Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and to have listened to the very learned submissions from my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), who brings considerable experience to bear from a distinguished career at the Bar in this area. I was grateful to listen to those submissions.

I rise to speak against these amendments, particularly amendments 9 to 14, and 73 to 75, because I take the simplistic view that all of us here have been elected to represent all of our constituents and all of our communities. That requires that we balance the rights of people to strike. As I said when I last spoke in this debate, I do accept that it is a fundamental right of public sector workers to be able to strike, but it is not unqualified, because we have already excluded the police and the Army from that right. The Bill seeks to restore the balance between the right to strike and the right of the public to know that access to key, often lifesaving, services and their livelihoods will be protected. Moreover, the Bill seeks to ensure that when public sector workers wish to exercise that right to strike, they can do so safely. For those reasons, I do not believe the Bill needs to be amended.

We have heard a lot said about a poor service on days when there are no strikes, but I am delighted to say that health workers in Southend West have not joined in with the national strike action. So I am standing here to ensure that everyone who is not lucky enough to live in picturesque Leigh-on-Sea and Southend has the same levels of care on all days. The Bill is a recognition that some of our public services are vital and that hard-working taxpayers deserve a minimum level of service. The public have the right to get on with their daily lives and access public services just as much as workers have the right to strike.

Those public services must include health, education and transport. I was deeply disappointed to read on a BBC breaking news alert only this afternoon that the Fire Brigades Union has opted to strike. I will certainly be in touch with my local police and crime commissioner to ask how we can minimise any disruption on those days to people living in my constituency. I am also disappointed that the planned strikes in schools are going ahead, which is not just a problem for students. In my constituency, two schools, Chalkwell Hall Junior School and Heycroft Primary School, are going on strike, affecting nearly 900 pupils. Those schools will close and that is a crying shame. Those children have not had a single year of undisrupted education since they started.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that it would be helpful if there were a requirement for a minimum notice period, so that schools could at least let parents know that they will close? At present, many schools affected by these decisions do not know what will happen on Wednesday.

[Anna Firth]

My hon. Friend makes a critical point. Not only should there be decent notice, but schools should all be required to run a minimum service, so that we do not have our children’s education disrupted again. A total of 270 million pupil days have already been lost through the covid pandemic and our children deserve better.

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I understand that some Conservative MPs might not understand employment legislation. One Conservative MP said, “Wouldn’t it be a great idea if trade unions had to tell employers the dates they were going to take strike action?” They have to do that already. We have heard Conservative Members say that the Bill is about public sector strikes, yet it also covers private sector strikes. We have heard the Minister, who is chuntering from a sedentary position, say that the Bill does not relate to buses, yet the Bill states that it covers “transport services” and does not define that further. I think it is frightening.

[David Simmonds]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the need to notify. My understanding is that an individual worker is under no obligation to notify, although the trade union has to give notification. As a consequence, a headteacher could have no idea which staff in their school will be going on strike, and therefore cannot plan for a safe staffing level. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the individual worker should be required, as the trade union is, to give notice of whether they intend to strike?

[Richard Burgon]

That is a very helpful intervention, because it illuminates the fact that I am afraid the hon. Member, and other Conservative Members, do not believe in individual liberty. We believe in collective rights as well as in individual rights. The trade union has to notify the employer of the dates of strike action, yet the Government Minister is saying—I mean the hon. Member; I am sorry to accidentally promote him, although he might get a promotion for that intervention. He is saying that individual workers should have to notify the employer about their intentions. That goes against individual liberty, against civil rights, and against individual freedoms. Thereby we see what this Government are proposing.

