A GOVERNMENT proposal for new union members to be automatically signed up to pay a political levy have been heavily defeated in the House of Lords.

Peers voted to remove the measure from the Employment Rights Bill by 290 votes to 143, a majority of 147, on Wednesday night.

Former TUC general secretary and Labour peer Lord Barber of Ainsdale said that returning to the opt-out model was “reasonable and fair.”

But non-affiliated peer Baroness Fox of Buckley said: “All the amendment does is to try to retain, at least notionally, control in the hands of trade union members.

“They should decide where they want their dues to go and whether they want them to go into a political fund. What could possibly be frightening about that?

“It simply puts unions in a position in which they have to convince their members to opt in.”

Former Treasury chief Lord Burns, who chaired the cross-party Lords committee that previously examined the issue, added that he had been “taken aback” by the government’s plan to “abandon the compromise” reached during the passage of previous legislation, requiring an active opt-in to making contributions.

Business Minister Baroness Jones of Whitchurch argued that the existing system “places an unnecessary red tape on trade union activity that works against their core role of negotiating dispute resolution and giving a voice to working people.”

She said: “So we’re seeking to redress this balance and remove the burdensome requirements on how unions manage their political funds.

“By reverting back to the automatic opt-in for new members, we are simply returning to a long-standing precedent, which was only altered by the previous government.

“Prior to this, automatic opt-in had been in place for 70 years, even during the Thatcher and Major administrations.”

The Labour front bench went on to suffer a further setback when the Lords backed — by 271 votes to 138, a majority of 133 — the retention of the 50 per cent turnout threshold for an industrial action ballot of trade union members to be valid.

A Tory bid to overturn a government proposal to ditch requirements for union supervision of picketing failed when a vote on the measure was tied, with 198 for and against.

MPs will consider the changes made by peers when the Bill returns to the Commons.