Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me start by declaring my interests and my registrations as a trade union member.

This has been a hugely well-supported debate, with no fewer than 38 speeches from the Opposition Back Benches. As many of those speeches identified, there is certainly a pattern with this Government. When people began to protest in large numbers against their policies, they responded by making it harder to protest. When the polls turned and people made it clear they wanted to vote them out of office, they responded by making it harder to vote. Now, when paramedics, nurses, transport workers and many other professions decide, in desperation and as a last resort, to go on strike, rather than listen to them and negotiate, the Government are responding by making it harder to strike. Let me put it in simple terms for Conservative colleagues: “The problem isn’t them—it’s you.” The Conservative party has built this Britain of low pay, low resilience and insecurity, but instead of listening to the voices of the people most affected, Conservative Members have turned up today to try to take away their rights.

The Bill is not so much a proposal as an alibi. It is an attempt to deflect the blame for this country’s problems, particularly the condition of public services, away from the Government and on to the workforce themselves. It is a fairly transparent attempt to pretend that industrial action is the cause, rather than the symptom, of the poor state of public services. I think I speak for every Member on the Opposition Benches when I say that we reject that cynical attempt entirely. When we clapped key workers, we actually meant it. I can only imagine how they will feel watching this debate and having to listen to the people who crashed our economy, adding thousands to mortgage payments, giving them lectures now on pay restraint.

Imagine a police officer who has seen the Conservatives cutting the police so much that they can no longer respond to burglaries, a teacher struggling with class sizes and special educational needs and disabilities referrals, or a nurse on an understaffed ward in a busy NHS hospital this weekend. Imagine those workers hearing this Government having the audacity to talk today about minimum guaranteed levels of service. We have not had a minimum level of service from this Government for 13 long years. After 13 years of a Conservative Government, not a single public service is working better today than it was when the Conservatives came to power.

Even worse is what has happened to growth, productivity and wages in that time. Let us remember that we are not expecting to see UK wages return to 2008 levels until 2027. That is why times are so hard. That is why we are seeing so many people taking strike action—and that is despite the fact that in the UK it is actually quite hard to go on strike. We do not have a legal framework that allows industrial action to happen lightly.

Even so, many of the strikes that we have seen recently could have been avoided. Nurses have never been forced to strike in this country—until now. The offer to halt strike action before Christmas was made. All that was needed was negotiation. We needed the Government to listen, to negotiate, to work through the problems, to compromise and to lead, but that is not how this Government operate. Instead we have this Bill. As we have heard from so many of my hon. Friends today, its proposals are unnecessary, unethical and unworkable. In the brief time that I have, I will address each point in turn.

First, this legislation is unnecessary and is likely to make industrial disputes worse. Minimum service levels are not a recipe for industrial stability. What I find so abhorrent about the Bill is the assumption it makes about working people. We have heard it so many times today: the assumption that striking workers do not care about the people who rely on their services or the patients they are nursing back to health. That is completely wrong. As every one of my hon. Friends has said, in essential sectors we already see minimum service agreements being voluntarily negotiated. We have seen viral videos of workers leaving picket lines to implement those voluntary agreements. Where national agreements are not made, such as with the ambulance service, it is because they are done on a local basis, reflecting local circumstances. What this legislation will do is undermine the good will and good faith that are essential to making minimum service levels work.

We have also heard a repeated claim that the Bill will simply bring us in line with other European countries—remarkably, it seems that the Conservatives have finally found an area in which they see the advantages of common European alignment. But those countries combine their laws with much stronger employment rights, including collective bargaining, and these measures are part of that package. More than 95% of employees in France are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Additionally, it is still a poor argument because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) said, France has lost almost six times as many days to strikes as the UK in recent times. In Spain the figure is more than double, and minimum service levels there have led to protracted legal battles, further prolonging disputes, not solving them. The evidence is compelling, if we look for it, that this approach is flawed.

Secondly, these measures are unethical. The scope of the Bill is huge, affecting as many as 6 million workers. Whether we agree or disagree with the merits of any one particular strike action, the right to strike is a fundamental right that every one of us has, except in the specific circumstances applying to occupations such as the armed forces. So many Conservative speakers have said today that they support that right, as long as the strike in question has no impact. That is meaningless. Conservatives used to worry about the power of the state over the individual, but we have not heard much of that today—and, crucially, the Conservative party has no mandate for this, because the manifesto commitment mentioned only the transport sector. That is likely to be a significant issue in the House of Lords.

Finally, these plans are unworkable. They will start a torrent of legal claims and counter-claims as people understandably resent the direction that the Government have taken and seek to challenge it. They will also prolong disputes by preventing workers from making the point that industrial action is designed to make.

The Business Secretary said something revealing in his opening statement: he said that he hoped he would never have to use these powers. In other words, this is all for show. It is a weak attempt by the Government to say that they are doing something when they are not doing anything to address the underlying causes. All the Members who will vote for the Bill tonight must be praying that its provisions are indeed never activated, because if the Government ever do use it, the net result will be teachers, doctors, nurses, firefighters and more turning up at Conservative Members’ surgeries or standing outside their offices, asking their MPs if they really do want to sack them. Has the Conservative party really thought this through? Is that how we will improve public services, and address the recruitment problems of which we are all aware? The truth is that the Conservatives have gone from clapping workers to sacking workers in just three short Prime Ministers.

These proposals strike me as the last gasps of a Government who are at the end of their tether. This is not a serious proposal to resolve the industrial action that the UK is experiencing. I repeat that it is a sideshow, it will not work, and in fact it is likely to make things even worse. Above all, it completely fails to recognise what every good business knows: that the biggest asset any organisation has is its people, and when those people are driven to extremes and are going on strike in record numbers, we simply have to listen to them. Look at the turnouts in the ballots, and at the strength of the votes that have taken place. We do understand that: there were no nurses’ strikes under the last Labour Government, and there are no rail strikes in Wales under the Welsh Labour Government.

Our plans will address the workforce problems in the NHS with revenue from ending the non-dom rule. Our plans for energy security, industrial strategy and making Brexit work will get the economy growing again, and we will put good jobs and good work at the heart of those plans. The simple truth is this: the Government cannot end these strikes because 13 years of Conservative Government are the cause of these strikes. The sooner they make way for the people who can build the fairer, stronger, more prosperous and more secure country that Britain could be, the better it will be for everyone.