Draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 General Committees

[Huw Merriman]

There are interesting parallels. When I talk about train operators, I also mean the operators of last resort: Southeastern, the east coast main line and TransPennine Express. They are under the same control that he referenced the Executive in Scotland having. We, as the Government, will treat those with the exact same autonomy, and will not be autocratic; we will not tell them what they must and must not do. There is talk of this legislation being controlling, but we are demonstrating that we are not being controlling, whereas the hon. Gentleman is demonstrating that he would perhaps intervene, which is obviously a policy matter for him.

Network Rail is, of course, an arm’s length body. It will be down to Network Rail across the whole of Great Britain to determine whether it wishes to use the work notices, when it comes to category B. That will be a matter for Network Rail in Scotland, as it will be in England, and not for me, the hon. Member or the Scottish Executive.

I want to come back to a point that the hon. Member for Portsmouth South and others mentioned: safety. Let me be absolutely crystal clear—this is why we have the safest railway in Europe—that there will be no compromise when it comes to safety and these regulations. Those are not just words. Everyone needs to remember that we already have a minimum service; it is the key route strategy, and it operates right now, but our contention is that it does not operate to the same extent—it is about 20%. Safety is the most important ingredient during a strike day, as it is during a non-strike day. There will be no difference to that, as far as the regulations are concerned; safety will always be paramount in the railways.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the reason that we have one of the safest railways in the world is the same reason that my family and I do not have fingers missing from industrial accidents. Maybe the people we should thank for that are the trade unions.

[Huw Merriman]

Of course I pay tribute to everybody on the railway who takes safety so seriously, but it is fair to say that we had trade unions when we did not have such a safe railway, and we have them now that there is a safe railway. That seems to suggest that it is the entire railway family that makes railways safe. We have the independent Rail Safety and Standards Board, and we will ensure that safety is paramount on the railways.

I will touch on freight. Freight is not included in the regulations. That was part of the consultation; the freight industry did not wish to be included, but, of course, freight benefits from the regulations. If there is an infrastructure strike and more of the key route network can be opened up, that means that more freight can be delivered, as well, which is important.

I come back to a point made by the hon. Member for Portsmouth South that was slightly contradicted by other hon. Members. That was that the Secretary of State should get to the table and deal with the trade unions. Of course, we have had some deals with the trade unions. According to the right hon. Member for Warley, the Government want the industrial action to continue, and the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said that the Government ultimately control all train operations. If we are both controlling and making deals, that must mean that the Government have got round the table and had those discussions; I certainly know about the discussions that I have had. Or perhaps the right hon. Gentlemen pluck out arguments that suit them. When it comes down to it, we want industrial action to be settled. We welcome Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and Unite the Union settling their industrial action, and it looks as though—we will find out on Thursday—the RMT has settled its action as well.

We do not want to use these regulations, because we would rather there were no strikes at all. The Opposition claim to be the party of the workers when it comes to the rail workers, but not the workers who use the trains. A train driver is paid £60,000 for a 35-hour, four-day working week—we have an offer on the table to increase that to £65,000—but people on those trains who earn a lot less are inconvenienced, and cannot get where they are going, because there is no proper minimum service. I have a constituent who writes to me to say, “I’m on a zero-hours contract; when train drivers go on strike, I don’t get the opportunity”—

[Jess Phillips]

Why don’t you ban those contracts, then?

[Huw Merriman]

The key is to ensure that those individuals have the right to go to work. It may be asked, “Why don’t you ban zero-hours contracts?”. I am pleased to hear that that is now Labour policy. We want to ensure that those who want to go to work, and who are not as well paid as train drivers, have the choice to do so. That is the balance, and the measures are proportionate.

[Huw Merriman]

My hon. Friend has said it, and obviously he has the experience to do so. It is a fair point that needs to be considered. Through the regulations, we are taking a proportionate approach that still allows those who wish to strike the right to do so. Equally, it allows those who wish to go about their lawful business—to go to work, go to school, get skills or go to their health appointment—the right to do so. Those people deserve that right. We should be on the side of people who really need train services.

[Jess Phillips]

rose—

[Chris Stephens]

rose—

International Women’s Day

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I thank the Speaker’s Office for its understanding every year in making time for me to read these names, and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for always securing the debate. This year, we are joined in the Gallery by Carole and Matt Gould and their son Zeb, and by Julie Devey. They are the families of Ellie Gould and Poppy Devey Waterhouse, whose names I read out in previous years. Both were brutally killed and taken from their families.

The act of remembrance that we undertake here every year is completely down to the work of Karen Ingala Smith and the Counting Dead Women project. She is the only person keeping this data, but her painstaking work over many years has meant that, unlike seven years ago when I first read the list, we are all more aware of the peril of femicide. That was not the Government’s doing, and they did not do the work; it was women, giving their labour away for free.

