Commemoration of Matchgirls’ Strike

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Uma Kumaran]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As neighbouring MPs, we are struggling together to get our voices heard in this place and make sure those women are recorded in history. He is a powerful advocate, and an ally in the fight for improved conditions for workers. Many descendants of the matchgirls live in my hon. Friend’s constituency today, and some even work in the Tate & Lyle factory that he is proud to represent. I take this moment to pay tribute to our joint predecessor, Lady Brown of Silvertown, who held a debate about matchgirls over a decade ago.

The history I am talking about belongs to all of us, and we have a responsibility to keep telling it. I am sad to say that the Conservative Benches are completely empty this evening. Conservative Members might try to talk down our trade unions when they are in the Chamber, but we on the Labour Benches are so proud of our industrial heritage. As such, I ask the Minister whether the Government will look at how that history is taught in schools, so that working-class stories such as those of the east end matchgirls and so many others that we have heard about today are finally heard, and that these people’s contribution to Britain is finally recognised.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

This is an important debate, and I thank my hon. Friend so much for securing it. The matchgirls’ strike played a really important part in the whole of labour history and the struggles of women. In Durham, we had the Durham Women Against Pit Closures, who sustained the miners in their strike. They joined the picket lines and were key figures in their areas, and they are still around today—we saw them last week at the gala. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important that the struggles of women of the past are remembered, and that they empower women of the future?

[Uma Kumaran]

I could not have put it better myself. Durham is rooted in the fight for workers’ rights, and I am proud that that tradition is still continuing. My hon. Friend has long been a powerful advocate for working people’s rights and union voices in Britain. She has made a powerful point, and I thank her for her intervention.

As we honour these women and celebrate how far we have come, we also know that—in the words of another incredibly powerful woman—great is the work yet to be done, particularly for women in today’s workforce who still struggle disproportionately with low-paid and insecure work. There are 3.9 million working women in the UK who are in severely insecure work—insecure work that creates a culture of fear and uncertainty, isolates employees, and so often leaves young women struggling financially.

Young women are more likely to work in sectors with high job insecurity. They are paid less, work fewer hours, and face last-minute shift changes. All that puts them under greater financial and emotional pressure. Young women are paid less, and are stuck in roles that are far below their potential. Over time, this chips away at their confidence, their mental health, and any sense of self-worth. When they do not feel safe to speak up about poor treatment, they start to believe that being treated unfairly is just part of the job. What is worse is that many young women do not even know their rights at work. I have worked with the Young Women’s Trust, which has told me that nearly half the women it surveyed did not know their rights in insecure jobs.

This follows women throughout our lives. When women return to work after pregnancy, their wages stagnate and they are crippled by the costs of childcare. Women are still struggling today, and that must change—which is why I was so proud to be a member of the Bill Committee considering this Labour Government’s Employment Rights Bill, a Committee to which the Minister was integral. We are delivering the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation, rolling back Tory attacks on workers’ rights to have their voices heard at work, cracking down on fire and rehire practices, banning non-disclosure agreements that prevent people from speaking up about harassment and discrimination, delivering sick pay for 1.3 million of our lowest earners, enhancing workplace protections for pregnant women and new mothers, and taking on the gender pay gap. In all those ways, we are boosting living standards and workplace protections for millions.

Now, 137 years on from the matchgirls’ strike, those landmark reforms will deliver rights and dignity to a new generation of women and working people, but we must ensure that young women know their rights and that those rights are enforced. We must therefore give the fair work agency the power and resources to do its job well and ensure that the workers most at risk of exploitation and discrimination are helped to access their rights, so that our economy can finally gain from the skills and talents of young women.

I have covered a lot of ground today, and it has been a bit of a history lesson: the story of the matchgirls, pride in Britain’s working class history, pride in the story of my constituents in Stratford and Bow, and the security and dignity of young women in today’s workforce. If Members want to learn more, I encourage them to visit the Upper Waiting Hall off the Committee corridor, where the Matchgirls Memorial is hosting an exhibition right here in Parliament.

I want to thank the brilliant women in my team who have helped me to put this speech together, and who have been integral to the work we have been doing to shine a light on this subject. I pay tribute to Anna Gorrell, Niamh O’Brien and Sameeah Ahmad. Let me also thank Barbara Plant of the GMB, who is in the Gallery today, and Penny Robinson from GMB London region, who have played an integral role in helping me along my way as a Member of Parliament.

