My Lords, I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, have said.
I thought that the Conservatives were in favour of reducing regulation and bureaucracy and simplifying the way we go about things. That seems to be with the complete exception of the trade unions—I wonder why. It is not realistic or proportionate to require all items of expenditure in excess of £2,000 to be reported to the Certification Officer. How is he going to cope with this? It is mammoth and unnecessary bureaucracy, whereas if you were really intent on having greater scrutiny, you would have a review of the categories of expenditure and you would look to see that there was greater transparency. But to require every invoice over £2,000 in a total expenditure of more than £20 million—the bureaucracy just beggars belief. We know that the Government failed to consult the Certification Officer on the implications of this—that has come out in the work of the Select Committee. They seem to be blindly going ahead without any comprehension of the workload and the way in which the trade unions will be bogged down in the bureaucracy of fulfilling all these requirements.
For those reasons, the Government must question whether it really is necessary to put this bureaucracy on the unions. Is the figure of £2,000 realistic? In the other place, the Minister sort of said that this figure of £2,000 was comparable to that for company donations to political parties that have to be declared. The type of expenditure we are talking about here is not just donations, but all trade union expenditure. That will vary, as speakers have already said, from sending people to political conferences, to paying for stands as part of campaigns and hiring vehicles—or whatever it is—but it is all very detailed expenditure. Is the Certification Officer meant to go through all these invoices and check that they have been done properly?
We have seen the great difficulty the Conservative Party already has with its invoices, and now it seems it will impose this on the trade unions. We should not forget that the Electoral Commission is already looking at all political donations in excess, depending on the recipient, of £1,500—£7,500 for the national parties—so all the information is there. Have there been discussions with the Electoral Commission and has it been consulted on the twin track of bureaucracy the Government are now imposing on trade unions—through the submissions they already make to the Electoral Commission and the excessive ones they are now going to have to give to the Certification Officer? Have they also found out from the Certification Officer what dealing with all this extra work is going to do to his staffing and expenditure requirements?
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