My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendment 93, which is in my name, but will also make a general contribution to this debate. I start fundamentally from a belief that this is a matter for local decision. Any Government with a localism agenda should not be promoting this amendment, because it has nothing at all to do with localism.
I began my life, as I suspect many people who have a long history of trade union involvement did, as a sub-collector—someone who went round collecting subscriptions from members. I was in a monthly-paid Civil Service job and on the first two days of each
month I used to go round and collect subscriptions. It was a very pleasant experience as it meant that I had about an hour and a half off on each of those days, and because we had a branch rule that you could not take money home, I also had half an hour off at the end of each day when I went over to the treasurer in another building and handed over the small amount of money I had collected. Management decided that this was not a very efficient way for its employees to behave, and in the course of the 1960s, management decided that it would be a lot easier if it had a system called check-off. I was in a very odd union branch: the chairman was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the secretary was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. I became the vice-chairman because the two parties could not agree on anyone, so they decided that someone young should do the job. However, our branch rigorously opposed check-off because it would break the link with members. What we meant was that it would obviate our ability to wander round the office on what in those days was known as foot patrol, because many of the members in our office had recently had experience of the Army. I notice that part of the impact assessment says that this will foster a more direct relationship with members. If you want to have people wandering around the office, fine, but I put that in by way of background because this was not fought for by the unions, but was largely asked for by management and accepted by the unions, because of course sub-collecting was a very random experience.
Let us move forward, to a tale of two unions. When I became the TU envoy for my party, we went to all the unions. Many of them were very helpful but some of the big ones were not, particularly Unite and the GMB. However, two of them were; the Minister will be very familiar with one, USDAW, whose general secretary John Hannett not only came to meet the party leader David Cameron but made it quite clear that he and USDAW did not support the Conservative Party. However, he also made it very clear that he wanted a constructive relationship with any party that might become the Government. He did not come to meet the Conservative Government; he came to meet the Conservative Opposition to benefit his members with a direct relationship. He sought a constructive attitude, which we associate with USDAW. That union is not affected by this measure because it has had some very good people looking after its personnel in the past and it has very good industrial relations.
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The second union that I want to talk about is UNISON, which represents many lower-paid workers in the public sector. When we approached UNISON, it, too, made it clear that it had its political perspective—that it wished to safeguard its members. All senior members of the UNISON union met their opposite numbers in the Conservative Party prior to the election and they all came with the same message: that, whatever their political attitude, they wanted a constructive relationship with whoever were the Government of the day. There must have been a dozen meetings between UNISON and a whole raft of opposition spokespeople, as they then were. UNISON co-operated
with the Government, and I think it is with great sadness that it views this clause as it is today.
If you are a member of one of the more professional unions, such as BALPA, with which I am associated, or the British Dietetic Association, you are generally in the upper ranges of the pay scale. You have direct debits and bank accounts, and you have a fundamentally middle-class lifestyle. If you are in UNISON, you are quite likely to be a lollipop lady or a swimming baths attendant or doing one of a whole range of quite underpaid jobs, struggling to manage financially from one month to the next. Your union dues are deducted at source and that genuinely helps.
Let us just look at the benefits afforded to all UNISON members. They include death and accident benefits, with an accident payment of up to £8,600; advice and support at work; a helpline that is open every weekday and until 4 pm on Saturdays; employment tribunal fees paid by the union if you have a good case to take forward; a legal assistance helpline; a debt advice helpline; and access to an approved credit union network. There is also free legal help to pursue compensation for accidents and injuries at work without a deduction of fees, which is an important point—this is a real no win, no fee arrangement. There are other things, including professional indemnity insurance for health and social care staff up to a limit of £1 million. All that comes with your union membership. It is a valuable addition and something that we should try to safeguard.
Under this provision, obviously some people would drop out. Who would drop out? They would probably be the people at the margins—ironically, probably the people least likely to vote for a strike and most likely not to return their ballot forms. So you could say that maybe the Government are doing this to promote strike action. It will make it easier to call a strike because the very members who will disappear will be those who have various difficulties.
The noble Baroness who moved the amendment gave us part of the list of deductions, but if this is about modernising relationships, I ask the Minister why it is not an amendment to the Banking Act to deal with all direct deductions. I have not recently received a letter from the Conservative Party about my monthly contribution to the Conservative Christian Fellowship. Perhaps that should be reviewed; perhaps that should be part of a “modern relationship”. But no, I have a list here, covering almost a sheet of A4 paper, of the sort of things that are deducted as salary sacrifice, including charitable donations; rail ticket loans; childcare vouchers; staff association subscriptions for staff and social sports clubs; the branch lottery, which is still, apparently, going to be allowed; the company creche; childcare holiday pay schemes; additional voluntary contributions; and, of course, student loan repayments. Perhaps student loans should no longer be deducted at source and we should modernise that relationship and let people decide whether or not they wish to repay their loan. There is a whole list, and that will stay in place.
But does it cost much? That is the next question. The answer is that it does not cost a huge amount. I have a letter from our friend the Conservative leader
of the North Yorkshire County Council, of great fame having been quoted earlier this week. What does he say? He says that from North Yorkshire County Council’s position,
“the changes outlined in the legislation are not needed by us and certainly some of them are … not helpful to us locally. Clearly other authorities may not have our positive industrial relations and good working relationships and may feel the proposals are of benefit”.
Moving on to the subject at hand, in other words check-off, he says:
“The deduction … from employees via the payroll is not a process problem for us at North Yorkshire County Council. It is simply treated in the same way as payroll services provided to other organisations i.e. it is a charge for service. As you know Unison pays £7k a year which more than covers the cost and work involved in a straightforward payroll deduction managed by our payroll system with minimal effort from payroll staff … a standard feature of payroll systems and requires no development, adaptation or extra cost … provides us as an employer with valuable information on trade union membership numbers and density across our workforce”.
He goes on to say that that is of value when planning changes. It also enables the council to know with ease whether a staff group are union members. He is saying that this is no problem.
I have quoted a Conservative council leader because they may have a bit more influence with this Government than Labour council leaders in this House, but this is a common view. I have not had a single letter from an employers’ association or from a council to say that they support this—not one, not even from a Conservative counsellor. I spoke to one Conservative council leader and asked him what he thought. His response was, “Oh, anything that makes life difficult for the unions I am in favour of”. That is how he saw this: it makes life difficult for the unions. He did not see it as modernising the relationship in the workplace.
We need to look at this again. This is going to affect the poorest in society. This is not compassionate conservatism. This is going to affect the lollipop lady and the swimming baths attendant—the person at the bottom of the trade union pile; the person for whom unions, above all, were set up to help. It is a very sad day when this clause appears as part of a Bill. It does nothing whatever to improve union relations. I could be very rude about it, but I will sit down, having made my point. This is one area where, if there is a Division, I will be voting in the Lobby against my own party.