Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and John McDonnell

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud union member.

The Bill is an affront to Parliament. It will not protect the public, it will worsen industrial relations and it will undermine the unity of the United Kingdom. It should be voted down tonight. There has been much heated argument about the provisions in the Bill. On all the moral and pragmatic arguments, I stand firmly on the side of working people and their right to withdraw their labour, and against what the Government seek to do in the Bill. However, I do not consider that those moral and pragmatic arguments are likely to change the minds—or more importantly the votes—of Conservative Members. I therefore want to put forward an argument against the Bill that I believe they both can and should accept: it is damaging to our constitution and to the Union.

The reason the Bill is so short is that it delegates to the Secretary of State the power to set out all the relevant law in regulations through statutory instruments—regulations which receive only the most minimal scrutiny in this place and cannot be amended. So it is the Secretary of State, not Parliament, who will make regulations to determine the levels of service in relation to strikes, who gets to define the nature of the services to be provided, the number of people who are to provide them, the time at which they are to be provided and the manner in which they are to be provided during a strike. Extraordinarily, the Bill also proposes that the Secretary of State should have the power by regulation to

“amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation”

in this House. So statutes passed by Parliament can be amended by regulations drafted by the Minister without full parliamentary scrutiny. In a recent report by a Committee of the House of Lords, “Democracy Denied?”, their lordships state:

“A substantial groundswell of concern is developing about the shift in power from Parliament to ministers.”

This Bill is perhaps the most egregious example yet of a measure brought forward by an increasingly autocratic Executive to strip Parliament of its role in determining what, for many of us, is a critical area of employment and human rights.

It gets worse. The primary legislation that the Secretary of State can amend or repeal is defined to include an Act of the Senedd or the Scottish Parliament. That should set alarm bells ringing for all of us, nationalists and Unionists alike. What is being proposed is that the Secretary of State in Westminster should have the power by regulation to override devolved legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd—and to do so with minimal scrutiny in this House. If the Executive had intended to provoke constitutional outrage and call into question the very basis of the devolutionary settlements, they could not have designed a piece of legislation better guaranteed to do so.

That the Secretary of State in Whitehall should claim the power to legislate by regulation to interfere in devolved areas of government and to impose restrictions in different parts of this Union on the right to strike in transport, education, health and other public services in Scotland and Wales is more than unwarranted. It is more than inappropriate. It is a deliberate provocation and offence.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend like to comment on why the Government have refused even to agree to the super-affirmative procedure?

[Barry Gardiner]

That is quite simply because they are introducing a party political measure that is designed to provoke this House.

I call on all Conservative Members, if they care about the Union at all, to vote against this wrecking ball of a Bill, which will only provide succour to those voices seeking to destroy our constitutional settlement and our United Kingdom. Under the Bill, the employer has the unilateral right to identify in a work notice the individual workers required to operate the MSL. A worker who refuses to comply after having been requisitioned in this way will lose unfair dismissal protection.

The Government are thus authorising employers to do what not even a court in this country can do. Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992:

“No court shall…compel an employee to do any work or attend at any place for the doing of any work.”

However, once the union is notified of the identity of the workers to be requisitioned, the Bill requires the union to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that all its members identified in the work notice comply with it. It is ironic that, under the Bill, the same trade union may be required to discipline or expel—

Foster Carers

Debate between Barry Gardiner and John McDonnell

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Mr Robertson, as Chair, you have a very privileged position, because you hear in Westminster Hall debates some truly remarkable stories. We have heard some today. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for the work that she has done on this issue and for securing the debate, but that is trite—there is no merit in securing a debate. The merit lies in what she said and in the experience that she brought to it. Similarly, I was hugely moved by the words of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey). That is what is remarkable: sometimes, we learn so much more about our colleagues in this Chamber than we ever expected to. We also heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who spoke of his own experience in secondary school.

We have heard today about the power of love and how it can transform lives. It can change a child’s life and set it on a new path. I pay tribute to all those from the Fostering Network who are here in the Public Gallery for the work that they do. I salute them. That service often is not in the vanguard of the public’s imagination, but clearly, what we have heard today means that it should be. It is extraordinary work and it takes extraordinary strength, resilience and compassion to do it. That is what this debate has brought out.

Let me turn to the debate itself and look at the annual fostering statistics. Ofsted has told us that the number of children in care is at its highest ever level in England. I know what the Minister will say. He will no doubt tell us that the number of carers is also at an all-time high, but he knows that the number of children in need of care is at an all-time high. The question that he must answer is not a technical one of provision and so on; it is this: why are so many children in need of fostering care? What is breaking down in our society that means that we have an all-time high and we need even more places than we have? What stress are families are experiencing and what pain—social and economic—are they going through that means we need so many more fostering places because families cannot cope on their own?

