Written Statements

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Written Statements

Tuesday 14 November 2023

Industrial Action: Minimum Service Levels

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

Earlier this year Parliament passed the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. The Act seeks to balance the ability of workers to strike with the rights and freedoms of the public to go about their daily lives, including getting to work and accessing key services.

Most major European countries, such as France, Italy and Spain, have had some form of minimum service level regime for many years, and organisations such as the International Labour Organisation have recognised that such approaches can be an appropriate way of balancing the ability to strike with the rights of the wider public.



Where minimum service level regulations are in place, the Act requires trade unions to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that their members who are identified in a work notice do not take strike action during the periods in which they are required by the work notice to work and comply with the work notice.

During the passage of the Act, the Government committed to bring forward a statutory code of practice setting out more detail on the “reasonable steps” that trade unions should take.



I am pleased to inform the House that yesterday we laid a statutory code of practice on reasonable steps to be taken by a trade union (minimum service levels) in Parliament for approval. This follows a public consultation on the draft code and careful consideration of the feedback received. A Government response to that consultation was also published yesterday.



The code of practice is issued under section 203 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and sets out four steps that trade unions should take to meet the legal requirement under the Act:



Step 1: Identification of members—Trade unions should identify those of their members who are identified in a work notice;

Step 2: Encouraging individual members to comply with a work notice—Trade unions should send an individual communication or notice to each member identified in a work notice to advise them not to strike during the periods in which they are required by the work notice to work, as well as to encourage them to comply with the work notice.

Step 3: Picketing—Picket supervisors will be instructed by the trade union to use reasonable endeavours to ensure that picketers avoid, so far as reasonably practicable, trying to persuade members who are identified in a work notice not to cross the picket line at times when they are required by the work notice to work;

Step 4: Assurance—Once a work notice is received by the union, trade unions should ensure that they do not do other things that undermine the steps they take to meet the reasonable steps requirement.

Subject to parliamentary approval, the code will be issued and brought into effect by the Secretary of State in accordance with the procedure set out in section 204 of the 1992 Act.



We will also shortly publish separate, non-statutory guidance on the issuing of work notices in relation to minimum service levels.

[HCWS32]

Tackling Crime and Antisocial Behaviour

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Written Statements

[The Minister for Crime, Policing and Fire (Chris Philp)]

I am pleased to set out to the House the Government’s response to three consultations that have informed provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill that is being introduced in the House of Commons today.

Government response to the public consultation “Strengthening the law enforcement response to serious and organised crime”



The Home Office ran a public consultation from 24 January to 21 March 2023 that sought views on two legislative proposals to tackle serious and organised crime. Following the consultation, the Criminal Justice Bill will give effect to two legislative measures, as follows:



1. The creation of new offences to criminalise the importing, making, adapting, supplying, offering to supply and possession of specific articles for use in serious crime. These articles are:

vehicle concealments used to conceal goods and people;

templates used to 3D-print firearm components; and

pill presses.

2. Strengthening and improving the functioning of serious crime prevention orders (SCPOs) by:

increasing the number of bodies which can apply to the High Court for an SCPO in the absence of a conviction to include the National Crime Agency, the police, British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police, and HM Revenue and Customs;

empowering the Crown Court to issue an SCPO on acquittal;

introducing an express power to include electronic monitoring as a condition of an SCPO; and

prescribing a set of notification requirements for all SCPOs.

Law enforcement agencies frequently encounter articles that they suspect are being used in serious crime but which they are unable to act on under existing legislation. The Government must continue to give law enforcement agencies the tools and powers they need to disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups and those who knowingly enable them. These measures will help law enforcement agencies to frustrate the activities of the most harmful criminal groups operating in the UK. They will target the facilitators who support and profit from serious and organised crime, and improve our ability to manage and disrupt the highest harm offenders.



