Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today, we consider a number of Lords amendments that will go some way towards making the Bill slightly less draconian than it currently is, but will not make it a Bill that we can ultimately support. I start by paying tribute to Members in the other place who have done their best to ameliorate the Bill with the sensible amendments that we are considering, and which we will be supporting. What those Members understand is that the Bill is the act of a weak Government who have lost the authority and the will to govern for everyone; a Government who prefer legislation to negotiation, diversion to resolution, and confrontation to consultation. How Ministers have the gall to come to the Dispatch Box and talk about the importance of minimum service levels when we have seen the decimation of our public services under this Government—with a record 7.4 million patients left on waiting lists, record teacher vacancies, and ever-increasing response times to calls to the police—is beyond me.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making excellent points. I have heard from doctors in Wirral West who firmly believe that the Bill represents an intrusion on legitimate trade union activities, undermines workers’ rights to representation, and would leave unions unable to effectively represent their members. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I do agree with those doctors. I will go on to explain why the Bill is an attack on basic freedoms and liberties that I thought this country held dear.

Turning first to Lords amendment 2B, as we know, the Bill presents the Secretary of State with huge, unchecked powers, throwing scrutiny and democracy out of the window. We think it is entirely reasonable that if a Secretary of State wants the power to set, impose and police minimum service levels, they should be accountable for the impact of those powers and able to demonstrate what their impact will be. Requiring them to conduct a proper impact assessment on the use of those powers and hold a consultation on any specific proposals they have could be helpful to a Secretary of State, because they cannot possibly know how every nook and cranny of any particular sector operates and what is needed to deliver a minimum service level—assuming they can define what one is.

If the Government think that it is such a wonderful idea to introduce minimum service levels in the sectors covered by the Bill, they should not fear scrutiny of their proposals, consultation with those directly affected, or challenges to their assumptions. My fear is that the Government fear all of those things. When the Regulatory Policy Committee described the Bill as “not fit for purpose”, one would have hoped that any sensible and rational Government would put a little bit of effort into talking to people to make sure that their own Bill had even a remote chance of working, but I suspect that—like so many things that we hear from this Government—they do not look beyond the easy headline and do not think through the consequences of their actions.

I will turn briefly to Lords amendment 5B, which attempts to deal with what is essentially a full-blown attack on the independence of trade unions and their members. I know that the Government have been raising the bar ever higher on the number of members required to vote in favour of industrial action. However, even they must see that putting a requirement on a trade union to take action to stop some of its members from participating in industrial action once they have voted in favour of it—as proposed new section 234E of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 would do—undermines the very essence of what a trade union stands for.

We have never had an adequate explanation of what reasonable steps a union is expected to take in those circumstances. The Minister previously told us that it would be a matter for the courts to determine, but that represents an abject failure by the Government to do their job. Are they really saying to trade unions that they can face damages of up to £1 million if they fail to comply with the Bill, but that they will have to wait for a court to decide what they need to do to avoid that liability? That is ludicrous, dangerous, and a potentially disastrous situation for any trade union to be in. This amendment removes Government interference in lawfully and democratically made decisions by an independent non-governmental organisation, and removes the completely disproportionate risk that trade unions face if they fail to adhere to the undemocratic, unspecified and unconscionable requirements of this provision.

[Rachael Maskell]

I should refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the jurisdiction of trade unions. I have said this in the House before, but Government Members just do not seem to understand it. It is the members of the trade union who determine what happens within a trade union—it is not a general secretary or even an executive, but the members—so how are they, as individual members, going to instruct workers to attend work?

[Justin Madders]

That is really a question for the Minister, and one that I think the Government have failed to answer adequately. I think the point my hon. Friend makes is a good one. When Conservative Members traduce the union barons, they actually traduce every single member of the trade union who has voted in support of industrial action, and I am afraid that that is no way for any Government to operate.

I would ask Conservative Members, not that there are many here, to consider what the Bill actually means. Representatives of trade unions will be required to encourage, cajole, advise, pressurise or even demand that their members cross a picket line. They will be asking trade unions to actively go against the very thing they were set up to do. I would say that it is a bit like asking a Conservative MP to vote in support of higher taxes, but I guess that, with the highest tax burden in over half a century, we may have to drop that particular analogy.

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I am a proud trade unionist, but I am also a former schoolteacher. I am concerned not only about the administrative burden that this requirement for employers to serve work notices on staff will create, but about the risk of damaging relationships within the workplace. He is talking about people being required to cross picket lines, and that would most definitely be a case in point. I am very concerned, because schools and hospitals in particular operate through staff collaborating with each other, and risking those relationships is a very dangerous thing to do.

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why so many employer organisations are also against this Bill, because they understand what it will do for industrial relations: it will make them worse, not better. I would ask Conservative Members to think carefully about what they are asking trade unionists to do, which is to go against deeply held, genuine and sincere beliefs—

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I intervene to give my hon. Friend a chance to get his throat in order. Does he agree with me that, first and foremost, the Prime Minister withdrew his Labour on Monday with the intention of not showing leadership, which is a remarkable feat on the part of a Prime Minister? Does my hon. Friend agree that these are the death throes of a Government who have really run out of steam? They are trying to blame everybody else for what is going wrong. They are going for a cheap headline and have created this piece of legislation, which is anti-trade union and anti-democratic, to try to throw the blame on to the trade unions and workers, and away from where it really lies—with this Government.

