Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I want to start by congratulating the noble Baroness on her maiden speech. As a girl brought up in south-west London, I rarely ventured to the wilds of south-east London, and I cannot recall visiting Bexley, so I am grateful to learn so much about it today.

In my previous career as a teacher and lecturer, I was always a trade union member and, indeed, rose to the heights of chair of my branch, but I am far from believing that trade unions are always right. However, I do believe that this is a silly, vindictive and totally counterproductive Bill. Many others here are far better qualified to talk about the basic rights involved in trade union membership, so I will concentrate on two of the details of this Bill—first, the veritable shopping list of occupations it covers, which seems to have no underlying logic or rationale.

What unites fire services, health services, education services and transport services, and what do the Government even mean by those terms? The vast majority of fire, health and education is government-funded and delivered by arm’s-length, government-run bodies. In contrast, transport services are run very largely by private sector companies within a much lighter-touch set of regulations. I am surprised by the vagueness of the terms used, because the Government have had months to tighten up their definitions since they first started threatening this Bill.

There is another fundamental difference. If your house is on fire, you need the fire brigade immediately. A patient suffering a heart attack needs to see a doctor immediately. A child of school age needs to be taught by a qualified teacher. In all those cases, the professional skills concerned cannot be substituted in anything but the most fleeting manner. But if there are no train drivers available, it is usually possible to take the bus and call on the skills of a bus driver instead. Take the car or take a taxi. If you are a long distance away, take a plane. I cannot understand the inclusion of transport on that sector list.

What is meant by education? Do the Government mean schools, covering just the years of compulsory education? If so, why not say so; or does this cover higher education as well? Here, I must declare an interest as chancellor of Cardiff University. Teacher strikes raise issues of child safety and parental inconvenience, affecting a cohort of children less capable of directing their own learning, whereas university students are adults and, in these post-Covid days of digital learning, have alternative resources.

Transport is a cauldron of choice. The Tory manifesto promised this legislation only in relation to the railways, so why has it been broadened? Do the Government intend to include the 600-plus bus companies that operate in Britain, or ferry services, or aviation? Far more people travel by bus than by train and would be inconvenienced by bus strikes. The three services I mentioned are actually much more irreplaceable than the railways. If the trains are on strike, go by bus instead. I can vouch for the excellent long-distance bus services I have taken recently. Or is this still really just a Bill designed to annoy Mick Lynch? Does the term “transport” also refer to freight, which is arguably much more fundamental to our economy than passenger travel?

The second issue is on the implications of minimum service level agreements. On the last rail strike day, I went to Cardiff for a funeral. It turned out to be straightforward: there were hourly trains to Bristol, with a change to a Cardiff train there. The timetable was published in advance, trains ran to time, refreshments were available, tickets were checked and announcements were accurate. That was a minimum service level agreement and it did not need government strong-arm tactics to create it. The leadership within the rail industry has recently made clear its sense of relief that the new Secretary of State is prepared to avoid the angry rhetoric and antics of his predecessor, which made negotiations so difficult.

I am also concerned about the implications of specifying, maybe even by name, those obliged to work to provide minimum levels of service. Railways are complex jigsaws: the Government talk as if all you need are the drivers but if the cleaners go on strike, all the drivers in the world will not enable you to run the railways. Once you start naming individuals—as you would have to in the case of signalling, for example—you are in a very sensitive position regarding the safety and security of the workforce.

We have a Government who are struggling to stimulate a failing post-Covid and post-Brexit economy. A persistent problem across that economy is labour shortages, which are particularly acute in higher-skilled occupations like these. Therefore, is it sensible to threaten to sack the workers you do have if they go on strike? Is it sensible to discourage new recruits by flagging this decline in employment terms and conditions? Of course it is not.

Finally, this is another example of the Government simply ignoring the impact of their legislation on devolution. The Welsh Government were not consulted prior to a government press release on 5 January, and their requests for information were met with just a restatement of publicly available information. The Secretary of State first wrote to the First Minister in Wales on 10 January, after the Bill was introduced into the other place. No effort was missed to put the devolved Administrations in their place. The Bill allows government Ministers to set minimum service levels for a range of devolved public services. The Welsh Government’s LCM recommends refusal of the devolved powers. The Bill adopts a policy position in sharp contrast to the social partnership approach used in Wales. For example, it could mean the Secretary of State for Health—who is essentially a Health Minister for England, as we all realised during the pandemic—interfering in negotiations on wages in Wales and other devolved issues. This has a clear potential to poison relationships, and it is the patients who will suffer in the end.

