UK Parliament / Open data

Trade Union Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Bridges of Headley (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 19 April 2016. It occurred during Debate on bills on Trade Union Bill.

My Lords, I apologise to those who have had to edit their speeches so quickly and spent time over the weekend to no avail. In response to the points on charities made by the noble Baroness, I completely agree, and we will seek to address this point. As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, about further consultation and what the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, said about facility time, she is right. We have made further progress on the reserve power to cap facility time.

Obviously, we are not discussing Clause 12 today, but I will update noble Lords on where we are. Our commitment is to engage the cap only on the basis of evidence from the transparency measure. Our proposal is that the power will not be exercised at all before there are at least two years of data from the bodies subject to the reporting requirement. Following this, should a particular employer’s facility time be significantly above the levels of those of comparable organisations, the Minister will send and publish a letter to the employer drawing attention to the concerns. The employer will have the opportunity to set out the reasons for the level of facility time. The employer will always have a year to make progress in relation to their facility time levels. Nothing would be done until a third set of reporting data was published. If there is insufficient progress, the Minister will then be at liberty to exercise the reserve power and make regulations to cap facility time for that employer or those employers. Our intention is to set out the key elements of the arrangements for triggering a cap in Clause 13 when we introduce it.

As regards the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, on delegated powers, I absolutely hear what the noble Lord is saying. The substance of regulations will be available before Third Reading. I very much hope, therefore, that the skeletons will be well and truly buried. On that point, I would like to thank your Lordships for the comments that were made this afternoon.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

771 c592 

Session

2015-16

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber

Subjects

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