Lord Dykes
Main Page: Lord Dykes (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, Amendments 2 and 9, in my name, have a simple aim: to bring into alignment the standards for democratic legitimacy which the Government apply to themselves, and on which their claim to a democratic mandate rests, and those which they wish to apply to the trade unions.
The Government’s electoral majority rests upon the support of 36.8% of those who voted in the general election last May on a 66% turnout, so representing some 24% of the total electorate, at least of those on the register. For neatness and convenience, I have rounded the figures to 35% and 25%, recognising that the Labour Government of 2005-10 were accepted as legitimate on 35% of the vote.
Amendment 8, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Collins and Lord Mendelsohn, rounds the figure of the turnout down, to 20%, rather than up, to 25%. Here we have far higher standards set out for the legitimation of ballots by trade unions than are set out by the current constitutional arrangements for legitimating government—50% of those voting and an even higher barrier, 40% of those eligible to vote. No British Government have passed this second hurdle in the past half-century. No Government for more than 60 years have represented more than 50% of the electorate, except of course the coalition Government of 2010-15, considered illegitimate throughout their life by a great many on both the Labour and Conservative Benches.
There is a very serious and constitutional point at stake here. The new Government claim they have a strong democratic mandate. The noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, underlined this in the first debate this evening. On that basis, they are now pressing through a substantial legislative programme, including a number of radical free-market proposals which were successfully resisted under the preceding coalition. This Bill is a mixture of free-market and authoritarian principles. Trade unions are an important part of civil society, balancing the power of employers and investors in the market. The battle to establish the rights of trade unions to combine was a significant part of the development of British democracy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I am happy to say the Liberal Government then did a great deal to support that.
Trade unions, like employers and investors, need to be regulated but—again like employers and investors—they are legitimate actors in a market that is rooted in an open and democratic society. Authoritarian free markets, of the sort favoured by some right-wing economists and briefly practised in some South American states, require civil society to be suppressed. But none of us, including those 24% of voters who supported the Conservatives in last year’s election, wants to convert the UK into an authoritarian state.
I ask the Government to recognise the limited and conditional character of their mandate to govern. They require the consent and acceptance of the 75% of UK voters who did not give them their support in last May’s election. The Government hope to govern for a full five years. If after two years they find themselves facing the usual mid-term disillusionment, made deeper by a likely economic recession, while they press ahead with an agenda about which significant parts of the electorate are unhappy, then the discontented will take to the streets and smash windows. We already face a public mood of deep disillusionment with conventional politics. The Government should be careful not to deepen that disillusionment further and provoke public anger.
Many of us will remember the confrontation between the Conservative Government and the trade unions in 1973-74, when the then Prime Minister attempted to assert his constitutional authority and union leaders replied that their total membership was larger than the number who had voted Conservative in the previous general election. The unions are much weaker now, of course, but then so is the Conservative Party—down from the 1 million members it had when Edward Heath was leader to, apparently, 150,000 now. It has far more money, of course, but far fewer members. The number of votes it won in last year’s election, as well as the proportion of the votes cast, was also much lower. To quote the noble Lord, Lord King, we are governed by an active minority against an idle majority.
We all recognise that the Government are opposed to constitutional reform, in particular to electoral reform, which could raise the barrier before an incoming Government could claim a mandate to govern. But, by that token, and recognising the weakness of their mandate, the Government should be cautious about imposing new barriers on union decisions. We know that there is public anger out there about our failures as a political class to impose sufficiently strong regulation on the banking industry, and the absence of prosecutions and punishment for those in the banking industry whose actions triggered the crisis of 2008-09. I meet that anger on the doorstep every time I go out canvassing in Yorkshire. To impose a combination of tougher regulations and higher barriers to legitimate action on trade unions, in contrast to the light touch on bankers and others, will only feed that underlying popular hostility and disillusionment.
I move the amendment, and speak to Amendment 9, in this spirit. The Government should recognise their own position, treat trade union ballots by the same standards as parliamentary ballots and recognise that a Government with a limited mandate must compromise with the institutions of civil society. Trade unions are an important element in our civil society. I beg to move.
Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will be brief. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on his speech. I missed only about 20 seconds, when the television screen changed back to the Committee, so I was technically here. I agreed with what he said. I hope that he and others agree that the other disturbing factor in this is the context of a Government supported by a low percentage of voters, and only 24% of the electorate. I do not think that there was a lower figure in recent decades. I may be incorrect, but I am pretty sure that that is right. To invoke the regular incantation that something is a manifesto promise is also flawed if the support from the natural electorate is so puny and minor as to render this an illegitimate exercise for such a controversial piece of legislative text that deliberately makes life more difficult for normative trade union behaviour.
There is an idea that because the manifesto is mentioned in the press in the context of an election campaign, therefore the thinking electorate, or the whole electorate, should be well aware of the proposals in it; but, of course, that is not the reality. Most members of the public, first of all, regard politics as a rather distasteful activity and they leave it at the back of all the important activities they have with their families, their holidays, their education and their children, and they go to politics when they have to, when elections come. Therefore they would not be very conversant with the contents of manifestos anyway. So the manifesto-itis element of these very badly drafted Bills that are coming through—skeleton Bills, often, with too many SIs following them and the rest of the problems—also affects this piece of legislation.
