Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

My Lords, as I explained at the all-Peers briefing on 8 May, my amendments to Schedule 6 have been made following welcome scrutiny of the Bill. They do not bring forward new policy but instead aim to ensure that the legislation operates more effectively to implement policies already reflected in the Bill. I will speak to all the amendments in this group, which amend Schedule 6 or the government amendments that I tabled. On government Amendments 216L, 216M, 216U, 216W, 216J, 216N, 216P, 216Q and 216V, there is currently no provision for a sanction on an employer where the employer fails to comply with access arrangements in relation to a worker application for trade union derecognition. Where legislation imposes a duty, there must be a corresponding enforcement mechanism to give effect to that duty. This is why these amendments have been tabled and why they are necessary. Amendments 216LA, 216LB, 216MZA, 216MZB and 216MZC in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, all relate to sanctions on the employer or the union where one of the parties fails to comply with access arrangements generally in relation to a worker application for trade union derecognition. Amendment 216LA, again tabled by the noble Lord Sharpe, would introduce a proportionality test, where the CAC considers applying a sanction on the employer to prevent it campaigning should it be in breach of an access agreement. This amendment is unnecessary. It would make it harder for the CAC to issue an order, as determining how a breach by the employer affected the recognition process would be difficult to establish. It should be sufficient for the CAC to establish that a breach has occurred. Amendment 216LB would add an additional sanction where a union has breached an access agreement by allowing the CAC to impose a sanction to prevent the union campaigning. This amendment is unnecessary because, in relation to applications by workers seeking derecognition of the union, the CAC has the ultimate sanction of declaring that the union is derecognised, should the union fail to comply with the CAC order. Amendment 216MZA seeks to clarify that either the union or the worker can enforce a CAC order but not both, the aim being to avoid overlapping enforcement actions. I thank the noble Lord for this amendment, but it is not necessary. The legislation is framed so that the union, the workers or both can enforce a CAC order because we cannot assume, where there is an application by workers for derecognition of a union, that workers and the union would be of the same view. To insist that only one party or the other can enforce the order would deprive the other party of its rights. This shows that the Bill is about striking the right balance between unions, employers and workers. Should both the union and the workers be of the same view, the court could simply join their applications together when considering whether an employer had breached the CAC order. In that event, there would therefore not be overlapping enforcement actions against the employer.