This is a macho Tory signal that is counterproductive. Ordinary people will not like to be demonised by the way in which the Government are treating people from these professions.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not aware of the details, but I am not sure that it would be appropriate to comment at this point.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

Is the Minister able to answer a brief question in relation to the role of school governors? They actually employ the staff—that is engage the staff. Do the Government not have concerns that these volunteers could be deterred from taking part in what is already a demanding, onerous and very skilled job by problems such as having to identify those members of staff who are needed for a minimum service level, added to their already onerous responsibilities?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have already been repetitively clear that the Government would much prefer to see voluntary arrangements in this area. Again, having been a governor of a school, as many of your Lordships probably have, it is not about picking one single thing that is going to make it more or less stressful. We need to be very clear that the role of governors is incredibly important. We appreciate them enormously and offer them the support that they need to do their role.

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I turn now to minimum standards. I have forgotten the name of the rail operator in the north-west that constantly uses a clause in its service contract to cancel trains the night before, so that people who are planning to go to work the next day will not know that they do not have a train to go to work. I would be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, if she could shout out its name from a sedentary position.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

The TransPennine Express.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

The TransPennine Express uses that clause, and that is why the public can see through this legislation. This is not about maintaining minimum service levels; this comes back to the basic, fundamental idea that this is an attack on organised labour and its ability to protect its workers. It is the thin end of the wedge, as it were: we started off with transport minimum service levels and then the Government thought, “It is very difficult to define how that will work, so let’s not do that, because we will be forced to define what a minimum service level is in the rail industry and we will have to account to Parliament for that. So let’s go the whole hog: let’s get a skeleton Bill which simply gives us the powers to set minimum service levels across a whole range of services and occupations.” They say that they are focused on public services, but of course most transport services are well outside the public sector and have been for a long time, including aviation.

How do the Government envisage minimum service levels in aviation? Do we have half a pilot? Do we have half the safety staff in a plane? Do we have half the number of planes? I suppose that most unions would go for that last option in terms of a dispute in the airline industry. It is a nonsense, and it highlights that there is a target in the Bill: it is not necessarily the taxi driver, the aviation industry or any of the other things which could be brought into its scope; it is rail passenger transport. We do not even get a mention of freight transport and other things such as that.

I suspect that, as we lead up to the election, the Bill will form part of the Government’s narrative that they are on the side of the public and passengers and that, according to them, Labour supports strikes and unions. No, the Bill is not about that; that is a false narrative. The narrative is: who defends public services and who supports the commitment of the people who serve us? It is Labour who will support the people and public services. This Government have undermined them, and that is why we have these strikes. I beg to move.

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

My Lords, the Committee may remember that, back in 2022, the TUC commissioned legal opinion from Michael Ford KC on the train operating contracts because there was concern about the role of the Government in obstructing a settlement to disputes. Looking at those contracts, his opinion was that the Transport Secretary has

“very extensive powers over what can be agreed between rail operators and unions, and very significant contractual power to direct how industrial disputes are handled. Rail operators are not free to agree terms and conditions without the involvement of the Transport Secretary.”

Before discussing matters, they have to get a mandate from the Transport Secretary, and so on. If you add to that the issue of minimum service levels, and the very real concerns expressed about undue pressure being brought to bear on employers to make use of the powers that the Government propose to take for the Secretary of State, you can see why there is concern. When you look at the power to direct disputes, minimum service levels and so on, apparently the only thing the Government are not willing to do is renationalise the railway system.

It would be wrong to assume that, even in that context, rail employers and unions have conversations, and certainly I am aware that train operating companies are not keen on this legislation. They have real concerns about what it would mean for health and safety on the railways; you could run 20% of services, but you have 100% of passengers wanting to get on. It is not as simple as some might believe.

I really wanted to ask the question: who is asking for this? It does not appear to be the employers. Who wants this to happen? Is it really passengers if it involves a detrimental impact on health and safety? People are already worried about the cuts to maintenance jobs. I do not believe passengers want an unsafe railway; I believe they want constructive industrial relations that can lead to a good-quality rail service. That is what passengers want, and I am afraid the Bill flies in the face of that.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I share the disappointment of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, is not here, but I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, was Transport Minister back in the day, and I am absolutely sure he has perfect recall of those times and will give us very full answers.

