House of Commons Hansard Debates for 23 Mar 1993

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Estimates,

1993-94 (Navy) Vote A--

Question,

That during the year ending on 31st March 1994 a number not exceeding 63,350 all ranks be maintained for Naval Service. put and agreed to.

Estimates,

1993-94 (Army) Vote A--

Question,

That during the year ending on 31st March 1994 a number not exceeding 163,590 all ranks be maintained for Army Service, a number not exceeding 130,000 for the Individual Reserves, and a number not exceeding 70,300 for the Territorial Army.

put and agreed to.

Estimates,

1993-94 (Air) Vote A--

Question,

That during the year ending on 31st March 1994 a number not exceeding 83,480 all ranks be maintained for the Air Force Service, a number not exceeding 19,450 for the Royal Air Force Reserve, and a number not exceeding 2,800 for the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. put and agreed to.

Estimates, Excesses,

1991-92

Question,

That a sum not exceeding £131,142,154.72 be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to make good excesses of certain grants for Defence and Civil Services for the year ended on 31st March 1992, as set out in House of Commons Paper No. 432.

put and agreed to.

Supplementary Estimates,

1992-93

Question,

That a further sum not exceeding £2,654,112,000 be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to complete or defray the charges for Defence and Civil Services for the year ending on 31st March 1993, as set out in House of Commons Papers Nos. 433, 434 and 494.

put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions by the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Michael Portillo, Mr. Stephen Dorrell, Sir John Cope and Mr. Anthony Nelson.

Consolidated Fund (No.

Mr. Stephen Dorrell accordingly presented a Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31 March 1993 and 1994 ; And the same was read the First time ; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 162.]

AGRICULTURE BILL [LORDS] [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified--

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Agriculture Bill [ Lords ], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred by a Minister of the Crown under any provision of the Act about grants for marketing.-- [Mr. Wood.]

AGRICULTURE BILL [LORDS] [WAYS AND MEANS]

Resolved,

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Agriculture Bill [ Lords ], it is expedient to authorise--

(a) the imposition by any provision of Part I of the Act about the taxation of a person who is a transferor or transferee in relation to a scheme approved under that Part, of charges to income tax, corporation tax or capital gains tax,

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(b) the imposition, by any provision of Part II of the Act about the taxation of a person who is the transferor or a transferee in relation to a scheme approved under that Part, of charges to corporation tax, and

(c) the payment into the Consolidated Fund of any sums received by a Minister of the Crown under any provision of the Act about grants for marketing.-- [Mr. Wood.]

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Trade Union Ballots

10.16 pm

Mr. Frank Dobson (Holborn and St. Pancras) : I beg to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Funds for Trade Union Ballots Regulations (Revocation) Regulations 1993 (S.I., 1993, No. 233), dated 8th February 1993, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th February, be annulled.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The Order Paper says that this instrument has not been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. It was considered this afternoon, and the Joint Committee has placed in the Vote Office a report to the effect that a section of the instrument is redundant because of the effect of the Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill. I thought that I should draw the attention of the House to this, because once again the Government are hurrying through delegated legislation without giving adequate time for the Joint Committee to give proper consideration to it. The Committee Clerk has made special efforts to ensure that the House is informed about this matter.

Madam Speaker : The hon. Member, as ever, is helpful to the House.

Mr. Dobson : The regulations would cut off the funds which the Government have, for the past 13 years, provided to cover the cost of trade union secret ballots. In future, the cost will have to be borne by the members of each union. Last year, these ballots cost £4.25 million. That is quite a lot of money, and certainly a lot of money to be found from the voluntary contributions of members of trade unions, which are voluntary organisations without large sources of finance.

This decision is entirely typical of the events of the past week or so, because it is another Tory promise broken and another Tory betrayal of the people who trusted them. Last week's Budget extended VAT, put up national insurance and increased income tax, all in blatant betrayal of promises made during the 1992 general election. This week the Government go back on a promise made at an earlier general election, that of 1979, when they promised in their election manifesto to

"provide public funds for postal ballots for union elections and other important issues."

