Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Lord Collins of Highbury and Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I hope—I plead with the Minister—that the noble Baroness reads the debate on this in Hansard. If questions arise, I hope he will encourage her to write to us, because we have heard something quite critical: a definition, for the health service, of who might be involved and the issues involved. We could understand what the Minister was saying on health. But of course he was focused on the fact that the voluntary agreements are what works. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was even more clear that the better way is the voluntary arrangements, the agreements in place and the good industrial relations, even when there are disagreements that lead to a dispute.

Now we come to transport, where there are obvious questions. Who is the real target of the Bill? One cannot help feeling that there is a target in it, and it is not any of the things we have heard about so far. Of course, the area where we know the Conservative Party had a manifesto commitment on was transport— passenger rail transport. Of course, that Bill did not proceed, and instead we have this omnibus piece of proposed legislation, which includes everything but with no detail, no definition of minimum standards and no proper scrutiny. Every committee that has examined this has criticised it because of that nature. This comes back my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s point about proportionality.

So let us focus. I will come on to Amendments 9 and 10, but let us deal with the first amendment. I will focus a bit on passenger rail, because we had a very bad red warning—is that what they call it?

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

Red-rated.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Normally that is a good thing in my party, but in this context it is not, because it failed completely. But let us go back to the impact assessment on passenger rail when it was introduced for the Bill that specifically addressed that issue.

In October 2022, the impact assessment for the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill was tabled. It said that minimum service levels could have a

“negative impact on industrial relations, which could have detrimental impacts for all parties”.

It said that they could increase the frequency of disputes, meaning that

“an increased number of strikes could ultimately result in more adverse impacts in the long term”—

adverse impacts on all the people that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, talked about. They could lead to greater use of “action short of strike”, which would have a particularly significant impact in sectors such as fire and rail. The impact assessment further stated that minimum service levels could lead to “increased operational costs” for employers, with a “particularly onerous” burden on smaller operators, and result in lower pay and poorer conditions for union members and non-union members working in the relevant services. It went on to state:

“If terms and conditions are reduced over time relative to the strength of the economy in one sector then there is a potential for employers in other related sectors to be able to offer similarly reduced terms and conditions”—


we have certainly seen that in recent times.