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Employment Bill [Lords]

On the public-private issue, is my hon. Friend aware that, when Unison has to conduct a ballot in schools, it now has to write to 25,000 schools? Among the 25,000, it knows that 10,000 now have a degree of self-management, and that not all those schools are well disposed towards trade unionism. However, the union does not know which other schools might have changed their status and, as a belt and braces measure, it has to contact all of them. This involves massive expense and a great deal of uncertainty for those involved. It makes no difference to the outcome of the ballot, because a ballot has never been lost on that basis, but it does increase resource costs to union members.