Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, for her excellent maiden speech. I truly welcome her commitment to public service and her aspiration to make a difference; she will make a strong difference in this House. I also agree with her wholeheartedly that we need more women in Parliament and certainly more women in power. That would also make a difference.

I wish to mention the fact that the news tonight is that, at long last, the Government have agreed to sit down with the RCN and negotiate a settlement that will truly reflect the value this country places on nurses. The pity, of course, is that it has taken so long to reach this point. Some 140,000 appointments need not have been cancelled had the Government talked to the RCN, rather than ignoring its position. That is an important thing which we should have in the backs of our minds when we talk about the Bill.

A major focus of today’s debate, and a point which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, made clear in his contribution, is whether it is right that we make laws this way through skeleton Bills. Whatever your Lordships’ views about the state of industrial relations in this country, we should all agree—across this House— that a rushed process which puts power over making laws in the hands of Ministers without proper parliamentary oversight is simply not right. I make that appeal to all Members of this House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, quite rightly said that she welcomed the affirmative procedure in relation to the secondary legislation. However, let me remind her of the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, who said on 12 January in the debate on the Select Committee report that nobody

“could reasonably argue that secondary legislation is as effectively scrutinised as primary … Secondary legislation is unamendable. It can be passed or rejected but it cannot be amended. Secondary legislation is unamendable. It can be passed or rejected but it cannot be amended.”—[Official Report, 12/1/23; col. 1537.]

and that is not proper scrutiny in terms of the principles addressed in this Bill.

In that same debate, which I had the honour of responding to on behalf of the Opposition, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, a former Minister, said that

“when laws are passed without proper parliamentary scrutiny, they cease to be just technical, as they threaten the rights and freedoms of the individual.”—[Official Report, 12/1/23; col. 1532.]

Are not those words absolutely right in the context of this Bill? The noble Lord also reminded us in that debate that the excuse that excessive delegated powers are needed because Parliament cannot move quickly enough has been proved false on many occasions, not least by this Parliament’s reaction to Covid legislation.

Of course, noble Lords in this debate have referred to Jacob Rees-Mogg, a declared supporter of the Bill’s aims. He said in the Commons that

“this is not emergency legislation”

as the Conservatives had been contemplating these sorts of actions since 2016, and criticised its lack of detail when instead it

“should set out clearly what it is trying to achieve”.

He also said, as we have heard, that the Bill is badly written and an

“extreme example of bad practice.”—[Official Report, Commons, 30/01/23; cols. 88-92.]

That should be enough for this Chamber to say, “This Bill is bad”. However, what of Rees-Mogg’s policy objectives of imposing minimum service levels to replace what I believe, and what noble Lords have tried to put across tonight, is the current effective system of agreement between unions and employers for cover during industrial action, instead of the “one size fits all” mandate from Ministers?

I must admit that I always enjoy the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs. Evoking the 1970s and 1980s is fair game, I am sure, but it is not reality or where we are today. My noble friend Lord Liddle was right: things have moved on. A lot of that legislation which imposed ballots has resulted in much stronger and more effective mandates. When British Airways are threatened with a massive mandate for industrial action, it cannot wait for that strike to take place. The cost to them has already hit because people cancel their bookings. They are not going to risk carrying on.

That is not what this is about. We do not need to evoke the 1970s and the 1980s. This is not about people pushing things to the limit. This is about our public services—our nurses and the people who support those nurses. In every element, these people have shown their worth in the last two years. That is what we should focus on.

Is this legislation going to do what it says it is intended to do? The simple fact, as we heard again in this debate, is that it will not. Mark Phillips, the chief executive officer of the Railway Safety and Standards Board, told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference last October:

“If you introduce minimum service levels there’s the huge issue of how is that level set, and particularly if you set that minimum level and you’ve rostered staff to work. I would suggest you’d probably have a much higher level of sickness arise because of that because people won’t want to be seen to be breaking the strikes that their colleagues are involved in.”


As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, asked, what is the minimum standard level? There are many people who would love a minimum standard level, and they are certainly not receiving it at the moment. It is not just Avanti West Coast: every train service coming into London suffers from a shortage of staff; every hospital suffers from a shortage of staff; every GP surgery suffers from a shortage of staff. Why? It is because we are not attracting enough staff to do the job; we are relying, as the noble Baroness said in her maiden speech, on people’s commitment to public service. That is not sufficient to run a 21st-century-standard service.