I remember when I was the incumbent Conservative MP—proud to be the most left-wing one, of course—for Harrow, the total number of people who came into our campaign office during the election campaign to ask for a copy of the manifesto ranged, over the seven elections I fought, from 10 to six, with an average of about eight. People just did not pay any attention to the details of manifestos. Any newly elected Government, in this case with a 12-seat majority on the basis of 30%-plus support, are entitled to say, “Well, they should have, shouldn’t they?”, but it is not like that.
Therefore, we must produce intelligent legislation which is balanced and fair and consensually based—particularly, as in this case, with the sensitive subject of the trade unions, which have had a very difficult 15 years as a result of the way politics has moved—and we should be very concerned to make sure legislation does the right thing. Therefore, I hope the Government can respond to these realities by responding to intelligent amendments such as that just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
My Lords, I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, which is always a warning, in this House, that worse is to come. I simply say that I could not believe the speech he made. I would like to think and hope that he got somebody to write it for him, because I thought that the intellectual content was as close to zero as one could get. Of course, I understand, sitting on the Bench he is sitting on, his acute dislike of our present parliamentary system and first past the post, but, of course, that is the situation in which we live.
That is the situation in which noble Lords on the Opposition Benches have stood for office, have won office and have run this country. At times, members of the noble Lord’s party did the same; they formed a coalition because they had enough seats to count under the first past the post system. This, on the other hand, is as if we were to say that no Government were to do anything the least bit controversial because they did not have an overall majority all the time. I am trying to think how many times when I stood for election I ever got 50% of the vote. I think I did on one or two occasions. Against that background, it is as if we were to say to the people who if there is another tube strike will be walking 10 miles to the office, to the people who never make their operation because they cannot get there in time, to the people who never see their loved one who they hear is in a serious situation in hospital but who cannot get there in time, “Sorry, we really cannot do anything which might give more confidence to the Government and to Parliament and recognise your concerns.”
Someone who was an observer from outer space, or in the Gallery here, and who heard the deeply moving speech by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, brilliantly delivered, as it always is, might ask, “What is he actually talking about?”. Oh, it was just to say that if you are going to have an important vote to bring people out on strike, it is unreasonable to say that at least one in two of the union members should actually vote. Some noble Lords may not have had a chance to look at this amendment. This amendment says that it is outrageous to say that one in two of the union members have to turn up for the vote, irrespective of what they decide to do. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, says that it should go down from 50% to 35%, so that it is one in three.
Lord Balfe (Con)
It is good occasionally to get up on this side of the House and remember why I am on the Conservative Benches and not on the opposition Benches. This is a clear manifesto commitment. You can throw statistics around for how many people voted for the Government and how many people did this or that. They are different systems. It is clearly written in the manifesto that:
“Industrial action in these essential services would require the support of at least 40 per cent of all those entitled to take part in strike ballots - as well as a majority of those who actually turn out to vote.”
I am impressed with the arithmetic of the noble Lord, Lord Dykes. I am a little puzzled if the number of people coming into his office for a manifesto varied between eight and 10, giving an average of six—he obviously went to a different school to where I learnt my averages. These are different elections. I have no objection to proportional representation. I was a member of the Labour campaign for electoral reform for the better part of 20 years. I voted for the alternative vote system in the referendum because I believe that democracy is strengthened if it is more firmly based than it is at the moment. I am always impressed by the fact that, whenever the Labour Party is in opposition and look as if it is not going to win, it sets up commissions under the noble Lord, Lord Plant, or Robin Cook to look at electoral reform. Then somehow when it gets into government electoral reform gets lost.
This is a separate issue. What majority the Government have is irrelevant to the fact that the Government have a mandate under our constitutional system and a clear entitlement by virtue of the manifesto to introduce this legislation.
Lord Dykes
Does the noble Lord agree that the aspiration for sensible governance of any country is for the number of seats in Parliament to equate proportionally to the percentage of votes from the electorate? The closer we get to that, the more we get a natural balance of the genuine result. The only such systems in Europe, of which the noble Lord has great knowledge, are the Irish with the single transferable vote system and Germany with the additional member system. Why does he not support that?
Lord Balfe
I think we are straying a little, but I am happy to talk to the noble Lord afterwards about different electoral systems.
Many strikes are unpopular, and sometimes the trade union movement does itself no good. I would imagine that everyone on the opposition Benches is uncomfortable at RMT chief Steve Hedley’s comment:
“I think all the Tories are an absolute disgrace, they should be taken out and shot to be quite frank with you.”
Obviously, no one is going to support statements like that, but they are made and reported with pictures of a union leader with a Kalashnikov in the Evening Standard, and this impacts on people.
I quoted earlier what I call the moderate unions—the 16 unions that issued the brief on the Bill. It does not mention strike ballots once. Over four pages it brings out a good number of other points, including on electronic balloting, check-off, agency workers and the Certification Officer. There is not a single word on ballot thresholds. I suggest that the Government have a clear mandate for this. According to the Mayor of London’s brief, which may or may not be accurate, over half the strikes called by RMT would not be possible under this law. That could well be the makings of a rather popular law.
I counsel noble Lords opposite—including the noble Lord, Lord Wallace—to have a look at the sayings of Mr Mark Serwotka, the head of the Public and Commercial Services Union, who said that this Bill provides an organisational challenge. I draw his attention, too, to the words of a trade union general secretary, who is a friend of mine, who said to me, “Richard, I would never take them out on strike if I only had half the people behind me”. If you are going to have a strike, you need to have a good, solid basis of representation and a good, solid majority behind you. I think that the Government in this instance have a very clear mandate for this change, and I doubt that Labour will repeal it when the party—as it inevitably will—comes into office.