Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I join many of my hon. Friends in declaring an interest in the register. I am proud to be a member of Unite the union and to have spent more than 54 years of my life in the labour movement, fighting for workers on the shop floor as a steward and convenor, and across the north-west of England as a Unite regional secretary.

The Business Secretary sought to assure hon. Members that the Government will “always defend” workers’

“ability to withdraw their labour”.—[Official Report, 10 January 2023; Vol. 725, c. 432.]

I can only conclude that, in his rush to steamroll the Bill through the Commons, he has neglected to read it, because it sets out to do the direct opposite—to deny working people their democratic right to engage in lawful and legitimate strike action.

Last week, I warned that the Government are attempting to achieve through legislation what they have been unable to secure in negotiations with the trade unions, but the Business Secretary is gravely mistaken if he believes that the Bill will put an end to the wave of industrial action that we are now witnessing. It is not a recipe for harmonious workplace relations, but the exact opposite. Indeed, this draconian response to the same key workers who Ministers applauded through the pandemic will only strengthen the strikers’ resolve while forcing unions to find more creative and disruptive ways to make their voices heard.

The Business Secretary must also understand that the labour movement is prepared to fight these proposals all the way through this House and in the other place, through the courts, and through workplaces all over the country. He believes that he can bully working people into submission; we will prove him wrong. Soon enough, the Government will find themselves in court having to explain how the Bill can be reconciled with the UK’s obligations under the European convention on human rights, not to mention convention 87 of the International Labour Organisation.

The legal minefield awaiting Ministers in the court of law is nothing compared with the reckoning that awaits them in the court of public opinion. The British public do not support this Bill. When they see the architects of austerity condemning frontline workers for striking for fair pay, they know whose side they are on. They recognise that the issues now driving ambulance drivers, nurses and firefighters to the picket line—from low pay to unsustainable workloads—are the same issues that they face in their own working lives, and they understand that strikes are not to blame for our broken rail network and overwhelmed hospitals. These strikes are not the cause but rather the symptom of a crumbling public sector that has been hollowed to its core by 12 long years of Tory cuts.