Lord Hendy (Lab)

My Lords, this amendment is a reproduction of the amendment on secondary action that I moved in Committee. Of course, your Lordships are far too polite to give expression to the collective groan that would otherwise emanate from all sides of the House. I move the amendment again for two reasons—first, because the issue raises important factors of which I shall remind your Lordships briefly in a moment and, secondly, because support for it from various unions and resistance to it by the Government in Committee, and, I surmise, today on Report, give the lie to the repeated allegation that this Government are a puppet manipulated by the trade unions. The amendment contains six measures aimed at restoring statutory protection for solidarity action, which subsisted between 1906 and 1984. As before, I am grateful for the support of ASLEF, the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union, the BMA, the Fire Brigades Union, the RMT, the University and College Union and Unite. Your Lordships will be pleased to hear that I shall not rehearse the arguments that I made in Committee, save to remind the House of two. First, solidarity action is an inherent aspect of freedom of association, which is the jurisprudential and international underpinning of trade union freedom and, at a more mundane level, the very essence of trade unionism. Solidarity between workers is not confined to the happenstance of employer identity, especially in the light of the fragmentation of enterprises in recent years. Secondly, the issue is one of the rule of law. Lord Bingham’s eighth principle requires compliance with international treaty obligations ratified by each state. Those obligations are elaborated by the supervisory bodies established by the relevant treaty to which the state adheres. Their decisions are as much part of international law as is the treaty that authorised them. The right to strike is guaranteed by ILO Convention 87 and Article 6.4 of the European Social Charter of 1961. The decisions of the supervisory bodies of each hold that a prohibition on secondary action by a ratifying state violates these respective provisions. Of course, the United Kingdom has ratified both ILO Convention 87 and, specifically, Article 6.4 of the European Social Charter of 1961. The UK is also represented on both the ILO supervisory committees, the Committee of Experts and the Committee on Freedom of Association. From time to time, it has appointed a representative to the European Committee of Social Rights.