My Lords, let me deal first with the two chinks of light. The first was that the Minister said that the Government will look at the arrangements where the Certification Officer absorbs all the investigatory and adjudication roles. Secondly, her case against having someone to look independently at adjudications as a means of oversight—the case against the enforcement of human rights—was that it was too regulatory. That breaches the principle that she is espousing in the first place. I do not think that the case has been made for regulation, and I do not really understand the architecture for the regulator. I do not understand the model or where we are going on this. I do not think the Minister has made a case for where there are comparable institutions or why, just because this impacts on the public realm, this is a proportionate role and one with any appropriate objectives.
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, tried to make a case for regulation—bizarre as I felt it was. We believe in
better regulation—sometimes less, sometimes more— but there has to be a case for it, and there is not for this measure. The point about why this is different from general consumer or other rights matters was extremely well made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, who has made it before. We are dealing with fundamental rights, which are vastly different to the other sorts of rights that the noble Lord was addressing. I do not think that the Government have taken that point on board at all.
I am very concerned about this extension, because it cuts to the heart of our debate. It is not really about members who are not getting the right service and ensuring that unions are operating properly within the rules. We just have to read the impact assessment, which, it is now apparent, was written long after the Bill was published, without consulting any expert and with no real evidence. It identifies, as does the Bill, the particular areas that it covers as: political fund rules, political fund ballots and expenditure on political objectives. Then there are the areas that the Minister was prepared to address: union mergers, internal elections and other such things. It is absolutely clear that this is targeted at political matters.
The Minister has not addressed the warnings that came from the Certification Officer. In his same evidence to the Select Committee—we could almost recite his entire evidence and ask the Minister to respond to it—he talked about the growing uncertainty caused by the legislation:
“In my experience, uncertainty gives way to litigation, and there are a number of issues that could give rise to uncertainty. It is not only members who can complain to me about these things; anyone can raise them with me. Given the political nature of the subject matter, which is likely to be highly contentious, and the fact that what is reported to me is likely to be forensically examined, I can see many more issues being brought to me about what is reported”.
The nature of trying to open up all political matters provides a completely different sense of what the Government want the Certification Officer to do. It is about the regulation of people’s free right and ability to join together and have political views, and they want third parties to be able to intervene on them. That is wrong.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, made exactly the right point about the cases raised in the Certification Officer’s report. There were 19 complaints, and four declarations were made that a union had breached or threatened to breach its rules. What were those issues? The cases of note that the Certification Officer addresses are: case 1, union disciplinary procedures; case 2, internal disciplinary procedures; case 3, the elections for general secretary and issues relating to members in long-term arrears; case 4, internal disciplinary procedures; case 5, internal disciplinary procedures; and case 6, a removal from office of an official. All of a sudden, every third party is now going to have a chance to raise issues on every political matter. That is just not credible.
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