At that time, ballots were not going to be made compulsory. Now, after the Government have made these ballots compulsory, the funding is to be taken away. The Government have no mandate for this. They have never raised it in any consultative document. They did not put it to the people at the last general election, and it is therefore contrary to the promises made at the outset and repeated at every later stage in the development of the Government's industrial relations policy.

The present Government, the present Prime Minister and the present Secretary of State for Employment all attempt to present what might be described as Thatcherism with a human face. Yet is has to be remembered that Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit promised to provide those funds, and to be fair to Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit, they delivered them. Yet this Prime Minister, this Employment Secretary and this Government are taking those funds away. They

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are breaking that promise. The Prime Minister is exceedingly keen on charters, we understand, and clearly, if he is going to cover everyone against the Tory party, he will have to produce a twisters charter to keep an eye on them.

It is not just the Government in general who are twisting and betraying their promises. Individual Tory Members have committed themselves in the past to the provision of these funds. A quick look through earlier debates shows that at least 15 existing Tory Members spoke in favour of the ballots. So far as I can see, not one of those who spoke in the past ever suggested that these funds would be withdrawn at a later stage. Not even any hon. Member on the far right suggested that they should not be provided or should be withdrawn. The present Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. and learned Member for Tunbridge Wells (Sir P. Mayhew), then the junior Employment Minister, said in 1980 that trade unions were being told : "You do not have to have a secret ballot for any of your decisions--it is up to you ; but if you are thinking of having one, you do not have to worry about the cost, for the taxpayer will reimburse you." Not any more, Paddy.

The present Minister of State, Foreign Office, the right hon. and learned Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) commended the merits of these funds when he said of that 1980 Bill :

"It provides for the establishment of a fund from which secret ballots are to be financed",

and went on :

"That proposal is one to which no reasonable-minded Member could object."-- [ Official Report, 17 December 1979 ; Vol. 976, c. 138.] I wonder what he will do in the vote tonight.

The present Minister of State for Social Security, the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott), said :

"The Bill is simply making funds available so that the resources of unions that want to have ballots are not under pressure."

He went on :

"This at least frees them from that constraint."--[ Official Report, 17 December 1979 ; Vol. 976, c. 99.]

Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Dobson : No, I will not. It is a very short debate, and I do not have time to give way.

The right hon. and hon. Members whom I have mentioned are at present Ministers of the Crown, and they now expect people to take them at their word when they make a promise on behalf of the Government on Northern Ireland, foreign affairs or matters to do with social security. It is quite clear that there is no chance that anybody will take a promise from them.

When the ballots were made compulsory, in 1984, the then Employment Secretary--

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Dobson : No, I will not.

The right hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) gave this reassurance at the point when ballots were going to be made compulsory :

"The money provided under the 1980 Act to meet the cost of such ballots will continue to be available."--[ Official Report, 8 November 1983 ; Vol. 48, c. 160.]

He is here tonight, and I wonder which way he will be voting.

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I could give other examples. For instance, the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover), told the House on that occasion :

"I support the measures in this Bill, particularly the secret ballots to be paid for by the Government, because ordinary trade union members in my constituency have been crying out for this every day virtually since the general election."

Mr. Oppenheim rose --

Mr. Dobson : No, I shall not give way.

Mr. Nicholls : On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Dobson : I am willing to bet that the ordinary

Madam Speaker : Order. I have a point of order, to which I must listen.

Mr. Nicholls : Would it be in order, Madam Speaker, for you to remind the hon. Members on the Labour Front Bench that this is supposed to be a debate, not a boring monologue?

Madam Speaker : The hon. Gentleman knows that it is not the responsibility of the Chair to instruct hon. Members who have the floor that they must give way. It certainly is a courtesy in a debate. The hon. Gentleman is determined that he will not give way for the present, so the hon. Member must bide his time.

Mr. Oppenheim : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Are you saying that we have been discourteous?

Madam Speaker : I am not saying anything of the kind ; I am saying that the hon. Gentleman must bide his time. I think that it was a point of frustration, not a point of order.

