Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of trade union access proposals on SMEs that employ less than 200 people.

The Government is committed to modernising industrial relations and as part of this we are moving away from a reliance on outdated, ad-hoc access arrangements by providing a formal right of access for trade unions in the Employment Rights Bill.

We will be consulting on specific details of the access framework before they are set out in secondary legislation. We encourage businesses and unions of all sizes to share their views. An impact assessment on the Bill was published last year.