Employment Bill (Hansard, 24 May 1988)

§ Mr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East)

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Before we begin our debate I wish to refer to Lords amendment No. 52. You will recall that the Green Paper, and in our earlier deliberations Ministers, sought to justify clause 12 partly on the grounds that a loophole in the previous legislation had been demonstrated by the decision of the president of the National Union of Mineworkers to have his vote removed from him, as it were, by his executive. He subsequently secured re-election to the office of president by his membership. It was clearly in response to that—and this was almost admitted in another place—that the Government tabled amendment No. 52, which is aimed specifically at encompassing the position of the NUM president and certain other individual trade union leaders.

When the Government were challenged on the matter in another place, and when the Minister was asked whether amendment No. 52 had been drawn up to catch a particular class of trade union leaders in relation to their ages, Lord Trefgarne replied that that was so. He said in response to my noble Friend Lord Murray, a former general secretary of the TUC: Off the cuff I cannot think of any reason why we should not."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 March 1988; Vol. 494, c. 613.] If that is not evidence of hybridity, I do not know what is.

It is demeaning for this Chamber and for the legislative process that an amendment should be tabled, not to achieve greater accountability, but which is specifically aimed at catching particular Left-wing trade union leaders. If that is not hybridity, it is certainly an abuse of the legislative process.