Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. There is a great physical similarity between me and my hon. Friend, and it was entirely understandable on your part to mistake one for the other.
First, as I should have done when speaking on the previous group of amendments, I declare my membership of Unite the union and my very proud membership of the Musicians Union.
As the Minister said, the Government are accepting most of the amendments in this group. Due to the time constraints, I will not deal with all of them. He highlighted the significant changes, including on check-off, which we very much welcome. He will recall that during our debate on Report the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) tabled an amendment on these provisions. I pointed that out that it was extraordinary that a Conservative Government were seeking to make illegal a voluntary arrangement between parties, even where one party is paying for the service, when that arrangement is neither immoral nor illegal. That would have been an extraordinarily illiberal measure. I am glad that in their lordships’ House the Government gave way on this matter and it is no longer in the Bill. That is very welcome.
I welcome what the Minister said on the record about the certification officer. It is extremely important that the Government recognise the concerns that have been expressed about the potential for vexatious complaints by third parties and the tremendous waste of time that that could be for all concerned. I also welcome his comments on a review of how the provision works out in practice. Although, as I have made clear, we do not agree with what the Government are doing in relation to the certification officer, that is a welcome assurance, and I am glad that he has put it on the record here at this stage before the Bill goes back to the Lords.
Perhaps the most controversial and contentious element of the Bill has been the Government’s desire to create an opt-in process for trade union political funds. Lords amendments 7 and 8 relate to that. The original Government proposal meant that existing trade union members who pay into their union’s political fund would have to opt back into the fund, in writing, within three months of the Bill’s passage, and do so again after five years.
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Let us imagine if every organisation in the country was required to get a recommitment to every standing order payable to it within three months and in writing. It would obviously result in only one thing: massive problems for that organisation, whether it was a bank, a voluntary group, any membership organisation or a subscription to a magazine. It was always clear to us that the proposal was utterly unworkable, and designed mainly to deprive unilaterally the governing party’s main political opponent—the Labour party—of an important source of funding. It seemed to be a pretty naked attempt to undermine effective opposition from the Labour party in this place and beyond.
That is why the House of Lords set up a special Select Committee to look at the matter, as the Minister said, under the able chairmanship of Lord Burns. We, too, are grateful for his efforts and those of his colleagues on the Committee and other Members of the House of Lords. We thank them—not only Labour peers but those from other parties and Cross Benchers—for approaching the issue in such an imaginative and collaborative way. I recognise, as did the House of Lords in its report, that the Government made a manifesto commitment to introduce opt-in. However, they made other manifesto commitments about big business and we have not yet seen much action on those, but we will leave that for the moment.
The Conservative party manifesto stated that it would introduce opt-in, and it was elected with an overall majority in the House of Commons, albeit on less than 40% of the vote. The Government have therefore been able to argue that the House of Lords should not remove opt-in from the Bill under the normal conventions that the other place follows. The Lords amendments are extremely skilfully drafted. The House of Lords has taken the view that opt-in should apply only to new members of a trade union, that there should be a longer period—at least 12 months—for trade unions to adjust their rules and procedures and that there should be no automatic requirement to opt-in again after five years.