Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Randerson

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has spoken very powerfully and comprehensively on this, and I am delighted to offer my support on both these amendments, which reflect how badly written this Bill is. It reflects a Government in a temper tantrum in the face of a period of determined and effective trade union action. I can hear government Ministers stamping their feet in a fit of rage and the result is this badly drafted Bill.

The report of the Select Committee on the Constitution condemns the Bill for being “skeletal” and declares that the concept of minimum services levels is insufficiently specified. This problem is particularly acute in relation to the devolved Administrations, because it is surely up to them to decide what minimum service levels should apply in their own countries in their own circumstances.

I will give two very concrete examples. First, in relation to health services, ambulance response times might quite reasonably be very differently specified in Wales and Scotland because in the Highlands of Scotland and rural mid-Wales the distances travelled are massive. Secondly, if you look at Welsh-medium education, dare I say it, it is unlikely that a UK Minister would even understand the minimum service levels they would have to specify. It is totally inappropriate that it should be in their hands.

At the heart of these amendments is the fact that most of the services specified are, of course, devolved and have a close impact on devolved services at the very least. Education, health, fire and rescue and most transport services are in the hands of the devolved Administrations, which are democratically accountable for the running of those services, yet the UK Government want to intervene in that relationship. That intervention will inevitably sour employer-employee relationships and inevitably mean worse services for the people of the countries concerned.

It will create a seriously muddy situation. Minimum service levels should be down to the democratically responsible Governments concerned, and in these services that is the devolved Governments. The muddy waters will be even more troubled by the information referred to earlier in Amendment 3 from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, that in practice employers will have to issue work notices in order to avoid being sued.

So, we have employers in devolved Administrations working to the devolved Governments which are going to have to act in response to UK Government actions. This is not practical, so for all these reasons I believe the Government need to draw a halt to their many steady and determined attempts to undermine devolution, and this Bill needs to apply only to England.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I support both these amendments, speaking, if I may, from a Scottish point of view. I endorse entirely what has been said by my noble and learned friend Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd and by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

I would like to come back to the point about legislative consent, because I very much regret the fact that the Government have not sought that from the devolved legislatures. It is pretty obvious that it would have been withheld, but the fact that they never did that itself tells one a great deal about the Government’s attitude to devolution.

The fact is that almost all the services that we are concerned with—health, education and so on—are devolved. It follows that industrial relations in relation to these services are in the devolved area. We see this in Scotland day after day. Discussions about pay and conditions for nurses, junior doctors, ambulance workers and so on are dealt with in Scotland by the Scottish Government because they are dealing with devolved areas. Therefore, industrial relations in relation to these services really are within the devolved area and should have nothing to do with Ministers in Whitehall. There is a basic misconception about the approach the Government have taken in the Bill in relation to these devolved areas. Without elaborating on the other points that have been made, it is because of that very basic misconception that has misguided the Government from the start that I support these two amendments.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Hope of Craighead and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 9th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hope of Craighead]

I do not want to detain the Committee for very long; I will make just one or two points. First, I congratulate the Government on the steps they have taken to amend the original structure of the Bill so that it fits better with the architecture of the devolved statutes. If you look at the list of amendments, there are not just one but 22. That gives an idea of the scale of the exercise that has gone into preparing what we are discussing this evening. I congratulate the team that has been working behind the scenes to put this together. There are one or two loose ends, as I mentioned earlier this afternoon, but this has gone a very long way and—apart from on the one issue of consent, about which perhaps enough has been said—I support entirely the structure and wording of these amendments.

As far as the solution put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is concerned, one feature that is worth noting is paragraph 11, which is the requirement that, if there is disagreement—a failure to reach unanimous agreement—reasons must be given. I have sat for a long time in court where, if you want to dissent, you have to explain yourself, and it is quite extraordinary; once you start writing these things out, you begin to wonder whether the dissent was justified. It is an extremely good discipline, when somebody is in disagreement, to force them to sit round a table and express themselves in writing as to what the nature of the disagreement is. The disagreement may remain, but at least it focuses the mind and makes it easier for the dispute to be resolved by the final body that has the responsibility of resolving the issue.

Regarding the three solutions offered as to how we might deal with this, there are three different solutions for resolving the issue. I have already suggested that the solution put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, would not work because the Supreme Court could not deal with that kind of issue. As for the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, I believe that the panel he is talking about has four members, three of whom are from the devolved institutions and one from the United Kingdom. It is a simple majority decision and the United Kingdom would be in the minority—and I am not sure that that is an entirely satisfactory solution to have arrived at. So I am brought back to the solution offered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, which, at the end of the day, is to refer to the United Kingdom Parliament. I am not quite sure what procedure would be adopted, but it seems to offer a fairer and better solution than the other two. Broadly speaking, I endorse the thinking behind what the noble and learned Lord suggested.

We have made a great deal of progress. My final point is to comment on the fact that the Government have undertaken to withdraw the amendments. I was arguing for that some days ago, because it seemed to me that if we had to vote on it tonight that would give a rather different flavour to the debate. It is a way of enabling us to talk around the subject and the way in which we on the Back Benches have to operate all the time. It may be unusual but it is part of the constructive way in which the Government are approaching this issue and I commend it.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, we sit here week after week and, wherever we started our careers, we cannot help but look at them now from the Westminster and London perspective—the UK perspective. As I have been sitting here this evening, I have done a head count. More than 10 of us in the Chamber during this debate have been Members of the devolved legislatures as well as here. We have First Ministers, Deputy First Ministers—a huge band of people here who have experience of seeing these things from the devolved perspective. It is important to bear in mind—and I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Lang, who said that there had been much too much emphasis on the importance of legislative consent in these debates—that legislative consent is the firm foundation on which confidence in the devolved system lies, in the absence of a full federal system, which of course we do not have in this country. I am a fierce unionist, but demonising the SNP does not help to bind the UK together. I assure noble Lords that there is a firm cross-party determination in Wales to insist on significant improvements to this Bill. The Government’s amendment is extremely welcome—but, so far, it is too little. It is a great pity that it is so late, because it means that people have not been able to give the full attention to it that it deserves. But I am sure that it is a good foundation upon which to build.

As noble Lords may remember, nearly two hours ago the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, intervened to ask the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, why the devolved legislatures and Administrations had been content to accept EU power but were not content to accept the UK Government’s power on these issues. I can assure the noble Lord that I went to a number of JMCs and, sitting as a Minister in the UK Government, there was never a time when I felt for one minute that the devolved Administrations did not question the need for more power to go to them. They have persistently and determinedly asked for greater powers and a greater say in negotiations with the EU. This is not something that has come out of nowhere; it is a persistent requirement from the devolved Administrations and legislatures that they should have a stronger voice. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, devolved Ministers could go to those meetings—and, indeed, often go to meetings of the European Council. I give way.