I want to end by honouring the inspiring legacy of the women and girls of the matchgirls’ strike of 1888 by ensuring that the names of the strike and union committees are recorded in Hansard, and that their contribution to the fight for the workers’ rights that we all enjoy today is remembered.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran) on securing her first Adjournment debate. She has chosen a topic extremely well and, as she highlighted, it is really important that we draw attention to the incredible courage of the women who participated in the matchgirls’ strike. It is important that this House acknowledges and recognises this very important piece of British history.

As my hon. Friend touched on, these young women, many of whom were teenagers, worked in absolutely appalling conditions. We have made great advancements in working conditions in recent decades, but it was a particularly horrendous set of circumstances, even for the time. Women working at the match factory suffered from what was described as phossy jaw, a painful and disfiguring disease caused by exposure to white phosphorus. They endured 14-hour working days in overcrowded and poorly ventilated conditions, and their strike was a watershed moment. It garnered widespread public support, and ultimately forced Bryant & May to concede to their demands. It is right that the names of these courageous women are included on the parliamentary record, and I thank my hon. Friend for doing that.

As hon. Members will know, the matchgirls’ strike took place a year before the more famous London dockworkers’ dispute of 1889, which was so formative in the growth of trade unions, including of course today’s GMB union. For the record, I draw attention to my proud membership of the GMB. The organised female workforce showed those working on the docks just what was possible when workers stand up for their rights; they showed that insecurity and unfairness at work never have to be tolerated.

The labour movement is a living, breathing one and we can take inspiration from each other, including those who have gone before us in the struggle for improved working conditions. I was pleased to be able to visit the exhibition on the Committee corridor mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I highly recommend that other Members take the time to visit it and learn more about the history of these struggles. The legacy of these women is wholly remarkable. They were part of a trade union movement that achieved so much, as we can see when we look back now: discrimination protection, paid holiday entitlement, paid maternity leave, and the right to request flexible working. So many advances have come from those beginnings.

However, as has been touched on, there are still many issues of unfairness that need to be addressed today. A recent survey by the Young Women’s Trust found that 67% of women said they had faced discrimination, 37% believe they have had to endure unsafe working environments, 26% have experienced sexual harassment at work, and 50% had not received pay when off sick. I am pleased to say that we are hoping to address all those matters. My hon. Friend raised an important point about young women’s awareness of their rights at work, and it is crystal clear that we need that in order to be effective in enforcing our rights. I hope that we, as a Labour Government, will be able to trumpet that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) spoke with great passion and made the important point that the courage that these women showed was instrumental in and inspirational to the formation of the Labour party. It was not yet formed at the time of the strike, but the growth of the trade union movement and the belief that Governments at the time were not representing the interests of working people led to the formation of the Labour Representation Committee and then the Labour party itself.

We are proud to be a part of that tradition. As a Labour Government, we want to continue the work done by the matchgirls and ensure that workplaces are safe for women. The Employment Rights Bill is helping us achieve exactly that by tackling non-disclosure agreements used to cover up sexual harassment, in a development that only this week has been called world leading. We are strengthening dismissal protections for pregnant women and new mothers, and expanding gender pay gap action plans. As has been touched on, the pivotal role that the fair work agency will have in ensuring that existing and new rights are enforced cannot be overstated.

The Employment Rights Bill also addresses insecure work such as exploitative zero-hours contracts and the heinous practice of fire and rehire. We know from research that women are more likely to be in insecure work, with an estimated 650,000 women on zero-hours contracts, compared with 519,000 men. So the struggle continues: the work never ceases but the determination of this Government to address workers’ rights and improve protections in the workplace is undimmed.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow for her assistance on the Employment Rights Public Bill Committee. She has carried on her keen interest in this area, helping to push for improved rights at work, as well as rightly celebrating those who have had to fight for their rights in the past.

The Government’s plan to make work pay is delivering real change for millions of people. The work this Government are doing on our transformative agenda, which is led of course by a woman—the Deputy Prime Minister—shows that we are staying true to the spirit of the matchgirls and the trade union movement, and we are renewing our country so that it once again serves the interests of working people. The Employment Rights Bill is a generational leap forward in workers’ protections, and I believe it will be one of the proudest achievements of this Labour Government.

