Industrial Action on the Railways

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Secretary of State’s words, but I have to say that they did not get any better on the second time of hearing, and I listened to the Statement with increasing despair.

When such a serious dispute is going to cause huge disruption and misery across the country, there are two approaches that a Government and a Secretary of State can take. The first is that they can sit back and do nothing—except perhaps a few media interviews where they blame everyone else and take no responsibility—but that negligent approach makes it even harder to tackle the issue. There is another approach: they can recognise the responsibilities that come with being in government. They can recognise the social and economic cost of strike action and then roll up their sleeves, show some leadership and do everything they possibly can to ensure that there are urgent, meaningful discussions and official talks. That is the job that Governments are elected to do. Even now, at the 11th hour, it is possible. Some of us think it is an essential government duty to facilitate and hold last-minute talks to avert strike action that will be devastating for workers and passengers alike and damaging to an already fragile economy. I heard the noble Baroness trivialising the meetings, talking about beer and sandwiches; I do not care what they eat and drink at these meetings, as long as the meetings take place.

We all know that it is better and probably easier to prevent industrial action than to try to resolve it once the workers have gone out on strike. If these strikes go ahead, it is obvious that there is only one way they can conclude: by negotiation and discussion. Even the Government’s own MPs know that that is the case. This Secretary of State’s former PPS, Jake Berry, expressed his frustration with the Government over the weekend. Pointing out that he was a lawyer, he said:

“I can tell you that the only way out of a dispute is via negotiation.”

He called on all parties—and explicitly named the Government—to get round the table and sort it out.

Can the noble Baroness give me one example—just one will do, even if it is a very small one—where the Government have convened any discussions at all between the employers and the employees in this dispute to find a way through? Unfortunately, I suspect that she cannot. I suspect that there has been no attempt whatever, and yet surely that is a basic requirement of government. If the Minister and the Secretary of State are not prepared to get a grip and do their jobs then they should move over, because there are plenty of others on this side of the House who would be happy to ensure that there are negotiations, rise to the occasion and show some real leadership.

This is worse than just a failure of leadership. The Government have not only stepped back when they should have stepped up but they have tied the hands of those charged with resolving the situation. It has been revealed that the train operating companies have no mandate from the Government with which to negotiate, so when they do have meetings there is nothing to discuss. That information has come from a source inside the train operating companies. Then we have the Secretary of State, as partly repeated by the noble Baroness today, accusing union negotiators of leaving talks to go to a rally. When those talks ended on Friday, the understanding was that further discussions were scheduled for Sunday, after the rail bosses had engaged with the Department for Transport on what they might be able to discuss with the unions. And yet no talks were convened. Why?

When a rail manager said in a radio interview this morning that there would be no compulsory redundancies, the union’s response was that this was the first it had heard of that and how significant it would be for going forward with the negotiations, yet the Secretary of State appeared to refuse to rule out any such job losses on TV. Which is true?

It is really hard to escape the conclusion that government Ministers are content for strikes to take place as long as they are not their fault and they do not have to take any responsibility for them. I have a couple of questions for the noble Baroness.

First, could she say something about how withholding a negotiating mandate from the train operating companies means there can be any meaningful progress? Secondly, given that safety is a key issue, what assessment has been undertaken by the Government regarding the cuts to the maintenance workers? Thirdly, as I came into the Chamber I was given information about a letter written by Steve Barclay, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, to Rishi Sunak. The Government’s message has been very clear on how important it is that we have wage restraint, and they have been very clear on that in this dispute and others. But tonight, this letter reveals that the Government apparently want to remove curbs on bankers’ bonuses to attract more people into the City. On the one hand, we are telling people who are working that they must have wage restraint, so does it not seem somewhat hypocritical to say that the constraints and curbs that have been in place are to be removed in the City? I am grateful to Paul Waugh and the i newspaper for that information.

It comes back to the Government seeming to think that the rules are for other people but not them and their friends. I hope the noble Baroness can say something about this; she must realise how deeply it will affect those who do not want to go on strike and who are trying to negotiate if they find that the Government are using two sets of rules—one for those in the City on high incomes with large bonuses and another for those who are working.

