Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Chris Stephens Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution and I absolutely agree. I was reflecting while the Secretary of State was making his opening speech, and I was thinking that, if I still worked in social care or one of the key public services—if I was paramedic, a nurse or one of those key workers he mentioned—and I was listening to this debate, I would be really upset and offended by the way he represented them here today. That is not what the Labour party thinks of those key workers.

The Secretary of State has claimed that this legislation is about public safety, so why does the Bill not mention safety once? He knows full well that working people already take steps to protect the public during strikes through derogations and voluntary agreements, yet he brazenly claims that this punitive legislation is needed because of ambulance workers. That is insulting and shameful, and I think he should apologise for the way in which he has awfully smeared ambulance workers.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I thank my Unison comrade for giving way. I am not a member of the parliamentary Labour party, but I am a proud trade unionist. Will my good friend remind the House that section 240 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 guarantees that trade unions will agree to provide life-and-limb cover during an industrial dispute, because failure to do so could result in a custodial sentence? This Bill is therefore completely unnecessary.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my friend. We may not be in the same party, but we are in the same trade union.

These brave, hard-working men and women struck local life-and-limb deals on a trust-by-trust basis ahead of all the strikes. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says it is trust by trust, but it is the best way to ensure that the right care is provided, and those employers know that. When I was a home help, we always put patient care first. We negotiated to ensure minimum safety levels, which is more than I can say for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, under whose watch we have seen excess deaths and an increasing crisis in the NHS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her point, and I will assist her, because I was coming on to that point. The article 11 right may be restricted for two reasons—if the restriction is necessary, yes, and proportionate. The International Labour Organisation, of which the United Kingdom is a founding member, recognises that maintaining a minimum level of service provision can be both when it comes to essential services. Its committee on freedom of association has expressly set out the two circumstances in which it may be appropriate: where strike action would pose a risk to life, safety or health; or where the service is not essential in the strict sense of the word, but where repeated strikes would bring a very important sector to a standstill.

[Chris Stephens]

The ILO also says, does it not, that the minimum service level has to be agreed by an independent arbiter if there is a dispute, which is not in the Bill, and that there should not be a dismissal, which is in the Bill?

[Laura Farris]

I am grateful to both SNP Members for their interventions. I am coming on to those points, so I will make a tiny bit of progress, if I may.

On the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), we already know that transport and education meet the ILO’s test, because the ILO told the United Kingdom that in its response to the challenge to the Trade Union Act 2016 submitted by the TUC in 2015. In its response, the ILO committee of experts—Members can look it up; it is on the website—said that in relation to transport and education

“recourse might be had to negotiated minimum standards for these sectors as appropriate”.

We also know that many comparable countries take a much tougher line than the Government are proposing. In the United States, to give one example, 38 out of 50 states ban public sector strikes altogether.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, my position as chair of the PCS parliamentary group and my membership of the Unison Glasgow City branch.

The Government started with clapping workers on their doorsteps and they are ending with clapping them in irons. Each of the staff mentioned in this Bill worked hard to protect our communities through crisis after crisis, but if they now wish to protect their own families, they are being threatened with dismissal. The false respect shown to them for their dedication and commitment has now become the removal of their most fundamental human rights.

None of the countries that Government Members have mentioned—they have also mentioned the ILO—imposes these restrictions on balloting or these notification requirements for strike. If the Government want to be consistent about the ILO, let us bring back the Trade Union Act 2016 so that we can discuss those thresholds and restrictions.

Another problem with the Bill is arbitration. In Europe, there is a social partnership model, so workers and employers try to reach agreement on things, but the Bill’s proposals seek to remove the Central Arbitration Committee and turn co-operation into conflict. We are now being advised that this Secretary of State would be the sole arbiter—this Secretary of State whose arrogant and ignorant performance this afternoon showed us everything that we always suspected: the Government are clueless when it comes to industrial action. This is a Secretary of State who tweeted last year calling the weekend a non-strike day and he is to be the arbiter of this. As Denis Healy once said, there are some people who should be gobsmacked at birth.

Trade union activists could be used as a weapon, with them picked to be the ones attending work, so that they will be the ones challenged to cross a picket line, and if they do not do so, they will be dismissed. That is a completely disproportionate action. In Europe, the norm is that they would lose their pay, which would seem more proportionate than automatic dismissal, with no protection to take that matter forward to industrial tribunal. I will be fundamentally opposing this Bill today, tomorrow and any other day of the week.