Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am not quite sure how to follow that, my Lords, but I do so by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, to this Chamber and our debates and thank her for a crash course in Bexleyism, which has educated me considerably.

Before being elected to Parliament in 1991, I spent 14 years as a national research officer serving postal and telecommunication workers, and I am proud to have been a trade union member for over four decades to help achieve fairness at work.

In September 2020, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was happy to be photographed on the steps of No. 11 Downing Street with two smiling figures. They were the then TUC general-secretary Frances O’Grady—now my noble friend Lady O’Grady, who spoke so powerfully earlier—and the then CBI director-general, Dame Carolyn Fairbairn. All three were marking their support for a winter economic plan that included an extension to the furlough scheme. They demonstrated and symbolised what progress can be made when unions, employers and government look for a common cause and common ground in a crisis.

Sadly, the good will that was on display from the Government that day has been missing ever since and is nowhere to be found in this minimum service levels Bill. Instead, Tory Ministers have adopted entrenched positions and inflammatory language, denying a fair deal to public service workers and seeking to provoke key workers into action that might lose them public support. Yet nurses, ambulance drivers, doctors and other health workers, firefighters, rail workers—yes, rail workers—education workers, Royal Mail workers and border officials all enjoy public backing, because they all want the same thing we do: a negotiated settlement that delivers a fair deal, a deal that begins to undo the real-terms pay cuts and the damage done to Britain’s public services by over a decade of savage Tory austerity, worsened by soaring costs of living.

The Bill seeks to discriminate against key workers by singling them out: paying them poorly, then threatening to sack them unfairly, with no compensation if they dare to go on strike or refuse to cross picket lines. It would, in effect, outlaw the right to strike, as the Taff Vale case did for five years from 1901, but it would not stop people standing up for fairness at work.

The Bill would prolong disputes, demoralise staff and frustrate the public. People forced to work against their will would quickly turn into quiet quitters, who do what they are paid for and no more. Just look at the impact on our railways when train drivers refuse to be forced to work on their normal rest days and decline to work overtime. Formal set-piece strike action would give way to informal guerrilla tactics, with unpredictable absences and unexpected gaps in coverage as demoralised staff stay home instead of struggling in to work when they feel below par or when they sense the onset of back pain. Some 17 million people in Britain suffer from a chronic health condition. The scope for quiet civil resistance to such punitive legislation is massive.

Where could the Government’s intransigence lead? Might they seek to press-gang the millions of economically inactive people of normal working age, such as the 2.5 million people aged 16 to 64 who last summer were out of the labour force due to long-term sickness? Any minute now, I expect to hear Ministers revive the language from the David Cameron days of workers versus shirkers and Liz Truss’s shameless dismissal of Britain’s workers as

“the worst idlers in the world.”

The Tories always end up attacking those they regard as the undeserving poor. This Bill is just their latest attempt at such punitive, arrogant behaviour towards essential workers they were lauding and clapping during Covid for keeping Britain going.

Ministers are trying to portray union representatives, as Margaret Thatcher did, as the “enemy within”. The truth is that workplace injustice remains rife today, and tackling it is what trade unions are for. The day- to-day experience of trade union officers is of taking the heat out of difficult situations, calming matters down, resolving disputes. They are peacemakers, not troublemakers. In practice, their key role is to help solve problems at work, not to cause them. The Government should be helping them fulfil that role, not making life difficult for everyone by their belligerent attitude.

There was a time when Tory Ministers would insist that public sector pay should be set at levels needed to recruit, retain and motivate the public sector workforce. That left ample scope for negotiation between employers and unions, and for the pay review bodies to do their job without being gagged by their sponsoring ministries or confined to quarters by the Treasury, as has so transparently been the case over current disputes.

Instead, today health staff are finding that they cannot afford to work for the NHS. Last year saw NHS workers quitting for better-paid jobs elsewhere at twice the rate they did at the start of 2020. More than 130,000 unfilled posts, due in part to NHS pay that has failed to keep up with the rising cost of living, have led to unacceptably long waiting lists and massive treatment blockages for patients. The number of workers seeking help from Trussell Trust food banks for the first time has increased by 40% in recent months, and half the NHS Trusts in England have food banks. Surely that is unacceptable.

Every day the Tories delay reaching negotiated settlements only adds to the inevitable cost for taxpayers and loses the Government more of the good will on which our public services have come to rely. The way forward has been shown by the devolved Governments in Wales and Scotland: negotiate in good faith, try—you cannot always succeed—to find a compromise, show respect, and try to get everyone back to work, however difficult that proves to be after 12 years of huge Tory cuts in devolved government budgets.

This Bill will not even keep services going, as the public are told. Instead, the real motivation is to enable Tory Ministers to dog-whistle to the base instincts of their right-wing supporters, finger-pointing and scapegoating, instead of treating with respect the workers who save our lives, teach our children, deliver our parcels, organise our trains and protect our borders. It is utterly shameful, and I am delighted that my party will repeal it.