Mr. Hood, it is always a delight to see you in the Chair and to have the opportunity to raise a subject of great importance. I stand here as a trade union MP, in the sense that I have the support of ASLEF, the train drivers’ union. However, the matter that I want to raise today has enormous importance right across the field of representation.

I and other Labour Members of Parliament are here today because of the existence of trade unions. It is not an accident that trade unions began in the United Kingdom. We have always had a commitment—I think that it exists in the Anglo-Saxon character—that makes us strongly resent anything that happens to the detriment of fair play, in industrial relations or with respect to any organisational change. I think, therefore, that it is important that this country should uphold, as it does, the labour laws that are part and parcel of our commitment to fairness, decency and proper standards.

I want to talk today about a bus company. The way in which United Kingdom companies operate, in the UK and elsewhere, affects their efficiency and their ability to succeed. It is their particular responsibility to ensure that what they do is properly supported by the rules of law and, more than that, that it clearly shows a proper commitment to justice and the general principles on which the International Labour Organisation declarations are based. It is therefore important to raise the matter of First Group.

First Group is a very successful transport company. It has expanded from a very small base into the railway and bus industries. Very many companies are involved with it. It has been extraordinarily successful and, in this country, very well run. It has conducted proper industrial relations. It has a strong and robust connection with the Transport and General Workers Union and it has made its commitment to proper trade relations clear. It is therefore worrying to see, as it begins to expand elsewhere, that that may not necessarily be a tradition that is fully carried out in other countries. We should perhaps today consider some of the things that are happening, which will rebound badly not just on First Group but on the reputation of United Kingdom companies.

We might first refer to passages in the ILO conventions on trade union rights and civil liberties. Members of Parliament frequently mention their commitment to the ILO conventions; I wonder how many of them have read the conventions, including the provisions that state

“that a system of democracy is fundamental for the free exercise of trade union rights”;

that for

“the contribution of trade unions and employers’ organizations to be properly useful and credible, they must be able to carry out their activities in a climate of freedom and security”;

and that a

“free trade union movement can develop only under a regime which guarantees fundamental rights, including the right of trade unionists to hold meetings in trade union premises, freedom of opinion expressed through speech and the press and the right of detained trade unionists to enjoy the guarantees of normal judicial procedure”.

Another paragraph states:

“The International Labour Conference has pointed out that the right of assembly, freedom of opinion and expression and, in particular, freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers constitute civil liberties which are essential”.

A commitment is also made:

“Although holders of trade union office do not, by virtue of their position, have the right to transgress legal provisions in force, these provisions should not infringe the basic guarantees of freedom of association, nor should they sanction activities which, in accordance with the principles of freedom of association, should be considered as legitimate”.

That is all very clear and good and is well supported in a Parliament that has grown up because of reaction to the imposition of unfair or unacceptable laws.

Why, then, do I worry about what First Group is doing elsewhere? First Group is a company that because it is successful—I am happy to record that—is expanding. In the United States it is not just expanding into one company; it is expanding into a much larger company than was originally intended. Forty per cent. of the non-management staff of Laidlaw International Inc., which First Student appears to be about to take over, for $2.8 billion, are represented by trade unions. Why should that be a matter for concern? First Group is facing a serious risk to its reputation and it is best to speak plainly. It is because of its continuing aggressive interference in workers’ organising rights, community consensus and the adequate funding of school transport services.

I spoke to trade union representatives who came here from the United States of America, because I am very concerned about the reputation of transport companies, whether they operate in the UK or organise elsewhere. I knew very little of the situation and asked to be given a detailed brief. I was very surprised to see that, in spite of the fact that the company has pledged to support the principles of the ILO conventions on workers’ freedom of association, three different reports produced for the Teamsters union by well respected members of universities—Lance Compa of Cornell, a professor specialising in labour and human rights law, John Logan, a scholar and professor at the school of management at the London School of Economics, and Fred Feinstein, who was on the US National Labour Relations Board, the Government agency that enforces federal labour law—make it clear that there has been a consistent, targeted and deliberate attempt to make it almost impossible for members of the First Student companies to organise, meet together and operate as a proper trade union. There is considerable detail in all the reports, which I will spare you, Mr. Hood, because I hope that we can accept that anyone who wants to know the details will read the “Third Report on Freedom of Association and Workers’ Rights Violations at First Student, Inc.”

