Employment Rights Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 8th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to add to what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. We are having a good debate and I very much hope to keep it friendly. What the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said, was really rather flying pigs.

I, obviously not like most of the Committee, am old enough to remember the 1970s. I remember the destruction of the British automobile industry by the trade unions. London docks was destroyed by the trade unions. This led, through the 1970s, to the “winter of discontent”, which led to the necessary emergence of a Government under Margret Thatcher who sought to control the trade unions and do something about the destruction they were wreaking on the British economy. We all remember that; I am not fantasising about this. This 150-year story of the great things wrought by the trade unions is really difficult to let go by without saying something.

Right now, only 22% of workers in the UK belong to unions. Why is that? It is because of the destructive nature of those unions. Let us remember that, of that 22%, most are in the public sector. Public sector workers have a monopoly in the areas they occupy and in return are being rewarded by a Labour Government. We saw the sorts of rises, which were completely unjustifiable compared with what people in the private sector were earning, that the Labour Government awarded many public sector trade union workers when they came to power.

We saw how there is—I am not saying anything we do not all know—a wonderful relationship between the unions and the Labour Party. I saw a number—I do not stand here asserting it is true, but I saw it and it seems reasonable—that, since 2011 the trade unions have given £31 million to the Labour Party. Whether that is true or not, we know the figure is of that order. This is wonderful, but it increases the size of government, because of the deals the Labour Government have to make with these trade unions. It increases the cost and complexity of government, and it increases in general the cost of regulation to all employers.

All those things destroy the economic growth which, as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, said earlier, we are all trying to achieve. I ask the Government please not to give us guff—I hope it is not unparliamentary to say that—about the positive effects of the trade unions. They are destructive.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether we are having a discussion for 2025, or one that is deeply mired in history. I find myself in some difficulty listening to either side of this discussion. I say very strongly that trade unions have been, and are, very important, but I also hope that people who watched the annual conference of the National Education Union, all of whose officers have the support of the Socialist Workers Party, may ask why a union like that should have spent more time talking about Gaza than it did about school attendance. We cannot be entirely happy about the circumstances of all trade unions, and this Government are going to have to face those trade unions pressed from that way.

On the other hand, I deeply disagree with the attitude we have just heard about trade unions being destructive. Trade unions have been very constructive in many circumstances, and this is something we should recognise. My problem with the Bill, and my reason for coming to this debate to support my noble friend’s amendments, is related to what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton—who opened the Back-Bench remarks—said about trade unions: that they were not forced on anyone. They were created by people coming together to work for better attitudes, better conditions and better pay for working in those circumstances.

If people want to do that but want to be independent and not subject to their employers—as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, fears—and if they do not want to be called a trade union, then we ought, in 2025, to give them the powers to make the same kinds of arrangements with employers as a trade union. If we do not do that, this is going to be the one area where this Government will say there shall be no competition or opportunity for people to make a different decision about their future.

We ought to give people that opportunity, and we ought to protect those people by making sure that it is given to them only if they are independent, pay for it themselves and have chosen that particular mechanism. I say to the Labour party Front Bench that none of us who work—as I still do, happily—right across the board with all kinds of companies can think of today’s industry and commerce as if it were like yesterday’s. There are new circumstances and new ways of doing things, and the Bill ought to recognise that. If all it does is solidify the past, we will have missed a great opportunity.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, let me just explain that if an organisation meets the requirements to be free and independent, it is a trade union. Anyone can set up a trade union. If it does not meet the standards—many of which have been set by the party opposite—it is not a trade union and it is not capable of collectively representing its members. There is an illogicality in suggesting that an organisation that is not meeting the standards of a trade union can represent its members.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

If that is so, it is very simple: we can all agree to this amendment, with such alterations as are necessary, to make sure that they are independent. Then we can all feel that we have created an answer that suits today. Can we please get out of this yah-booing from both sides—and I mean both sides—about these issues? We have to find a way in which the whole of society can come more effectively together, without constantly determining that we have to do it like we did 100 years ago.