Red tape watchdog criticises initial costings and rationale for three sets of proposals designed to make it harder for workers to organise strike action

Government proposals to toughen up trade union laws have been condemned as not fit for purpose.

The regulatory policy committee (RPC), which the government appointed in July to scrutinise progress towards cutting £10bn of red tape this parliament, criticised the initial costings of proposed changes to the law, designed to make it harder for workers to strike.

The RPC said the government had been too hasty in pushing through its proposals, which were first set out in the Conservative party manifesto ahead of the general election, and called on it to undertake further consultations.

The RPC looked at the initial impact assessments of three sets of proposals in the trade union bill, which MPs will debate when parliament reconvenes after the summer recess, and classified them as “not fit for purpose”. The three proposals were:

to allow employers to break strikes by bringing in agency workers to replace strikers

to force striking workers to tell their employers their plans two weeks before a strike

only to permit strikes in “important public services” if 50% of members vote and 40% do so in favour of strike action



The RPC found that the government’s impact assessment on agency workers being allowed to replace striking workers undermined its own central assumption and “provided reasons why it might be more beneficial to the employer to take the short-term costs associated with a strike”.

It also questioned the government’s claim that the introduction of new ballot thresholds would reduce the number of working days lost due to strike action by 65%, saying the calculation assumed there would be no change in voting patterns. It pointed to the suggestion that turnout might rise if the rules were changed.



On the proposal to force workers to tell employers of their plans two weeks before a strike it said there was “little evidence presented that there will be any significant benefits”.

A spokesperson from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills said: “Strikes can have a damaging impact on the lives of every working person and recent polling shows public support for our proposed actions.

“We have made the best assessments of the available evidence. To build a broader evidence base we are consulting widely and welcome views. The final impact assessment will reflect these responses as well as the RPC’s concerns. We are also strengthening the role of the certification officer to ensure that there is high quality data in the future.”

The TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady, said again that the trade union bill threatened the basic right to strike, and added that it was being “rammed through with unseemly haste, without a proper case being made”.

“We’re pleased that the regulatory policy committee has exposed the lack of consultation and the unfair imposition of excessive red tape on unions and employers,” she said. “This is an opportunity for the government to take a step back, recognise that they were wrong, and drop these proposals which threaten the democratic right to strike.”

The RPC is made up of economists and representatives from small and large business, civil society, academia and the legal profession. It has one trade union representative who was barred from discussions surrounding the assessments to avoid a conflict of interest.

The government introduced its bill, which amounts to the biggest crackdown on trade union rights for 30 years, in July.It said it felt forced to act as a result of the number of strikes called on the London underground, railways and in schools based on small turnouts or two-year-old ballot mandates.

The number of working days lost to strikes was 704,000 in the 12 months to April 2015, compared with an annual average of nearly 13m in the 1970s.