I will turn to my hon. Friend’s points on education. She will know that the Department for Education provides a statutory national curriculum that sets out the subjects and broad content to be taught in maintained schools across England. Within that framework, schools have a degree of flexibility, especially in subjects such as history. There are parts of the history curriculum that lend themselves to teaching about the matchgirls’ strike. In key stage 1, there is teaching about

“the lives of significant individuals in the past who have contributed to national and international achievements”,

during which

“aspects of life in different periods”

can be taught. In key stage 3, there is the theme of ideas, political power, industry and empire in Britain between 1745 and 1901. It can also be taught as part of any local history content in the curriculum, which is particularly pertinent in my hon. Friend’s area.

By coincidence, when I spoke to my parliamentary assistant just before I entered the Chamber, he told me that he was informed of the matchgirls’ struggles during his education, and I hope that that is repeated up and down the country. Oak National Academy offers a resource on the matchgirls’ strike for year 8 pupils, and resources are also available from the Historical Association, English Heritage and the National Archives.

Turning to my hon. Friend’s points on commemoration, this country has a long and well-established tradition of commemorating its national and local individuals through statues and memorials, which serve as a long-lasting reminder of individuals and their efforts for this country and help to bridge the gap between the past and the present. As she will know, it is not normal practice for central Government to fund such monuments, but there is a long history of memorials and statues being funded by public subscription, and the Government support that approach.

Experience has shown that investors, including from the private sector, are often happy and willing to fund new memorials. Many organisations—public and private— are rightly able, subject to the relevant permissions, to freely propose, fund, develop and deliver memorials marking a variety of incidents and historical moments in a way that they are best placed to deem appropriate and sensitive. Many successful memorials are created by a wide range of authorities and organisations, which are able to respond sensitively to the particular circumstances that they seek to commemorate.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate those from Redhills in County Durham, the home of the Pitman’s Parliament—and where I have my office—which has been given money for a huge refurbishment to make it into a living heritage site? The Redhills building will provide young people with an education about what happened in the past, but will also, by showing them how to live out their heritage of the struggles of the mining communities, empower them to go on and fight as the men and women in the north-east did before them. It will be open to the public in the autumn, but I want to congratulate them on the wonderful thing they have done.

[Justin Madders]

I am certainly happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Redhills on that achievement. If it is opening in the autumn, I hope it will be ready for when I come and visit her in her constituency. Perhaps those involved would like to work to that as a target.

As we know, a great many people and organisations are interested in establishing memorials, and as a general rule it is for those groups to work with the relevant local planning authority and other organisations to identify a suitable site and obtain the necessary planning permissions. That said, the Government provide indirect assistance through the memorial grant scheme, which is administered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The scheme makes grants towards the VAT incurred by charities and faith groups in the construction, repair and maintenance of public memorial structures, including war memorials. The scheme has a fixed budget of £500,000 a year for this spending period. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow to correspond with the DCMS if she wishes to seek further advice on the commemoration process.

In conclusion, I once again thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to the House, and for providing the opportunity for the names of those truly courageous and inspirational matchgirls to be forever immortalised in Hansard. That is a fitting tribute, which my hon. Friend has delivered for this House today.

Question put and agreed to.

Employment Rights Bill

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nadia Whittome]

I am a proud trade unionist, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I commend the Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister for introducing this landmark legislation, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), who did a huge amount of work on it as shadow Minister. All of them have dedicated their lives to standing up for working people, and this Bill is a culmination of that work and the work of trade unionists over many, many years.

I would like to speak in support of new clause 73. My own experience of taking time off work as an MP and the contrast with the experience of those on statutory sick pay made it clear just how badly reform is needed. Some years ago, when I needed to take a leave of absence because of the severity of my post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, I received full pay and a phased return, but for many workers, that is a million miles from their experience. The UK has some of the worst sick pay entitlements in Europe. The fact that the Bill means that sick pay will be paid from day one, instead of after day three, is very welcome, as is the removal of the eligibility threshold, increasing access for more than 1 million low-paid workers. However, we must acknowledge that without increasing the rate, the low level of statutory sick pay will continue to place a terrible burden on those who are already poorly paid. That is why amendment 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), is so important.

