Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I stand as a proud trade unionist in solidarity with my constituents who are taking strike action, and with workers across the country. We are seeing widespread strikes in the public sector because of the abject failure of more than 12 years of Conservative government. The Government have pushed nurses, ambulance workers and other dedicated NHS staff to the brink. They are taking strike action not only on pay, but as part of their campaign for patient safety and, as they have told me, to save the national health service. The Government now want to repay them by threatening to sack them for doing so. My constituents have written to me to tell me that they are appalled. The Bill is a shameful attack on the rights of working people. Richard Arthur, head of trade union law at Thompsons Solicitors, said:

“The introduction of minimum safety levels does not comply with the United Kingdom’s legal obligations under Convention No. 87 of the International Labour Organisation on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise, and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

He is one of many who expect there to be legal challenges to the Bill.

Last October, the Government published the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, allowing minimum service levels to be introduced during strikes in certain transport services. It seems that that Bill has now been superseded by the one we are debating. In the European convention on human rights memorandum that accompanied the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill, the Government set out why minimum service requirements would not apply to other sectors. Just a few months ago they were clear that “important factors” already existed in other sectors

“to mitigate the impacts of industrial action in those sectors on wider society.”

For example, in health, they pointed to the fact that unions include guidance to their members on their approach to life-and-limb arrangements. So why have Ministers changed their minds?

The Government now say that they are

“introducing this legislation to ensure that striking workers don’t put the public’s lives at risk.”

That is an insult to workers who kept the country running during the covid-19 pandemic, putting themselves at considerable risk. In particular, it is an insult to nursing unions and representative bodies that worked hard to ensure that there would be cover for urgent cases during their strike. As the TUC points out, the Bill is the Government’s

“latest attack on the right to strike”,

and I will be voting against it this evening.