In my Second Reading speech, I emphasised the fundamental differences between life and death services, such as fire and rescue and health services, and their contrast with transport services, which are of course economically important but are not life and death. Fundamentally, there is a whole range of transport services that can be substituted one for the other. If I wanted to go from Aberdeen to London, I could take the train, I could go by long-distance bus, I could fly, I could drive myself in a car, or, if I wanted the luxury route, I could take a ship and have a cruise. There is only one way to put out a fire, but there are lots of ways of travelling. Another key difference between the services we have been discussing earlier and transport services is that fire services, health services and education services are funded from our taxes and provided free of charge, whereas the profit motive is alive and well in transport services. Although I acknowledge that some transport services are subsidised, we still pay for the vast majority.

Amendment 9 from the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, is particularly useful in featuring aviation, which is, as he pointed out, overwhelmingly in the private sector, unsubsidised and not appropriate for this Bill. Amendment 10 is also very helpful because it features the complexity of transport services. I have a very specific example as a question for the Government seeking clarification on exactly what they mean by the term “transport”. For example, will they be setting minimum service levels for local bus services? If so, will those minimum service levels be for just those routes that are deemed socially necessary and are therefore subsidised by public money, or will they also include those local routes which are run by the same bus company but are run commercially and not subsidised by public money? The company that provides the services and some local councillors will know the difference, but I reckon there are very few bus passengers who will know the difference. It is that kind of detailed question that the Government need to be able to answer in order to clarify what they mean by “minimum service level”.

Even Amendment 10 would simplify the situation. At Second Reading, I used the example of cleaners going on strike on the railways. The Government are concerned about rail drivers but, if the cleaners go on strike, the toilets do not get cleaned so the trains cannot be run. I am interested in what level of detail the Government intend to specify in their minimum service levels.

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With that, I do not think that there were any other questions that I have not already answered in previous groupings. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I understand why the Minister is not going to answer the question about local bus services and the bits that are and are not subsidised within one service, and I realise why he cannot give me a full answer now, but will there be a letter from the Government on that issue?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am happy to give the noble Baroness a letter, but I am not sure there is much doubt about it. Legislation is not dependent on whether the service is subsidised. Some rail services are heavily subsidised, and some are not. It is about providing the level of service to the public. There is no compulsion on employers to use a minimum service level if it has been set in their particular sector. It is probably quite unlikely that we would want to set minimum service levels in local bus services, but that is a decision for the Secretary of State if Parliament chooses to grant him the power.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Randerson]

14: The Schedule, page 3, line 31, at end insert—
“(5) Regulations made under this section in relation to strikes affecting services in an area for which an elected mayor is responsible may not be made without the consent of the elected mayor for that area.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the consent of the relevant elected mayor before minimum service levels could be set in relation to an area for which an elected mayor was responsible.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendments in the group starting with Amendment 14 in the name of my noble friend Lord Fox. This group is all about devolution. The Government have hyped up their commitment to devolution in England, so Amendment 14 is in line with the proposals in the levelling-up Bill and in Bills on the powers of existing mayoral authorities. In England, an increasing number of those have great powers over transport—for example, bus franchises—so it is logical that elected mayors should be consulted by the Government before they intervene with minimum service levels.

I move on to Amendments 19 and 49 in my name, which refer to the much stronger devolution that has existed in Wales and Scotland and, we hope, will be returned in Northern Ireland in due course. Amendment 19 refers to Part 1 of the Schedule, which relates to minimum service level regulations that may be applied by UK Government Ministers to the list of services specified in the Bill. The key point is that most of these services—health, fire and rescue, education and most of transport—are devolved. Only the decommissioning of nuclear installations, management of radioactive waste and so on, and border security are reserved matters falling to the UK Government. Once again, we have this Government riding roughshod over the core business of devolution. Even border security could be argued to be a very legitimate interest to the devolved Administrations. For example, the Welsh Government owns and runs Cardiff Airport, and that would clearly be directly affected if there were a dispute with border security staff. Similarly, the safe and efficient operation of the several very important and significant Welsh ports is of direct concern to the Welsh Government. In practice, you could not impose a minimum service level without consultation and close co-operation.

I need to point out here that the Welsh Government have a much more positive relationship with public sector trade unions than that between the UK Government and trade unions in England. Although they have not totally avoided strike action in Wales recently, it has certainly been much less intense and acrimonious. The Welsh Government have adopted more of a social partnership approach, and we have seen none of the provocative rhetoric that we have seen in England.