I contacted my own local authority and asked for its experience. It told me about the ageing profile of the foster care workforce. In Brent, we are finding it difficult to recruit newer and younger foster carers. Of course, in a city context, that is a function of the demand for housing. If someone wants to be a foster carer, they need a room for the child. The cost of living pressures in London, where both adults in a household need to work simply to maintain a property, are reducing the availability of people who would otherwise desperately wish to become foster parents, as we have heard. For our more vulnerable and needy children in care, having a carer at home for most of the time makes a huge difference to the stability of the placement. That is very difficult if both potential parents have to go out to work simply to maintain their rent or mortgage commitments. In Brent, we are actually turning away people who want to foster and have good skills because they simply do not have the physical space in their homes to accommodate a child.

The Competition and Markets Authority carried out a study of children in social care. I have to say that I found it difficult to read about the final report of its study of the “children’s social care market”. “Market” is not a word I want to use about children or the care of children—“service”, yes, but not “market”. However, on recruitment, the CMA said:

“The difficulty…is greatest for carers needed to look after children with more challenging needs… The degree of challenge also varies geographically.”

The study considered not only areas such as my own in London, but rural areas and the challenges faced by parents there. It is clear that not everyone who wants to be a foster carer has the resources—whether that is a spare room, the spare time or the financial stability—to be able to do so.

The Social Market Foundation has said that, in the next five years, we need 63,000 new families to make their homes available to children, yet it predicts that at current rates there will be 40,000—23,000 short of what is required. I hope that the Minister will say how the Government are preparing to meet the problems of recruitment and retention. How is he ensuring that his Department will assist local authorities with the pressures that they face, and how will it assist potential foster families with the pressures that they face in taking on that responsibility?

I hope that the Minister will also turn his attention and that of his Department to why this is happening—why there is an ever-increasing need. There has been, I think, an 11% increase over the past seven years in the number of children needing foster care. We are seeing an economic crisis and a cost of living crisis, and that will put increasing pressure on families. Over the next 18 months, I think the projected need for 63,000 families will be blown out of the water, because so many families will be in crisis and will not be able to cope, and the result will be increasing pressure on fostering services.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend asks why the numbers coming into care are so great. For four years running, Barnardo’s and the other children’s charities came together and argued the case for additional resources for local authorities for early intervention to support families. They say that the withdrawal of that intervention has resulted in record numbers of children coming into care.

I have another point to make. Like me, my hon. Friend is a London MP. The CMA report states that 20% of children in foster care—the percentage is higher for residential care—are in placements more than 20 miles away from where they live. That is exacerbated in London by the housing crisis, with many local authorities in London having to go as far as Kent and elsewhere to find foster placements. That problem is identified as part of the housing crisis in which local people are prevented from having a spare room available to assist in fostering.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am so glad that my right hon. Friend makes that point. I wrote on a piece of paper comments about geographic dislocation, but I have been unable to find it. It is important because this debate is about connectivity with the child’s environment—with his or her roots—and making sure that there is stability and continuity, which are undermined in exactly the way he describes.

The funding of local authorities is absolutely central to this question. My local authority has lost £180 million in Government support over the past 10 years. That is the scale of the crisis local authorities are facing. I am not saying this to make a plea for my local authority; I am saying it because we have an increasing crisis in caring for our children. The Government have to have a co-ordinated response that covers more than recruitment and retention, because that is just patching up the problem afterward; they must have a proper response to why so many children and so many families need this support.

Human Rights on the Indian Subcontinent

Debate between Barry Gardiner and John McDonnell

Thursday 15th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is exactly right. As a result of the campaign in India and the support that we and Amnesty International are giving it, there could be a breakthrough in this case that could lead to the abolition of the death penalty. There are clear concerns about the fairness of the trial, as well as about the eight-year delay in implementing a decision, which I believe constitutes cruel, degrading and inhuman punishment. As a friend of India—as many of us here are—I therefore appeal to the Indian Government to think again, to allow the mercy petition to go ahead and to allow this person’s death sentence to be commuted, but also to consider the issue of the death penalty itself, which I see as a continuing blemish on the Indian constitution and political system.

[Barry Gardiner]

I was most concerned to hear my hon. Friend say that the only evidence against Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar was the confession that he had made in police custody. The Amnesty report, “A lawless law”, describing another case, records that

“the trial court dismissed two of the three outstanding charges against Sheikh noting that the only evidence against him was a confession made by him while in police custody which was inadmissible in court (in India, confessions made to the police are inadmissible as evidence because of fears that they may be coerced).”

Would my hon. Friend care to comment on that?

[John McDonnell]

Yes, that is common practice, and it is usually taken into account when considering the mercy petition. That did not happen in this instance, however. There have been four recent cases in which mercy petitions have been rejected by the President. That is a change in practice that we have witnessed over the past seven or eight years, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) suggested. There is a change of political climate on this issue in India at the moment, and I think that it is to the detriment of India. On that basis, pressure needs to be mounted in India and internationally, to address not only this individual case but the whole question of the abolition of the death penalty.

