Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support this amendment. It seems to me that we have seen Bill after Bill in which this Government have chosen to bypass Parliament and leave too many decisions to Secretaries of State. Therefore, for me, as a former member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, the most important aspect of this amendment is the requirement, following consultation, to present these matters to committees of both Houses of Parliament. I do not want to say any more; the case has been made very clearly. However, I would like it noted that I support this amendment very strongly.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I too will be brief in strongly supporting this amendment. 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 into the hands of Ministers without proper parliamentary scrutiny and oversight is simply not right. I appeal to all Members of the House to support Amendment 1.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said in the debate on his committee’s report,

“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.]

That is absolutely true when it comes to this Bill. There is no clear understanding of the form that minimum service levels are likely to take or of the impact on workplace relations and services to the public.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the excellent briefing from NHS Providers, which is responsible for managing the NHS and 1.4 million staff. It says that the Bill

“risks damaging relationships in the NHS between trust leaders and their staff, and between trust leaders and local union representatives at a particularly fraught time, without addressing any of the issues underlying current strike action or providing a useful alternative approach to managing service provision during periods of strike”.

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[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment really shows what a ludicrous Bill this is. The clause that we are dealing with is unworkable. As noble Lords know, I have to declare an interest as an executive honorary president of the British Airline Pilots’ Association. I have talked in this House before about the fact that this Bill allows the Minister for Transport, our good and noble friend Lady Vere, to identify a pilot and order him, a week before the plane takes off, to fly to Washington. That is ludicrous. If you live in the real world of aviation, you will know that a plane is not cleared for take-off until the pilot certifies that it should take off, something like two hours before it leaves. You have to consider weather and whether the level of staffing is correct—and then the pilot is the captain of the plane, responsible for ensuring that the alcohol levels of the staff are not breached. Unless you let people make a decision, you are just running yourself into trouble.

Aviation is about 70% unionised. Is the employer going to identify some people who are not in the union and tell them to go to work, rather than people who are in the union? You have the same group of people, and some of them are in and some are out. How are you going to decide that, and how will you decide matters such as illness? What happens if someone rings up and says, “I think I’ve got Covid”? Are you going to be able to withdraw their protection from unfair dismissal? Of course not.

This clause, above everything else, demonstrates the weakness and stupidity of the Bill. The idea of naming people in a work notice could come only from the desk of someone who has never had to do it, frankly.

I want to look at Amendment 5. The reason put forward in a note to me for the proposal in the Bill was that the minimum service levels would be far less likely to be achieved as trade unions may attempt to persuade workers not to comply with work notices. That is fairyland. Trade unions spend more of their time and money on our friend the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and his colleagues in the law than is probably sensible. At every stage, they look at the law and say, “We must not break it”.

In my experience, the executive of a trade union, and particularly the local branches, will spend more time persuading the hotheads not to do stupid things than they will encouraging them to do so. It is, for instance, a regular occurrence that a number of British Airways staff believe that they can take actions that are clearly in contravention of the law. It is the job of the executive to say to them, “You will damage the union”; it is not the job of the executive—it never has been—to say, “Behind the scenes, do you think you could do this?” That is not the way that trade unionism works.

I say that as someone who has been involved in trade unionism, for my sins, for over 60 years. It is 60 years since I first became a branch official. Throughout a lifetime of serving in different trade union branches, executives, and now as president of a TUC union, I have always been impressed with how the workers we represented wanted to get it right. They have often had very good reasons for feeling annoyed with the employers, but the job of the union, as a structure, has been to canalise the dispute in such a way that it is within the law and is a compliant dispute that attempts to achieve the objectives that the workforce is looking for. One reason we have trade unions in this country is to provide a bit of balance.

The Bill is not even sensible. It will not work. I hope that, when it goes down the corridor, our new Prime Minister will look at it and say, “For God’s sake, let’s just bury it”. There are far more important challenges facing Britain today than passing an unworkable Bill to annoy one section of the population—not to mention the 1.5 million trade unionists who voted for the Conservative Party at the last election. They will probably vote for it again because they do not vote according to their union; they vote according to their class interests. Most of my union members vote for the Conservative Party.

Let us be aware that this is not a matter where a Conservative Government have to stand up to the unions—they are standing up to their own supporters. Ordinary members of trade unions have worked hard to help the country become the prosperous country that it is. This sort of legislation is just the sort of damn nonsense that people look at and say, “My God, they just do not understand, do they?” They do not say that the Government are trying to do something. The general reaction to this Bill, I am afraid, among my trade union friends is that the Government do not understand what they are doing. I urge the Minister to send it back down the corridor and ask them to bury it in a nice big box somewhere.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I thought that I had better interject and speak to Amendment 5 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Fox.

I reiterate what my noble friend Lord Woodley said. The Minister has said on every occasion that we have considered the Bill that this is not about banning the right to strike, which is a fundamental right. I have no doubt that the Minister will repeat that when he responds to this debate. We face in this country some of the most onerous processes and procedures in order for people to exercise that right through their trade union. The statutory ballot requirements are pretty rigorous and, as the noble Lord has said previously, they can be challenged in court. Unions are very concerned to make sure that they do not breach the law, that they act within the law and that strikes are lawfully conducted.