This week, I invited the families of the women I have listed over the years to come here to Parliament. I and the Labour party will be working with them to build a families manifesto for change. Each one of them had stories to tell: their daughters being murdered while their perpetrators were on bail; how their mother’s killer went away only for six years because he had taken drugs before he killed her; or killings that went un-investigated because the woman had taken drugs. Today, we live in a society where the excuse used by a perpetrator who kills, to get a lighter sentence, is used to victim-blame and diminish the innocence of a woman who has been killed, in the trial of her own death.

For every name that I am about to read, there will be a story about how better mental health services, even the slightest suggestion of offender management or the availability of quick specialist victim support, would have saved their lives. The perpetrators killed, but it is on us if we keep allowing a system where women live under the requirement of giving away their labour for free in the pursuit of their own safety.

The final name on the list when I stood here last year was one that we all know. Here are the names of the women killed since that supposedly watershed moment: Karen McClean; Stacey Knell; Smita Mistry; Samantha Mills; Dyanne Mansfield; Patricia Audsley; Phyllis Nelson; Klaudia Soltys; Simone Ambler; Emma McArthur; Sherrie Teresa Milnes; Constanta Bunea; Jacqueline Grant; Loretta Herman; Sally Metcalf; Sarah Keith; Peggy Wright; Charmaine O’Donnell; Michelle Cooper; Kerry Bradford; Julia James; Beth Aspey; Susan Booth; Mayra Zulfiqar; Maria Rawlings; Chenise Gregory; Agnes Akom; Wendy Cole; Caroline Crouch; Svetlana Mihalachi; Nicola Kirk; an unnamed woman; Agita Geslere; Alison Stevenson; Lauren Wilson; Peninah Kabeba; Jill Hickery; Bethany Vincent, who was killed alongside her nine-year-old son; Leah Ware; Esther Brown; Michaela Hall; Mildred Whitmore; Stacey Clay; Linda Hood; Marlene Coleman; Sophie Cartlidge; Gracie Spinks; Kim Dearden; Michelle Hibbert, who was killed alongside her husband; Sally Poynton; Catherine Wardleworth; Sukhjit Badial; Elsie Pinder; Catherine Stewart; Ishrat Ahmed; Tamara Padi; Katie Brankin; Sandra See; Beatrice Cenusa; Patricia Holland; Louise Kam; Yordanos Brhane; Amanda Selby; Malgorzata Lechanska; Megan Newborough; Diane Nichol; Maxine Davison; Kate Shepherd; Bella Nicandro; Eileen Barrott; Sharron Pickles; Helen Anderson; Jade Ward; Maddie Durdant-Hollamby; Fawziyah Javed; Ingrid Matthew; another unnamed woman; Sabina Nessa; Terri Harris, who was killed alongside her two children John and Lacey Bennett, and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, who was there for a sleepover; Sukhjeet Uppal; Norma Girolami; Jekouki Jaboa; Nicole Hurley; Bonnie Harwood; Katrina Rainey; Marta Chmielecka; Ruth Dent; Josephine Smith; Dawn Walker; Yvonne Barr; Sarah Ashwell; Tamby Dowling; Pauline Quinn; Ilona Golabek; Alexandra Morgan; Tricia Livesey and her partner Anthony Tipping; Bobbi-Anne McLeod; Bori Benko; Jennifer Chapple and her husband Stephen; June Fox-Roberts; Malak Adabzadeh; Fernanda; Amber Gibson; Lily Sullivan; Caoimhe Morgan; Julia Howse; Beverley Taylor and John Taylor; Mary Fell and her husband; Kirsty Ashley; Brenda Blainey; Judith Armstrong; Freda Walker; Marlene Doyle; Yasmin Chkaifi; Lucy Powell, my constituent, who was killed at the age of 21; Marena Shaban; Lesma Jackson; Ashley Wadsworth; Charissa Brown; Katy Harris; Nicola Shaba; Dawn Trusler; and Valerie Warrington, alongside her husband.

I want to mention the names of four other women. Three women have been killed in the last month where no suspect has yet been charged. They are: Clair Ablewhite; Valerie Freer; and Naomi Hunte. Finally, a mention for Jomaa Jerrare, whose body was dumped and set on fire in a layby last August. Nobody has been charged with her murder.

Many women like Jomaa do not appear on our lists because no one is ever charged with their killing or because they die by staged homicide in a sudden death by falling from a building, overdose or suicide and we never look into the history of domestic abuse in their cases. The list is painfully long, but in reality it is much longer. We can make it shorter. Let us act faster.