Government response to the consultation “Review of the Computer Misuse Act 1990”



It is essential that the UK has the right legislative framework to allow us to tackle the harms posed to our citizens, businesses and Government services online. As part of this, the Home Office initiated a review of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), and a subsequent call for information and a public consultation. The consultation ran from 7 February to 6 April 2023.



We have been considering the information provided to us by that consultation and are now publishing the results. In summary, these are:



There was broad support for a new power to allow law enforcement agencies to take down domains and IP addresses especially in the event of non-compliance with a voluntary arrangement. However, several respondents argued that voluntary agreements should be used initially or there would be a risk that court-based routes would take primacy and organisations would only respond to takedowns and seizures under the statutory arrangements. After further engagement, we believe the voluntary arrangements will continue to be the primary route for action.

There was support for a power to allow a law enforcement agency to require the preservation of computer data, although several organisations did raise concerns that data storage is costly and that any long-term data storage requirements would impact on an organisation’s finances, reducing UK competitiveness.

There was less agreement on the proposal for a power to take action against a person possessing or using data obtained by another person through a CMA offence. This raised concerns with respondents. Some correspondents stated that harm would occur if an offence of copying data were to be created, as this would stop intelligence and law enforcement agencies from being able to proactively protect people from significant harm, and that there would be a lack of protection afforded to security researchers carrying out good faith security research.

The Criminal Justice Bill includes the necessary powers to enable law enforcement agencies to apply to the court for a domain name suspension order or an IP address suspension order.



When publishing the consultation, we also responded to three wider issues that arose in the call for information that ran previously in 2021. These related to the levels of sentencing, statutory defences to the CMA offences, and whether the UK has sufficient legislation to cover extraterritorial threats. We have been working with a range of partners on these since the consultation, including setting up a working group that includes law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, the cyber-security industry and system owners to consider in detail the issue of statutory defences. We will update Parliament on this wider work at the appropriate moment.



Government response to the consultation “Community Safety Partnerships review and anti-social behaviour powers”



The consultation on the community safety partnership review and antisocial behaviour powers ran from 27usb March to 22 May 2023, in support of the Government’s commitment to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour swiftly and robustly.



In March 2023, we launched a plan to crack down on antisocial behaviour, restoring people’s confidence that unacceptable behaviour will be quickly and visibly punished. We made a commitment to consult, via the community safety partnership review and antisocial behaviour powers consultation, on views about strengthening the powers used to tackle antisocial behaviour under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The majority of respondents flagged that expanded powers would help to tackle antisocial behaviour more effectively, allowing the relevant agencies to better resource and implement longer term strategies, and agreed that the proposed measures will help to provide agencies with the necessary confidence to use these powers more frequently and consistently. This consultation was informed, and its findings are supported, by Home Office Analysis and Insight (HOAI) research into police perceptions of ASB powers.



The consultation also tested proposals to strengthen the accountability of community safety partnerships. Community safety partnerships were introduced by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and bring together local partners to formulate and deliver strategies to reduce crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour in their communities.

Part two of the police and crime commissioner review, conducted by the Home Office in 2021, found that while the importance of local partnerships such as community safety partnerships was widely acknowledged, they were not being used as effectively as they could be, resulting in a recommendation that the Home Office undertake a full review of community safety partnerships across England and Wales: the community safety partnership review. It also found that police and crime commissioners were unclear of their role in the antisocial behaviour case review process and that there was a disconnect between police and crime commissioners police and crime plans and local antisocial behaviour strategies developed by community safety partnerships.



I am very pleased, therefore, to unveil a package of measures through the Criminal Justice Bill to strengthen the powers available to the police and other local agencies to tackle antisocial behaviour. The measures will also help to improve and clarify the ways in which community safety partnerships and police and crime commissioners work together, including by enhancing strategic alignment between community safety partnerships and police and crime commissioners to deliver more effective outcomes for the public in tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.



A copy of each of the Government responses is available on gov.uk and will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS32]