Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans she has to encourage companies operating in the UK to ensure workers throughout its supply chain are able to engage in collective bargaining.

Collective bargaining is largely a matter for individual employers, their employees and their trade unions.

Where an employer refuses to recognise a union for collective bargaining, that union can apply to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) to be statutorily recognised. Unions that can demonstrate that they have majority support amongst workers for recognition for collective bargaining purposes in the workplace will secure statutory recognition from the CAC.

The system in Great Britain is based therefore on the democratic wishes of workers in the workplace.