My Lords, Amendment 33A concerns the commencement of Part 3. We have already debated the purposes of the Bill and I must say that I am still in a state of some mystery about exactly what it is supposed to do, other than give trade unions a provocative prod, and it is certainly doing that. For the Government to act in this way without any clear justification for doing so other than through some sense of confidence and assurance—for whom, I am not sure—is a dangerous road to go down. We will be watching other developments in this area, if there are any, very carefully.
I am not going to go through the speeches and points that have been made already. This amendment seeks to ease the regulatory burden by extending the period before the Act is brought into force. The Minister has learnt about union administrative procedures. To change the rules, which would have to be done to allow the assurer access to this kind of information, is a time-consuming, complicated and expensive prospect. The kind of costs we are talking about are those for a union with, say, 1 million members that holds a rules revision conference every two or three years of 1,000 delegates. If, because of the timing, a union has to
hold a special conference, that will cost another £500,000. The Government’s estimate that the cost to unions collectively will be around £460,000 pales into insignificance against the costs of union conferences and administration. We debated earlier that the assurer can be got rid of only by the decision of a delegate conference, and again you can see the kind of costs that are beginning to stack up; they go way beyond where the impact assessment took us. In Committee, the Minister indicated some scope for flexibility about this aspect and I know that there have been talks about it. The TUC has been involved and some noble Lords have had contact with the Minister as well.
Let me emphasise that there does not seem to be any great urgency about the need to bring this in. It is not a matter of widespread public concern. There are no current, or indeed historical, problems screaming for attention and for the early implementation of this legislation. It would very much help unions, which would obviously have to comply with the law, if they had adequate time to prepare the necessary changes to their rules without the need to have special conferences and rules revision processes that are exceptional rather than in their mainstream work. It would be cost effective, economical and practical, and would minimise some—not enough but at least some—of the red tape that has been dolloped on the administrations of trade unions. Therefore, I ask the Minister if there can be an adequate period of digestion that avoids unnecessary costs and administrative complexities.
This is a probing amendment, so I wonder whether the Minister can say something about what talks he has had on this issue and whether he has been able to give any more thought to it that he could disclose today in addition to what was said in Committee. I hope that if there is a chance for further dialogue, he will agree to come back to the House on Third Reading to give a report about where we are. However, this is a plea for a road map of where the unions go in relation to full implementation, for some additional time and maybe even for a scintilla of sympathy for the union position as we are forced into this particular corset, which is unwelcome in so many aspects.
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