My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment which has just been so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and I also support other amendments in this group.
As the Committee will see, Clauses 2 and 3 introduce arbitrary thresholds of turnout and majorities in relation to union strike ballots, particularly affecting certain sectors. Never mind, for the moment, that no other organisations are under the same statutory restrictions as far as their ballots are concerned. Never mind, for the moment, the glaring discrepancies between these requirements and the requirements that exist for ballots in political life; for example, we all know the embarrassment of the low turnout for police commissioner elections in particular, and there are one or two other examples. And perhaps never mind, for the moment, the
unprecedented nature of these requirements on trade unions, certainly in western Europe. The fact is that these thresholds must be seen alongside the existing requirement that a union must use postal ballots. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has just explained, this has been the case since 1992.
Looking at different countries, only in Australia are there similarly tough thresholds on unions as far as strikes and other industrial action ballots are concerned. But in Australia, it is normal to use workplace ballots, with the postal ballot as the default position, and unions there can use online balloting too. This amendment seeks to develop that case for the United Kingdom.
In the impact assessment, which I am pleased we have now had a chance to look at—better late than never—the Government claim that the proposals are not about banning strikes and, rather disingenuously, claim that the thresholds are in fact an attempt to make the balance better. Other countries in western Europe are mentioned in the impact assessment, including Denmark and Germany, which do use thresholds in strike ballots. However, in both cases, those are agreed arrangements with the unions concerned that go back a number of years and, in the main, were done just after the end of the Second World War. But, again, there is no requirement on the method of balloting to be used in those countries. So, nowhere else in the advanced world is the requirement on how to ballot linked to questions of threshold, and nowhere else is there a requirement to have a mandatory postal ballot.
Those familiar with parliamentary elections—and there are many in this House—will know that easier rules on postal balloting were introduced to increase turnout. People apply for a postal vote from the local returning officer. In the union world, the ballot form is different; it is not solicited in the same way. It drops through the post with all the other stuff that we get and, too often, gets put to one side, forgotten about and ends up in the recycling bin. It has depressed turnout figures in most unions; it has certainly not increased them. The Government clearly do not trust—at the moment, anyway—alternative methods. In their wish to curtail the relatively few strikes that do take place in the UK today, the Government are using the combination of high thresholds plus postal ballots as a way of stamping out dissent and protest.
What redress is left to employees in these circumstances? Just imagine, for a moment, a large retailer with many casual workers, often low paid, a very high labour turnover and some harsh management practices: Sports Direct just happens to spring to my mind immediately. Under the proposed provisions in the Bill, how could workers do much collectively about the conditions in which they work? It would be virtually impossible, for example, to take lawful industrial action. I have to say that in some of these companies, it would not be easy to do that at all, even without postal ballots or any thresholds. However, it seems to me that an important artery of democracy is being blocked by making things more difficult. Not everybody is in a school or works for Transport for London—a tight group of workers with a common identity who are therefore relatively easy to organise.
The amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Kerslake and Lord Oates, and myself suggests that Clauses 2 and 3 should not come into effect until an independent review has been carried out by the CAC. The Central Arbitration Committee is probably not very well known to most of the British population. It is a relatively small organisation, but it conducts ballots under the law on trade union applications for recognition. The turnouts in the ballots that it conducts are always high, and no evidence of fraud has been found since it started doing this work. It can decide on the most appropriate means of holding a recognition ballot—for example, with a dispersed workforce it could well use postal balloting, whereas with a concentrated workforce it would make sense to have a properly supervised ballot box. The key is proper supervision, with an independent scrutineer and a properly secure balloting method. The CAC has not yet used e-balloting, although as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, it has the ability to use it.
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Our amendment asks that before the provisions of the Bill come into force, the CAC be asked to conduct a review of the delivery of the various means of voting on industrial action. It would be asked to prepare an independent report to be laid before both Houses of Parliament considering the different methods of authenticating voter identification and security systems for electronic voting, and providing a cost-benefit analysis for unions using those different methods of balloting. As has been explained, the Secretary of State would be required to lay before Parliament,
“a … strategy for the rollout of secure electronic, workplace and postal balloting methods”,
on industrial action.
That seems to me, as I hope it seems to most noble Lords present, a very reasonable proposition, and I hope the Government will open their mind to it. It must be obvious to any fair-minded person that, provided that the balloting method is secure and can be trusted, unions should not be impeded from taking lawful steps in the interests of their members. The current proposals are draconian—unacceptably hard. The measures in the amendment and the other amendments in the group seek to make them more practical and fairer.
If e-balloting is good enough for the Conservative candidate in the London mayoral election, surely it is good enough for wider application—and it could ease the burdens that the Bill is putting on unions. I have a vision of a certain Minister acting like the sorcerer’s apprentice in Whitehall, scurrying around collecting ideas for hobbling trade unions and slapping as much red tape as they can find on them. This is unfair and unjust: it is the opposite of one-nation Conservatism. There are huge problems in the British labour market—problems of inequality, casualisation and productivity—but what trade unions are up to at the moment is not one of those problems. Rather, it has been picked on by the Government to attack. I hope they will think a bit more maturely about what they are doing, and try to find a way of making some of these provisions more acceptable. I hope that by adopting the amendment,
or one very much like it, we will get a better, fairer and much more balanced Bill—one that the Government can be proud of, and the rest of us can live with.