The issue of Sri Lanka and the treatment of the Tamils has also been raised with me. I want to associate myself with the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) in this regard. A key issue is that, although the commission took place and various recommendations were made by the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, a number of them have not been implemented. For example, the simple recommendation that a list of names of those in detention should be published still has not been implemented. As a result, a number of my constituents are still anxious to find out what has happened to their families and where they are in detention.

When people are released from detention, despite reassurances that they will be assisted with resettlement, that is not happening in every case. Some are living in very distressing circumstances, but they are getting no assistance. Furthermore, there is a continuing problem of land having been taken over, particularly by the military, and reallocated to the majority community. In that way, members of the Tamil community are being displaced yet again as a result of the Government’s actions. I would welcome our own Minister putting pressure on the Sri Lankan Government to address those issues and to get back into negotiations with the Tamil National Alliance, which has withdrawn from the current negotiations because of the Government’s intransigence. In that way, we might be able achieve an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation again.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and John McDonnell

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

That is the sad fact of our situation. I am sure that all of us, as constituency MPs, have business people coming to us saying that they cannot get credit. Indeed, many successful businesses that have had no change in their circumstances are suddenly being told by their banks that their credit facilities are no longer there. The banks are unilaterally changing the terms of those facilities, and the Government must do something about that. They cannot on one hand let the banks off with a £20 billion tax allowance for bonuses and, on the other hand, say that they do not have to ensure that they are lending to small businesses.

The difference between Opposition and Government Members goes right to the heart of whether we believe that the most important thing to do is to get growth back into the economy, get money flowing into small businesses and pay people a decent wage rather than make them redundant—that means that their spending on goods and services does not contract, and they spend money on brown goods and white goods and generate wealth and jobs in the economy, so that we grow our way through the problems—or whether we believe that we have simply to cut, cut, cut the public sector and pay, pay, pay the bankers’ bonuses.

[John McDonnell]

I would welcome the amendment because I think it is time to stand back and review the future role of levies. The amendment seeks to prise out the Government’s analysis regarding the rate and the threshold of the levy, but it also gives us the opportunity to debate the overall adequacy of a levy and its role in the economic situation that we face.

I echo the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) in saying that the world has moved on and the role of bank levies is different now. The first early-day motion on this matter, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and I eight years ago, in advance of the crisis, related specifically to the profligacy of the banks in their distribution of bonuses. We gained the support of 40 Members of the House. At that stage, the role of the proposed levy was fairly clear cut and straightforward: it was to act as a disincentive to the payment of such obscene bonuses, as others have described them.

Then, economic crisis hit us. The first sign was Northern Rock. I remember being in the Chamber when we exposed the role of Granite in Northern Rock and the tax fiddles, avoidance and evasion—whatever we want to call it—that were taking place. We called for the Government to use public ownership to nationalise and stabilise the banking system, but we added to that a call for the maintenance of a levy system, because we wanted to prevent a recurrence of the bankers’ bonuses during a period of recession caused by their profligacy.

As the right hon. Member for Wokingham said, the world has moved on, and we now have a bizarre situation. Yes, a levy on privately owned banks that are making profits and paying large bonuses is relevant, but introducing a levy on publicly owned banks is bizarre—it is a circular form of taxation—which is why the review proposed in the amendment is important. Surely if we own banks, we should end such bonuses by diktat and enforce reasonable lending using our management control. I hope that the review will examine the adequacy of future bank levy arrangements.

I compliment a number of my hon. Friends who have spoken in this debate, none more passionately than my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who reflected the climate of anger in which this debate takes place. There is anger about how individuals have been treated by the banks, but also anger about the impact of the banks on the overall economy. The impact has also been felt by families in the loss of jobs and cuts in services. If we are to have a review of the bank levy, I would welcome a commitment to absolute openness and transparency about the nature of the banks’ current operations. Many people are bewildered by the banks’ lack of adherence to the exhortations of successive Governments on the role that they should play, particularly in lending and long-term investment.

I welcome the proposed production of a report, but I would prefer it to be published earlier. The amendment proposes a deadline of “before 31 December 2011”, but I would want the report no later than the autumn, because I believe we need a tighter analysis and review regime for the banks.

I am no longer sure that the Government know what the levy is meant to achieve; they are certainly not clear on the appropriate rate, or even to whom and what the levy should apply. The previous Chancellor’s levy was clearly a bonus tax: it was an attempt to influence the behaviour of the banks and to end the remuneration system that encouraged reckless behaviour and the taking of excessive risk. The objective was also to raise income, although that was not the stated primary aim. Bizarrely—this is why I admitted an error earlier—the levy failed to influence behaviour, because the bonuses continued, but at the same time it was extremely successful at raising income. In fact, it was seven times more successful than was originally predicted. As I said, the original prediction was that it would to reap £500 million, but £3.5 billion was gained.