I am speaking to Amendment 23, which was moved to Clause 4.
The most likely thing is that the clause will have the opposite effect to what is proposed by the Government as their motivation—although, I must say, some of us rather doubt their motivation at this stage. It would be much harder, as has been pointed out, for trade unions to settle disputes once they have put all these issues on the ballot paper because their members may, understandably, object to having voted in favour of action and the dispute being settled before all the issues on that ballot paper are achieved.
The Minister will know that BIS’s Code of Practice: Industrial Action Ballots and Notice to Employers states:
“The relevant required question …. should be simply expressed”.
It goes on to say that nothing which appears on the voting paper should be presented in such a way as to encourage a voter to answer one way rather than another. So I have some questions for the Minister. How does she see the requirement to be “reasonably detailed” fitting in with the requirement that any question is “simply expressed”? Does she not think it likely that a reasonably detailed explanation is more likely to be open to interpretation as encouraging a voter to vote one way or another? Given the Government’s concern that people taking part in a ballot should not be misled as to what they are voting for, does she perhaps see opportunities to extend this principle? Does she think it would be better if the general election ballot had provided a reasonable description of what the Conservative Party had in store for voters? Does she think that voters in the general election could have been told that the first actions of the Conservative Government, on winning an overall majority, would be to take thousands of pounds off millions of hard-pressed working people? That certainly came as a surprise to millions of those voters after the election. Of course she does not. I hear someone referring to the manifesto. The Minister will know that there is already provision for Members to be given information about the nature of a ballot. Again, the BIS code of practice states that unions should give information to their members, including the background to the ballot, the issues to which the dispute relates, and the nature and timing of industrial action that the union proposes to organise. Does the Minister not think that the trade unionists are capable of reading this information and deciding how to vote?
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It is not just trades unionists and, lawyers and professional bodies which think this clause is a recipe for litigation. Conservative advisers on employment relations share this view also. Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to the Conservative Party on employment law, who provided evidence to the Bill Committee in another place, also agrees. He helped to produce a 2008 paper for the Conservative Party which set out most of the changes relating to ballots which are in the Trade Union Bill.
In evidence to the Bill Committee in another place, Tom Flanagan said that the trade union changes that he had proposed were unable to proceed in the last Government, largely because of opposition from the Liberal Democrats. He is certainly right about that.
While praising many of the provisions of the Bill, he went on to say that a reasonably detailed indication of the matter or matters in issue,
“is likely to be a step too far, in my view, and risks more legal challenges in endless satellite litigation”.
If the Government will not listen to us on this matter, will they perhaps listen to him and accept Amendment 23?
The measures set out in Clause 4 in particular demonstrate everything that is wrong with this Bill. They are unnecessary. The Government have produced no evidence of a compelling case. The provisions are a politically motivated attempt to tie the trades unions up in red tape. They are poorly drafted and will be a lawyers’ paradise. They will ensure that disputes are drawn as widely as possible and that they are as hard to resolve as imaginable. They will be entirely counter- productive to what I hope all Members of this House want to see—good industrial relations in this country. For those reasons I hope that the Minister will consider very carefully the amendments before us.