Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)

My Lords, I oppose the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. In doing so, I accept that he is very sincere in the arguments that he makes. I would not necessarily wish to dispute his interpretation of ILO regulations or policies, but we are nevertheless being asked to accept the central premise of secondary picketing. Although I agree with the noble Lord—any reasonable person would—that the P&O dispute was an egregious example of malfeasance and inappropriate behaviour by the management, it should not be the basis of industrial policy and legislation that governs employment. On that basis, and with all due respect, I do not think that the noble Lord’s argument is very compelling. It is always bad law to work on the basis of unique circumstances, situations and anecdotes, notwithstanding the fact that we disagree with how P&O Ferries handled that situation, which was pretty lamentable. That said, in the situation that we now have in the economy, where we have pressure on employment, rising inflation, difficulties in recruitment and ossified GDP growth, and where we are not achieving growth levels that we need, the last thing we need is to make the employment market more disputatious and more litigious. That is what this amendment would do, frankly. If one reads it carefully, the term “connected with” in proposed new subsection 4(a) would probably do a lot of heavy lifting in the future and no doubt be the subject of quite a bit of legal action, one would assume, were it to be incorporated into the Bill. In addition, the change in proposed new subsection 4(b) from employed by “that employer” to by “an employer”—that is, all employers—gives carte blanche, frankly, for going back to the bad old days of the 1970s when we saw behaviour that caused huge disputes and very significant dislocation between the workforce and employers across a wide range of industries. As others touched on in Committee, and notwithstanding what the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, said about the ILO, this is almost from a different era. We are no longer in the era, or we are less so than we were, of heavily mechanised, heavily unionised manufacturing, where that central argument for having collective action between different groups of workers at different locations—I could mention Saltley coke works and Orgreave, which is very topical—was a pertinent issue. We are no longer in that situation, because of technical change, communication change and the way that people work now. Many more people work from home and many more work on a self-employed basis. They are not accessing unions as members and it is not necessary for them to have that physical collective action. There are, very briefly, other big philosophical and ideological reasons why it would be bad news were this amendment to be appended to the Bill. There would be a disproportionate impact of secondary picketing, which would undermine the confidence of employers, customers and suppliers in businesses that are not directly involved in the dispute. It would create economic damage that extends far beyond the scope of the actual workforce disagreement. It would unfairly target neutral parties. Secondary picketing affects businesses and workers in the supply chain who have no direct involvement in the original dispute. These neutral employers face disruption to their operations, despite having no control over, or responsibility for resolving, the underlying conflict. There would obviously be a multiplier effect in the economy of such disruption. There are also legal and fairness arguments and contractual rights. Secondary picketing can interfere with existing contractual relationships between neutral businesses and their customers, suppliers or employees, which undermines the security of commercial contracts and business relationships. There is also the right to work. Workers at secondary sites who are not party to the original dispute have their own right to work without interference; secondary picketing would, of course, impinge on that right. Secondary picketing can effectively coerce those workers into supporting a cause that they may not agree with or have a stake in. In terms of property rights, secondary picketing often takes place on or near the property of businesses uninvolved in the dispute, potentially interfering with property owners’ rights to conduct their business freely. The rule of law is important as well. There is a reason why there was consensus among the voting public at the 1979 election and onwards, with the continuing legislation brought forward by the Conservative Government, that secondary picketing was essentially retrograde, a bad thing and not good for jobs, prosperity and business. There is a final point to be made about democratic legitimacy. Secondary picketing can give unions power to disrupt parts of the economy where they lack a democratic mandate from the affected workers, as those workers have not chosen to join the industrial action. The point is that if you wish to go on strike, having gone through the democratic processes of a union workplace ballot at your place of work, that must be respected and it must be proper and within the rule of law. However, imposing that particular dispute on other people through secondary picketing undermines democratic legitimacy. I say finally that the Blair Government were not perfect, but they looked at this situation, as did the Brown Government, when Labour was in power from 1997 to 2010 and did not essentially resile from a settled position and a consensus on secondary picketing. For that reason, notwithstanding that I respect the great expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, I think that this is an unfortunate amendment and I oppose it.