Amendment 19 is very modest: it simply asks for an obligation for proper consultation with Welsh and Scottish Ministers before regulations are made. It reflects similar provisions in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. It specifies that a senior Minister of the Crown should undertake this consultation because we have lately had repeated evidence that this Government have failed to interact at the appropriate level with Ministers in the devolved Administrations, whom they seem, on occasion, to regard as insignificant juniors. Very recently, in the debate on the retained EU law Bill, we were repeatedly referred to officials as the appropriate level for such links. If the UK Government decide to intervene to specify minimum service levels for devolved services, that is a political decision, and the very least that they should do is ensure that Ministers take the lead in that political process.

Quite apart from the need to respect devolution, there is considerable scope for confusion if the UK Government decide to define what they regard as an MSL without close liaison with the devolved Administrations. Let us take health as an example: waiting times for treatment are defined differently in Wales and England, as are ambulance response times, so one size definitely does not fit all. The very simple Amendment 49 takes a much more radical approach. By leaving out “Wales and Scotland”, it would limit the extent of the Bill to England. That would reflect the points that I made previously: most of the public services specified are devolved, and even those which are not have a close interaction with devolved services.

During the pandemic, for instance, we became acutely aware of the differences in organisation and ethos between the UK Government’s approach and that taken, for instance, in Wales, but which I also observed in Scotland. There are plenty of stresses in the delivery of Welsh public services. I do not defend the current standard of some of those. They are under acute stress. If this comes to a head in the form of strikes, it is unlikely that dictation from the outside by the UK Government will help the situation.

Finally, I remind noble Lords that the UK Government are just the Government for England when we talk about strikes in schools or in the NHS, for instance, and other services specified in the Bill.

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 49. All the points arise in relation to it, so I do not think it necessary to go into the other amendments. I will make six points.

First, I do not believe that it is contested that a number of the services covered by the Bill are effectively within the control of the Governments of the nations of Scotland and Wales, and that is reflected everywhere in the consultation that has so far been made. However, when you take that, you have to consider whether you can disentangle services during periods of strikes from services elsewhere. On our previous day in Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Kakkar and Lord Patel, eloquently put why it is quite impossible to disentangle them. What I simply do not understand at the moment is why, if you have a minimum standard on a strike day, that is not the minimum standard across all these areas on every other day. How can the public be expected to think that in strikes there is a minimum standard? There is not.

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[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

I do not accept the noble Lord’s points at all, but I will continue my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Collins. Of course, we would rather have a negotiated agreement on minimum service levels, but the Government resist these amendments. I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords—I feel I have not entirely—on “may” versus “must” and the compulsion, the statutory discretion or the statutory duty. With those comments, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

I thank the Minister and all who took part in this useful debate. We started with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, who pinpointed the persistent erosion of devolution. He called the Bill “Henry VIII on stilts”, and the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, called it “Gis a power”—I think both phrases will stick in our memories. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that of course the devolved Administrations will be consulted, but the problem is that, persistently, they have not been consulted at the right levels and the right point in time. There has been a thin façade of last-minute, low-level consultation, and this has not worked—it is not consultation in the proper sense of that word. The Minister did not reassure me when she said that it was complete nonsense that elected mayors should need to give consent—that shows a lack of understanding of the concept of proper consultation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bryan, gave us a useful long list of recent Bills that have undermined devolution—I will copy it out when I read Hansard so that I remember each one. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, took the points further by raising the fear that UK Ministers would use powers in the Bill for political ends. The truth is that this is a heavily political issue and, in England, the wrong sort of political interference has created problems in industrial relations that have not existed in Scotland and Wales to the same extent, because industrial relations have been handled with more sensitivity there. I have no doubt that the UK Government have their own reasons for wishing to sharpen relations with the unions, but that is nevertheless a political issue.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

Amendment 21 seems to be just common sense. Surely it is appropriate that if a work notice is to be issued, it is issued only when all the options to avert a strike have been exhausted. As we keep hearing today, work notices bring serious consequences with them. As the Bill stands, it could lead to an individual employee losing their job. Beyond that, if trade unions do not take “reasonable steps” to comply with the work notices, they could face significant financial damages and the strike could be classified as illegal. If that happens, all the workers taking part in that strike risk losing their livelihoods.

