Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Chris Stephens and Alan Brown

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg)—certainly now that he has found his Back-Bench voice again—but it is disappointing that he is still in favour of the Bill even though he says how badly drafted it is. We know how bad a Bill’s concept and drafting are when something like 120 amendments are tabled, spanning 53 pages, yet the Bill itself has only six clauses over seven pages.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who is responsible for about a quarter of the entire amendment paper. I am disappointed to see that there is not a single Tory amendment, nor a single Tory MP backing any of the amendments despite how many there are. It is good to hear some critical voices, however, and I hope that at the very least the Minister will listen to the Tory Back-Bench voices telling us how unconstitutional the Bill’s drafting is and the dangers that it will bring.

With only five hours to debate amendments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said, it is clear that the Government are intent on ramming the Bill through with minimum scrutiny but maximum politics as part of the Tory culture war—a culture war that they are now taking to something like 7 million key workers. I hope they get their just reward at the next election from those 7 million voters. Considering that the Tory party accumulated only 14 million votes at the last election, those 7 million key voters could be critical up and down Great Britain.

The Bill is so offensive that there is a moral dilemma involved in tabling amendments to it. How can we improve a Bill that we so fundamentally oppose? For that reason, we tabled amendments to delete each clause. As I have said before, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), has described the Bill at the Dispatch Box as “anti-strike legislation”. Our amendment 33, which was not selected, would have changed its title to “Anti-Strikes (Forced Working) Bill”, which would have been quite apt.

The Bill presents opportunities for employers to pick on specific individuals and name them as required to break a strike. If those individuals do not comply, they face the ultimate sanction of sacking. Those proposals are not replicated internationally, even in places where, as the Government like to remind us, there is some form of minimum service legislation. The threat of sacking for going on strike is absolutely outrageous, so I certainly support Opposition amendment 1. Although the Minister says that the Bill could not lead to sacking, the overview in the explanatory notes makes it clear that it will remove protections from unfair dismissal for going on strike. That is the key aim of the Bill, as set out in the overview given in the explanatory notes, so the Minister cannot say that the Bill will not lead to the sacking of key workers.

[Chris Stephens]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The Minister keeps shaking his head whenever someone mentions dismissal, but it is clearly there in the Bill. The Bill says that someone who is sacked will have no right to an industrial tribunal. The very real concern for many of us is that trade union officials and activists will be the ones who are picked on. They will be dismissed and will not have the right to a tribunal.

[Alan Brown]

I will return to that point, but it is quite clear that the Bill allows individuals to be named. If someone is deemed to be part of an awkward squad, or to be a trade unionist the company wants rid of, they can be named. If they do not break a strike, they could be sacked.

A common theme on the amendment paper is the attempt to control and limit the definition of “minimum service” and ensure that it relates to service required for genuinely critical health and safety-related matters. I support such amendments, although we know that there is existing legislation that covers life and limb protection anyway. In a similar vein, there are attempts to limit unilateral impositions by the Government. There are also several new clauses and amendments that relate to consultation, voluntary agreements, compliance with international obligations and the implementation of an arbitration process. If the Government had any intention of collegiate working, we would not have to debate the inclusion of such measures.

Another theme—I am glad that the right hon. Member for North East Somerset brought it up—is parliamentary sovereignty and the need to prevent too much control from lying with the UK Government. Those are issues that should exercise Tory Back Benchers.

I support all amendments that would eliminate the retrospective effect of the Bill and stop it applying to strikes that have already been balloted for. The Bill is bad enough, but to apply it retrospectively to attack strikes that have already been properly balloted for, under the existing rules and the existing draconian legislation, is just bizarre.

The SNP has tabled amendments that would protect devolution and require approval from devolved Governments and other bodies on devolved matters before implementation. If Scotland were indeed an equal partner, the UK Government would not have a problem with such requirements, but we know that their attitude is “Westminster knows best”, even though it is Westminster that is wrecking inter-Government relations. It is now Westminster that is looking to wreck relationships with key workers, including in the devolved nations.

Our amendment 27 is an attempt to eliminate the ridiculous proposal that secondary legislation could be used to “amend, repeal or revoke” any previous legislation already passed by Parliament or any future legislation in this Session. SNP amendment 28 further makes it clear that such Henry VIII powers should not extend to devolved legislation. It might be acceptable for most of the Tories to allow their Government unparalleled powers over past and future legislation, but it is simply not acceptable to us that Westminster could have carte blanche to rip up devolved legislation that has already been passed. I welcome the similar amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) to protect the devolved institutions; I hope that Labour Front Benchers too will see the need to stand up and protect devolution.

I also support the hon. Member’s amendments 98 and 77. They mirror our amendments 30, 36, 37 and 38, which would amend clause 4 and the schedule to ensure that the Bill will not apply to Scotland. New clause 2 spells it out: the Bill should

“not apply to disputes which take place in…Scotland or Wales”,

no matter where the workers reside. If the Tories really want this Bill, I suggest that they own it and justify it to the nurses, ambulance drivers and train workers in their constituencies—but do not think about imposing it on Scotland and Wales, whose Governments do not want it.

Our amendments are intended to prevent imposition from Westminster, but the blunt reality is that unless employment law is devolved to Scotland, the Bill—clause 3 in particular—will allow Westminster to interfere and impose as it sees fit. We are now seeing Westminster confirming autocratic powers.

Pensions Guidance and Advice

Debate between Chris Stephens and Alan Brown

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Chris Stephens]

The Select Committee, of which I am a member, has heard evidence from the Association of British Insurers, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, the Financial Inclusion Commission and Age UK, which all say that there should be an evaluation trial of auto-appointments as a means of increasing take-up of pension guidance. They are correct, are they not?

