Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I would like to accept the invitation of the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who encouraged us to be respectful in this debate. I wish to be so. We have heard a lot from the Labour party this evening about how the Bill is an act of political violence and an attack on the fundamental freedom of working people, but we have not heard an answer to the fundamental question that the legislation poses: do the British people have a right set out in statute to a basic safety and security guarantee during periods of strike?

Let us start with the law. The right to strike is embedded in international law, most notably in article 11 of the European convention on human rights.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Lady asks whether any of us on the Opposition Benches care about fundamental safety levels, and yes we do. She asked whether we would support legislating, but legislation already exists. On article 11, she knows as well as I do that the measures have to be “necessary”. The Government’s own memo with the last legislation said that the measures were not necessary in relation to the health service, education and fire and rescue.

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her point, and I will assist her, because I was coming on to that point. The article 11 right may be restricted for two reasons—if the restriction is necessary, yes, and proportionate. The International Labour Organisation, of which the United Kingdom is a founding member, recognises that maintaining a minimum level of service provision can be both when it comes to essential services. Its committee on freedom of association has expressly set out the two circumstances in which it may be appropriate: where strike action would pose a risk to life, safety or health; or where the service is not essential in the strict sense of the word, but where repeated strikes would bring a very important sector to a standstill.

[Chris Stephens]

The ILO also says, does it not, that the minimum service level has to be agreed by an independent arbiter if there is a dispute, which is not in the Bill, and that there should not be a dismissal, which is in the Bill?

[Laura Farris]

I am grateful to both SNP Members for their interventions. I am coming on to those points, so I will make a tiny bit of progress, if I may.

On the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), we already know that transport and education meet the ILO’s test, because the ILO told the United Kingdom that in its response to the challenge to the Trade Union Act 2016 submitted by the TUC in 2015. In its response, the ILO committee of experts—Members can look it up; it is on the website—said that in relation to transport and education

“recourse might be had to negotiated minimum standards for these sectors as appropriate”.

We also know that many comparable countries take a much tougher line than the Government are proposing. In the United States, to give one example, 38 out of 50 states ban public sector strikes altogether.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is presenting a reasoned case, but she knows, and she has just used the word, that these things should be negotiated. The measures in this Bill are by fiat of the Secretary of State.

[Laura Farris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point. I am coming to all these things, so if he will give me a moment, I will continue.

In the United States, 38 out of 50 states have an outright ban on public sector strikes, including New York. Other states, such as Canada, Australia, Italy and Spain, all have embedded in statute minimum service levels that apply to important public services, and those services are often drawn much more widely than the Government are proposing. They include waste collection, postal services, broadcast services, the administration of justice, water distribution and energy supply.

I pick out those states not as random examples, but because every single one is a member of the International Labour Organisation. They are bound by exactly the same rules as us, and they are among our closest comparators around the world. Even more importantly, the International Labour Organisation has adjudicated all their statutory minimum service levels, and a 2019 publication from the ILO in Geneva commented:

“These examples illustrate the wide diversity of approach that ILO member states have adopted to address the challenges posed by industrial disputes in essential services”.

Minimum service levels

“supported by the ILO’s supervisory organs, exist to manage the balancing act between these necessary restrictions and the individual worker’s fundamental labour rights”.

I have not heard a single Member of Parliament tonight explain to me why the ILO is wrong or why the Government are striking the wrong balance when they have a mandate for what they are doing.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

The disingenuousness comes from making comparisons with other nations under ILO regulations, which clearly have a completely different context. For example, the ILO imposes restraints on the circumstances in which such powers can be used, which is the antithesis of the Government’s blank cheque approach.

[Laura Farris]

With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I take the opposite position. The United States has an outright ban on public service strikes in 38 states. In December, President Biden made his most recent intervention in union rights when he signed legislation that imposed an outright ban on a national railroad strike. The United States is a founder member, as we are, of the International Labour Organisation. It goes much further, but the ILO has found its ban to be lawful. The Opposition will have to say why all those comparable states, which go much further than us, are somehow acting lawfully, yet we are not.