight of whom spent the majority of their time on trade union work. By contrast, Suffolk County Council spent just 0.05% of its pay bill on facility time.

[Lord Beecham]

Perhaps the noble Baroness will recall that Bristol has an independent mayor, who controls the council.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for correcting me. The point I was making is that it is interesting to compare different council experience; we could probably agree on that.