Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Ian Byrne Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) with that extremely interesting speech. I would like to put on the record that I am a proud member of Unite the union and the GMB. I will vote against the Bill and stand in absolute solidarity with all those in Liverpool, West Derby taking industrial action in defence of their pay, their conditions and their colleagues, as well as in defence of the public who rely on those services. I am proud to stand alongside workers on picket lines and will continue to support those workers in their struggle with pride. May I offer a word of advice to Conservative Members? Go to the picket lines and speak to the people on them. Maybe then the demonisation will not slip so easily from their lips.

This is a pernicious Bill that shames the House and the nation. It is designed to attack and demoralise public service workers who are taking industrial action as a very last resort. I have spoken to nurses, firefighters, civil servants and posties in Liverpool at our food pantries, who have been forced into food poverty because of the wages that they have received after 12 years of austerity—a political choice made by the Tory Government in 2010. We are now living through the wreckage of that choice, with the destruction of our NHS and public services.

Let us be clear: the reason why these workers are having to take industrial action in the first place is because of the Government and their decisions. Never, ever forget that the hunger and poverty that many public sector workers face at the moment is a political choice that the Prime Minister unfortunately finds so easy to make. We have a multi-millionaire Prime Minister who will never know what it is like to feel hungry—he will never fear the creep of poverty at the door of his home—telling public sector workers facing this dire situation that they will be sacked if they withdraw their labour when they are simply saying, “Enough is enough.” It is obscene.

We have a morally bankrupt Government with financial scandal after financial scandal, and second job after second job, bringing in draconian legislation to outlaw industrial action for the very people we clapped during covid for everything they had done for us as a nation. The Bill is purposefully lacking in detail. It is a practically unworkable and potentially unlawful attempt to undermine the right to strike. Instead of bringing it to Parliament, Ministers should have been spending time negotiating meaningfully with the trade unions about pay and conditions. They could also have used that time to write the long-promised employment Bill.

The Bill must be voted down. The draconian drift is becoming a raging current. Any parliamentarian who believes in the democratic rights of our citizens must see that clearly and kick this wretched piece of legislation out of this place.