Anti-trade union laws mean that workers are denied their fair share of the wealth they create. In this era of neoliberalism, which has lasted decades, the race to the bottom has seen the share of the economy going to wages plummet from 60% to less than half today. Wages go down as profits go up. This Bill is happening now because workers are fighting back. This Bill is an attack by the Government on trade unions. If what the Government are saying is true, they would be pleased to accept my new clause, although I am sure they will not. If they have nothing to hide, let a court rule on this. Our country is often in breach of its international workers’ rights and duties. It is in breach with this Bill, and it does not bring us into line. We need to level up the rights of workers in Britain with the rights of workers elsewhere.

Let me tell the Committee—I will finish on this point—that workers in my constituency and across the country are sick to death of being attacked by bad bosses and by a bad Conservative Government. They are sick of being the poor relations of workers in other countries in Europe when it comes to hard-won workers’ rights. Workers in this country deserve better and it is about time that the Government stopped attacking them.

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[Liz Saville Roberts]

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dame Rosie. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am the co-chair of the justice unions parliamentary group. I am not employed by it and do not receive a penny from it, but I still have to declare it. It would be very useful if other hon. Members had to declare their support from employers as well.

I rise to speak to amendment 76 and new clause 3 in my name. It is telling that amendment 76 is one among many amendments—including those tabled by SNP colleagues and by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter)—designed to prevent the UK Government from interfering with primary legislation passed by Senedd Cymru or the Scottish Parliament. Powers to amend or revoke workers’ rights legislation on a whim have no place in a modern democratic society. The protections that my amendments would afford are critical in a period when it is becoming increasingly clear not only that devolution is under attack from Westminster, but that our fundamental rights and freedoms as citizens are not safe from an increasingly authoritarian Government in Westminster.

New clause 3 would require the UK Government to conduct an impact assessment of the effect of the Bill on industrial relations in Wales. Actually, it does not go as far as the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley. It seems a very reasonable request to see what the effect of this legislation is on a sister Parliament in the United Kingdom. The assessment under the new clause would have

“particular reference to the intended outcomes of the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Bill”.

That Bill, which is currently being debated in the Senedd, will place a duty on certain public bodies to work with trade unions when setting and delivering on wellbeing objectives.

In Wales, we seek to include workers in the making of the very public policy decisions that will have an effect on their working lives. We want to chart a different path: one whereby workers are empowered and valued, not bullied as they are by Westminster. That brings us to the very heart of the question why the right to strike is so important. Giving workers the opportunity and the choice to be represented collectively in the work environment by a trade union enables them to be heard and to bargain collectively. Okay, those are good words, but why do they actually matter? They matter because this is the key tool for improving living standards and tackling inequality. That is especially important in a country like Wales, where sadly a third of children are growing up in poverty.

We have a duty to tackle inequality and poverty. Undermining the effectiveness of industrial action at a time when the cost of living crisis is biting will only perpetuate the cruel poverty cycle that has trapped so many people in so many communities. Amplifying workers’ voices can also bring significant benefits to employers, as it can be a way of identifying issues at an early stage and ensuring that the valuable insights that workers have into how services can be improved are heard and acted on. This is about facilitating meaningful discussions and negotiations that lead to real solutions—which is not to say that such an approach is always easy, but in the long term it is far more effective than actively sowing the seeds of discord between workers and their employers.

[David Simmonds]

I yield to no one in the Chamber in my respect for trade unions. I have had the privilege of chairing three public sector employer organisations and the European sectoral social dialogue in education, so I know from lengthy personal experience that a great deal can be achieved through processes of that kind. However, 61% of workers in Britain are employed in small and medium-sized enterprises, and a further 15% of the UK workforce consists of self-employed people. Does the right hon. Lady think it is necessary for the interests of those people to be raised in this debate, as well as the interests of those who are part of large unionised organisations?

[Liz Saville Roberts]

The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point, but when we are looking at the culture of workplace relations and at productivity, perhaps we should look to Europe. In Germany, for instance, that culture is far more effective and far more productive, so perhaps it is something we should be addressing.

