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Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should point out that it is not under the Bill that the NUJ would be entitled to do it; it is the findings of ASLEF v UK in the European Court of Human Rights. This Bill is merely giving legal standing in Britain to what is already applied. Under the Bill, yes, if the union wishes to bring a court case to the European Court of Human Rights that will be precisely the conclusion. What I find difficult to understand, but it is true, is that a trade union is the only association in Britain that is not allowed to make that distinction. Every other sort of association from a golf club to a dog club can do that, but unions cannot. We are trying not only to give UK efficacy to a European judgment but to stop unions being treated as a special case.