Those are far from the only issues. Another problem is the inflexibility of statutory sick pay, and that is why I have worked with the mental health charity Mind to table new clause 73. More than 8 million working-age people have long-term health conditions and experience challenges at work. Statutory sick pay currently does not allow for a proper phased return or for workers to reduce their hours during periods of ill health. Statutory sick pay can only be paid for a full day of sickness. If a worker needs a half day, for instance, SSP cannot be used to cover the hours they are not working.

If we force people to return to work before they are ready, whether that is because they cannot afford to remain on statutory sick pay or because a phased return is not an option for them, they are far more likely to be trapped in a cycle of poor mental wellbeing and to fall out of work completely. New clause 73 would mean that sick pay was paid pro rata, by hours rather than days, to allow for that greater flexibility.

Years of successive Government reviews have come to the same conclusion: a flexible statutory sick pay model would improve lives and better support people to remain in work. I have appreciated Ministers’ engagement with me on this issue, and I hope the Government will commit to looking at it further, especially as the cost to the Government would only be administrative. However, the impact it would have on people’s lives is huge.

The Labour movement fought long and hard for the right to sick pay and proper support for those with long-term illness and disability, whether in work or not, because our movement and our party exists to stand up for the whole of the working class. At a time when more people are affected by sickness and disability, it is crucial that this Government support them and do not scapegoat them for the failures and the political choices of the Conservative party.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

As a young worker in the late 1980s, I experienced the precarious nature of the world of work, along with many of my peers. Lack of knowledge about our rights and the fear of being sacked if we complained about our terms and conditions politicised me and made me a lifelong trade unionist and a member of Unite and Unison. I wish to speak to new clause 92, on rolled-up holiday pay for irregular hours workers and part-year workers, and new clause 93, entitled “Working Time Regulations 1998: records”, which are tabled in my name. Like most colleagues in this House, and along with the trade union movement and the millions of workers who will benefit from its provisions, I warmly welcome the Bill and thank everyone who has campaigned for it long and hard.

The majority of people spend a huge portion of their lives in work. Work should be an opportunity to be fulfilled, to live fully, to support ourselves and our family, to develop as individuals, and to contribute to society. In reality, however, for too long and for too many the world of work has been, and is, a world of uncertainty and ruthless exploitation, often stripping people of their dignity and their worth. For millions there is a struggle to obtain secure work, and that strengthens the hand of employers to drive a hard bargain to benefit their balance sheet and their profits. For those who can secure work, working life can remain unclear and insecure. It can include irregular and uncertain employment, uncertainty about hours, payment, and vital matters such as holiday pay and entitlement. While others in the House boast of their endless push for so-called flexible labour markets, the reality is very different for those on the other side of the employment contract—for the workers.

The previous Government spoke about cutting so-called red tape, when they really meant reducing people’s working rights and strengthening the powers of boardroom billionaires. My proposed new clauses are in relation to certain sectors, although they would benefit all workers. It is widely known and acknowledged that some employers use so-called rolled-up holiday pay as a device to tackle their obligations to provide paid time off for holidays. Holidays and breaks from work are essential for workers, and a recognised factor in delivering an effective organisation in the public and private sectors. So-called rolled-up holiday pay is a mechanism by which an employer adds holiday pay to basic pay throughout the working year, but does not provide it separately at the time of taking the holiday. It is acknowledged, including by ACAS, that that creates a risk that a worker may feel under pressure not to take any holiday, or to take less holiday than they are entitled to. That is particularly a risk for those who work in sectors of the economy where the work is irregular, and along with that, their work also tends to be lower paid. The pressure on such workers is immense. New clause 92 seeks to address that risk—a risk accepted and addressed by rulings from the European Court of Justice.

New clause 93 would ensure that working time is accurately recorded by employers. Colleagues across the House may recall that the recordkeeping requirements under the Working Time Regulations 1988 were watered down by amendments tabled by the previous Government in November 2023, following the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. They believed that it was too cumbersome to require employers to maintain accurate records on behalf of employees, referring to it as “time consuming” and “disproportionate reporting.” What a load of rubbish. With advances in modern technology, there is no excuse for an employer to fail to accurately and precisely keep records of the working time contributed by a worker. The onus of managing records should be shifted from employees to allow them to focus on their own roles without added administrative requirements.

