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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle): The Speaker's Counsel advised the Committee to examine that in great detail because it is at the heart of the matter. If an employee goes to an industrial tribunal, on what judicial authority would the tribunal rely? According to Stephen Mason, the Speaker's Counsel, there is no judicial authority.

Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend is forcibly repeating the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish has already made. I hope that the Minister will provide an answer. What he told me across the Dispatch Box is not validated by the regulations. We want an explicit answer on that critical point.

There are elementary requirements that even the Government should have considered necessary. Unless it was a slip, one Minister did. Lord Inglewood, as Minister of the now defunct Department of Employment, said in another place on 20 March last year that workers' representatives

"must clearly have appropriate guarantees of independence".--[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 1995; Vol. 562, c. 1095.].

I ask again, as my hon. Friends have asked--it is a general demand from Opposition Ministers--where in the regulations are those guarantees?

Mr. David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside): There is none.

Mr. Meacher: If the Minister wishes to intervene, he can freely do so. I take the fact that he has not done so as a silent assent to my point. Let us clear it up as we go along. If the Minister wishes to refute that, perhaps he will do so. Perhaps he could quote to me the regulations which are relevant to this point.

Mr. Taylor: I am quite content with what I have said in my two previous interventions to the hon. Gentleman's speech. I am grateful to him for giving way to me again, although I am not sure that I asked him to. I will stick by what I said, and I am more than happy to return to the point when I address the House or, with the leave of the House, when I speak again towards the close of the debate. I shall select one of those two opportunities to deal with the hon. Gentleman's point.

Mr. Meacher: I do not know why the Minister is so coy or, if he is able to tell us, why he does not tell us now. We shall certainly be looking forward to a precise quotation. I have in front of me regulation 3, which is headed "Duty to consult representatives". That is the critical point. I have read it through in detail--it is quite lengthy--and there is absolutely nothing to justify what the Minister has said. The truth is that giving preference in the elections to the employer's chosen candidate or fixing the electoral machinery in such a way as to benefit some candidates and not others will not stop an employer from discriminating.

Mr. Michael Stephen (Shoreham): Will thehon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Meacher: Let me complete this. All that the regulations say, at 3(2)(1B), is:

"employee representatives elected by them, or . . . representatives of the trade union . . . as the employer chooses."

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Those are the critical words in the regulations, and it is to those that I expect the Minister will respond.

Mr. Stephen: The hon. Gentleman has suggested that an employer might seek to fix the election. If he is suggesting that the employer might act fraudulently, surely he will accept that that is a matter that clearly will be overruled by the courts.

Mr. Meacher: When I said "fix" I was not suggesting anything illegal. I am simply saying that the employer can structure it--if the hon. Gentleman prefers a more neutral phrase--in such a way as to produce a given result. That is perfectly legal, and it is compatible with the regulations.

Mr. Stephen: How?

Mr. Meacher: Perfectly easily: the employer can ensure that particular candidates are offered the opportunity to stand for election; he can ensure that those candidates receive the benefit of his and other people's support; and he can arrange the consultation mechanism and the electoral preparations in a manner that benefits them. It is perfectly possible to do those things. That directly contradicts what the Advocate-General in Brussels has said. The Government have been fond of repeatedly quoting what he said because it supported their case. However, in this case, he said in his report:

"the designation of representatives ought not to depend on the free choice of the employer".

I believe that those words are directly contradicted by the letter and the spirit of these regulations.

I think that there is more than a whiff of humbug in all this. The Government have gone to great pains during the past decade, in several Acts of Parliament, to prescribe in the minutest detail exactly how a trade union should operate and precisely what it can and cannot do. On the crucial test of independence, for example, the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 states of an independent trade union:

"(a) is not under the domination or control of an employer or group of employers . . .

(b) is not liable to interference by an employer . . . arising out of the provision of financial or material support."

Why are not similar rules now applied here to employee-elected representatives? Why should trade unions be strictly independent, yet elected employee representatives--whom the employer can choose as an equal alternative--are allowed to be under his thumb? How can it be right for the employer to decide which employees will be eligible for election, whether they will be elected directly or indirectly and whether the ballot will be by a show of hands or by secret ballot? Why should the employer be able to decide who counts the votes, whether there should be an independent monitor or how any complaints should be handled? Under these regulations, those are the sole and untrammelled prerogative of the employer, and that is what we object to.

It is obviously not the first time under this Government that there has been one law for the unions and another for the employers. In the Government's eyes, trade unions are dangerous animals whose activities have to be ensnared in comprehensive bureaucratic detail, while employers are

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very laudable chaps who can be trusted and allowed to get on and do whatever they like. That fantasy may have been the politics of the 1980s, but I suggest to the House that it is wide of the mark today, when job insecurity is rife almost everywhere, like a plague afflicting workplaces up and down the country.

Mr. Piers Merchant (Beckenham): I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman's description of Conservative Members' views on trade unions and companies. It certainly does not represent my views. On this point, does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a major difference between a trade union that is charged with a series of responsibilities during a long period, and the much narrower responsibility of the people who are elected to represent a specific and probably small group of employees during a specific period in relation to redundancy?

Mr. Meacher: Even in relation to the specific question of electing those who will hold authority for a particular purpose--whether it is carrying through redundancies or as elected members of the executives of trade unions--how the election will be conducted is laid down and prescribed in much greater detail for the trade union side. There is not even an attempt to do so for the employer; it is simply left completely open. If the hon. Gentleman does not recognise that description, after six--or is it eight--trade unions Acts, he should examine himself and his party more closely in the mirror.

Our third charge against the regulations is that the Government have unilaterally decided to put such a high threshold on their application as to largely nullify their purpose. Employers are exempted from consultation under the regulations in cases in which there are fewer than20 redundancies during a 90-day period. A very important point is that that has nothing to do with the European Court judgment of June 1994. It did not require that threshold in any respect. In revising the regulations, the Government have gratuitously added that exemption, entirely on their own account. It need not have done so because it was not in any way required by Brussels.

The effect of the new threshold will of course be dramatic, and the Government intend it to be so. The threshold seriously erodes the existing rights of consultation, and it will automatically exclude nearly6 million workers in small firms and a great many people in larger firms. The Government have openly boasted that it will result in no less than 96 per cent. of employers being free to implement redundancies without any consultation with their work forces.

Mr. Stephen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Meacher: This will be the last time.

Mr. Stephen: Surely the hon. Gentleman will accept that what he is suggesting is over-bureaucratic and, frankly, rather silly. If there are fewer than 20 people involved, the employer could consult them directly. He could get them all together in the canteen, if there is one, or in his own office, if there is not.

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