I am grateful for that intervention, but I fundamentally disagree. As the hon. Member will know, when someone makes an interlocutory application for an injunction, they often have to give an undertaking in damages. The cap, which I have not yet come on to, will not be raised to a new level; the order merely restores what was put in place, which was the will of Parliament when the legislation was enacted back in 1982.
There is a very strong argument that an organisation that causes loss to another through its breach of a duty of care should be responsible for 100% of damages, but the Government have not taken that view. They have capped the liability in damages for trade unions, even when strikes are illegal. They have tried to balance the disincentive from strike action, for which I make no apology, with protection for trade unions from the full consequences of their actions, even though they might be illegal. The reason is that the Government are in favour of trade unions and do not want crippling damages being awarded against them. There is a balance of rights and obligations, which in my view is absolutely reasonable.
The cap was set by Parliament under the Employment Act 1982 at between £10,000 and £250,000, based on the size of the union and its ability to pay. It seems quite wrong, in 38 intervening years, for the caps not to have been increased by the rate of inflation or by any other amount. The rights of unions and the rights of damaged businesses and individuals have now, in my submission, become unbalanced. The legislation is no longer acting as proposed, and I think the Government are quite right to take action to rebalance it, as it originally required. I have looked up, on the Office for National Statistics website, the retail prices index figures for inflation between January 1982 and May 2022. The multiplier, to be entirely accurate, is 4.31963. The Government’s proposals, which use a multiplier of four, are actually less than the inflationary increase.
It is entirely right that the order restores the original intention of Parliament. The legal right to strike is wholly protected, and it is disingenuous for Opposition Members to suggest that the right to strike is being in any way affected. The order merely restores the balance of rights between the damages available to the victims—and they are victims—of tortious losses caused by illegal strike action and the protection of trade unions from crippling losses. That is right: it is an incentive to avoid illegal strikes, which I think is a good thing.
This is good government. I support the order; I only suggest that from now on, the limits should rise automatically with inflation to avoid having a repeat of this debate in 2060.