Trade Union Bill

Debate between Grahame Morris and Alan Johnson

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

No, I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once already, and he did not pass the “Teletubbies” test.

[Grahame M. Morris]

Is not the number of days lost in the UK to industrial action only half the EU average? Furthermore, are not 20 times more days lost owing to stress and depression, and might that not have something to do with the nature of this Government?

[Alan Johnson]

My hon. Friend, a good gas fitter in his time, makes a good point.

The hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is an exception, but many Government Members do not have sufficient experience of dealing with employers and trade unions and of needing a trade union to defend them. We know that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice was once on a National Union of Journalists picket line in Aberdeen, but I think the Red Gove period did not last very long. I think he is practically alone in the Cabinet in having that experience.

There are many aspects of the Bill that I hope will be dealt with in Committee. It deserves the scrutiny it will get from Opposition Members when its passes through Second Reading—I hope it does not get a Second Reading, but I fear the worst—but its primary purpose is to introduce stringent restrictions on trade unions’ ability to take industrial action, so the first question has to be why. As hon. Members have said, we have gone from an average of 7.2 million days lost to industrial action each year in the ’80s to 647,000 since 2010. That is a spectacular reduction. On average, a unionised British worker will take strike action for one day every 15 years, and the duration of that action is likely to be one day.