Draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Fire and Rescue Services) (England) Regulations 2024

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2024 General Committees

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I am a member of the Fire Brigades Union parliamentary group, and have been since its inception. I have been involved in every major fire dispute in the last 20 or 30 years, including the two national strikes that have been emphasised. For the life of me, I cannot understand the justification for the minimum service legislation and for this delegated legislation in particular, because in those disputes we have always established agreements whereby firefighters have come off picket lines—and they have—whenever necessary to save life and yes, actually, to save houses as well in many instances.

I have never previously heard about this issue of the loss of life, because every time that was used in the media, each one of those incidents was contested and proven to be inaccurate, even in coroners’ reports. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley said, it is an issue of mistaking correlation for causation in many instances, which confuses people.

This is the first time I have heard the argument about the lack of military resources used as justification for this particular piece of the legislation. It is the first time that argument has been used. I am amazed: if the Government are saying that the reason why they have brought forward this legislation is because they have not invested in our military, that is a problem for the Government that we may have to solve when we go into government.

Let me pick up a couple of particular points, to follow on from my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. It is clear from paragraph 6.8 of the explanatory memorandum that there is a strike ban on call staff. It is fairly obvious that if the call staff are to be required to operate as they would if a strike were not taking place, that means, in effect, that they will not be able to strike. If we turn over the page, we see that exactly the same provisions are there with regard to the resilience staff. They will need to operate and provide the service

“as if a strike were not taking place.”

Both those provisions are a ban on the right to strike, despite the assurances that Ministers have consistently given us.

I looked at the assessment of the financial costings and the risks themselves. On page 29 of the impact assessment, on the risks, it says:

“The monetised benefits…assume that strike hours will be prevented as a result of this policy. Any displacement of strike hours (for example, through action short of strike, or an increase in the volume of strikes) will reduce the”

savings from

“this policy, and have not been monetised.”

That is exactly the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. There need to be wiser heads in Government to approach this issue.

Before they introduce legislation, a Government should consider what they are doing in terms of the industrial relations climate generally. I refer back even to the early 1970s and the Industrial Relations Act 1971 under the Heath Government, because when Conservative Governments have introduced industrial relations legislation that in any way impedes the right of trade unions to exercise their civil liberty to withdraw their labour, it has always resulted in an almost catastrophic demoralisation of the workforce, which has then undermined the industrial relations climate in particular sectors—and in that instance nationally—and just produced more industrial action. What will happen in respect of this legislation is that other forms of action will be taken, short of strike action, and in the long run that will undermine the delivery of professional services, if we are not careful. I therefore caution the Government to be careful what they wish for on things like this.

In respect of the costings, the Government need to take into account the decisions taken at recent TUC congresses and the TUC general council, because it is quite clear that if there is any action against any individual trade union or any individual trade unionists under this legislation, the whole trade union movement will react, and I do not think it will react in a way the Government will want. I believe this legislation will provoke more strikes and more industrial action and, unfortunately, in the long run have the consequence of undermining the services that we are desperately trying to protect.