As I was saying, the Bill, as it stands, actively sows the seeds of discord between workers and employers. This destructive approach, which the UK Government seem hellbent on pursuing, will serve only to exacerbate the very recruitment and retention problems that are placing so much pressure on our public services. I therefore welcome the Welsh Government’s commitment to seeking every possible lawful means of opposing the implementation of the Bill in Wales.

It would be remiss of me at this stage not to encourage the Welsh Government to live up to their laudable rhetoric by showing leadership when it comes to public sector pay disputes taking place in Wales. I am sorry to say that, so far, that has been lacking in their approach. It is sad to see the difference between Labour’s message here and its message in Wales, but we are dealing with this Bill in the here and now, and that is our serious problem. I urge the Welsh Government to consider adopting the five-point plan to tackle the health crisis presented by my Plaid Cymru colleagues in the Senedd: that is a result of collaboration, and collaboration brings results—unlike confrontation, which is what we are discussing today.

I remind the Minister that the UK Government cannot legislate their way out of disputes that are taking place because of the pressures on the very public services they have stripped to the bone year after year. Our society cannot function without the thousands of workers who run our hospitals, public transport systems, schools and courts. Sacking people for demanding fair pay and fair conditions for their work is blinkered and short-termist. Why are the Government doing this? Public sector workers and workers in key publicly funded services are not to be demonised. Follow the money—services are creaking and in a skeletal condition, having been starved by 13 years of Tory budget choices. Everything else is cynical window dressing.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

It is a matter of considerable concern that anybody should be removed from their power or heating. We have specifically asked the energy authorities not to go down that line and asked Ofgem to do the same. As I mentioned just moments ago, officials are actively working on this issue, with a letter ready to go to Ofgem as well. She is right to highlight this issue. We do not want to see people cut off during this cold weather. We will return to the House with more detail.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to support small and medium-sized businesses.

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to support small and medium-sized businesses.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kevin Hollinrake)]

It is absolutely right that we direct support where we can to our SME community. We have reversed the national insurance rise, saving SMEs approximately £4,200 a year on average; provided £13.6 billion of business rates support over five years; cut fuel duty for 12 months; and raised the employment allowance to £5,000. The energy bill relief scheme is also protecting SMEs from high energy costs, as will, from April, the energy bills discount scheme.

[David Simmonds]

Before Christmas I held a session with hospitality businesses in my constituency. Although they were appreciative of the energy bill relief scheme, they expressed some concern that they were not necessarily seeing it reflected in their bills. What assurances can my hon. Friend provide to ensure that companies, such as Hop and Vine in Ruislip High Street, see Government support reflected in reduced energy costs?

Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. He is absolutely right to bring up this matter. It is one of the concerns that has been raised most frequently with me since taking on this role. We are tackling the culture of late payments with measures including the Payment Practices Reporting, the Small Business Commissioner and the Prompt Payment Code, but I am determined to see how much further we can go to be effective in this area.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

T8. I recently met my constituent, Puneet Bhalla, who is the founder and chief executive of Maxim World, a very successful small exporter of hotel goods across the world. He told me of some of the challenges that small and medium-sized exporters are facing with post-Brexit trade arrangements. Can my hon. Friend tell me what plans there are to involve SMEs in the review of EU retained law?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is great to hear that my hon. Friend’s constituent is looking to export right across the world, and we are determined to make it easier to do so through trade deals outside the European Union. Ministers and officials from across BEIS regularly engage with SMEs on a wide range of issues and will continue to do so as the retained EU law programme proceeds.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

The UK is party to many international legal arrangements, many of which do not enjoy a great deal of scrutiny in this House. Having heard several Members raise points about scrutiny in respect of EU law, I think it is important for us to acknowledge that there are a number of Members here with direct experience of that scrutiny process. We have heard about the Council of Ministers, in which UK Ministers signed EU law into the laws of all the member states. We have heard from former Members of the European Parliament, where the directly elected representatives scrutinise that law during the law-making process. I can speak as a former member of the Committee of the Regions, where the indirectly elected representatives of the United Kingdom authorities, including the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Government, scrutinised those laws in that law-making process.