Those matters were outlined to me by individual members of the Teamsters union. I was very taken by the representatives who came to the House of Commons. A lady who was a bus driver on a student bus was, apart from her accent, very much like the sort of person I would meet in my constituency. She was a lone mother, entirely on her own, who had found, in her job, a way to combine earning an income and running her family. She ran a bus journey for students, to and fro twice a day. She was not in any way an extreme or difficult person. She was the sort of person one would hope to see forming the cadre of trade union representatives. It is extraordinarily worrying that those workers were subjected to a targeted and consistent programme of something that I will not call persuasion, because it seems to me that persuasion, particularly on the part of management, must be couched in very controlled and considered terms; they were subjected to a very deliberate attempt to persuade them that joining the union or seeking together to create a union in their work place would lead to very direct consequences for them. One threat appears to have been, “We’ll deal with your depot in the way that we dealt with Baltimore,” where, as far as one can see, because the staff voted for trade union representation, they were told that that depot would be shut down—and that is what happened.

We should be quite clear about such matters in this country. If a similar situation arose with a bus company in the UK, I, personally, and, I am sure, many other trade union representatives in this House, as well as those who do not directly belong to trade unions but are concerned about labour relations because of their commitment to fairness, would seek to raise the matter time and again. The UK Government have made it plain that even though they have no intention of interfering with and should not interfere with the commitment of UK companies abroad to the legal systems in which they cease to operate, they nevertheless require those companies to take account of and be responsible to the ILO convention. I have made it clear exactly what that implies. The House of Commons has a direct responsibility to tell such companies, “You may operate in the way you think best in a capitalist system. That is, of course, your responsibility: you are responsible to your shareholders and you have a responsibility to ensure that your performance is acceptable to those who support you. However, because you are a British company, you may not ignore aspects of responsible behaviour that we in this country regard as a norm.” Commitment to the ILO is absolutely essential.

Today, I received from Moir Lockhead a letter that I found rather nowty, as we would say in my part of the country. Let us say that I did not turn up when he wished to talk to a representative of his and independent monitor who

“would welcome the chance…to discuss the implementation of FirstGroup’s workplace human rights”.

He assures me that, within the UK, the company will comply with its commitments regarding trade union organisations.

The TGWU has made it clear that it finds it difficult to understand how a company that is so responsible in the UK and complies with its agreements with the trade unions could go so far to impede the creation of trade union rights within the United States. When we say that it is impossible to form a trade union within that company, we are talking not about the wilder shores of Saudi Arabia, the jungle regions of Colombia or some of the far-flung pits of Guatemala, but about the United States of America—a country that shares with us a common law system, approximately the same language and a financial system based on the capitalism that is now so fashionable. We have always regarded the United States as having direct roots in its relationship with the UK. I therefore feel more than justified in raising the issue of the anti-union behaviour there, which has been aggressive, deliberate, consistent and larded with the sort of threats that I would find wholly unacceptable if they were targeted at members of my constituency.

I finish by making this point. I have in my time—I am only 21, but I have been around for a little while—met trade unionists and seen trade unions being run by people who were venal, inefficient, incompetent, arrogant and unacceptable. I have seen arguments put forward in the name of trade unionism that I found difficult to recognise, but I have also, over a lifetime of commitment to the labour movement, seen trade unions filled with people who were wholly committed to fairness, decency and the improvement of conditions for their fellow workers. I have seen people pay a high price for their trade unionism in this country, and I do not find that acceptable, but we now have a country that accepts the right of workers to organise. It is a very small thing to ask of a successful company in the transport industry that it should comply with the same standards and norms elsewhere, and I am astonished that it has not reached that conclusion of its own volition. The House of Commons would be unwise to ignore the behaviour of such a successful British company, lest it be thought that that is the way in which we operate as soon as we leave UK shores.

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.

Is my hon. Friend interpreting the right to freedom of association? I have never said that there is a right of a particular trade union to be recognised or that the UK should insist on it. That would be absurd and unacceptable. However, there is clear commitment to freedom of association, as he will be able to read. That is the point that I have made and will continue to make.

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. The one that I was making is that when it comes to collective bargaining, recognition is subject to national legal systems and to negotiations between specific companies and their employees.

The ILO conventions can raise issues about conflicting human rights and my hon. Friend mentioned ASLEF. I should point out that UK law limits the entitlement of trade unions to exclude or expel individuals on the grounds of political party membership. Until recently, we believed that that law struck a fair balance between the rights of union members to govern their union affairs and the rights of individuals to hold political beliefs. Earlier this year, the European Court of Human Rights issued a decision in a case involving ASLEF that concluded that that balance was wrong, and we intend to act in response to that judgment.