No one wants to see these strikes go ahead; they will be devastating and they will hit hard. But if the Minister thinks that government means not lifting a finger other than to point the blame at others, that is not a way forward. It is a gross dereliction of duty that fails every single test of leadership. The public deserve better from this Government, who want to sit back and do nothing to try to resolve this position.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, which opens with a list of those affected by the strikes. I should say that my plans have had to change for the latter part of this week. Potential revellers in Glastonbury have had their plans ruined and people going on holiday have had their plans upset. But it is workers, school and university students, and patients who will be most affected, and whose lives will be most impacted in the longer term by these strikes.

I would take the ministerial hand-wringing about this issue much more at face value if the Government had moved heaven and earth to solve this strike, but they have not. They have not lifted a finger and are making a virtue of this inactivity. Perhaps the Minister could update your Lordships’ House on when the Government last discussed this issue properly with union representatives. What does “doing our utmost” mean in terms of actually doing things? What is the Government’s utmost when it comes to stopping this strike?

This would be bad enough if the railway was being organised under the old franchise system, but as the Minister knows, the Government “took back control” of railways during Covid and essentially imposed a TfL-style service contract system. They are the real employer, and not to negotiate is a dereliction of duty. The Government hide behind the “we are not the employer” excuse, but with the formation of Great British Railways the Government are in charge. They have effectively nationalised the railways. The Government cannot expect this power of owning the railway without responsibility. Their responsibility is to negotiate.

The unions should not be inflicting this misery and should not be in a position to, but Grant Shapps is just as much to blame for failing to have acted to stop it from happening. We should look at the facts. As the Minister said, the railways have suffered throughout the pandemic and passenger numbers are yet to bounce back. This huge interruption will only hurt the recovery of passenger confidence in the railways. Here I agree with the Minister. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that the Government need to understand that and get everybody around the table and thrash this out. Until that happens, we will not get resolution. Can the Minister please explain why her Secretary of State for Transport is more willing to step into the media and try to save the Prime Minister’s neck than he is to sit around the table and save rail passengers from the problems we are seeing?

Meanwhile, we have seen sabre-rattling about agency workers from the Business Secretary of State, Kwasi Kwarteng. Can the Minister please tell your Lordships’ House when we might expect a statutory instrument to be laid here so we can find out what his plans are? On the face of it, it looks like a political gimmick which is actually deeply impractical. This is a tight labour market; it is a tighter labour market than we have ever known. Agency workers are in really high demand. They can pick and choose the jobs that they take. Agency staff are unlikely to choose a role that causes them to have to cross a picket line rather than a job that does not. Where are these people coming from?

Even if the Government manage to find workers, it will not fundamentally address the underlying issues causing the strike actions and it will not save many of the services. For example, train drivers are trained for weeks to learn a new route. We saw this complication during the Covid crisis. You cannot just swap one driver for another, even if they know how to drive the train. What this looks like is the Government seeking to pour petrol on an already incendiary situation. The tone of this Statement adds to my suspicion that this is what is happening. Inserting third-party agency workers into this scenario is likely to inflame tensions and elongate strike action.

For my part, I think the Government think this is putting pressure on Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition and are not intending to solve the dispute. That is wrong. The Statement laughably urges divisions to end, but the Government’s language is inherently very divisive. It is the people of Britain who will suffer: the cancer patient who misses an appointment, the student who fluffs an exam after having to take a much longer journey to school, and the zero-hours worker who misses a whole week’s wages because they cannot get to work. These are the lives the Government are using to fuel their narrow political aims. Does the Minister agree with me that this is beyond reprehensible?

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[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I think that the noble Baroness is challenging me on that point. Has she actually invited the unions to a meeting with the Government at any point? I did ask that, and I would be grateful if she would respond to it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Well, that is marvellous; I have only just started my response, so if the noble Baroness could just hold her horses, that would be brilliant. Let us get back to the questions that she asked and indeed to the Government’s Statement. At face value, it is indeed the case that the current Rail Minister and her predecessor have met the unions in the past to press the need for reforms, and to outline the reforms set out in the Williams-Shapps plan for rail about the establishment of Great British Railways, changes to terms and conditions, modernising railway and creating this fantastic thing that we all want. But this was not part of the negotiations, because the negotiations are between the employer and the unions, as they have always been. That does not mean that the Government do not take great interest in the negotiations—we want to see an increase in pay—but it has to be done fairly, between the passengers, the taxpayer and the workers.

