My Lords, I am delighted to be able to thank the Minister for her statement and the amendments, and I hope that this will be the end of what has been the controversial issue of trade union political funds. As the Minister said, today’s proposals leave intact the substance of the amendment which was passed so comprehensively by your Lordships’ House. Noble Lords will recall that the amendment was designed to put into legislation the majority recommendations of the Select Committee on Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding, which I had the honour to chair. I remind noble Lords that most of the recommendations reflected the unanimous view of the committee, although there was a difference of opinion about the treatment of existing members of unions with political funds.
In essence, after a transitional period of at least 12 months, all new members will be required to pay into political funds only if they have actively opted in. They will be reminded annually of their right to opt out. Opting in or out will be allowed electronically, there will be no renewal requirement every five years, and the requirement to opt in will not apply to existing members.
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Personally, I regard this as a very satisfactory conclusion. In my view, it is consistent with the Government’s manifesto commitment by establishing the principle of opt-in, which I believe to be the correct approach. Over time, an increasing proportion of union members will have opted into paying political funds. It avoids the punitive and expensive requirement of asking those members who have opted in to renew their decision every five years, for which I cannot find a precedent. It avoids the dangerous path of counting as opt-outs existing members who do not answer the request to make an active choice between opting in and opting out, and it of course avoids the potentially significant reduction in the funds available to the Labour Party. So far, so good.
However, in the spirit of this compromise, I urge trade unions with political funds to go further than the measures in the Bill and ensure that all members of political funds, both new and existing, are reminded each year of their right to opt out if they wish. In addition, I would like to see the unions routinely ask existing members who have not made an active choice between opt-in and opt-out to do so, with the aim of increasing over time the number of members who have exercised an explicit choice. The figures that we have suggest a turnover rate in unions with political funds of about 15% a year. If that turnover is spread evenly across the membership, that could mean that after five years around half the members of political funds will have exercised a choice to opt in or opt out. In
addition, if each year 10% of existing members who had not made an explicit choice were persuaded to make a choice, the figure could be significantly higher.
It would be helpful from my perspective if, in the future, unions publish annual statistics of the proportion of members who have opted in. That need not be unduly burdensome, and in the long run it would put the trade unions into a much stronger position if this issue were to arise again.
The other issue that the committee dealt with was that of political funding. During the short life of the Select Committee, I learned a great deal about the problems of party funding and along with many noble Lords hope that there will be progress on this front in line with the manifesto commitments. But that will have to wait for another day. As I have said, I am enormously grateful to the Minister, who has shown great patience on this issue, and am content with the outcome.