New clause 5 - Provision of money for trade union modernisation
Employment Relations Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk, Conservative)
I welcome you to the Committee, Mr. Forth.
We have had a debate on the Floor of the House on the money resolution, and I am grateful to the Minister for setting out exactly what the fund will do. The Bill's essence was based on consensus and consultation between parties. I praise the Minister and his team at the Department of Trade and Industry for the work that has been put into that.
However, I have grave reservations about using the Bill as something on which to hang a number of extra measures. We will in due course discuss another new clause that concerns racism and infiltration by extremist organisations. I think that that is a fair use to which to put the Bill, but if the Government are to set up a union modernisation fund, that should have been part of the discussions and deliberations that took place going back two years at least.
What representations has the Minister received from the trade unions? We on the Conservative Benches are sympathetic to trade unions; in many ways, we are pro-trade unions, and we want them to modernise. As he said, the TUC runs an excellent education programme. I also accept the need to assimilate modernisation. He says that the pace of change has been much too slow and he wants employers to be able to work with modern union organisations. That is all very well, but I am concerned that that is completely one-sided. Employers may well want trade unions to modernise, but do not the trade unions want the employers' organisations to modernise too? However, there is no question of money going to employers' organisations. If the previous Conservative Government had introduced a fund to give money to the CBI, the Engineering Employers Federation and the Institute of Directors, there would have been an outcry. People would have said that if those organisations were doing their job properly they would have introduced all the measures contained in the Bill.