Mr. Dobson : Generally speaking, Madam Speaker, I attempt to be courteous to all hon. Members, but there are a number of Members on the Benches opposite who are so notoriously and continuously discourteous that they cannot expect courtesy from this side of the House. Both the hon. Gentlemen who have raised spurious points of order fall into that category.

I should like to ask the hon. Member for Chorley whether any of those ordinary trade union members in his constituency have been crying out for these funds to be taken away. I do not suppose that he told them at the general election that the Government intended to take them away, and I do not suppose that he has told them since, but we have to ask ourselves why the Tories are doing this. We can reasonably say that it is a typical example of Tory spite against trade union members, but I do not think it is only that.

One reason for them taking away the funds at this time is political fund ballots. Up to know, the renewal of political funds by ballot could be financed from Government funds. The Government have forced ballots on trade unions ; they have forced postal ballots and therefore, not unreasonably, they funded those postal ballots. They are now about to withdraw that facility, just as another round of political fund ballots appears on the horizon. It is not just spite against the trade unions ; it is malice against the Government's political opponents. They have done everything they could by law to obstruct the funding of the Labour party and any political opposition from trade unions.

The trade unions have, rightly, for a long time contributed substantially to the funds of the Labour party

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through open and democratic decisions reached by British nurses, dinner ladies, miners and railway workers. The Tories have never liked it, and at every chance they have attempted to obstruct it. By this measure, they are attempting to make the process more expensive and to ensure that less money is available for political activities both directly by the unions and by the Labour party. Therefore, it is necessary to contrast this with the process by which the Tory party raises its funds.

Mr. Nicholls : Will the hon. Member give way?

Mr. Dobson : I shall not give way. Unlike the trade unions, who face innumerable legal obstructions--

Mr. Nicholls : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. A few moments ago you said that you anticipated that the hon. Gentleman would want to give way when he had recovered his nerve. Would now be an appropriate moment for him to do so?

Madam Speaker : It is for the hon. Gentleman who has the Floor and is at the Dispatch Box to determine when he is going to give way.

Mr. Dobson : We can reasonably contrast the legal obstructions to raising and disbursing political funds by trade unions which the Government have placed into law with the absence of virtually any obstruction to the funding of the Tory party.

Take company law, for instance. Companies do not have to establish any special political funds ; they can make contributions to the Tory party out of their general funds. Nor do they have to conduct a ballot of anybody before they decide to do so. Just a few rich Tories can simply hand over money to the Tory party. Let us take as an example Thames Water, an organisation which is a taxing authority, because--

Mr. Nicholls : On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to start talking about water charges when he is not prepared to give way to Conservative Members on the subject of trade union ballots?

Madam Speaker : It is for the hon. Gentleman to determine what he has to say. It is not for the Chair to involve itself with the comments of hon. Members.

Mr. Dobson : The point I am making, in case the hon. Gentleman cannot understand it, is that the processes whereby trade unions raise funds and use them for political purposes are decided democratically by way of ballots. There is no ballot involved in the decision of Thames Water, the monopoly supplier of water to people in its area, when it levies what everyone recognises as a water tax--known as the water rate--which people cannot avoid. From that tax, Thames Water has been giving money to the Tory party. There was no democracy or ballot there.

Mr. Oliver Heald (Hertfordshire, North) : On a point of order. In a debate on trade union balloting, Madam Deputy Speaker, is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to spend his time talking about Thames Water, Conservative party funding and all sorts of irrelevant matters that have nothing whatever to do with trade union ballots?

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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes) : I have only just come to the Chair, and I want to listen carefully. It will be easier for me to do so if there is less noise.

Mr. Dobson : For ease of reference, Madam Deputy Speaker, when Madam Speaker was in the Chair I said that it was proper to contrast the arrangements made by law by the Government for the accrual and disposal of funds for political purposes by trade unions with what happens when companies and other people donate to the Tory party, and she accepted that.

No ballots are involved when people raise money for the Tory party. Only one ballot has been conducted by a company, National Freight, and the shareholders voted overwhelmingly against giving the party any money.

