Trade Unions (Permissible Means of Voting) and Employment Rights (Unfair Dismissal) (Amendment) Order 2026

Lord Frost Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the regret amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe. The strength of this country over the past 20 or 30 years has been in its very flexible labour market. Those of us, like me, who have, from time to time, managed staff in European labour markets know what the difference is: endless consultation, inflexibility, disputes and reluctance to employ people. The significant role for social partners and trade unions is a big part of that. Now we are bringing that home to this country and we already see the effects in the employment statistics.

The SIs that we are debating are just the latest phase in that. They obviously build on what was done in the Employment Rights Act: the extra rights for trade unions, which have been much debated and I will not go into now, but include the extra right to workplace access, easier recognition, rights for union officials on employer time and, of course, lower thresholds for ballots of all kinds, including strikes—which brings us to today’s SIs.

As we heard from the Minister, the main thing that these SIs do is extend the types and arrangements of ballots that can be carried out before a strike. This is presented—indeed, the Minister did present it—as modernisation of the system. Whether deliberate or not, the effect is going to be to make it easier for politically motivated union officials to make strike action happen.

The trade union reforms of the 1980s were brought in for a reason, as were postal ballots. It was to stop intimidation and to make ballots secure as to both process and the reliability of the result. These SIs risk beginning to undo that process. Workplace ballots obviously make potential intimidation of workers easier. We know that electronic voting is insecure. We would not do it in our own general elections. The Government’s own impact assessment is doubtful about the ability to provide security about such ballots. To add to that, trade unions themselves are made the responsible persons for such ballots, rather than independent third parties.

I imagine the Minister will point to other organisations that have used such methods—the Conservative Party, the National Trust, financial services institutions, and so on—but I suggest gently that such organisations do not have the same record of questionable behaviour, bullying and threats that unions have done from time to time. We know that happened in the 1980s but it did not happen only then. There are credible reports of such threats during the Post Office dispute in 2022-23; the Birmingham bins dispute, where the High Court itself was involved; and many other such cases. This is the problem with bringing insecurity into strike ballots. We risk bringing back some of the forces that made problems for this country in the 1980s and which we have not seen much of in the past 20 or 30 years.

I finish with some questions for the Minister. Does this record not give him any pause for thought? He is a very successful businessman himself: does he not worry about some of these consequences? Does he not worry, since most unions are in the public sector nowadays, that these rules will come back to bite the Government at some point very soon? Why, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, asked, have pilot arrangements been rejected? Finally, when we look at the unemployment figures over the past year or so, does the Minister not have any qualms about what has been done with the Employment Rights Act—the additional costs to labour in this country? Would it not be better for him and the Government to think again while they still can?