May I just point out that people must have the right to be in a trade union before they can be barred from one, so the point that the Minister made is not relevant?

My hon. Friend referred in much of her speech to the activities of UK-owned companies operating abroad, particularly those of First Group. She compared its employment practices in the UK and in the US. She also referred to the campaign waged by the Teamsters union to obtain recognition at the company’s operations in the US.

I know that the facts about employment relations in the company—my hon. Friend referred to recognition and the approach taken by the parties to recognition ballots—are contested, and I do not intend to become the judge and jury. She referred to several reports into this situation that had been commissioned by the union, and I accept what she says about them. The company has also commissioned its own report, which I understand reaches a different verdict. That makes it somewhat difficult for those of us outside the situation to come to a definitive judgment about a contested situation over union recognition.

Instead of setting myself up as the judge and jury on the particular specific example that my hon. Friend quoted, I should like to focus on the broader issue of how we believe British companies should behave when operating abroad and what employment practices they should follow. One basic rule is that companies should always observe the employment law of the country in which they operate. We expect foreign companies operating in Britain to comply with our laws, and in the same way we expect UK companies to comply with the laws of the countries in which they operate. Obviously, the legal systems in those countries are designed to ensure that employment rights are enforced.

When it comes to ILO obligations, the United States is not signed up to every convention that we are signed up to, and, in any case, virtually every ILO member state faces questions as to whether it is interpreting its obligations fully. These are not clear-cut issues, and different interpretations of treaty obligations are possible. This is not always as simple as saying that because these questions are raised, the basic international standards are not being observed.

It should also be expected that the terms and conditions of work forces around the world will vary, as will even those between work forces in developed countries. That is because labour market conditions, tax and social security systems and so on differ from state to state.

On terms and conditions for workers internationally, First Group could be used as a template for the way that it treats migrant workers coming into this country because it gives them the same terms and conditions. The Minister is right not to be judge and jury, but given the serious accusations that my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has made, would it not be possible for him to act as a honest broker between both parties?

It would not be wise for me to become a mediator between First Group and Teamsters. The issue should be resolved between the unions and the company within the legal framework in which they operate.

Employment practices are a function of each country’s traditions, history and institutional arrangements. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich referred to the trade union influence on our party and on the legal framework that we operate in the UK. Some European countries have legally enforceable collective agreements whereas this country tends not to have them. We probably would be concerned if a German company operating in the UK were to say that collective agreements must be both legally enforceable and contain peace clauses forbidding strikes, as is the case in Germany. Such an approach comes from its tradition; things do not operate in the same way in our tradition.

We do not expect British companies to operate in an identical manner around the globe, but we hope that British companies operating abroad respect local practices and traditions. Of course that does not mean that companies should systematically exploit their work forces or deliberately flout international labour standards. There are minimum core standards that should be applied worldwide.

It is in the interests of the United Kingdom, is it not, that companies based in the UK but operating elsewhere should be successful, responsible and highly respected? Have the Government no view on the responsibility that companies have to comply with basic laws?

My hon. Friend rightly says that it is important that British companies operating abroad have regard to some of the things that she mentions. We would expect those companies to comply with the legal systems in which they operate. Some countries have ensured that basic standards are built into their employment law, although that is not the case in others. We would encourage British companies operating around the world voluntarily to apply the basic minimum standards. We cannot compel our companies to operate in that way in foreign jurisdictions, although we have instituted arrangements in our own corporate law and we are party to monitoring arrangements that provide for greater openness and transparency in this area.

The Companies Act 2006 brings the regulatory framework up to date to reflect what we see as the modern business environment. It enshrines in statute the concept of enlightened shareholder value, which recognises that directors will be more likely to achieve long-term success for the benefit of their shareholders if their companies pay appropriate regard to wider matters such as the environment and their employees.

The Government are committed to improving company reporting and transparency, and wish to encourage full and transparent corporate reporting to shareholders in both financial and narrative reporting. By improving the way in which companies report on their activities and by enhancing that transparency, shareholders will be able to hold directors to account more effectively.

We made good progress in the Companies Act in bringing together this kind of commercial success with the kind of sustainability that we see in this shareholder value. The key instrument is the business review, which is designed to encourage directors to provide strategic and forward-looking information. All companies, other than small companies, must prepare a business review as part of the directors’ annual report. From October, quoted companies must disclose information—to the extent that it is necessary for an understanding of the company’s business—on environmental, employee, social and community matters, as well as on contractual and other arrangements. That is of value in adding to the quality of companies’ narrative reporting and promoting responsible business behaviour.