I can also speak as having chaired one of the employer organisations in the social dialogue, which were part of the cross-industrial sector process of working up the detail of what those laws and regulations should contain. So while it is absolutely the case that that law, once it was signed into the law of the United Kingdom by our Ministers, did not enjoy further scrutiny here, the UK was well known as a leader in designing good regulation across the European Union. I recall my experiences in the education sector, where in neighbouring conference rooms organisations such as chemical engineers, veterinarians, pharmacists, clinicians and representatives of the aviation sector were having similar discussions seeking to design better law and regulation, which sits in this retained body of EU law today as part of Margaret Thatcher’s single market.

A weakness of that process that we must acknowledge is that it was easy for big industrial organisations and corporates to engage with, but in a country where around 70% of our workforce are in enterprises with fewer than five employees, it was challenging for those types of organisations to have a voice. They will not have had the input that the UK industrial sector had in the designing of these regulations. This should remind us of the importance of our scrutinising the detail of what this Bill means when it comes to deciding what pieces of law we might wish to keep and which we might not. Ministers and Members across the House have acknowledged this.

For example, it is easy to dismiss the value of regulations around batteries, but those pieces of regulation were designed to ensure that the ambition set out in this House by British Governments that all batteries would be recycled was achieved. We will wish to ensure that if we continue to support that ambition, which we clearly do, we will have an equivalent form of UK regulation, appropriate for our market, that will ensure that that outcome can be achieved, as was the intention of those European Union rules.

This seems to be a good moment to take stock of what is in this wide body of legislation. I welcome the fact that our former Prime Minister but one made a number of clear public statements that the Government’s ambition would be to go beyond what was set out in the EU legislation, especially in respect of environmental protections and animal welfare, and that it was the aspiration of the United Kingdom, just as we encouraged higher standards in the EU when we were a member of it, that we would use the freedom from those standards to seek to have still have higher welfare standards and higher levels of environment protections than those that previously legally applied. I hope we are going to hear that this is not simply a matter of maintaining a minimum, or indeed of going back, and that it is going to be a considered process of looking at where we can go beyond what we have, because that is good for our economy, good for our environment and good for our people.

It is positive that several Members have recognised that there are opportunities to make this legislation better. We know that the European Union, much criticised sometimes for the slowness of its law making, would have been unlikely to be able to implement changes to the financial market legislation, for example. I have to acknowledge, having been involved in some of the EU discussions about online safety, that the UK’s Online Safety Bill goes well beyond what was envisaged as part of the EU law-making process. It sets a higher standard for online protection in the United Kingdom than was likely to have been achievable across that greater body of member states. There are opportunities for us to do things better as a result of these changes.

That said, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), I welcome the fact that there is scope within this Bill, as we go through the process of looking line by line at what the implications of those legal changes would be, to extend the life of those protections, indefinitely if necessary. I suspect the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) is correct that there will be a number of areas where we will decide that the regulations work just fine as they are, thank you very much, and we will consider them to be implemented at UK level. However, we will undoubtedly wish to change or reshape some elements in the light of our UK circumstances.

I have had a clear message from constituents, especially those with an interest in the environment and animal welfare. They recognise that some of those pieces of EU legislation have been cumbersome and that they have not always been as helpful, as sharp and as enforceable as we would like to see when it comes to things such as habitat protection; but they note that we have had the highest level of wildlife loss of any nation in the G7. There are reasons for that, and it happened under EU regulation, so there is a need to ensure that within this context of “taking back control”, the promise of higher and better standards and more flexible legislation that was made to the British people is met in full.

I urge colleagues on the Government Benches to keep that at the forefront of their minds. This Bill is not about deregulation; it is about showing that we in the United Kingdom will have the ambition to have the highest possible standards and the best possible regulation as a country outside the European Union.