Industrial Action on the Railway

Debate between Grant Shapps and Craig Williams

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

That is very much one of the things that we are working on through the civil contingencies secretariat. I am working with my right hon. Friend Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that tourists can still receive information through their hotels, bed and breakfasts or wherever they happen to be staying, because they would not necessarily know to look at things such as National Rail Enquiries, as I hope others would. We are trying to push the message out as widely as possible, but it will be far from perfect. Again, just as this country was starting to recover—just as we came out of coronavirus first, because we got the jabs done first—this is the last thing, among others, that the tourism sector needs.

[Craig Williams (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

It is sad that the Labour Front-Bench team will not condemn the strikes that are happening tomorrow, but in Wales, Labour is going further and denying their existence. In my constituency, which I assure the House is in Wales, there are no strikes tomorrow, Thursday and Saturday—Labour is calling them “travel disruption”. I ask the Secretary of State not to forget about Wales and to make sure that we get the trains running again. When is a strike not a strike?

[Grant Shapps]

I notice that the tone of the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople has changed considerably since last week, when they each stood up and claimed that in whichever part of our great United Kingdom they run the Government, there were somehow not going to be strikes. The RMT strikes affect the entire country—Scotland, Wales and England. The only place that is being spared is Northern Ireland. The track and the responsibility of the unions—the RMT—to work with Network Rail means that the disruption, I am afraid, will be wholesale.