Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Hendy and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

I will try to finish the point in just a couple of sentences. The point is that somebody who does not like paying the political subscription can simply leave the union. If they object to it, that is what they can do. That freedom is protected by Article 11 of the European convention and is ratified in a whole number of cases. I will not develop the argument further. I would love to take it outside with the noble Baroness. We can have a drink and go into all the cases.

I just wanted to make one further point. The suggestion was made by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that perhaps trade unions should be barred from making political payments at all. It is an interesting argument, which nobody else has advanced. It reminds me of the point my noble friend Lord Barber made about the fact that the requirement to have a political fund, introduced in 1909, is imposed on no other organisation in this country. Companies do not have to have separate political funds, ballot their members or shareholders or answer to anybody in making a political donation. It is only trade unions that are required to hold political funds with all the paraphernalia of opting in or opting out. I am not going into that argument.

I was contemplating—I never did it, but perhaps I should have done—moving an amendment that trade unions should be relieved of having political funds at all. It was a requirement which answered the Law Lords’ decision in Osborne vs the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in 1909, eight years after the foundation of the Labour Party, to bar trade unions from funding the political party that they had just launched. If we got rid of trade union political funds, we would not be having this argument at all.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lord, I will speak to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and to my own Amendments 152A and 152B. In so doing, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on this amendment. I remember the debate we had at that time. There is no question about it: every side of the debate compromised. I remember Ministers from the other place telling us that we had to compromise and we had to make concessions that we did not feel were right. The deal was done, and the deal still holds.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that we should do things in the round and in one is exactly right, rather than making this piecemeal change that the Bill proposes, if there are to be dramatic changes. I accept that times have moved on and that funding for the Labour Party is largely from individuals rather than from unions. None the less, if we are to make changes, then let us look at them in the round rather than observing the piecemeal change proposed in the Bill.

I have to correct the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Hendy. Companies cannot make donations to any political party without prior shareholder approval in the period of a year—not 10 years, but one year. That approval lasts only one year and has to be refreshed at the annual general meeting. Noble Lords are encouraged to look at the accounts of any company—certainly a public company—to see that that is the case.