There are working practices that need to change. I am sure that all noble Lords will have heard of some of them, and I suspect that some have thought, “Yeah, it does need to change”. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked about job losses. Over the course of the Covid pandemic, any job losses that have happened to date have been voluntary. A very successful voluntary severance scheme was launched in October 2021. There were 5,000 applications for that scheme—I am sorry, would the noble Baroness like to intervene?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Baroness was mumbling, and I was desperate to know what she had to say.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

Could the Minister answer the questions that I asked?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am trying to answer the questions that the noble Baroness asked. As I was about to go on to say, it is clear that the industry will do whatever it can to avoid job losses. There will be voluntary schemes, and we expect them to be popular. But of course each train operating company, and indeed Network Rail, has a vision for how we will put the reforms into practice, and there will be different ways that each organisation will do that, with the human resources available to it. We will have to see how that all pans out because, obviously, different organisations will require a different number of people to carry our different levels of service.

I turn to some of the other questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised. She mentioned that there is no mandate. There is a mandate for both Network Rail and the train operating companies. However, even so—I will say this again and again and no doubt I will be at the Dispatch Box many times talking about it—this is not just about pay; this is about terms and conditions, and we have known about changes to those for a very long time. We need to think about how we get to a stage where we manage to operate a seven-day railway in circumstances where, at the moment, you simply cannot. Southeastern’s high-speed operation, which has been in place since 2009, is incredibly successful. It is a great service, and that is the level of customer offer that we really should be giving to our customers on a modern railway, particularly as leisure travel is so important.

The noble Baroness also mentioned safety. Safety is, of course, the Government’s top priority. We have one of the safest railways in Europe, and there is an enormous uptick in the amount of advanced technology used for safety on railways—such as drones to check rail lines, which is much more effective than doing that by eye, and all sorts of machines that check for internal cracks in the rails. So, yes, there is an increased use of technology, and sometimes that means that people’s roles will necessarily have to change. The noble Baroness said that this will deeply affect the workers, and I agree. I feel very sorry for that, because at the end of the day we need those workers, and we want them to create these railways of the future. We do not want them to go on strike; we do not want them to damage their own livelihoods, which is what striking will do.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said that the Government are apparently not lifting a finger. I can absolutely reassure them both that the Government have been working on this all through the weekend. Obviously, at the moment, this is the biggest priority for my department. It is taking up an enormous amount of time in the department—rightly so—because you cannot build a modern railway on poor foundations. That is what we run the risk of doing. We must make sure that we have reforms, particularly to working practices, such that we can create the modern railway that we all want. At the moment, we are not there.

The noble Lord, Lord Fox, asked about agency workers, and we are looking at all options for them, because we do not want future strikes to punish the travelling public. When I have more information, I will of course bring it back to your Lordships’ House. In the meantime, I believe I have answered all the questions.

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[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to declare an interest: I am a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for GWR, whose services I normally use almost every day but clearly will not be using tomorrow.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, my interests are slightly different: I try to travel on the trains most weeks.

We have a few minutes left. The Minister will have heard from across the House the disappointment in both the tone of the Statement and the fact that the Government have not been more proactive on behalf of the public in trying to resolve this issue. She said at the end of her comments that she had answered all the questions. Actually, she had not: I raised the issue of the letter from the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to the Chancellor, which appears to be saying that they should remove the curbs on bankers’ bonuses. I asked her if she felt that such action would be detrimental to those involved in this dispute because it seems rather hypocritical to urge wage restraint on one group of workers while allowing large bonuses for another. If she could comment on that, I would be grateful.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I am grateful for the reminder that I had not commented on that. The reason is that I have not seen the letter so I do not know what is in it and am not able to comment.