Legal Services Bill [Lords]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) for again making relevant and pertinent points, and I commend the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for succinctly putting across arguments of great relevance, as he often does in our debates. Considering the amount of thought that the Minister has put into the Bill and the amount of listening that she has done to detailed representations through formal channels and informally from my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and me, one would expect that on this matter of all matters she would have got things right. I am pleased to inform the House that she has listened and she has got things right. If anyone were wary of a loophole, it would be my hon. Friend and I. I would call it the Union of Democratic Mineworkers question, against which all trade union legislation needs to be proof. In law, the UDM is a recognised trade union, albeit one not within the TUC and not with many members. The UDM question is whether there would be any loophole in the law that would allow the UDM to find a route through it. If there is a loophole, the union will pay vast amounts of money for advice to find a way through it. If I felt that the Government were allowing a UDM loophole, I would want that loophole closed. Those who listen to these debates know that that would be the case for me and for my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, so we commend the Minister for the detailed thought that she and her civil servants have put into responding to the many points that have been raised. It is with a little incredulity though no surprise that I find the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) continuing to attempt to promote his career through traditional but rather antiquated attacks on the trade unions. Only last week he attempted to equate what he was doing with the fight of miners for justice over their compensation. Sadly, he has been all too quiet about supporting the work that has been done in relation to that. He may want to consult his hon. Friends the Members for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), who will be able to describe in detail how the work done by Back Benchers to challenge injustices can be taken forward by Conservative MPs with vigour equal to that of some of the Labour Members who have done so. To confuse the issue seems disrespectful to the quality of our recent debates. I appreciate that there are pressures on the hon. Member for Huntingdon as he gets his instructions to stick the boot in and go for headlines in some obscure publication unsympathetic to the trade unions. However, he does his party and its vague attempts to move to the centre ground a great disservice. There are 7 million trade unionists in this country, and the hon. Gentleman has done nothing more than remind us of his party's traditional, unthinking bias against trade unions over the past 20 or 30 years. Trade unions, after all, are a fundamental and integral part of a free and democratic enterprise society. I would have thought that in attempting to move to the centre, the hon. Gentleman's party would recognise the vital and valuable role of trade unions. Sadly, old prejudices die hard, even among some of the newer and younger members of the Opposition Front Bench. That is to their cost; the public and trade union members across the country will see them out on that. I commend the Minister on how she has listened in detail to all parts of the House, including Back Benchers, to get the Bill right.