Civil Society and Lobbying

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for initiating this most valuable debate. I declare not only my register of interests declaration; like many Members of this House, I suspect, I have spent much of my life involved in charities, trade unions and other voluntary bodies. It is a part of the rite of passage into this Chamber for virtually everybody.

Charities have a very soft image but that is not necessarily the whole image. Near the beginning of the debate we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Patten, about his views on the National Trust, which have been well aired in the Times recently and probably in other papers as well. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, is not here because he wrote a powerful letter to the Times which I found very convincing. I would have liked to have heard his side of that story. The sad truth of the matter is that, as with many institutions in society, charities have also faced their problems. They are facing a loss of trust.

I cannot remember which noble Lord mentioned the fact that the charities were not allowed to campaign during the Brexit debate. My prediction is that if charities had been campaigning in that debate, they would probably almost all have been on my side and campaigned for remain. But the most significant lesson of the Brexit debate is how out of touch we were; the fact of the matter is that many charities today are out of touch. There are well paid chief executives, in the name of professionalism, but apparently accountable to no one. They are less accountable than a trade union general secretary or a chief executive officer in a FTSE-listed company. They often exist in an area where there is no apparent democratic structure. Can anyone tell me what the democratic structure is of the Red Cross, Oxfam, the British Heart Foundation or the many charities that we see in our high streets? I do not believe that there is one—but there should be and, as such, it might well be time for this area to be revisited.

I do not subscribe to the philosophy that there are fewer people. There are in fact more people living longer and far more, particularly in my generation, who are available, fit and working. My wife holds a position in the U3A in Cambridge, which has 3,000 members in that one city. Admittedly, Cambridge is probably an exception but there are 3,000 retired people taking part in just one body in one city. There are a lot of people out there but there is a need for some control.

Chugging has been dealt with to an extent but it is still apparent on our streets. We should revisit the need for an extension of the Freedom of Information Act to the charitable sector. Why should what the charities do not be accountable? They are, after all, spending money raised from the public sector or volunteers. It is not, in large part, private money. Why should they use government money to lobby the Government? I do not believe that they should. I think the policy we have on this is quite right. I also believe it would be useful if we knew what some charities do. For instance, I have been told that the NSPCC does not inspect any children any more, but is purely a lobbying organisation. I am told that Barnardo’s no longer runs homes but lobbies. This is probably a useful thing, but the reality has gone a long way away from the image.

My noble friend Lord Shinkwin outlined a very serious and worrying case in which there was no apparent easy redress. It would be useful if the rigour which we apply to the trade union movement, with the forthcoming introducing of a new, beefed-up Certification Officer, was applied to the charitable sector. Perhaps charities should have a certification officer.

I shall make one aside to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, on lobbying. I am appalled at the way in which people leave comfortable government positions, in which they are largely underpaid, and immediately go into very highly paid positions in which the only reason they are there is because of who they know from the other side of the case. It appears that the most the body we have for regulating the transition from public service to private service ever does is to send somebody on six months of gardening leave. I have been unable to find an instance of any senior politician or civil servant being prevented from taking a well-paid job on the other side. That is not good service to our democracy.

I shall finally say a word or two about trade unions. Trade unions exist at the other end of the system. They spend far too much of their time lobbying for things that are of no interest whatever to their members. One-third of their members vote for the Conservative Party, which shows a good deal of common sense among average trade unionists. Most trade unionists join a trade union to be defended at work, to be looked after and to be protected in difficult circumstances. They do not join in order to be lectured politically. I am proposing not that we should do anything but that perhaps the unions themselves should take a more careful look at what they do. Every day I get emails from the TUC, and I see that Frances O’Grady has today sent a message to the Labour Party to get its act together ahead of the TUC in Brighton next week, which I shall be attending. I will be looking around, but I do not think it will do that. I look forward to the TUC sending messages to the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative Party and others expressing the needs of working people. I say to the TUC: butt out. It is not your fight. Let the Labour Party and the Conservative Party sort out their own politics while you fight for the rights of working people, which is what you were set up to do in the first place.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, following our positive discussions in your Lordships’ House on Report, I am amending Clause 14 as I promised, to reflect an arrangement whereby check-off continues within the public sector on the crucial proviso that there is no burden on the taxpayer.

There was one concern, which concerned the Certification Officer’s role. While I appreciate the sentiment of my noble friend Lord Balfe and others, the Government believe that it is not the role, and should not be the role, of the trade union regulator to assess the reasonableness of the cost to employers and unions of check-off. However, it is important that these costs are indeed reasonable. So we have set out on the face of the Bill that employers must satisfy themselves that the total amount of the payment is only substantially equivalent to the total cost to the taxpayer of making these deductions.

I stress that the amendments regarding those organisations within the scope of this Bill apply equally to Clause 14 as they do to the facility-time transparency clause. This means that, were the scope to be extended in future, it could apply to bodies which are not public authorities only if they are mainly funded by public funds. To be absolutely clear, it is not the intention of this Government ever to include charities if they could not also be captured by the Freedom of Information Act.

