THE Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, backing two amendments to remove clauses within the Government’s Employment Rights Bill, said that his support was “a matter of basic democratic justice”.
In the House of Lords on Wednesday of last week, two opposition amendments were carried. The first maintains a previous rule that recent members of a union would not have to pay into the political fund. The second preserves the present threshold of 50-per-cent turnout in a union vote for industrial motion.
Bishop Jackson didn’t speak in the talk, but voted for the amendments. On Saturday, he told the Church Times that the provisions had been excised from the brand new Bill “either by accident or design”. “The amendments brought them back and attracted widespread support within the House. I voted ‘for’ in each cases, because it seemed a matter of basic democratic justice,” he said.
The amendment on union members’ paying into the political fund was proposed by the crossbencher Lord Burns, who was involved in negotiating the agreement reached in 2016. He had been “stunned” by its absence from the brand new Bill, he said throughout the debate.
“This Bill proposes returning to a position where all recent members make automatic contributions to political funds unless they deliberately select to not, with reminders just once every ten years,” he said. “We should recognise the importance of consent.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, speaking for the Government, said that the previous arrangement “places unnecessary red tape on trade-union activity”. Despite opposition from Labour peers, the amendment was carried.
The second amendment, also carried, would maintain the present turnout threshold. Baroness Jones said that it was “not consistent with other democratic decision-making”, similar to local elections, however the amendment’s proposer, Lord Sharpe (Conservative), said that it was the “very last democratic safeguard that ensures that strikes have substantial backing”.
The Bill returns to the Commons on 3 September, when MPs will consider the amendments.