Until today, we have had no sign of an impact assessment for this Bill. This morning, the RPC published its opinion of the impact assessment. The Minister is going to have to put a very brave face on that. It received it on 2 February, several weeks after the Bill had already been introduced to Parliament. It was red-rated: not fit for purpose. How can we scrutinise this legislation with that sort of back-up? The real criticism is the insufficient assessment of the impacts of the Bill on small and micro businesses, which is required under the Government’s own Better Regulation framework. I tried to read the 54 pages of the impact assessment, but we had it only an hour before this debate. I must admit that I was shocked by its amateurish nature, and especially by the impact on industrial relations.

My noble friend Lord Monks raised the fact that, when the Government tried to introduce minimum service levels in the transport strikes Bill, we had an impact assessment that said that minimum service levels could have a negative impact on industrial relations, increase the frequency of disputes, lead to greater use of action short of strike, and increase operational costs for employers, with a particularly onerous burden on smaller operators. That was in the first impact assessment, and this one tried to skate over all of that. Clearly it is not sufficient.

The Government are trying to hide the severe and disproportionate impact that their legislation will have on businesses, particularly small businesses. It is no wonder that they are trying to push this legislation and rush it through Parliament, because it really does not stand up to one bit of scrutiny.

The Bill does not define the factors that the Secretary of State will take into account when drafting regulations on minimum service levels. The only limitation on their powers is that the regulations may specify only services that fall within extremely wide categories: health services, education, fire and rescue, transport services, decommissioning nuclear installations, and border security. These will cut across both the public and private sectors and could include ancillary as well as core operational roles. Power is given to the Secretary of State to determine the scope of these services by regulation, without any guidance from Parliament.

There is nothing in the Bill to prevent ancillary staff being included, nor to prevent the legislation extending to a wide range of forms of transport, from taxis to passenger flights. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, talking about extending it to all kinds of services, including the ground crew. I am sure some people want to see an extension to ban strikes—a fundamental right. When we talk about conditions in China or Russia, we are quick to defend people’s right to organise—and quite right too. These rights are well fought after, and we should protect them, not allow them to be attacked in this way.

As the TUC asked in its excellent briefing on the Bill, what will a minimum level of service be? It could even mean a service at 90% of normal levels or an entire group of workers could be prevented from taking industrial action. In exercising these wide powers, a Secretary of State may “amend, repeal or revoke”, as my noble friend said in her introduction, and is empowered to do the same for Acts of the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Senedd. What are these draconian powers for?

One looks at the Bill and sees how undemocratic it is and how it cannot possibly work in practice. What is it for? The noble Lord, Lord Fox, is absolutely right: I can see the election posters now, but it does not help our public services.

It is not only employees and trade unions that are concerned; I know that employers are deeply concerned, because some of the biggest employers in the public and private sector have told me that they are. They are very concerned about the complete lack of consultation. A Bill is brought in; nobody is consulted; consultation starts late and is only in three categories. As I said, it is not clear exactly who is covered by these categories.

I also want to raise the question of ILO conventions and the position of international labour standards. There is no obligation to ensure that the regulations are consistent with ILO conventions. We know that the ILO has already raised concerns about existing UK labour law which the Government have failed to address.

I appreciate the meeting my noble friend and I had with the Minister about the Bill. We had a good and frank exchange and I asked whether the Government will publish their assessment of why the Bill is compatible with international law. He said, “Oh no. We don’t publish legal advice.” I do not want the legal advice; I want the Government’s assessment of how they reached their conclusion that the Bill meets our obligations. I want to hear or see the political decision, not the legal advice. I want to know whether they have done a correct assessment of what pertains in Spain and France. What statutory rights do workers and trade unions have? The collective agreements are totally different; the organisation is totally different. It is not a fair comparison. As the ILO has stated, we now have much greater restrictions on the power of trade unions to organise.

I know that I have gone on for quite a long time, but I conclude with this point. [Interruption.] Well, it needed to be said, and I am sorry if people are bored with the repetition, but as we move to Committee, let me assure noble Lords that we will probe this Government to produce the evidence for why they have introduced this Bill. As my noble friend Lady O’Grady said in her opening speech, this Bill is unfair, undemocratic and unworkable, which is why we are committed to repealing it in its entirety at the soonest possible date.