I welcome the work of the Lords, which my hon. Friend has just outlined. It is quite clear what the Bill is about. The Prime Minister talks about being a one nation Conservative, but he wants to be a one nation Conservative with one party—the Conservative party—at an advantage. If we want to understand Conservative Members’ disappointment, we have only to look at the Secretary of State’s face, which says it all.
There was no need for the legislation. It was based on a prejudice born of not understanding the way in which trade unions work, and it was an attempt to ensure that the Conservative party had not only a political advantage but a major financial one. The original requirement in
the legislation for new trade union members to opt in would not have come as any great surprise to trade unions. If the Minister takes the trouble to review some trade union application forms, he will see that they have a box on them, next to which is written: “If you want to pay the political levy, tick this box”. It is up to members whether they wish to do that, so the idea that that provision needs to be in the Bill is quite remarkable. We know what the provision was really intended to do, and we know the reason for the climbdown that we have seen. That climbdown has nothing to do with the Trade Union Bill; it has to do with the Prime Minister’s realisation that if he wants millions of trade unionists to vote yes in the EU referendum, he will have to keep them on side. As we often see in politics, the coming together of events has been of benefit and has defeated that bit of pernicious legislation. If it had gone through, as the House of Lords said in the Select Committee report, it would have given the Conservative party an advantage in political funding.
I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) when he says that trade union money is as clean as any type of money. There is transparency about how it is spent, and it is regulated. The same cannot be said of the way in which funding comes to the Conservative party, whether it be through dining clubs or unincorporated associations, which are a way of masking the true source of donations. I look forward to the Government’s bringing forward legislation on the reform of party funding, including greater transparency about sources of funding. That is vital if we are to have an even playing field in terms of the ability to raise funds and the knowledge of where money comes from.
There is another side to this. The media have completely misunderstood the matter, and certainly the Minister—[Interruption.] I am sorry that I seem to be boring the Secretary of State, who is just leaving. He is obviously not very happy about the fact that one of his flagship pieces of legislation is in tatters. The clear impression given by the Conservative party and its supporters is that every single trade union that has a political fund donates it all to the Labour party, but that is simply not the case. Many are not affiliated to the Labour party, and many make no donations at all to any political party. Having run a political fund for the GMB, I know that the proportion that goes to the Labour party is small compared with the proportion that is spent on campaigning work. That allows the union not only to campaign on political issues, but to have a say, quite rightly, on things such as health and safety legislation or reorganisations of hospitals and other institutions. Without the political fund, the union would not be able to do that. The proposal would not only have taken away from my party the ability to receive money from trade unions, but would have hampered trade unions from taking part in civic life in this country, as they are quite right to do, through having a voice and making sure that their members’ collective voice is heard in consultations on whatever affects them directly.
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Another big misconception is the idea that once people have ticked the box for paying a political levy, they are somehow locked in forever. I am sorry, but that is not the case. I used to deal every day of the week with
people who, having been a member for a while, chose for whatever reason to opt out. There is a clear mechanism, in most trade unions, for people to do that. There is an idea that people are forced to give money against their will, but that is just not the case. As I said earlier, when people join and fill in an application form, they take a conscious decision to tick whether they want to pay the political levy. Again, this provision is not really needed, but is based on both the ignorance of Conservative Members and the vindictiveness of a section of their party. When they won the general election in 2015, they thought that they could just roll on and do anything they liked to the democratic processes of this country.
The provision on check-off is another useless piece of legislation, because many councils and organisations already choose to levy an administration fee for handling the check-off system. Again, I do not think that the provision will be very onerous on the many trade unions who already pay such a fee. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said earlier, this is a minor issue in that it does not involve a huge amount of money. If we are saying that trade unions should not be subsidised by the taxpayer in such a way, that is fine, but in many cases trade unions are already not being subsidised, so this is another provision that is not needed.