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Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

No, I do not. We have not yet had time to see the details of the Court of Appeal's decision in the case of British Airways plc v. Unite. The court's judgment, which was quoted by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, was quite clear in regard to the effectiveness of the law. There has been such a long line of cases of this kind, and it is interesting to note that time and again they have involved the same union: Unite. One would think that by now Unite, and the people whom it employs to conduct the ballots, would have learned how to do it, but apparently not. The Master of the Rolls recognised that. Delivering his dissenting judgment in the Court of Appeal, he said that he agreed with Mr Justice McCombe, who had delivered the earlier judgment in the Queen's Bench Division. He said that he did"““not consider that the Union has a good prospect of establishing at trial that it complied with section 231. On the contrary, I would not regard its prospects as promising.””" He reached the conclusion that"““the requirements of section 231 seem… at least as at present advised, to be unnecessarily prescriptive and strict, particularly insofar as they can be relied on by the employer and particularly in a case such as this… Having fallen foul of the technical rules of the 1992 Act in a ballot a few months earlier, the Union might have been expected to take particular care over complying with all those rules in what was effectively a rerun of that ballot.””" So there we have it: the Master of the Rolls saying in terms that the union had had one chance, and had got it wrong. A few months later it did effectively the same thing, and got it wrong again. My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) is quite right. Let me now return to the detail of clause 1, which seeks to amend section 232B of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. Subsection (2) would add the words ““or notice””. Previously compliance had been required only if a ballot had been held, but sections 226 to 230 require notice to be given to the employer as well. Section 226A requires the notice to be given"““not later than the seventh day before the opening day of the ballot””," and to be"““received by every person who it is reasonable for the union to believe””" should receive it. In considering whether this is a sensible provision, I ask myself why notice should not be given to all the other people who would be affected. I would consider it sensible for the Bill to require it to be given not just to the employer, but to others who would be affected by the union's actions, such as post office and railway users' groups. Section 226 states that it would help the employer to be able to make plans and bring information to the attention of some of his employees, because other employees might be seriously affected if half their colleagues walked out on strike. It is entirely right that there should be compliance—full compliance—with the requirement for notice to be given.