Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords message

[Mr Speaker]

I should inform the House that none of the Lords amendments engages Commons financial privilege.

Schedule

Minimum service levels for certain strikes

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2B.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 4B, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendments 5B, 5C and 5D, and Government motion to disagree.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There are three motions before the House. I am grateful for the fact that both Houses have reached agreement on the appropriate territorial application of the Bill, but I regret that we have not yet reached agreement on some remaining issues. I must once again urge the House to disagree with the Lords amendments before us. Again, the Bill has been amended in ways that would delay implementation or seriously limit the operation of minimum service levels. That would mean that we could not provide the all-important balance between the ability of unions and their members to strike and the ability of the wider public to access, during periods of strike action, the key services that our country needs. I will briefly summarise for the House the reasons why the amendments remain unacceptable to the House.

First, through Lords amendment 2B, the noble Lords seek to introduce additional consultation requirements and new parliamentary scrutiny processes. We recognise the importance of ensuring that the public, employers, employees, trade unions and their members are all able to participate in setting minimum service levels. That is why we ran consultations on applying MSLs to ambulance, fire, and passenger rail services on that basis. The Government maintain that the Bill enables the appropriate consultation to take place, and we are confident that the affirmative procedure will allow Parliament to conduct proper scrutiny of secondary legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

No, I have given way twice to the hon. Gentleman.

The Government maintain that there must be a responsibility for unions to ensure that their members comply. Without that, and without any incentives for employees to attend work on a strike day when identified in a work notice, the effectiveness of the legislation will be severely undermined. Unfortunately, I do not consider that these amendments are a meaningful attempt to reach agreement. I fear that we are having a somewhat repetitive debate that is delaying us getting on with the important business of minimising disruption to the public during periods of strike action, and I encourage this elected House to disagree with the amendments.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Alan Brown]

I want to start by simultaneously condemning and praising the Lords, because although I still disagree with the premise of unelected peers for life, I respect the work ethic of some of those who have been trying to improve this God-awful Bill. It also shows that, while the Tories can stuff the place with their cronies and donors, the issue with cronies and donors is that they cannot be bothered to turn up, do their work and vote accordingly, as in the case of Baroness Mone, who is absent after pocketing millions of pounds for selling dodgy personal protective equipment to the NHS. On the Lords as an institution, we have a perfect illustration of the Labour leader’s continued flip-flopping. Overnight he has gone from wanting to abolish the Lords to now planning to stuff it full of Labour peers when he gets into government. It is pretty shameful.

I am disappointed that the Lords did not hold out on an amendment to restrict the Bill’s extent to England only, which would recognise the position of the devolved Governments.

I commend the Lords in their consistency on other matters pertaining to the Bill. Lords amendment 2B would require the Government first to publish draft regulations, and then to undertake impact assessments on their effects and to consult with representatives of trade unions and employees. That is hardly an onerous request—in fact, it is just putting in place basic transparency. Throughout the Bill’s passage, the Tories have been eager to tell us that it is about health and safety, minimum service levels and allowing the public to get to work. If that is the Bill’s real intent, and it is not a draconian attack on the rights of workers to strike, surely the Government should be willing to comply with the requirements of Lords amendment 2B.

Paragraph (c) of the amendment perfectly encapsulates the rhetoric of the Tory Government about balancing the impact of regulations on the general public with complying with workers’ rights to strike. Given all the quotes and speeches from Tory Ministers and Back Benchers, surely they should be content with the amendment and be confident that they can comply with it and set out the aims of any draft legislation, allowing the public to understand its intent and impact. If the Government were true to their stated aims, the amendment could mean them backing trade unions into a corner with transparency. At a stroke, the amendment would take away claim and counter-claim on the impacts of any regulations, as the impact assessments and consultations would be crystal clear to everyone involved. What is it that the Government are objecting to, because the Minister certainly did not make that clear earlier? The Minister said that the consultation is already closed, which means there is no transparency going forward.

In voting to disagree with the previous Lords amendments, the Government said that it was because the Bill already contains adequate consultation requirements. I have already illustrated that the Government are completely at it with that statement. If we look at proposed new section 234F of the 1992 Act, the Secretary of State is required only to consult such persons that he or she considers “appropriate”. That clearly leaves the door open to consult nobody at all.

Subsection (5) of proposed new section 234F advocates that any consultation requirements can be satisfied before the passing of the Bill. How is that even logical? According to the Government, adequate provision takes the form of consulting who they decide they want to consult, and in the absence of any doubt, any past consultation, past Government rhetoric or past announcements will count as satisfying these non-consult requirements. That is certainly a much easier pathway for the Government than having to bother to undertake impact assessments, proper consultation and parliamentary scrutiny in the form of a Joint Committee to review these impact assessments. The reality is that, with Lords amendment 2B, Parliament has a choice to take control or to cede unlimited powers to a Secretary of State.

Turning to Lords amendment 4B, I refer to the Government’s response to Lords amendment 4, which shows their real intent. They have said that the reason for objecting to Lords amendment 4 is

“in order for the legislation to be effective, it is necessary for there to be consequences for an employee who fails to comply with a work notice.”

The Government rationale is clear that the legislation is intended to be the “sack the workers, sack the nurses, sack the doctors and sack the train drivers Bill”, plain and simple. Forget the pretence that this legislation brings the UK into line with other countries that the Government keep telling us have minimum service levels legislation on the right to strike, because this legislation brings the UK into line not with other democracies, but with Russia and Hungary.

Lords amendment 4B provides some protection for workers—protection from malicious employers and protection for individual workers and, in particular, union representatives to stop them being targeted by employers. Surely the Government must agree with proposed new subsection (1) under Lords amendment 4B that a person is not subject to a work notice if they have not received it. This Government demand that people prove who they are before they can exercise their right to vote, but at the same time they seem to believe that a worker can be sacked for not complying with a work notice they have not actually received. It is preposterous. Proposed new subsection (2) confirms that the employer has to prove that the work order was served and received in compliance with subsection (1). Any decent employer would do that anyway, but it makes sense for an employer to have to prove that to ensure no unfair dismissal claims. Otherwise, I return to the point that the sacking of workers is clearly a key outcome and sanction that this Government intend.

No longer is there any need for illegal secret blacklisting, because all employers now have to do is the sack awkward squads for not complying with notices they did not receive. That is how open to abuse the legislation is in its current form, and it is outrageous that the Government are moving against Lords amendment 4B. They are bringing in legislation to make it easier to sack workers when we do not have enough workers to fill vacancies. It is truly perverse that the Government are sticking with such draconian legislation to make it easier to sack key workers.