Draft Important Public Services (Education) Regulations 2017 Draft Important Public Services (Transport) Regulations 2017

Alison McGovern Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 General Committees

[Margot James]

I can certainly deal with the issue of e-balloting. The Government committed to undertake a review of the potential for e-balloting in advance of strike action. A review has been established under the chairmanship of Sir Ken Knight and it will report by the end of the year.

We propose that the 40% threshold comes into force on 1 March. At the same time we will bring into force a number of other provisions in the 2016 Act, including a 50% turnout threshold for those who are eligible to vote, as I mentioned; additional information to be provided about the result of any ballot; two weeks’ notice of industrial action to be given to employers; new requirements to manage picketing and new reporting requirements. That ensures that the key changes to the way official industrial action is decided on and implemented are prioritised and come into effect as a package.

The purpose of the ballot thresholds is to rebalance the ability of union members to strike with the interests of the general public, non-striking workers and employers. The 2016 Act takes proportionate action to redress the balance and ensure that unions in the education and transport sectors have a strong democratic mandate before they take strike action. The impact of strike action is most severe when it takes place in the important public services that people and businesses rely on every day, particularly when people are left with no real alternatives. That is particularly unfair when strike action goes ahead with no evidence of strong support from a unionised workforce. That is why we have introduced a 40% approval threshold to apply to important public services such as education and transport, in addition to the requirement for a 50% turnout overall.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

For the sake of full disclosure, will the Minister say what her own approval threshold was and what percentage of her own electors voted for her?

[Margot James]

As I do not dwell on my own electoral circumstances, I cannot give an absolutely accurate answer to the hon. Lady’s question. However, I do not regard that as a parallel. That sort of question was raised when we debated the Bill last year. Everybody gets a say in the election of an individual MP to represent a constituency. It is not just a vote for one or another candidate; a range of candidates are on offer. Everyone who is going to be affected by the eventual outcome of such an election gets a say. In the cases we are describing, the non-striking workforce and—more important for this argument—the public, who require and depend upon these services, as they do in the hon. Lady’s own constituency, get no say whatsoever.

This is an attempt not to deny strike action or the validity of it, but to rebalance the interests involved. That is why we have introduced a 40% approval threshold to apply to these important public services, in addition to the requirement for a 50% turnout. It is in the interests of the public to know that where they face disruption in these crucial services as a result of strike action, it is because union members have secured a democratic mandate. That is also important for union members who did not support the strike action.

The Government believe that the measures being put in place strike the right balance. During the passage of the Trade Union Bill last year, the Government consulted on which services within the public service categories set out in the Bill should be subject to the 40% threshold and on how the threshold should operate in practice. We analysed more than 200 responses, reviewed the available evidence for the impact of strike action across different public services and listened to stakeholder views.

At this point, I will answer the question from the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts on what consultation took place with the Scottish Government. The Government held a public consultation on these measures during the passage of the Bill, published skeleton regulations as part of the Government response and invited comments from all stakeholders and members of the public, including in Scotland.

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[Margot James]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I will reflect on that and get back to him.

Members of the public will agree that strikes in such important public services should only take place when there is a strong level of support for a justifiable mandate. I hope I have reassured Members that the regulations are justified and proportionate to our objective.

I am aware that concerns have been expressed in Parliament and elsewhere that the 40% threshold is not consistent with our international obligations. I will set out why we are satisfied that it is compliant. We recognise that the threshold introduces additional conditions that must be met before strike action can be taken. It therefore engages our obligations under article 11 of the European convention on human rights and the International Labour Organisation’s conventions. We analysed the provisions of the 2016 Act carefully against those requirements. It is clear that restrictions on article 11 of the ECHR are permitted when they are justified by a legitimate aim and are proportionate. The pressing social needs we want to address in the regulations are the safeguarding of children’s education and the ability of large numbers of people to go to work and carry on their daily lives. Strike action in the important education and transport sectors can have a significant impact on those social needs.

[Alison McGovern]

It was my great joy as a child to experience my dad, a railway worker, out on strike on many occasions. Too often, he was protecting health and safety for other railway workers—a cause that is extremely important to all of us who have family members working to keep our trains running. Will the Minister explain how she has weighed important social factors such as the safety of people working in the industry against the causes she mentions?

[Margot James]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. The legislation does not purport to condemn all strike action as anathema. It is merely about a requirement to better balance the interests of the travelling public with the rights of people, including her father, to take strike action. There is no concerted effort by the Government to undermine a person’s or a union’s right to take strike action; we are merely requiring that right to be tempered by a strong democratic mandate.

Our aim is to rebalance the ability of union members to strike with the interests of the general public, non-striking workers and employers. In introducing thresholds, we have taken proportionate action that does not ban strikes, but simply redresses the balance by ensuring that unions have a democratic mandate before they take strike action. International bodies have persistently been asked to consider whether UK legislation is compliant, but the UK courts, the European Court of Human Rights and the governing body of the ILO have accepted that UK legislation strikes the right balance between the rights of union members and the legitimate interests of others affected by their actions. That is precisely what the Trade Union Act and the regulations continue to do.