In the interests of democracy, what happens with funds from Britain is bad enough, but when we contrast the different arrangements, we must also consider the Tories' keenness on democracy when it comes to raising money from people from abroad. It raised £2 million from John Latsis, a Greek fascist who was involved with the colonels in the killing and torture of the people of Greece.

Mr. Nicholls : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to call Robert Maxwell a Greek fascist just because he contributed substantial funds to the Labour party?

Madam Deputy Speaker : That is not a point of order for the Chair, and I notice that the hon. Gentleman raised several points of order before I came to the Chair.

Mr. Dobson : No one in their right mind would suggest that giving money to the Tory party makes someone a fascist. What makes them a fascist is supporting the Greek colonels, who murdered and tortured Greek people who stood up for democracy.

Within Britain, there was the case of Mr. Azil Nadir, who unlawfully shifted more than £400,000 of his company's funds to the Tory party, without declaring them in the company's returns. The Tories were in effect receiving stolen goods, and they have not returned them to the shareholders or to the administrator. No ballots were taken then.

Mr. Heald : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to spend his entire speech in our debate on an important issue talking about Conservative party funding, fascists, Greeks and all sorts of people around the world rather than dealing with the issue in question?

Madam Deputy Speaker : I have been trying to follow what the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) has been saying. I should prefer it if hon. Members left me to decide what is in order and what is not. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand that, while passing reference may properly be made to other matters, he must now--having sketched in the background--deal more closely with the subject under direct consideration.

Mr. Oppenheim : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If it is in order for Opposition Members to talk, in passing, about Tory party funding, might it also be in order for Conservative Members--if they are called later--to talk in passing about the filthy Maxwell money that the Labour party accepted before the last election?

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Madam Deputy Speaker : I shall wait to hear what is said first.

Mr. Den Dover (Chorley) : I was listening carefully to what the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) said about trade union ballots. When the legislation was passed 10 or more years ago, it was mainly targeted on postal ballots. I should be interested to hear from the hon. Gentleman whether the secret ballots benefit the trade union movement, and whether there might be a move away from postal ballots if the funds were not continued.

Mr. Dobson : The hon. Gentleman has not been keeping up with the increasingly draconian state of industrial relations law under the party of which he is a member. In future, all ballots will have to be postal ballots. It is curious that, at a time when postal ballots were voluntary, the Government agreed to fund them, but now that they are compulsory, the Government are taking away that funding. One of the problems we face when dealing with this subject is that we have never seen anything from the Government to justify the termination of the provision of the funds. Therefore, we have to guess what the Minister is going to say. My speech is based on the assumption that the Minister will use certain arguments, one of which will involve the need for democracy in the unions. Another argument that he might use is that the process is costing the taxpayer money, so it is unfair to taxpayers.

Therefore, it is necessary to contrast the limited sums that the taxpayer is providing--£4.25 million in the last year for which figures are available--with the cost to the taxpayer of some of the ways in which the Conservative party has been raising money. We now know from several sources that rich foreigners who live in this country have been granted enormous tax breaks by the Government, in exchange, in effect, for donations to the Conservative party. It is true that several of those rich foreigners were invited to No. 10 Downing street for a meal at the taxpayer's expense. But that fell a long way short of the total cost to the taxpayer, as the foreigners were then promised by the Prime Minister that the present tax laws would not be changed if the Conservative party won the election, and they coughed up money for Conservative party funds.

The process cost the taxpayer vastly more than the £4.2 million--the cost of all the ballots, not just political fund ballots. The decision cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds, which the rich foreigners will not have to pay.

I say--with some care--that secret deals at the expense of the taxpayer in exchange for donations to party funds are utterly unacceptable to the people of this country. At this moment, politicians in Italy are being prosecuted for exactly that offence, and it is likely that they will go to gaol for such processes. We have corrupt arrangements that are costing the taxpayer a fortune and utterly straight-forward

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is making some extremely serious and scurrilous accusations without any evidence. Will you ask him to withdraw the accusations of corruption or prove them?

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Madam Deputy Speaker : As I understand it, the points are generalised. The rules of the House relate to accusations made against individual Members. However, I am sure that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) will wish to maintain the highest tone in his remarks.

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