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

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I need to declare an interest because yesterday morning, in the post, I received my ballot paper for the election of the general secretary of my union. I looked at it. Of course, I will be voting —I will not tell your Lordships for whom—but it seemed absurd that I could do it only by post.

I can pay my income tax online. I can tax my car. I can book airline tickets. I can pay my gas bill. I can—regrettably—pay my speeding fines. I can vote in building society elections. I can check I am registered to vote—so online is involved in elections. I can apply for a postal vote. I can correspond about any responsibility I have to participate in jury service. I can undertake DBS checks—highly sensitive, highly secret. I can do all these things online, so why does this particular ballot that I have on my desk at home have to be done by post?

Famously, gamblers have a “tell”—someone blinks and you can tell what is happening. The Opposition have kindly put their tell in the amendment and in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom. What they are against is the exercise of democratic rights by free associations. They want to make it harder, they want to slow it down and they want to make it more expensive. That is the tell. This is antiquated, old-fashioned anti-trade union prejudice. That is at the heart of it, and that is what we learned from the noble Lord’s speech.

I will comment briefly on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Frost. He talked about a “flexible labour market”. We know what that is code for from the Conservative Party and former members of it. It is about making life tough for trade unions and for rank-and-file employees, who wish simply to exercise their democratic right to run their own free association in the way they want. The more we facilitate that, the better.