Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Janet Daby Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). It was somewhat inevitable that this debate would quickly become partisan, and she reinforced that.

I pay tribute to our hard-working frontline public sector workers. On Friday, I visited workers at the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, who have not been on strike, and all credit to them. In the operational control centres, people have been working diligently, day in, day out, to manage, quite frankly, the many, many challenging cases.

This House will understand my particular interest in operational frontline workers, especially when it comes to the police, who cannot strike, and also fire and rescue workers and Border Force officers. Just last year, I was able to use existing Home Office budgets to provide the police with a pay increase. It was a 5% pay increase across the board and one of the largest settlements in the public sector. I accepted the recommendation from the Police Remuneration Review Body, and it was my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who is in his place, who oversaw that settlement. That funding was vital because we on the Conservative Benches believe in our frontline public sector workers. We believe in giving them the resources that they need and the working conditions in which they can do their jobs, but within the affordability of the Government’s financial envelope, which is incredibly important.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Is the right hon. Lady aware that the Secretary of State’s own colleagues—the Secretaries of State for Transport and for Education—believe that the Bill will not solve the strikes?

[Priti Patel]

I say to the hon. Lady and to all Members in the House that we are facing fundamental economic challenges right now, and they have to be met within the financial envelope of this Government. That is a statement of the obvious. At the end of the day, the Government have a responsibility to ensure that certain levels of service are provided in key sectors and in our public services, and rightly so. The public expect that, and the Government have a responsibility to oversee that and ensure that these levels of services help to protect and safeguard lives, keep our country safe, support the economy and ensure that the British public—the silent, hard-working majority—can go about living their lives in the way that we all want to see.

Obviously, the current wave of strikes and industrial action is concerning the public; it is also counterproductive when it comes to delivering public services. We have seen the level of disruption that is taking place. It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, our great country and our economy are put at risk by strike action. We have seen that on our borders; border control is being weakened by strikes. Patients and those in need of essential medical care are facing disruption. That is not right. All of us have constituents. This is not about one constituency against another, or one part of the country against the other. We have seen commuters who cannot get to work. That is wrong. We have seen businesses and, in Essex, small and medium-sized enterprises, operating on tight margins—not glitzy corporations—now suffering because of the strikes. Again, that is not right.

I know that many workers—I think that we all know this—find the decision to go out on strike very difficult. They struggle when it comes to voting in ballots because of the options that are sometimes put in front of them. We also know that there are some in the trade union movement—we must recognise this and we have heard it already from those on the Opposition Benches—who are happy to go along with the disruption, which is not acceptable. Some get satisfaction out of this. I am afraid that we have seen that in the past. We have seen Opposition Members go on picket lines and cheer and make political points. That is not right, because, at the end of the day, it is the public who suffer.

Indeed, since 2010, we have seen the hard left and militants take action and co-ordinate strikes, and the public suffer. That is not right. Let us not forget that it was the Conservatives who, in the 1980s, stood up to the militant trade unions, and, importantly, introduced reforms.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Janet Daby Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will make some progress. Lords amendment 2 would require a consultation be carried out and reviewed before use was made of the power to make regulations setting minimum service levels. The primary stated motivation for tabling the amendment was to increase parliamentary scrutiny of the regulations implementing minimum service levels. Although there may be some merit to the intentions behind the amendment, it is, in the Government’s view, duplicative, and would ultimately delay the implementation of the policy. For those reasons, we disagree with it.

I turn to Lords amendments 4 and 5, and the associated tidying amendments, Lords amendments 6 and 7. In the Government’s view, the amendments were tabled to make the Bill inoperable.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister explain how the legislation complies with all International Labour Organisation conventions?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We believe that it does. The ILO endorses the use of minimum service levels to make sure that the provision of public services is maintained during periods of industrial action. We are happy with our position on that.

We resist Lords amendments 4 to 7 on the principle that the Government have a duty to pass effective legislation. It is regrettable that Opposition Lords have sought to undermine that principle. Lords amendment 4 would mean that there were no consequences for a worker who did not comply with a work notice. The Government disagree with the amendment, as without those consequences, employers would be powerless to manage instances of non-compliance, and strikes would continue to have a disproportionate impact on the public. That would severely undermine the effectiveness of the legislation. Given that the amendment would make the Bill ineffective, as I suspect the Opposition intended, the Government cannot support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Member makes a crucial point, which I was trying to make to the Minister: on non-strike days, minimum service levels do not apply at the moment. Many of the people providing our public services are absolutely screaming at the Government, “We need more people working in those services. We are having record vacancies. We are having people leave the profession because of the mismanagement by this Conservative Government.” Take our fire and rescue services: how does the closure of 80 fire stations across the UK keep the public and our brave firefighters safe? Take our precious NHS: how does having 7.3 million patients left on waiting lists keep people safe? And take our overstretched schools: how do record teacher vacancies keep our children safe?

[Janet Daby]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Regulatory Policy Committee’s opinion, published on 21 February, red-rated the Government’s impact assessment for the Bill as “not fit for purpose”? Does she agree that, in fact, it is the Government who are not fit to govern?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree. How will threatening key workers with the sack in the middle of an unprecedented recruitment and retention crisis do anything to provide the level of services that the public deserve?

We will also hear tonight that the Bill brings us into line with international standards, but what does the Minister have to say to the ILO’s director general who slammed down the Bill in January? The Minister did not effectively answer the questions that were put to him during his opening statement. What does he say to President Biden’s labour Secretary, who also raised concerns?

We are going to hear that the Bill is the only way to bring strikes to a close. We are now in May and there is no end in sight to the current wave of industrial action, harming the public, small businesses and, not to mention, the workers who lose a day’s pay. Might I give the Minister some friendly advice? Strikes are ended by getting round the table, not by insulting the very workers who kept the country going during the depths of the pandemic.

The Bill is one of the most sinister attacks on working people I have seen, and I speak as a trade unionist, an employer and a Member of this House. It gives Ministers the power to threaten every nurse, firefighter, health worker, rail worker or paramedic with the sack. Other Government Members wanted even more people to be in scope. I do not think they want anybody anywhere to have trade union rights in this country. This is being done at their whim. They have literally gone from clapping nurses to sacking nurses.

In the words of my noble Friend Baroness O’Grady, Lords amendment 4 is about

“the individual freedoms, dignity and livelihoods of workers.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 April 2023; Vol. 829, c. 1242.]

Labour is proud to support that amendment. We ask any Government Member—there are not many of them here—who believes in the right to protection from unfair dismissal to vote with us tonight.

We also stand by the provision in Lords amendment 4 to require employers to serve work notices and to prove that individuals have received them. The Government’s proposal not only threatens workers, but burdens employers, including our overstretched public services and small businesses. That only goes to show the Bill’s complete unworkability and proves the point of all employers who have condemned it.

The Bill also represents an almighty attack on trade unions—unions made up of ordinary working men and women. We are all grown up enough to acknowledge the integral role they play in our economy and our democracy. I think we can all agree that attempts to attack their ability to represent their members is morally, economically and democratically wrong. In its original form, the Bill would require them to take “reasonable steps” to ensure compliance work with notices, without any clarity on what that means. The Government have effectively conceded the flaws in their drafting of the Bill in their concession on Lords amendment 3. That is welcome, but not enough. The Minister asks us to vote tonight for vague and unclear wording that gives us no idea of what they actually require trade unions to do. So we will vote to keep Lords amendment 5 and by extension, Lords amendments 6 and 7.