Commentary on Sections Part 3 - Trade Unions’ Registers of Members Section 41: Duty to appoint assurer etc
144.This section inserts new sections 24ZB to 24ZG into TULRCA which concern the appointment, removal, rights and duties of an assurer.
145.Under section 24ZB a union must appoint a qualified independent person to be an assurer if it has more than 10,000 members. A qualified independent person is someone who satisfies the conditions set out in an order made by the Secretary of State or who is listed by name in the order. They must also be someone the union believes will act competently and independently. The assurer’s terms of appointment will require the assurer to provide the membership audit certificate and require the assurer to make whatever enquiries are necessary to do this. Section 24ZD provides that the certificate must state whether, in the assurer’s opinion, the union’s system for compiling and maintaining the register was satisfactory for the purposes of complying with its duty to compile and maintain a register under section 24(1) throughout the reporting period. The assurer must also state whether, in the assurer’s opinion, the assurer was able to obtain in accordance with section 24ZE all the information or explanations needed to carry out the assurer’s task. The assurer has powers under section 24ZE to request access to the register of members and other documents the assurer considers may be relevant and to require union officers to provide information or explanations the assurer considers necessary for the performance of the assurer’s functions.
146.Section 24ZG imposes a duty on the assurer to treat the register of members as confidential by incorporating that duty into the terms of an assurer’s appointment. This section will make consequential changes to sections 24A(3) and 299 of TULRCA to make clear that the meaning of "duty of confidentiality" in those sections is confined to the context of a scrutineer or independent person. The union’s own rules must provide for the appointment and removal of an assurer. The appointment will continue until the assurer is removed in any of the circumstances set out in section 24ZC. Any union branch or section that is subject to the duties in sections 24ZB and 24ZC by reason of being a trade union will be treated as having discharged the duties to the extent to which the union of which they are a branch or section discharges the duties instead of it. Section 24ZF requires that an assurer who produces a negative audit certificate must send a copy to the CO as soon as is reasonably practicable after it is provided to the union. A negative certificate states that the system for compiling and maintaining the register is unsatisfactory, or the assurer has failed to obtain the information and explanations the assurer considers necessary. The negative certificate must state the assurer’s reasons for making the statement and provide a description of the information or explanations and state whether that information or those explanations were required by the assurer under section 24ZE.