This Government’s Employment Rights Bill will deliver a new deal for working people, and I wholeheartedly support it, but I urge the Minister to take account of the issues I have raised and to accept new clauses 92 and 93, which would strengthen the Bill’s provisions and increase protection for the sections of workers who need it the most.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Third sitting)

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Anna Firth]

Thank you.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Q Thank you—I think that that evidence has been very useful to me as a parliamentarian. Richard, you raised some of the warning signs and some of the tactics that the big companies—Apple and Google—may use with us later on. To what extent do you think that the likes of Google and Apple lobby parliamentarians to maintain the status quo?

Richard Stables: The biggest spender in the US on lobbying—they have to make this public—is Google. They spend millions. You must have heard what happened in the European Commission. There was a whole programme they were going to do in terms of trying to lobby on the Digital Markets Act, but it became public and it backfired massively. The Commission said, “Oh, we’re not going to speak to any of you in that sort of forum; we’re going to do it in a very clear fashion.”

I see this a lot, because I have been fighting this a long time. You will see institutions, education bodies and units that have been put up and that are sponsored by big tech. You will listen to what they are saying, and you are going, “Where did you get that from?” They go, “Oh, we’ve done all this research and evidence,” but it’s baloney. You get underneath it, and you are like, “That is not based on facts. That is based on you basically touting what they want you to tout.”

So, yes, I would be really suspicious of what these companies have to say. They have been on the biggest gravy train in history; they do not want to get off it. So they will say whatever it takes to try and obfuscate and persuade and stop this type of activity happening, because they know that the game is up.

Mark Buse: By publicly available numbers, and we obviously believe that the spending far outpaces that, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon have spent well in excess of $300 million in the last two years on advertising alone against anti-trust change. They have spent another huge amount of money on direct lobbying, as well as on public relations efforts and so on around these issues, in the context of the US alone. They have been very strong on that and I do think, as somebody who used to work in Congress, that it has proven effective in slowing anything from occurring in the US.

As was said, if you have an assured pot of income coming in—if you are Apple and Google, in the store—every day that you can keep your walled garden intact is a good day, because even if the Bill passes tomorrow, companies like us are going to have to convince users to try something different. We believe we can drive users to alternatives by lowering price, and there are a lot of dynamics around that. However, in many cases, it is still going to be difficult to pull users out of that walled-off system that has been created.

Richard Stables: To add to what Mark has just said, when they were trying to pass the legislation in the US, there was one month where these companies spent $30 million on TV advertising. They specifically went to a couple of places where there were either Senate or congressional races happening and said exactly what I said earlier, which was, “Amazon Prime will stop working and your Google Maps will stop working.” It is just madness. I remember speaking to Senators and Congressmen, explaining to them that that is just rubbish and asking them to look at what is happening with the DMA in Europe. Amazon has not switched off its Amazon Prime and is never going to, and Google Maps works fine. They will do whatever it takes. I do not think they will try that in the UK, because they have recognised that parliamentarians are—well, they will not. I will not fill that; you can answer that yourselves. But they will try other, subtle things, and the most subtle one of all is innovation and investment. It is the absolute opposite of what they say.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

Q Tom, do you want to add anything?

Tom Fish: You certainly cannot blame the companies for wanting to put their points across to politicians who are potentially radically transforming their markets. I certainly echo the point about being wary of supposed bodies that represent small businesses in these areas. If you receive views from those types of organisation, think carefully about who they are really speaking for.

The one thing I would add is that knowing that those big companies will be lobbying hard is why companies such as Gener8 and others are willing to take the risk to speak out publicly and share our experience, because it is just so important that you hear both sides of the argument.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q Mr Buse, I think you will be pleased to know that everybody in the Committee has now moved their subscription for Tinder from the app store to the website to get cheaper subscriptions, so thank you for that—[Laughter.]

You are a very successful company. You own plenty of brands—Plenty Of Fish, as well as Tinder and the like. What do you make of the argument that, actually, far from inhibiting investment, these companies have encouraged investment by giving you a platform that can access lots of customers around the world?