Therefore, it is not clear what these “reasonable steps” are. The Joint Committee on Human Rights is not clear either, saying that

“the provision requiring trade unions to take ‘reasonable steps’ may fall foul of the requirements of Article 11”.

What assurances can the Minister give us that whole swathes of workers will not lose their livelihoods through this? Work notices should never be used lightly, especially in their current form. Amendment 21 provides some safeguards to ensure that this does not happen.

We can see from recent weeks and months, as other noble Lords have said, that trade unions want dialogue. They want to discuss matters of concern. They want to find mutually agreed solutions, which are the only solutions that actually work in practice. But if the Government adopt a more heavy-handed approach to strike action in those sectors where they have what elsewhere might be called coercive control, or if employees feel pressed to do so under fear of civil action, as we have heard today, this risks further division and delays agreement. If we allow work notices to be issued when other avenues to settle a dispute have not been fully explored, perhaps for political reasons of the day, that will, in my view and in the view of many others, extend and escalate disruption.

In its present form, the Bill will not reduce the short-term destruction caused by strikes; rather, it will lead to longer and more damaging strikes. That is not in what the Minister referred to earlier today as my parishioners’ best interests. It is not in anybody’s best interests.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Allan referred earlier, in relation to Amendment 15, to the key issue of human rights. The amendments in this group look at other aspects of this concept. Amendment 23 in my name seeks to examine the practicalities of an employer specifying a minimum service level. Other speakers have referred to the problems associated with this. It is going to be an invidious process. Let us look at how this will work.

The Secretary of State grandly specifies a minimum service level, then washes his or her hands of the practicalities and the personnel implications of it, because employers will have the job of implementing it. The Government will say that it is voluntary, as the Minister said earlier today, but at the same time, she made it clear that employers will be under some level of pressure from the Government to implement minimum service levels. This simple Amendment 23 makes it clear that employers need to specify only the number of employees in each role rather than by name in their work notice.

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[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I was responding to the point I was asked about, and I made the point that, under the Bill, it is clear that an employer must not have regard to whether a worker is or is not a member of a union when issuing the work notice. I was outlining procedures that they could then follow if that was the case. Ultimately, they could challenge it in court, and that would be a matter for the courts.

I was going to go back to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, but I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, wants to intervene.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

In order to reassure me on the issue of names becoming public, the Minister said that names would not be made public and—I assume this is what he meant—would remain private between the employer and the employee. I just want to tease out how this will actually work. Apart from the fact that the person concerned would turn up at work on that day and so it would no longer be private, how would trade unions and other workers be able to challenge any of this legally? How would they challenge the overall balance of the decision-making of the employer and the fairness in the way in which all this has been carried out, particularly if someone were to end up losing their job as a result of the whole process? How would there be any legal assurance about this if the whole thing is cloaked in mystery?

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to both Amendment 6 and Amendment 7— Amendment 7 being the more important. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Finlay of Llandaff, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, for supporting these amendments. I have tabled these amendments because this Bill, in its application to Scotland and Wales, is impractical, undemocratic and will make the services there worse. Let me briefly explain each of those points.

First, on impracticality, the main services—that is health, education and ambulance services—are all devolved. It simply is not practical for the Secretary of State for Health or the Secretary of State for Education, as advised by their departments in England, to deal with the position in Wales and Scotland. They do not deal at all with health and education in Wales or Scotland. They are run differently, on a basis of very different legislation to that in England. Let me explain why by reference to Wales.

As to health, under Welsh legislation it is the Welsh Ministers who give direction to the employers—the local health boards and trusts—about their functions. It is Welsh Ministers who have a role in setting pay and conditions in accordance with Welsh regulations and directions and the priorities of the Welsh Ministers.

As to ambulance services, these are run in Wales under the direction of a joint committee of health board chief executives, which has commissioned the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust to run the services for the whole of Wales. Those same health board chief executives are appointed by Welsh Ministers, who are of course accountable to the Senedd. How can an English Minister set minimum service levels for Wales and interfere in this structure when the Minister and the department have no basis whatsoever for doing so, no interest in the policy, no interest in the priorities and do not really understand either the demographics or geography of Wales.