I assure your Lordships that we will, of course, give adequate timeframes for new charging arrangements to be set up. It is our intention to provide a 12-month period prior to commencement for such arrangements to be properly established. I appreciate the co-operation of the noble Baroness and others and I beg to move.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this clause. It represents common sense and shows that the Minister has listened to the representations that have been received.

I do not intend to speak again during this debate but I will pick up on a point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Collins, who mentioned twice that he had been to an USDAW conference. I am sure that he had a very good welcome there. I was a member of USDAW for a few years, when I worked for the Co-op. I will place on the record that the understanding of the trade union movement would be much enhanced in the political comity of Great Britain if the unions extended invitations to their conferences beyond just one political party. One of the difficulties, which has been seen in the Bill and is seen in other places, is that although 30%-plus of trade unionists vote Conservative and a good number vote for the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties, the trade unions persistently seek to relate to only one political party. It would be for the good of the trade union movement and that of the noble Lords sitting opposite if the union movement could be persuaded to look a little beyond its comfort zone and to engage with all legislators. That could possibly avoid many of the misunderstandings that have occurred in the past. Having said that, I welcome the clause; it is a very good step forward and I thank the Minister for his introduction of it.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, after the starring role that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has played in these debates on the Trade Union Bill in a number of areas, he may find himself inundated with requests to go to union conferences.

[Lord Balfe]

And to Blackpool.

[Lord Monks]

I speak as someone whose job description included at least 26 visits a year to Blackpool for union conferences of one form or another—a burden that I am sure my successor would be very pleased to share with me.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Balfe]

21: Clause 14, page 11, line 15, at end insert “unless there exists an agreement between the employer and a trade union which provides for—
(a) the remittance by the employer to the trade union of those deductions;(b) the making of a payment by the trade union to the employer in respect of that remittance; and(c) the option for a worker to pay their subscriptions by other means.(1A) Costs charged to a trade union under subsection (1) must be judged to be reasonable by the Certification Officer.”

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I was delighted to tear up the speech that I was going to make, and I am delighted to begin by thanking the noble Lord for his statement. What we have seen in the last few weeks is this House at its best. I remember that when I was introduced here I had a briefing from a very wise lady on our side, although I will not say who. She said, “Richard, the difference between this place and the other place is that here you have to win arguments in order to win votes”. The Minister alluded to the fact that possibly the Government did not feel that they had won this argument and I fully agree with him.

I should like to mention a couple of facts. In this country we have a very odd view of the unions. They are not comprised of people who go to work every day looking for a strike; basically they have come out of the Victorian benefit societies and are some of the best examples of working-class solidarity. However, as time has progressed—particularly in the last 20 or 30 years—they have also attained a very heavy top layer of professional workers. Many people are quite surprised when I remind them that the British Medical Association is a trade union. There are many other trade unions whose members are highly paid professional workers, but at the same time there are many trade unions whose members are very low-paid workers, and those are the people who would have been hurt by this clause.

Perhaps I may just mention some figures, and I am largely using those from UNISON, although obviously other unions are affected by this provision. If you join UNISON, you not only get industrial cover, which generally does not matter because people do not go on strike, but you also get—and this matters—death and accident benefits, and legal advice, which is often very good in helping to resolve industrial disputes. We must all have met a person who has said, “I’m not putting up with this. I’m going to take them to an industrial tribunal”. Then the union representative will quietly say, “Look, calm down a bit. You haven’t quite got a case, but we can give you some good legal advice and help you deal with the problems you’ve got”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, I apologise to those who have had to edit their speeches so quickly and spent time over the weekend to no avail. In response to the points on charities made by the noble Baroness, I completely agree, and we will seek to address this point. As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about further consultation and what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said about facility time, she is right. We have made further progress on the reserve power to cap facility time.

Obviously, we are not discussing Clause 12 today, but I will update noble Lords on where we are. Our commitment is to engage the cap only on the basis of evidence from the transparency measure. Our proposal is that the power will not be exercised at all before there are at least two years of data from the bodies subject to the reporting requirement. Following this, should a particular employer’s facility time be significantly above the levels of those of comparable organisations, the Minister will send and publish a letter to the employer drawing attention to the concerns. The employer will have the opportunity to set out the reasons for the level of facility time. The employer will always have a year to make progress in relation to their facility time levels. Nothing would be done until a third set of reporting data was published. If there is insufficient progress, the Minister will then be at liberty to exercise the reserve power and make regulations to cap facility time for that employer or those employers. Our intention is to set out the key elements of the arrangements for triggering a cap in Clause 13 when we introduce it.

As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on delegated powers, I absolutely hear what the noble Lord is saying. The substance of regulations will be available before Third Reading. I very much hope, therefore, that the skeletons will be well and truly buried. On that point, I would like to thank your Lordships for the comments that were made this afternoon.

