Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Cashman

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of the amendments listed. I look to the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and assure her that I will not, at this point, offer my support to her amendment; I am sure that will give her great comfort. I will not repeat the points I made at Second Reading, but I believe this Bill undermines basic democratic and fundamental rights. I believe it is dangerous. It is barely drafted and badly drafted. I thank my friend the executive dean of Leeds, Professor Johnson, for the advice he has given me on the Bill.

I equally thank the Equality and Human Rights Commission and will refer to its recommendations now. I hasten to add that the commission, in my opinion, has been much muffled and muted during the last 18 months. Let me quote:

“Having carefully considered the issues, we believe the Bill raises several human rights considerations, specifically in relation to Article 4 (Prohibition of Slavery and Forced Labour), Article 11 (Freedom of Assembly and Association) and Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) that require careful scrutiny.”


I believe that these amendments provide for that.

To pick at random out of the commission’s substantial documents, paragraph 4 says:

“In the human rights memorandum that accompanied the earlier Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill”—


to which my noble friend Lord Collins referred earlier—

“now superseded by this Bill, the case for the lawfulness of similar provisions was made partly by distinguishing the Bill’s transport-focused clauses from measures affecting other sectors, including health and education. In that document, the Government recognised the importance of existing measures to mitigate the impacts of industrial action in health, education and fire and rescue services. For example, some healthcare sector trade unions already provide ‘life and limb’ cover during strikes, and the Secretary of State has legal powers to give directions to fire and rescue authorities, which could be used in the event of industrial action.”

Paragraph 5 says:

“It is not clear what consideration has been given to these existing measures in the current Bill. We advise that more detail may be needed to articulate a legitimate aim for imposing Minimum Service Levels (MSLs) on each sector impacted by the Bill.”


I now turn to paragraph 11, to which I referred at Second Reading:

“Finally, we are concerned that an employee would lose automatic unfair dismissal protection not only if they fail to comply with a work notice, but also if their trade union has failed to take reasonable steps to ensure compliance: an employee will not know before participating in a strike whether that is the case or not.”


I could go on. For those reasons and many more, I urge noble Lords, if not now then when these amendments come back, to give their full support.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome the contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. We have worked together, and one of the things I have always been impressed with, particularly on the Finance Committee we served on jointly, is her insistence on decisions being clearly evidence based. That is what this series of amendments is seeking, because at the moment the only evidence we have is an impact assessment that was judged to be red-rated by the Regulatory Policy Committee—not fit for purpose. It was published after the MPs in the other place had scrutinised and passed the Bill, so they did not even have an opportunity to see the red-rated impact assessment.

The noble Baroness has raised the important point that industrial action affects the economy and all kinds of things, not just people travelling to work. It has a cost, and it has a cost for a purpose. When I studied industrial relations, many economists tried to make me better understand that strikes brought two sides together because they had costs imposed on them. The problem we face now is that some of the costs, particularly in the rail industry, are hidden. A rail employer does not suffer any cost from industrial action because the Government indemnify it for those costs, so there is no imperative on the employer to reach a settlement. I suspect that is why the public realise who is to blame for the length of these disputes. The public are not as easily fooled as the Government think they are.

Importantly, the impact assessment on the transport strikes Bill said it would have a

“negative impact on industrial relations, which could have detrimental impacts for all parties”

and increase the frequency of disputes, meaning that

“an increased number of strikes could ultimately result in more adverse impacts in the long term”,

particularly on users of the service. Many noble Lords will have seen NHS Providers make the very same point in its briefings to this Committee, saying that it will directly impact good industrial relations and the ability to resolve any disagreements and disputes.