The government chose the immediate aftermath of the US election to release a list of ministers’ interests that demonstrates how wedded they are to the unions.
The 76-page document covers all 111 ministers and reveals no less than 100 are members of at least one trade union. That means nine in ten members of the government belong to a union.
Ministers’ most popular union was GMB with 56 members, followed by Unite with 31, Unison with 27, Community with 24 and USDAW with 20.
Commentators pointed out not one is a member of the National Farming Union, however.
Notable exceptions include Jess Phillips, junior minister in the Home Office, despite her singing unions’ praises in the Guardian and on Twitter.
Another is Luke Pollard, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the MoD.
The Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport curiously has no trade union memberships listed despite claiming: “I am proud to be a Trade Union backed Member of Parliament, and a member of the GMB and Unite the Union” on his website, dated January 2024.
Lord Timpson, Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, is another one of ten government members not in a union, as is Jim McMahon OBE, Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, though he has called for “a strong role for our trade unions.”
Three Labour members of government who are not listed as members of trade unions
PA
In the same department, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Rushanara Ali is not a member of a union, despite calling them “one of the greatest social reforms of the past 100 years.”
At the other end of the spectrum, junior government members Gareth Thomas (Business and Trade), Miatta Fahnbulleh (Energy Security and Net Zero) and Abena Oppong-Asare (Cabinet Office) are members of no less than four trade unions each.
Commentators have wondered how Sir Stephen Timms MP, Minister of State in the Department for Work and Pensions, has time for his government and constituency work while being patron for 21 charities, trustee of two, ambassador for two and chair of trustees for one.
This comes after Labour were heavily criticised for accepting vast sums of money from the unions in the run up to the election, only to hand out massive pay rises once in power.
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Sir Keir Starmer’s inner circle accepted £480,030 from Labour’s trade union backers since 2019.
Teachers and nurses look set to pocket a 5.5 per cent pay increase, while prison service workers and senior NHS managers can expect to see salaries soar by five per cent.
Train drivers have also been offered a huge hike of 14 per cent over three years.
Unison, the Labour government’s third most popular union, gave the party £1.5million during the election campaign, almost the same amount the Conservatives raised in the entire contest.
In August, it was reported 213 Labour MPs raked in a hefty £1.8million from union bosses in the run up to the election, leading to many questioning whether their representative would be under the unions’ thumbs.
Labour has been approached for comment.
