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International Labour Law

My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has been in the House for a great many years and has a great deal of experience. Any Minister responding to a case made by her would do so with some care and caution. I know that she cares deeply about this issue, and I shall address the two main issues that she discussed—trade unions and the International Labour Organisation conventions, and the company that she talked about. Let me start with international labour standards, which are set out in various international treaties. Perhaps the most quoted are those that my hon. Friend mentioned—the ILO conventions and the European convention on human rights. The UK was one of the founding members of the ILO and was among the first to ratify its key conventions, including the central ones relating to trade union rights—conventions 87 and 98. We therefore take our obligations seriously. During the 1980s, our reputation was diminished internationally by the removal of trade union rights at GCHQ, and hon. Members will recall that one of the first acts of the Labour Government when they came to office in 1997 was to restore trade union rights at GCHQ, which signalled both domestically and internationally where we stood on these issues. The ILO has mechanisms to monitor member state compliance with international standards, and there is often debate about whether member states are conforming with the spirit and letter of the conventions. Even this country has been part of those debates over the years, and I am pleased to say that it has never been formally reprimanded by the ILO’s governing body, although there has been debate about laws in this country and others and the extent to which they comply with the conventions. The conventions often focus on broad principles, which is important, because they need to apply to many different settings around the world, with different labour market conditions, in both developed and developing countries. Over the years, we have engaged in an ongoing and constructive dialogue with the ILO about the conventions, and I understand that its advisory committees have not interpreted its trade union conventions as requiring companies to recognise trade unions for collective bargaining purposes. That is subject to national legal systems and the negotiation that takes place between unions and companies.