Rt Hon SoSaturnistic CT MLA
Attorney General

Attorney General's Office
5-8 The Sanctuary
London
SW1P 3JS

Dixie Normous
Chatty Law Group
30 St Mary Axe
London
EC3A 8BF

4 March 2021

Dear Mr Normous,

I am writing to you regarding the recent letter sent to my office.

To be absolutely clear: this Government intends to adhere to its legal obligations, domestic and international, including those relating to the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Government, however, does not take the same position of your firm on the legality of so-called 'closed shop' union contracts and does not intend to go back on this policy commitment. The Government does not ignore the judgment cited in your letter and case law of the Strasbourg Court more broadly in doing so, however.

In no judgment handed down has there been a blanket ban on all manner of closed shop union contracts. Instead, there have been context-based judgments which have found closed shop contracts to be incompatible with Article 11 of the ECHR in various situations where it was seen that different governments edged too far outside of the given state's margin of appreciation, which is relatively substantial for industrial relations, for what was viewed as being of limited necessity. Indeed, the cited judgment in your letter makes note of this key principle of context.

It is the Government's view that the various relevant and contextual factors which led to a particular judgment for Denmark in 2006 are different enough from those which exist in the United Kingdom in 2021 to find a carefully-designed closed shop legalisation compliant with the Article 11 ECHR obligations. The Government places particular weight on the difference in condition between the United Kingdom's present labour market and Denmark's of 2006 and the difference in permitted political activities conducted by trade unions in each state, but these are not the only relevant differences at hand when it comes to a measure intended to adequately secure trade union freedoms.

To ensure that the Government remains compliant with the case law on this matter, taking into account multiple judgments on the issue of closed shop union contracts, any legislation which legalises closed shop union contracts will have the following components among others:

• only pre-entry closed shop union contracts would be legal, and
• closed shop union contracts will not be valid within the public sector.

I hope that this response may satisfy any question you might have had regarding the Government's legal position and its future plans.

Yours ever,

SoSaturnistic
Attorney General