[Lord Balfe]

This has been a very pleasant little debate. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, reminded me that I did not declare my interests, which are to be found in the register. I thank all the people who have contributed to the debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Cormack. When I was first appointed by the Prime Minister as the Conservative Party envoy to the trade union movement, I was met with much suspicion within the party. My noble friend was one of the first people to welcome me and point out the work that he has done over many years with unions, including with USDAW and on Sunday trading and other things. I appreciate the support that I have had from him and from many other noble Lords.

I also appreciate the support and briefings that I have had from UNISON, Prospect and the TUC. Several million low-paid workers depend on check-off. UNISON has more than 7,000 agreements in the public sector and a further two-and-a-bit thousand in the private sector. This is not a very small thing but a major part of low-paid workers’ security. I am pleased that we have secured this. I thank the Minister—he is not only a noble Lord but a noble Minister today—for this and I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 withdrawn.

Trade Union Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, there seems to be a great reluctance among your Lordships to speak. I will not repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has said, but obviously I agree with everything that he did say. The amendment that we have down—let me remind noble Lords—asks for an independent review. It says neither that we are putting electronic balloting in the Bill, nor that we are endorsing it. We are simply asking for an independent review. The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, outlined a number of organisations that use electronic balloting. There are a number of venture capital trusts of which I have knowledge that use electronic balloting—as, incidentally, does the Co-operative Wholesale Society for the elections of its board of directors. There was a lot of controversy around the last election, but none of it was about the fairness of the ballot.

We seem to have somehow sanctified the idea of a postal ballot. As noble Lords will know, particularly those on the Opposition Benches, I have a very dubious background. One of the people whom I can claim as my friend—now long dead—was involved in rigging the ETU ballot in 1959. There are also people who have rigged local authority postal ballots. Indeed, there are regular allegations of people going around collecting postal ballots. I am not justifying this, but I am saying: do not sanctify the postal ballot as being beyond reproach and dismiss the electronic ballot as something that we cannot consider. We are, after all, in 2016; technology has moved enormously fast.

I was impressed with my noble friend’s evidence about the Transport and General Workers’ Union. I had not realised that he was a notable fan of its history. But I seem to remember that it was a postal ballot, not an electronic ballot, where things went wrong. So I go back to the words of the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake: we have no evidence that it would go wrong, but—and I underline this key point—all we are asking for is a review. The review could conclude that everything that the Government say is right, and that this is not the opportune time. But this is certainly, in my view, an opportune time to have a review.

There is a lot in the Bill, as the Minister knows, that I support. I agreed with a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said. If we are to make the Bill work, we must not make it appear to be making things as hard as possible. I am afraid that that is the conclusion that is coming through if we turn down this very reasonable amendment that says no more than, “have a review”. So I hope that noble Lords will reflect and find themselves able to support this amendment and that when, as the amendment says, the report comes forward, we will be able to decide whether it is an opportune moment to introduce e-balloting.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I am not certain that I understand why no one is getting up on the other side on this matter. I will just intervene briefly to ask the Minister, when she comes to reply to this amendment, if she could explain the Government’s thinking on the use of the internet and technology. I ask because the Finance Bill is providing for the use of digital returns for people’s entire financial affairs. At no stage did I hear the Government suggesting that the internet was prone to hacking and that, therefore, it would be quite impossible to move to a system where we have people presenting their tax returns electronically. It is also the Government’s intention that returns should be filled in electronically by other people detailing income or savings or investment income.

Either the Government believe in embracing the future and the importance of the use of digital technology or they do not. It seems to be both. In respect of people’s financial information, they believe that it is a proper and sensible way to get more efficient application of government services. Increasingly, people’s personal health and other information will be transmitted and shared over the internet. I suspect that that is because the Government fully understand that, with good hygiene, it is possible to have secure digital systems in place. So I very much hope that my noble friend will explain why that does not apply to ballots organised by trade unions, which are independent organisations and which will have an interest in ensuring that the ballots are properly conducted. Perhaps she could also explain how on earth she could possibly be against the amendment, because all that it suggests is that the arguments put up by the Government should be looked at within six months by an independent body, and there is provision for this to be brought into effect.

This is important because I remember, when I was first elected to the House of Commons, making speeches in support of our trade union reforms. The argument that I used at the time was that we wanted to give trade unions back to their members; we wanted their members to be more in control. That is why we opposed the closed shop; that is why we brought in ballots. This sensible legislation is intended to ensure that people do not go out on strike without the support of our members. If that is our intention, why on earth would we want to resist something that will allow increased participation?

The big danger for the Government is that those who are perhaps not their friends may be able to argue that what they are really doing is trying to undermine the rights and responsibilities of trade unions to look after the interests of their membership, and making it more difficult for them to take industrial action, even where that enjoys the support of the membership. That would be a foolish error to make. So I very much hope that, having listened to the debate, my noble friend will feel able to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake—who, after all, has very considerable experience of dealing with the public sector unions and is very well aware of the issues that arise.