[Alan Brown]

My hon. Friend is right; I was going to come on to that. When the industry and all those bodies are saying that there should be a trial of auto-appointments, it is not controversial, and is something the Government should embrace. It was a Conservative Government that set up the Pension Wise advice system as a complementary service to the pension freedoms legislation, so it surely makes sense that the Government want to ensure that as many people as possible access impartial advice.

According to the Association of British Insurers, over £42 billion has been flexibly withdrawn since 2015, but just 14% of defined-contribution pension pots are accessed after the use of Pension Wise. We are talking about potentially billions of pounds being accessed with a high risk of it not being utilised properly for maximum gain. As the hon. Member for Amber Valley pointed out, people might make decisions that suddenly mean they are in higher tax bracket for the first time in their lives. Simple advice would remedy that.

Realistically, those figures should make the Minister sit up right away and pledge to take action. As others have highlighted, Financial Conduct Authority data confirms that the use of guidance and advice has actually decreased in recent years. Again, that should be an urgent call to action for the Government.

In March 2020, the chairman of the Money and Pensions Service, Sir Hector Sants, told the Work and Pensions Committee:

“A significant number of the people who contact Pension Wise will come away saying that, after having spoken to our guidance service, they have concluded that they should do something different from what they had in mind in the first place… There is a figure that suggests that 72% of people are saying they have changed their mind about what they will do as a result of talking to our guidance service. In a way, that is a simple statistic that tells you that the vast majority of people, left to their own devices, will probably make a poor decision.”

Again, £42 billion has been accessed since 2015, but 72% of the small number of people who received advice ended up making different decisions following receipt and consideration of that advice. The level of cash that is being accessed, with poor decisions possibly made on the back of that, is frightening—and, of course, some people are being scammed altogether.

The chairman of the Financial Conduct Authority, Charles Randell, made the following observation when asked about the adequacy of regulatory policy when he gave oral evidence to the Treasury Committee in November 2020:

“This issue about people making poor choices when exercising the freedoms and responsibilities that have been put on them in the last 10 years, through a variety of changes in Government policy, is probably the one that I worry about most of all.”

Does the Minister not share these concerns? I am concerned that he does not. I welcome the fact that the right hon. Member for East Ham highlighted comments that the Minister has made previously that he does not seem to be holding true to. Is the Minister blind to these concerns that everybody in the industry is raising?

The other crucial aspect in all this is that, for those who have used Pension Wise, it has been deemed a success. When the Government have a success story that they can relay, why are they not trying to build on it and enhance it? The 2019-20 Pension Wise user evaluation found that 94% of appointment users were very or fairly satisfied with their overall experience of Pension Wise; 88% of appointment users said that Pension Wise helped to improve their understanding of pension options; and 70% of Pension Wise users correctly answered eight true or false statements relating to their pension options, compared with 43% of non-users. That last statistic is proof of the additional knowledge gained by accessing impartial advice.

In contrast to the evidence gathered since 2015, the Government’s approach to non-advised savers seems to inhabit a space somewhere between “fingers crossed it’ll be okay” and “if savers stuff it up, that’s their own fault”. Again, that brings me back to what the hon. Member for Amber Valley outlined about the known risk that affects savers; he put it well.

Currently, 19 million people are at various stages of their defined-contribution pension journey. Their retirement outcomes depend, first, on the generosity of their employer’s pension offer and, secondly and critically, on the decisions they make at the accumulation and decumulation stages. If a saver has contributed to pensions for over 40 years, surely it is right that the system does all it can to ensure that they take as little time as 40 minutes for a guidance appointment.

The Minister’s response to this issue of low take-up of guidance and advice has not been to address it directly but instead to point to the “stronger nudge”, as he did earlier, or to other pet projects such as mid-life MOTs and pension dashboards. They are measures that I support, but they are not available in the here and now, whereas Pension Wise is. As for the stronger nudge, the FCA and his own Department admit that, on the basis of trials to date, it is unlikely to have a dramatic effect on guidance take-up. Indeed, the trials suggested that there would be an increase of only 8% in the take-up of advice, so that clearly is not the solution.

Once again, I ask the Minister and the Government to commit to a trial of auto-appointments. Two trials could be considered: one with an appointment when a person accesses their pension for the first time, and another—this idea came from the Select Committee—with an appointment at the age of 50, before someone can access their pension savings, which is the kind of mid-life MOT that the Minister supports. Piloting an auto-appointment system for the Pension Wise service is a clear recommendation of the Work and Pensions Committee, and the Association of British Insurers supports it too.

The Committee also recommended that the UK Government should set a goal of at least 60% of people using Pension Wise, the Government guidance service from MaPS, or receiving paid-for advice when they access their pension pots for the first time. Meeting such a target would see billions of pounds being accessed in a way that minimises the risk of poor decision making by people who are not used to assessing such sums of money.

Will the Minister confirm, once and for all, that he supports a trial of auto-appointments, as recommended by the Select Committee and the industry? It is a no-risk option for the Government to implement. Will he confirm the timescale for such a trial? If not, will he say why he is ignoring the advice and why he is willing to allow people unwittingly to continue making bad decisions with their pension pots? If they are accessing that money and using it for the best means possible, it should be able to support not just them but the wider economy better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Stephens and Alan Brown

Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

What recent assessment he has made of the compliance of Government special advisers with the code of conduct for special advisers.

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

What recent assessment he has made of the compliance of Government special advisers with the code of conduct for special advisers.