Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Balfe

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

Noble Lords will not be surprised that I agree with the amendment as tabled. I have been a student of history for many years. You do not requisition labour except in times of dire national emergency. We did not even requisition it at the outbreak of the Second World War. Conscription did not come in until half way through the First World War. To deprive a person of the liberty to decide whether they go to work is something that is done carefully and very seldom. I think this goes far too far. It is an imposition not only on the workforce but on the trade union movement.

We spend a lot of time saying how much we want to build a prosperous Britain, but I remind noble Lords that 60%-plus of trade unionists have a higher education degree or more. We are not dealing with the trade union movement of the 1920s. We are now dealing with a trade union movement on which Britain depends for its prosperity. The people who look after the skies, fly the planes, run the National Air Traffic Service, keep our nuclear power plants going and manage our railways are highly skilled people who are in trade unions because they see a trade union as being a way of defending their interests.

Sadly for the party opposite, some one-third of them do not see that party as being the one that will deliver their political future. But that is a good thing, because I do not believe that we want sectarian trade unions. I want people to join trade unions because they want to better the welfare of their country. Taking steps such as this will just alienate people. They are not the sort of steps where people are going to be happy and say, “Oh it’s a really good thing”.

As for minimum service levels, I live in Cambridge. We seem to have had lots of strikes this year, but there has never been one that prevented me getting here, because many of the unions have a harder job keeping their people out on strike than getting the original ballot to put them on strike because, when push comes to shove, a lot of them do not wish to lose the money that they lose. So I think we need to be realistic about this.

All we are doing here is heating up the atmosphere and making it harder for the reasonable people in trade unions to make this country work. Every trade union has within it a group of people who hate strikes; they regard them as being the last thing they want, because it is a sign of failure. So I say to the Government as a whole—because it is not just this Bill—for goodness’ sake, make peace with organised labour; it is fundamentally on your side. It is much more on your side than some of the people who are contributing to the political parties of this nation and doing so for reasons which I would not say are particularly honourable. So please, Minister, send this back to the Commons and look for a compromise. I certainly will not vote for it to go again because I believe that the Commons must, in the end, have its primacy; that is why we have it. But it is quite legitimate to send this back and I ask that, when it gets there, our Ministers on our Front Bench say, “Look, there are very genuine reasons for this. Please try and give us some concessions”.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will say very briefly I have no doubt that the Government do not want to lead to the sacking of workers through this Bill. However, when the Minister seeks to reassure us with the conclusion that it will be left to the discretion of the employer, I say to the Minister that those are dread words for anyone who is an employee of said employer if you are in dispute. As this Bill is about enforcing consequences, nay punishment, I do not care whether the Minister intends that people are sacked, I simply point out that that could be the consequence even against what the Government want. I hope the Government will reconsider this and bear in mind that it is to do with freedom, rather than coercing people: the freedom to go on strike and withdraw your labour, which is something that all sides of this House should support.

Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Balfe

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I do not think there are evil people involved in this and I have not gone down the moral/immoral route. I am concerned, genuinely, with ensuring that the electorate and citizens of this country do not feel that parliamentary discussion uses international treaties as an excuse to not do what they anticipate that Parliament was asked to do. For example, this could be about the abolition of the Vagrancy Act. Let us be honest; a lot of promises have been broken recently. I have heard excuses made for why we have not yet abolished that Act. I have heard excuses for why we can no longer get rid of tuition fees, and for why leasehold will not be abolished—

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

The noble Baroness will recall that we had a referendum to leave the European Union. Many of us opposed that, but it was the clear will of the democracy of this country that we left. Surely, on these international obligations that we are saying we are bound by, if the demos—the people of Britain—feel that they wish not to be bound by them, that is perfectly legitimate. We have to find a way to carry the wishes of the people into legislation and not use international agreements to say that the wishes of the people must be ignored.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am coming to an end. I understand the noble Lord’s point and I am endeavouring to explain that I think those international agreements are being used in a particular political way on this issue. I have suggested that breaching promises to the British electorate—I was trying to give some examples across party lines, so that nobody would think I was having a go at any one party—is leading to cynicism and bitterness in the electorate. The low turnout at the local elections was an indication of the fact that many people feel politically homeless.

I do not necessarily support the Bill. I want it to be scrutinised by this House, but I felt that the amendments I was referring to were almost avoiding scrutiny by simply ring-fencing the whole nature of the Bill and saying, “You can’t do that because of international treaties”. That would seem to render us even trying to scrutinise the Bill a waste of time and it will lead to even more cynicism about the lack of democracy. That is my point and it has nothing, as it happens, to do with Brexit or the EU. Although the desire to control one’s borders and one’s laws was undoubtedly part of that, I was not making that point in this instance.