Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Christine Jardine Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Not at all, Mr Deputy Speaker! But thank you very much.

I rise to speak in opposition to this Bill. I am not currently a member of a trade union, I have never been a trade union official, and I do not get any money from a trade union. Last week I even found myself—much to my own surprise—in agreement with the Secretary of State when he said to the House that when we need an ambulance, we need to know that one will turn up. I agreed with that, but I did not agree with the context in which he meant it. We should be able to rely on such a service all the time, not simply when there is a strike on.

I would even have continued to agree with the Secretary of State, and I could even have found myself thinking about supporting the Bill, if I had felt that it was an attempt to address the problem, but it is not. It not about problem solving; it is political posturing. It is an empty, detail-light, vague promise of a mandatory minimum level to replace existing voluntary arrangements. It will simply ramp up the rhetoric, without saying how anything will be achieved or offering any progress towards the solution that the public need.

None of us—those in this place, those at home watching television, those working on the railways, in hospitals or in any other sector, or those working as teachers—wanted this wave of strikes, because it further undermines recovery in those sectors, which were already stretched before the pandemic. Let us not get into the argument about whether the pandemic or the war in Ukraine is causing this, because neither is the case. The cause of these strikes is the deterioration in our public services that the Government have not just allowed but, at times, seemed to foster—and what are they doing? They are introducing this Bill, which is somewhat akin to taking a mallet to peel a peach.

The Bill will not undo that deterioration, and it will not help our public sectors. Already too many people go to sleep at night worried that if they have a heart attack or a stroke there will be no ambulance, and the Bill does not attack that problem. The reason we have a crisis this winter is this Government’s inaction. They have failed the workers in the public sector. It is nothing to do with trade unionism; it is to do with the Government’s failure. We always say that when there is a strike, it is a failure of both sides. It is a cliché, but the thing about clichés is that we use them because they are usually right. These strikes are a failure. With this Bill, the Government are doing nothing to undo that.