As to education, in Wales it is the local authorities that, with the governors, employ the staff. There are substantial differences in structure: there are no academies in Wales; funding, unlike in England, is not hypothecated; and minimum qualifications for teachers are different. Pay and conditions are set by the Welsh Government for the needs of the curriculum in Wales which, quite apart from bilingualism, is different to that in England. How can a Minister who knows all about education in England, yet has not been able to work out a policy for minimum service levels, set minimum service levels for education in Wales, about which the Minister knows absolutely nothing?

Overall, the position of the employers who have to decide whether to give a work notice in Wales and Scotland will be different to that in England. I have already set out the difficulties in dealing with Amendment 3. They will have to take into account different public law duties under different legislation, and the views of the Governments of Wales and Scotland, who have the power to give directions. Again, one can see a wonderful field day for lawyers.

Secondly, in my view, it is wholly wrong and contrary to basic democratic and constitutional principles for this to apply in Wales and Scotland. The responsibility for dealing with these services is not that of the UK Government but the Welsh and Scottish Governments under the legislation applicable in those nations. The Governments there were elected to run these services and are wholly responsible and accountable to the electorate for them. The English Government—the UK Government—are not accountable. It is therefore wrong in principle to undermine that accountability and democratic choice.

This is underlined by the refusal yesterday of the Senedd to give legislative consent. His Majesty’s Government will argue that the refusal is irrelevant, as it is not a matter for the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament because the Bill concerns a reserved matter, industrial relations. With the utmost respect to government lawyers, that is nonsense: the Bill is not about industrial relations but about devolved services. As has been explained, there is a fundamental failure to understand what the Bill is about. Secondly, the Senedd is the body democratically accountable for services, not the UK Government. Therefore, unless amended, this will be another piece of legislation where the Sewel convention is ignored. I have spoken of this before, but it is now being ignored at the heart of devolution, in services that have been run in Wales and Scotland for a very long time.

Thirdly, it will make matters worse for the people of Wales and Scotland by undermining the ability of the Welsh and Scottish Governments to manage their own relations with their staff and employees. The management of those relationships is different from, and has generally been more successful than, that of the Government responsible for England. Applying the Bill to Wales and Scotland is effectively taking away power from those who have responsibility for the management of the relationship, for the negotiations and for the setting of pay and conditions. It will undermine their ability to do this successfully. It is simply an arrogation of powers in matters over which the Government in England have no responsibility. Power without responsibility is a recipe for disaster for the people of Wales and Scotland, for which the Government, in respect of these services, have no responsibility at all.

In summary, the UK Government, which are under the law responsible only for health, ambulances and education in England, should not be interfering in areas for which they have no responsibility in Scotland and Wales. It is impractical, wrong in principle and makes no sense. The real problem is that this is yet another attempt to undermine devolution and give strength to those who wish to see the union weakened.

[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.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 8th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I will intervene very briefly, as I did at earlier stages of the Bill, having taken good note of the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd.

I press on the Government the question of the definition of reserved powers. This goes broader than this amendment and may be something that needs to be looked at in another context, in its own right. Under those circumstances, I accept the lead that has been given by the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and I hope the Government keep the issue alive in their mind.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, for moving this amendment. I too will be brief. It is important to restate the principles involved here. The Bill is one of a series from this Government that trespass boldly—I would say foolishly—on devolution. The United Kingdom Internal Market Act, the Procurement Bill and the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill do so distinctly, but this Bill takes it to another level. The overwhelming majority of the list of services for which it seeks to set minimum standards and take control are devolved services, and the noble and learned Lord spoke about this. Add to this the Government’s habit of ignoring the need for legislative consent Motions and we are well on the way to a constitutional crisis, which this Government seem openly to invite.

Even now, the Government do not seem to have decided how to develop and impose minimum service levels. Back in March, the Constitution Committee expressed surprise at this in its report, and it is significant that we are still at this point in June. It is nonsense to imagine that the Government can impose minimum service levels, in effect from a distance, on a service for which they have no responsibility at any level, and, in the case of Welsh-medium education, for which they do not even understand the language in which the rules and standards are written.

As it stands, the Bill is unworkable and damaging. The noble and learned Lord’s original amendment, which was agreed by the House, sought to limit the scope of the Bill. The elegance of the new amendment is that it would allow the devolved Administrations to give agreement in the normal way.

In the different political climate of the past, in devolution as it used to be practised and operate, there would be discussions, co-operation, compromises and ultimately agreement between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. There would be legislative consent Motions agreed before we agreed legislation here. The norms have gone and that is a serious problem for our future democracy.