Mark Buse: We do not deny, first, that what they have created is revolutionary and, secondly, that they should be paid for their intellectual property and their ongoing work. We have always stated that we support their ability to recoup and to profit off of this. There is no issue on that for Match. What causes us so much concern is that they make their decisions arbitrarily in a black box, with no transparency.

If you look at Tinder’s algorithm and Uber’s algorithm, they operate, at the base level, almost identically. We connect two strangers in real time for the purpose of a date. Uber connects two strangers in real time for the purpose of a ride. Uber does not own the car and it does not employ the driver; we encourage you to use an Uber, to not meet somebody in a dark alley in their car. Essentially, it works the same. Yet, on Uber, Uber pays nothing. We and our users have to only use Apple or Google and have to pay 30%. So there is a fundamental problem here.

Some of that is just due to a historical anomaly back when there was a competitive marketplace, but that competitive marketplace no longer exists. Again, we think this Bill gives flexibility, in that it does not have the CMA declare these companies as regulated utilities. Recently, a Minister in the Netherlands said that he believes Apple and Google should be treated like regulated utilities, such as a bank. That is not for me to decide; it is up to parliamentarians to decide. We would have concerns about that, just for precedent, but we think this Bill balances that and creates a flexible marketplace where, as long as Apple and Google are treating entities in a fair and transparent manner, they are entitled to earn profit.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Mary Kelly Foy Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

In summary, the Government should accept Lords amendments 4, 5, 6 and 7. Assuming that the Government win the votes tonight, I hope that the Lords do the right thing and reinstate the amendments, as well as Lords amendment 2. With Lords amendment 1, it is no small irony that it is unelected Labour and Liberal Lords who recognise the democratic deficits of Scotland and Wales having unwanted policies imposed upon us. It is time that Labour recognised that these Lords amendments are at best a sticking plaster. We need full devolution of employment law and workers’ rights to Scotland. Labour must commit to that if it is to form part of the next Westminster Government. While we obviously want full independence, full devolution of employment law is a pragmatic step forward. That reflects the wishes of the trade unions, which I would hope a proper Labour party would be reflective of, because we know that that lot over there on the Government Benches certainly are not listening.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I rise this evening as a proud trade unionist, proud to declare my interest as a member of two great unions—Unite and Unison—and proud to represent a constituency that is at the heart of the labour movement. I know that every single worker who marches in the Durham miners’ gala will be opposed to this Bill, which is autocratic, undemocratic and unworkable. It is autocratic because it gives enormous powers to the Secretary of State through Henry VIII powers, reducing Parliament’s role to a rubber stamp. It is undemocratic because it is another poorly written Bill rushed through Parliament that will undoubtedly see the intervention of the courts after Royal Assent. It is unworkable because trade unions and their members will not accept this blatant attack on their rights, and nor should they.

Since the Combination Act 1799, the party on the Government Benches has tried to suppress working people’s rights, but it has never succeeded in that, and it never will. The right to strike is a fundamental human right that goes hand in hand with freedom of association. History shows us that working people are never afraid to challenge an oppressive Government. We have seen that in the recent wave of industrial action, where workers are prepared to fight for decent pay, against poverty wages, for secure jobs and for their communities. They will continue, whether or not this Bill becomes law, and the public will be on their side.

Ministers could have used this time to negotiate with trade unions, tackling the real causes of industrial unrest. Instead, they have wasted Parliament’s time with a Bill that the Joint Committee on Human Rights has said falls short of human rights obligations. Amendments made in the other place have sought to put flesh on this skeleton Bill—amendments that the Government will reject this evening.

It is disgraceful that this Bill seeks to undermine devolution using Henry VIII powers. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) on her amendment in Committee, and I welcome the amendments from the other place. The British Government should not be interfering in areas where they have no responsibility. It will simply deepen the divide between London and the devolved Governments, and it is a joke that Ministers talk about public safety during strikes when the Bill itself does not even mention safety. It is all just a smokescreen to attack workers’ rights even further.

On the Government’s watch, austerity has removed 20% of firefighters since 2010, making all our lives less secure. It is the same with nurses. Tens of thousands left the job they love just last year, and now the Government want to make nurses’ lives and the lives of millions of other workers even harder. Why are Ministers not tackling the causes of this issue—the cost of living crisis that is making the lives of my constituents a misery?