Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Lord Patten Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, it is always good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, particularly in a debate such as this, where he has such a long and detailed recall of history over many decades. I listened to him with respect; it is genuine respect rather than just saying that, even though I do not agree with him on a number of points. He used “repetition” in his introductory remarks, and I address the first of the four remarks that I wish to make to that.

First, purely by chance, I came across something which His Holiness the Pope said the other day. He was telling his priests not to bang on for too long, to limit what they say in their homilies—that is RC speak for sermons in the established Church—and generally to get on with it. I think that six minutes, which is what His Holiness said, is quite a long time. We are luxuriating in eight minutes tonight but repetitive arguments will dominate all the proceedings of this Bill, as they dominated all the proceedings of the public order legislation. There is nothing wrong with saying it again and again in the hope that it sinks in, but we must recognise that in the end, we must act.

I applaud what my honourable and right honourable friends are doing in this Bill. We have seen the same argument used again and again, over protests and demonstrations, before debates on the Public Order Bill came to their end. We are going to get the same things again about the right to strike in this debate. There will be more than a spot of déjà vu in this Chamber over the next few weeks and months because we are all struggling—the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I, and other noble Lords—to find a balance between what it is right to strike about and the needs for individual and publicly recognised, or sought after, levels of safety and protection. Getting that balance right is fiendishly difficult. We would be foolish to say that this or that is a solution. I would always keep lives and livelihoods first in mind, in a world where self-restraint is steadily being screened out, which concerns me a lot.

Secondly, does my noble friend the Minister think the current arrangements that ban certain occupations—essentially the Armed Forces, the police and some prison officers—from striking are adequate today, since they were first thought of in the 1960s? There have been so many challenges since, particularly the growth of global terrorism, which we did not know about 30 or 40 years ago, and the huge back and forth in the flowing global movement of people seeking safety. Why should they not seek a better life as well, in a time of easier if sometimes very dangerous travel that we all recognise? The situation is dramatically different from what it was in the 1960s.

It is not easy to be a prison officer and I thank them for what they do, but the time may be coming when no prison officers should strike at all. The same goes for the challenging and sometimes dangerous work done for us all by our border forces, not only at sea but at land borders such as ports and airports, screening out terrorists. There is a strong case for them not being able to strike either. I do not want to alarm the business managers on my side of the House—I would hate to do so—so I promise and pledge that I will not introduce egregious amendments during the passage of this Bill, which will be long and drawn-out enough. However, I hope that in return I get a serious answer from the Minister about these issues, which need to be discussed as time goes on.

Thirdly, the areas of public service covered by the Bill vary in their substance. I do not say, diminishingly, that one is more important than another, but surely there is a qualitative difference between the never clearly-defined NHS “life and limb” cover, which I have never seen a satisfactory definition of, and education. Of course, education is essential, but in a different way. Obviously, that is important to students for their future happiness, prospects and way of life. I noticed that the phrase “industrial action” came from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I think. We need to dump that expression because it does not cover adequately the huge range of things that we looked at in the Public Order Bill and are now looking at in this Bill. Also, “essential” needs to be defined.

It is rather poignant, but some decades back the Association of University Teachers—that long-buried union—demonstrated about some unclear provisions that they were worried about in their pensions. Believe it or not, outside Carriage Gates, there was a capped and gowned figure holding up a placard containing the persuasive legend, “Rectify the anomaly now”. If that is the best that could be done in advancing arguments, I do not think it was very persuasive—and it certainly was not very chantable by those demonstrators.

Fourthly and lastly, we cannot any longer fantasise that, as a last resort, our Armed Forces can always step in and cover all exigencies. We know that, in the 1960s, there were more than half a million people in the Armed Services—about 250,000 in the Army. On 15 December 2022, those numbers were down to about 145,000, of whom some 79,000 were in the Army. These good men and women have other, more pressing, tasks in an increasingly warlike and geographically challenged world to do on our behalf than direct the traffic.

I note that I have gone beyond the time laid down by His Holiness the Pope, but just short of the time set down by the business managers.