My Lords, I will be brief. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on his speech. I missed only about 20 seconds, when the television screen changed back to the Committee, so I was technically here. I agreed with what he said. I hope that he and others agree that the other disturbing factor in this is the context of a Government supported by a low percentage of voters, and only 24% of the electorate. I do not think that there was a lower figure in recent decades. I may be incorrect, but I am pretty sure that that is right. To invoke the regular incantation that something is a manifesto promise is also flawed if the support from the natural electorate is so puny and minor as to render this an illegitimate exercise for such a controversial piece of legislative text that deliberately makes life more difficult for normative trade union behaviour.
There is an idea that because the manifesto is mentioned in the press in the context of an election campaign, therefore the thinking electorate, or the whole electorate, should be well aware of the proposals in it; but, of course, that is not the reality. Most members of the public, first of all, regard politics as a rather distasteful activity and they leave it at the back of all the important activities they have with their families, their holidays, their education and their children, and they go to politics when they have to, when elections come. Therefore they would not be very conversant with the contents of manifestos anyway. So the manifesto-itis element of these very badly drafted Bills that are coming through—skeleton Bills, often, with too many SIs following them and the rest of the problems—also affects this piece of legislation.
I remember when I was the incumbent Conservative MP—proud to be the most left-wing one, of course—for Harrow, the total number of people who came into our campaign office during the election campaign to ask for a copy of the manifesto ranged, over the seven elections I fought, from 10 to six, with an average of about eight. People just did not pay any attention to the details of manifestos. Any newly elected Government, in this case with a 12-seat majority on the basis of 30%-plus support, are entitled to say, “Well, they should have, shouldn’t they?”, but it is not like that.
Therefore, we must produce intelligent legislation which is balanced and fair and consensually based—particularly, as in this case, with the sensitive subject of the trade unions, which have had a very difficult 15 years as a result of the way politics has moved—and we should be very concerned to make sure legislation does the right thing. Therefore, I hope the Government can respond to these realities by responding to intelligent amendments such as that just proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.