THE Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Revd Richard Jackson, backing two amendments to remove clauses in 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 new members of a union do not have to pay into the political fund. The second preserves the current threshold of 50-per-cent turnout in a union vote for industrial action.
Bishop Jackson did not speak in the debate, but voted for the amendments. On Saturday, he told the Church Times that the provisions had been excised from the new Bill “either by accident or design”. “The amendments brought them back and attracted widespread support in the House. I voted ‘for’ in both cases, as 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 “taken aback” by its absence from the new Bill, he said during the debate.
“This Bill proposes returning to a position where all new members make automatic contributions to political funds unless they deliberately choose not to, with reminders only 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 current turnout threshold. Baroness Jones said that it was “not consistent with other democratic decision-making”, such as local elections, but 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.