We have taken account of the guidelines on essential services that some of the ILO’s supervisory committees have referred to in respect of services where it may be legitimate to limit or prohibit strike action, but our objective is not the same and that is why we have deliberately used a different term. As I have explained, we want to protect the public from the immediate and adverse consequences of strike action taken with the support of a minority of union members. We are not stopping strikes that have a reasonable democratic level of support, such as those the hon. Lady just mentioned.

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[Alison McGovern]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Evans. I intervened before to ask the Minister, for the purposes of the Committee’s information, if she could tell us what the genuine level of support for her candidature in her constituency at the last general election was. I am sure she will be thrilled to know it was a big 30%. The hon. Member for Dartford, who intervened before, did slightly better, reaching the dizzy heights of 34%. I imagine the Committee has now had its appetite whetted, to know what my own level of support in Wirral South was.

The people of Wirral South are extraordinarily fair-minded, passionate about social justice and get up every morning thinking, “I really hope my MP is speaking out on behalf of the myriad issues we care about,” but only 35% of them committed their vote to support me. None of us on the Committee can claim the true, justified mandate that the Minister seems to think is legitimate to require of public service unions. That is a ridiculous position for us to get into. It is a strange situation for us as democrats, as we no doubt all are in this House, to find ourselves casting forth our judgment on the levels of support that organisations must command for their positions, when we have found ourselves incapable and not up to the task of meeting this test ourselves. We have found it too hard.

There is a lot of discussion about hypocrisy in politics at the moment. I would never dream of accusing anybody here of being guilty of such a thing. At least, we must worry about the appearance of hypocrisy when we are unable to command the levels of support that we would ask of railway workers, tube workers, nurses, teachers and other public servants. They will understand the change that the Government are bringing in and fail to see how we could vote for it.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough said, the idea, which has absolutely no precedent in our democracy, is that such a threshold should be applied with a justification of protecting important public services. The Government seem to have plucked that definition out of thin air. The regulations would apply such a test in a way that has never been done before. I never thought that I would have to lecture the Tory party in government about the importance of tradition and precedents in our constitution, yet here we are: strange things are indeed happening in this Committee today, are they not?

There is no democratic precedent for this manoeuvre; the Government are completely making it up as they go along. The Minister did give a justification: she said we need to rebalance the interests. I look at the economy in our country today and think that if a rebalancing of interests is needed, it is a rebalancing towards working people, not away from them. The reality is that wages have not grown over the past decade. Since just before the economic crash, people have been doing steadily worse and their wages have continued not to grow.

It is a simple truth in our economy that there are only two things that successfully raise wages: one of them is the law and the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 introduced by my party, and the other is a trade union membership card in the back pocket. Those are the things that raise wages in this country—that is what all the evidence says.

[Chris Stephens]

Is that not the real game here? The Government have been caught out. They think the best way to stop teachers deciding to take national industrial action on pay is by imposing the 40% rule.

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[Alison McGovern]

That is a very good point. The hon. Gentleman reminds me that, as he did, I should draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have been proud to be supported by trade unions. Like all good Labour MPs, I work week in, week out, with our friends in the trade union movement. That is how I know that if what the Minister wanted to do was modernise the trade unions, she would be correct. It is very important that we see these institutions not as relics of the past, but as an important force for good in the future, which is why she should push ahead with the use of new technologies for the trade union movement. She should know that only too well, given that her party used online balloting to find its candidate for the London mayoral election—although that may be why she is not so keen on it; that story did not end well.

Online balloting is used for many democratic functions by, for example, building societies or important national organisations. I vote in online ballots at least three or four times a year for the different representative functions in the co-operative organisations that I am a member of. It is a common thing that could easily be done and it would save trade unions a heck of a lot of money that could be spent fighting for equality, safety and decent pay and terms and conditions in the workplace.

I finish with two points. First, I point out to the Minister that the year with the highest number of strike days our country has faced since 1996—as I am sure everybody in the Committee knows—was 2011. Why? Because we saw an attack on public services at the commencement of the austerity policies of the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne). We saw an attack on people’s pension rights and on funding for the public sector, and people did not feel that that could stand. The strikes were a reaction to that, marking the height of anguish about what was happening in our country. The cause of a strike is people not getting around the table to discuss things properly and find a moderate way forward. The cause of a strike is parties not talking to each other and not working together.

Secondly, and following on from that, if we pass these measures and still see in an increase in strike days because of the Government’s approach to public services, what will the Minister do then? Will we see even more attempts to reduce the influence of trade unions in our society and to restrict their abilities, or will she accept—as I believe she has to—that working people in this country need effective, well informed trade unions that have the ability to work in the modern era and give working people a genuine shot at a good future

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[Chris Stephens]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Margot James]

I will not give way, because I am merely responding to the hon. Lady’s—