Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 9th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Balfe. He followed me as president of BALPA and has done a good job, as I know from all my ex-colleagues in that union. I have long experience of disputes in the transport sector, particularly in railways. In fact, if any noble Lord has a spare half hour and wants to go through the history of flexible rostering and train drivers, I am your man. I may not sell many tickets for that particular gig, I fear, but this is the sector that it is really all about. If the Bill hits the statute book and is used, it is in this sector that the trouble will really start, because it is very strongly unionised, with workers who are no strangers to industrial action. Whether culturally or practically, they have taken it over all their history. It is part of their way of life, and the first person who issues a work notice to them will really be lighting a fire with petrol, because it is incendiary and the cocktail of the dispute will be explosive.

Let us just follow through for a moment what would happen. A work notice is issued. The workers will act collectively, not individually, and refuse it. Individuals might then be selected—this is all provided for under this wonderful Bill—and those individuals will have a choice to make: whether to go along with the work notice or to turn around and say, “We are sticking with the democratically made decision to strike, and with the union”. Then what happens? What is the response likely to be? Will the employer persist and maybe fire some of them? We will get a situation where there are two disputes: the original dispute and the dispute about reinstatement of the workers concerned. This is nowhere near where we should be going as a country, and nowhere near finding a way to improve industrial relations and get people working co-operatively and in a spirit of mutual trust and support.

With two disputes instead of one, the Government need to be very careful and think carefully about employment law. The party opposite has enacted a lot of employment law since the 1980s. Some of it, I have to say, has been well targeted and has hit the mark, and some of it has had counterproductive effects. Even the election of general secretaries of unions has had a counterproductive effect in quite a lot of unions, with the more radical candidate usually winning. A piece of legislation such as this—an obvious candidate to be counterproductive, as well as wasting a lot of time and expense in all this procedure we are going through at the moment—seems to be about a Government taking a step against the unions that is too far. The Government should pause, think again and put it in the waste-paper basket of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I would like to speak briefly to support what all noble Lords have spoken about so far. I am honorary president of the UK Maritime Pilots’ Association, which is exactly the same, with not quite so many members, as the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has with his airline pilots. We have the same issue of safety. In piloting an aeroplane, you are going rather faster than a ship, and if a ship gets into trouble, it cannot stop, or stop quite as quickly, as we all know. It is a dangerous job, and the pilotage training lasts several years. You start off with small ships and then they get bigger, and the scale of your local knowledge has to be quite dramatic. In most ports, big ships are now not allowed in without a pilot, for very good reason.

The same comments apply to the railways and railway safety. Noble Lords will have seen the accident in Greece last week—a head-on collision caused by some failure of regulation. We do not have that any more. We have an Office of Rail Regulation and various other bodies that make really sure that whatever operation we do is safe. I cannot see how Ministers, or the owners who will control many of the train operators, will be able to say, “Well, you do that. It is not your decision as to whether it’s safe or not; it is our decision”. I do not think a Minister will ever want to say that they have given an instruction that might be seen to be unsafe, because they will probably be for the high jump if it goes wrong. But many of the issues on the railways exist because the safety rules have built up over the years. Driver training used to take two years; it is a little quicker now but not much, and that is for a reason. You are not allowed to use a mobile phone when you are driving for a very good reason, because you lose your concentration. I cannot see how it can really work when Ministers are effectively giving instructions about someone going to drive the train and being responsible for the safety—closing the doors, making sure everybody is all right, and making sure the track is all right, which is really important.

I support my noble friends Lord Monks and Lord Collins, and the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in saying “Think again”.

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, the Committee may remember that, back in 2022, the TUC commissioned legal opinion from Michael Ford KC on the train operating contracts because there was concern about the role of the Government in obstructing a settlement to disputes. Looking at those contracts, his opinion was that the Transport Secretary has

“very extensive powers over what can be agreed between rail operators and unions, and very significant contractual power to direct how industrial disputes are handled. Rail operators are not free to agree terms and conditions without the involvement of the Transport Secretary.”

Before discussing matters, they have to get a mandate from the Transport Secretary, and so on. If you add to that the issue of minimum service levels, and the very real concerns expressed about undue pressure being brought to bear on employers to make use of the powers that the Government propose to take for the Secretary of State, you can see why there is concern. When you look at the power to direct disputes, minimum service levels and so on, apparently the only thing the Government are not willing to do is renationalise the railway system.

It would be wrong to assume that, even in that context, rail employers and unions have conversations, and certainly I am aware that train operating companies are not keen on this legislation. They have real concerns about what it would mean for health and safety on the railways; you could run 20% of services, but you have 100% of passengers wanting to get on. It is not as simple as some might believe.

I really wanted to ask the question: who is asking for this? It does not appear to be the employers. Who wants this to happen? Is it really passengers if it involves a detrimental impact on health and safety? People are already worried about the cuts to maintenance jobs. I do not believe passengers want an unsafe railway; I believe they want constructive industrial relations that can lead to a good-quality rail service. That is what passengers want, and I am afraid the Bill flies in the face of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am not an expert in the rail industry but my understanding is that most of the train operating companies are owned by the taxpayer now through various takeovers, so in my view the Secretary of State has a duty to run the rail services. Taxpayers are very generous in the support they provide to the rail industry, and trade unions sometimes do not appreciate how much it is subsidised. In my view the Secretary of State has a right to intervene on behalf of the travelling public and the taxpayer. The legal position—the noble Lord, Lord Collins, might think it is a mantra—is that there is no legal obligation in the Bill on employers to utilise a minimum service level if one has been set in their area.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

The Minister’s answers have been interesting but they have concentrated about 90% on the railways, apart from a little dabble into the bus sector with the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson.

Do we take it that Ministers are not really interested in the issues listed in Amendment 10:

“aviation services, airline services, airport services … car delivery services, road haulage services, parcel delivery services”—

even trams—and

“rail engineering ferry and waterway services”?

Are the Government not concerned about them? Are they not even going to try to come up with minimum service arrangements for them? Is it just really about the railway? I think that is what the Minister is saying.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sorry if the noble Lord is disappointed. I answered the questions that were asked of me and most of them were about rail services. That is what we have issued the consultation on, which is why I was answering the questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, asked me about bus services so I answered that question. I do not know how the noble Lord computes that we are somehow uninterested in other sectors. This legislation will specify transport services as an appropriate power for the Secretary of State to designate minimum service levels for, but the only one that we have issued on transport services at the moment is on passenger rail. That does not mean we are not interested in other transport services.