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9.51 pm
The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Ms Patricia Hewitt): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I shall begin by drawing attention to the Register of Members' Interests. Like all my hon. Friends, I am proud to be a member of a trade union. I am also proud of the fact that in Britain today there are more people in work than ever before 28 million. We have slashed long-term adult unemployment to below 140,000. In 1986, it stood at nearly 1.5 million. We have slashed long-term youth unemployment to about 20,000. Back in 1986, 300,000 young people were on the dole. We have lower unemployment rates than any other G7 economy, and in the last seven years 1.8 million new jobs have been created in our economy, seven out of 10 in the private sector. That has confounded all our critics, including Conservative Members who said that our policies to re-regulate the labour market would be a disaster for jobs. The opposite has proved to be the case, and the measures that we introduced in our first term are working well. We are building on those measures in the Bill.
Mr. Redwood: Can the Secretary of State tell us what has happened to manufacturing jobs since the Government took office? Does that not demonstrate just how much damage some of their regulations have caused?
Ms Hewitt: That is a bit much, coming from a former Minister in a Conservative Government who devastated manufacturing industry and manufacturing jobs in constituencies up and down the country and did not give a toss for the workers who were thrown out of work. I regret to say that, in many sectors, manufacturing employment has continued to fall. As the right hon. Gentleman is no doubt aware, there has been a global downturn, which has made life for manufacturing exporters exceedingly difficult. I am glad to say, however and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman welcomes this that manufacturing is now turning the corner. With a strong and stable economy, historically low interest rates, specific measures such as investment assistance and our wonderful Manufacturing Advisory Service, we are helping more manufacturing companies to become competitive. The right hon. Gentleman's party failed to provide such help.
Getting people into work is essential, especially after the unemployment created by the Conservative party, but far more is needed in the modern world. We must have the conditions that will create more good jobs, better jobs and better workplaces. We know that the best businesses in our country operate on the basis of partnership between management and the work force partnership with a recognised trade union where there is
one, but partnership in every case. Among the most important of the Bill's provisions are the measures on information and consultation. They give effect to the information and consultation directive but do so in a way that suits our particular circumstances in the United Kingdom. Our provisions on information and consultation will help to create, in larger workplaces, a culture of partnership in which employees are informed, involved and committed to the success of their business.
Mr. Djanogly: What the Secretary of State says is not reflected in the Bill. The fact is that under the Bill, all that information and consultation is to be done by statutory instrument. She has not said how consultation or the directive will be put into effect, and if she would like to say now how that will happen, I should be grateful.
Ms Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman must surely notice that the Bill provides precisely the statutory authority that will bring information and consultation into effect and, in so doing, will end the absolute scandal that too many members of our work force have had to put up with: that of hearing from the radio in the morning, or, as in one notorious case, by text message to their mobile phone, that they are to lose their job. We will not put up with that. We have worked with the CBI and the TUC to agree a framework for the implementation of the information and consultation directive, and I very much welcome the fact that Digby Jones has said on that:
- "We have reached this agreement . . . through constructive dialogue and discussion. It's exactly the spirit in which we all want new rules on information and consultation to operate in workplaces across Britain."
I also express my gratitude to hon. Members for their close interest in the Bill and the energy that they have displayed during its passage.
Mr. Bellingham: On both sides?
Ms Hewitt: There have been many constructive contributions, and I had the pleasure of reading the contributions that the hon. Gentleman made in Committee. I pay tribute to him for the spirit in which he moved, and then withdrew, several amendments. I also pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) for the excellent work that he has done in shepherding the Bill through.
We have had an extensive consultation process on the Bill, and we will continue to listen, particularly as we finalise some of the clauses that we have added more recently. We have never lost sight of the need to keep the costs to business to a minimum, and nothing that we have added to the Bill during its passage will add significantly to those costs.
I shall highlight the changes that we have made to the Bill since its introduction. First, we are absolutely clear that we will not tolerate intimidation or bullying by
employers or, indeed, by trade unions during recognition ballots. We will not have in Britain the kind of union-busting tactics that I am afraid have become all too commonplace in the United States. They are, fortunately, rare in our country, but we have listened to concerns raised during the Bill's passage, and we have responded with the new clauses, moved by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, that have been added today.Secondly, we are not prepared to allow racists to hide behind membership of a political party to infiltrate trade union ranks. Clauses now in the Bill provide greater scope, quite properly, and in a way that complies with the Human Rights Act 1998, to root out that pernicious element and to exclude and expel it from trade union membership.
Thirdly, we will not allow rogue employers or, indeed, trade unions to flout the rules on lawfully organised industrial action. I promised on Second Reading that we would look closely at the Friction Dynamics case. That case was not only unusual but, fortunately, unique, and as a result of our consideration of the experience of the Transport and General Workers Union members at Friction Dynamics we have now tightened the legal definitions so that we will not see a repeat of employees being locked out of their workplace while the employer pays little more than lip service if it can even be called that to their statutory obligations. Again, we have strengthened the Bill in that respect.
Fourthly, we recognise the valuable role of modern trade unions in the modern workplace. They play a crucial role in helping to raise productivity, skills levels and the quality of our businesses' output. They can be partners with business in creating high performance, high productivity workplaces. Those are the only kind of workplaces that have a long-term future in an increasingly competitive global environment.
The modernisation fund that we have just debated on Report will give trade unions targeted funding to help them keep up in the rapidly changing labour market, and to make step changes in the way in which they work. I want to add my assurances to those that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South has given both this evening and in Committee: this is not money for trade union recruitment, or money that can be used for industrial action. Nor can it be used for the political purposes covered by the political funds, which are entirely separate, separately constituted by law, and cannot receive money from a trade union general fund.
As my hon. Friend said, we shall of course consult fully on the plans for the fund, in order to ensure a robust set of rules, proper procedures and accountability, and so on. We will draw on the excellent existing model of the partnership at work fund, through which an independent advisory board makes recommendations on bids for money. We will not pre-judge the consultation process, but that model certainly provides a transparent and accountable method of allocating funds. The modernisation fund will account for between £5 million and £10 million, spread over several years. It will help trade unions to plan better for the long term, to think more strategically and to contribute better to our long-term economic success as a multiracial and diverse society.
The Bill takes another important step towards accomplishing our vision of full and fulfilling employment, and it reinforces the framework of fair standards at work that we have established over the past five years. It builds on the vital achievements of the national minimum wage, which was recently increased again, protection for part-time workers, paid paternity leave, the doubling of the length of maternity leave, the new rights to family friendly working, and the trade union recognition to which I have referred. It also leaves untouched the fundamentals of the trade union recognition system that we put in place in our first term: the small firms threshold, the voting threshold and the voluntary agreements.
We consulted extensively on those arrangements before the enactment of the Employment Relations Act 1999, and we know from our review that they are working. They have significantly increased, and are continuing to increase, the number of workplaces and workers covered by collective agreements, thereby helping to protect those workers, and helping even more importantly to create the partnership at work that I spoke of earlier. Business and employees are happy with them, and the number of stoppages at work due to labour disputes is at a record low. There were a mere 133 stoppages in 2003 the lowest figure since records began in 1920. I cannot go back quite as far as 200 years, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor did recently, but it is a pretty good record, given the history of industrial relations in our country.
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