Here we have a situation where a clause in this Bill could place trade unions in a position where they would be asked to ensure that the members who vote for industrial action—who go through that rigorous process—do not take part in that action. That is not the responsibility of a trade union. A union could face an injunction or be forced to pay damages if it is deemed not to have taken “reasonable steps”.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, talked about the definition of “may”. Well, what is the definition of “reasonable steps”? What situation are we putting trade unions in with this vague requirement that could result in them facing legal action? If a union is deemed not to have followed the legislation, the strike could be regarded as unlawful and the protection for striking workers, such as automatic unfair dismissal protection, could be removed from all striking members, including those not named in the work notices. So, employees will not know before participating in the strike action whether they have protection, and unions do not know what amounts to “reasonable steps”, as no detail has been provided in the Bill. I think that is an unacceptable situation. We should not be passing laws that put individuals and trade unions in that position.

Of course, this is not simply my view. The Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded:

“We find it hard to see how it is compliant with Article 11 ECHR to expose any participant in industrial action to the risk of dismissal simply because a trade union fails to take unspecified ‘reasonable steps’ required in respect of those subject to a work notice. In our view, the Government has not provided sufficient justification for this consequence or explained why the minimum service scheme could not be effective without it”.


I think those are the words—I do not need to say any more. I hope the House will support Amendment 5.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to both these amendments, which have my name. There might be an argument that the ends justify the means, but this does not deliver the ends. This false promise does not work. The means we are discussing here will poison industrial relations. The means we are discussing here will make recruitment into public services much harder, because working conditions will be made worse. The means we are talking about here will also remove predictability when we have a workplace dispute, because, as has been noted, people will go off sick and refuse to do overtime, and that will make the job of managing through a strike much harder.

The last group talked about protecting employers from this unwanted Bill. This group talks about protecting workers and unions from this unwanted Bill, and I ask your Lordships to support both these amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

5: The Schedule, page 5, leave out lines 9 to 22
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would remove the section that removes protection from Unions.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister suggested that Amendment 5 undermines the Bill. Actually, the provisions that this amendment addresses undermine the democratic role of trade unions, which is why we have tabled it. This is not about minimum service levels; as we have said previously, these are properly and better addressed voluntarily. If this provision remains, it will simply undermine the role of trade unions. It has to go, and therefore I wish to test the opinion of the House.

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[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

Speaking as a Scotsman and a unionist, I strongly support the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. It seems to me that if one is to maintain the union, it is important to maintain the devolution settlement. This Bill undermines the devolution settlement.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make a few brief points. Of course, the noble and learned Lord is absolutely right that defining and managing service levels is a devolved matter. It is how you manage and define them. So when it comes to defining minimum service levels, who has responsibility? It is not the Government. It is actually going to be the responsibility of the devolved institutions and devolved Governments. Let me say this: this is not about devolving employment rights. Employment rights are in a single market and they are clearly defined. This is about service levels. We had debates in Committee about how to define service levels on non-strike days. The devolved Governments are going to be responsible for that, and that is the democratic accountability. That is why it is really important that we support these amendments.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 6 and 7 relate, as has been said, to the devolved Governments. Amendment 6 seeks to remove the power for the Secretary of State to make consequential amendments to primary legislation made by the Scottish Parliament or the Senedd Cymru. This amendment was previously tabled in Committee, and no one will be surprised to know that the Government’s position remains unchanged.

As I have previously stated, the powers in Clause 3 can be exercised only to make amendments that are necessary to give effect to the Bill; they are therefore truly consequential. Employment rights and duties and industrial relations are reserved in respect of Scotland and Wales. It is therefore right that the Secretary of State has the power to make consequential amendments to primary legislation made by the Scottish Parliament or Senedd Cymru, if required, to ensure that the new legal framework operates in a coherent way across the whole of Great Britain. As always, the Government will engage with the devolved Governments as appropriate should consequential amendments be required to Acts of the Scottish Parliament or the Senedd Cymru.

Amendment 7, meanwhile, seeks to limit the territorial application of this Act to England. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, tabled a similar amendment in Committee, and the Government continue to resist this change for the same reasons that I set out then.

As has been said numerous times in this debate, once regulations for minimum service levels are in force for a specified service, if a trade union gives notice of strike action, it is then the employer’s decision whether to issue a work notice ahead of the strike, specifying the workforce required to achieve the minimum service level for that strike period. If the employer is the Scottish Government or the Welsh Senedd, it is their decision whether or not they use this legislation. Of course, we hope that all employers will want to do so where needed —as was said in relation to the amendments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, employers must consider any contractual, public law or other legal duties that they have—but the Bill does not contain a statutory requirement to do so. No one is forcing them to use this legislation.

We will, as we have done throughout this legislation, continue to engage with the devolved Governments as part of the development of minimum service levels in those areas and the consultations that would be required that are informing these decisions. The Government have a duty to protect the lives and livelihoods of citizens across Great Britain. The disproportionate impacts that strikes can have on the public are no less severe in Scotland or Wales, and the people there have every right to expect the Government to act to ensure that they can continue to access vital public services, which they pay for, during strike action.

I hope—again, perhaps without too much optimism—that noble Lords will therefore feel able not to press their amendments.