Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Mick Whitley Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon]

The Minister shakes his head. If what I am saying is not true, why does he not take that measure out of the Bill, so that workers cannot be sacked for not complying with work notices? That is in the legislation. I shall be charitable to the Minister. Having listened to him in a number of debates, I sometimes thought that he did not realise quite how pernicious the Bill was, but I think that others in the Conservative party do; they know exactly what they are doing.

This anti-trade union Bill, which the Government do not wish to consult on properly, comes hot on the heels of the criminalisation of peaceful protest, which is a democratic right in our society, and hot on the heels of voter ID, when what we should be doing is making it easier for people to vote in our society, not harder. This is an anti-trade union piece of legislation that shames the Government. People can see through it.

The Government cannot even pretend to be up for proper consultation by accepting Lords amendment 2D. They know what the ILO thinks of it, they know what our colleagues in the other place think of it, and they know what the British people think of it. That is why the next Labour Government will repeal this rotten piece of legislation, if indeed it passes, and bring in an important suite of workers’ rights, because workers and trade unions in this country have had enough of being treated like dirt for the past 13 years. Let us stop this race to the bottom in workers’ rights, and instead build a democratic system—a democratic system where we can be proud of the workers’ rights in our country.

[Mick Whitley (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

May I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?

The Lords have been set an unenviable task in attempting to amend a piece of legislation as ill-conceived as this one. As a lifelong opponent of the principle of an unelected second Chamber, I am surprised to find myself now commending the thoughtfulness and diligence that the other place has demonstrated in its many sittings concerning this legislation. It has been a breath of fresh air when compared with this Government’s recklessness in attempting to rush the Bill through Parliament.

I rise in support of Lords amendment 2D. Its purpose is simple: to ensure that perhaps the most significant piece of trade union legislation to be considered by this House in more than a century is subject to appropriate scrutiny before it is added to the statute book. I wish to repeat the comments that I made when we considered the Lords amendments on 22 May. I said that no number of amendments could ever salvage this Bill. It is rotten to the core. It targets a right that should be sacrosanct in any democracy—the right to withdraw our labour.

In sectors such as education and health, the provisions of the Bill will hobble the ability of working people to fight for the dignity and fairness that we all deserve in the workplace, and make the trade unions themselves unwilling accomplices in undermining the effectiveness of their own industrial action.

Worse still, in sectors such as air traffic control or nuclear decommissioning, minimum service regulations will, in effect, amount to a ban on taking any strike action at all. Ministers have repeatedly insisted that their policies towards the trade union movement conform with international standards and our treaty obligations. That was not the view taken by the High Court last week when it quashed the Government’s law allowing employers to bring in scab labour to break strikes. The court’s verdict was damning: that the Government’s approach was so unfair as to be “unlawful” and, indeed, “irrational”.

Despite the claims made by this Government that the International Labour Organisation supports minimum service standards, the director general of the ILO has made an unprecedented intervention in voicing his concern about the effects of the Bill on workers and of the Government’s strategy of imposing minimum service requirements on workers instead of encouraging them to be negotiated between unions and management.

Most embarrassingly of all for the Government, the Bill has been slammed by their own independent Regulatory Policy Committee as being not fit for purpose. The question that all of us should be asking is why the Bill was not withdrawn the moment the RPC slapped it with a red rating in February. Why are we still debating proposals that have been condemned by not only my friends in the trade union movement but a vast swathe of trade associations and the business community? Their verdict is astoundingly clear: they do not think the Bill will work. They are concerned, with good cause, that it will make industrial relations in this country worse. They simply do not want the Bill.

The answer is simple. The Government are aware of their impending electoral oblivion. They are intent on driving through reforms that will realise their decades-long dream of a world in which workers are stripped of all their rights and left helpless at the whims of their employers. It is about time for a little more candour from those on the Government Benches.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank all Members for their contributions to the debate. I think that it is time to agree to disagree with some of the points that have been made by Opposition Members. The Bill is compatible with our international obligations, which the Government will continue to uphold. We have announced a new code of practice, which will provide the clarity that Opposition Members have been asking for throughout the Bill’s passage. I encourage the other place to take note of the strong view of this House, and that its will should be respected.

Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 2D.