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—I think my voice has returned, thankfully—and he is absolutely right. This Bill is counterproductive because ultimately it will not quell the concerns of many people in those sectors that have taken industrial action. Taking away the right to strike will not take away people’s concerns; it will just make them worse, and it will prolong anxiety, concern and discord.

Again, I ask Conservative Members to think about what they are asking trade unions to do—to go against deeply held, genuine and sincere beliefs. Whether or not they agree with the right to strike, do they really think in all conscience that this is something that sits comfortably with notions of dignity, respect and freedom? How would they feel if they were compelled to take actions in direct contravention of their own values?

Finally, I turn to Lords amendment 4B. It attempts to tackle the pernicious heart of this Bill, which seeks to destroy the basic freedoms that the trade union and Labour movement have fought to secure over the course of history. From the Chartists to the founding of the TUC, the trade unionists at Taff Vale and the formation of the Labour Representation Committee, the working people of this country have faced a long and arduous struggle to improve their working conditions, and fundamental to that struggle has been the right to withdraw labour. When Conservative Members inevitably vote down this amendment, they are saying to their constituents—the teachers, doctors, nurses, bus drivers and train drivers—that their voice does not matter and that, should they dare to withdraw their labour in search of better terms and conditions, they do so at their own risk.

[Chris Stephens]

The shadow Minister is being very generous in taking interventions. The heart of the Lords amendment is to protect workers who have been dismissed so that they have recourse to a tribunal. That is a fundamental human right, is it not?

[Justin Madders]

One would have thought so, and that is probably why the Equality and Human Rights Commission has expressed great alarm at this Bill. If the Government want to give themselves the power to threaten every firefighter, every teaching assistant and every paramedic with the sack when they exercise their democratic right to withhold their labour, they should think very carefully about what they do with that power, because in a free society no Minister should hold that power—not that Ministers seem to understand what this Bill actually does, because the Minister said last time:

“The reality is that nobody will be sacked as a result of this legislation.”—[Official Report, 22 May 2023; Vol. 733, c. 103.]

I know that the Government chose to bypass the normal line-by-line consideration of this Bill, but one would have hoped that the Minister had read as far as the schedule, because it does actually contain the power to sack people for going on strike.

Even if the Government do not understand the powers they are giving themselves under the Bill, they ought to understand the principle of the withdrawal of labour in the event of a dispute. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) has mentioned, many Conservative Members withdrew their labour the other night. In fact, 200 of them had no difficulty in doing so. Indeed, former Prime Minister Johnson withdrew his labour after he disagreed with the report from the Privileges Committee. So they should understand that the principle of people withdrawing their labour is an important one. It is a basic and fundamental right that every one of our citizens should enjoy in a free and democratic society. We are not serfs required to provide toil to the lord of the manor or conscripts engaged in a war against an invading force; we are citizens of this country, and in a free country the right to withdraw labour should be protected and respected.

Even if Conservative Members believe that the requirement to send someone into work against their will is somehow consistent with a free and democratic society, they should at least consider the fact that the Bill as it stands means an employee can be sacked for failing to comply with a work notice, even if they say they have not received it. Yes, someone can be sacked for not complying with a work notice without any challenge to it legally, and they can also be sacked for not complying with it even if they have never seen it. How is that justice, how is that reasonable and how is that good industrial relations? It is a recipe for injustice, for toxicity and for abuse by employers who want to get rid of the most troublesome employees.

I will not list all the organisations that have condemned this Bill, but two of the main employers in the key rail and health sectors have called this out for what it is, because they know that rather than resolve industrial disputes, this Bill will prolong them. They know that the kind of restrictions this Bill places on people are anti-democratic and not in the best traditions of this country. It is no wonder that even members of the Cabinet have criticised this Bill. Indeed, this week we had the shameful news that the United Nations, through the International Labour Organisation, has called on the Government to respect international law, such is the threat that this Bill poses to it. No, we cannot accept this tawdry, vindictive, unworkable disgrace of a Bill. This Bill attacks the people who keep this country going, and the sooner the Government realise that the politics of division will not work, the better.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank Members for their contributions. It is fair to say that we will have to agree to disagree. We believe that this legislation is a proportionate response that gives the Government the power to ensure a safe level of service in areas such as health, transport and border security, so that people’s lives are not put at risk and they can work, access healthcare and safely go about their daily lives.

I will touch on one or two points raised by right hon. and hon. Members. I have a great deal of time for the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), though perhaps we do not agree so much in this debate. He asked who we govern on behalf of, and he listed very important people in our society—our nurses, train drivers and border security officers. But is he properly representing the many other stakeholders in this debate, such as pub landlords, restauranteurs, hoteliers and people seeking urgent medical treatment or trying to get to work or to see family? There have been 600,000 cancelled appointments as a result of the strikes of recent months and £3.2 billion of economic detriment—much of that to our restaurateurs, hoteliers and pub owners. It is important that their voices are heard, too.

[Justin Madders]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but that is an argument to ban strikes altogether. Is that not what he is doing?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We have been clear that there is a balance between people being able to seek industrial action and being able to go about their daily lives. That is the balance that we are trying to strike. He asked if we fear scrutiny; not at all. What we fear is delay. That is what the Opposition parties are trying to bring about: delay in wrecking amendments.