Employment Agencies and Trade Unions

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I rise to support both statutory instruments, but I will speak in support of only one: the liability of trade unions in proceedings in tort and the increase in the limit on damages. To set the context, we need to look at the rights and obligations under the law of tort—the common-law duty under tort—so that we can understand the rationale behind the measures. As many Members will know, for a liability under tort to become established, we first have to have a duty of care for one organisation or individual to another. There needs to be a breach of that duty and then evidence to demonstrate that the breach was causative of identified damages. That is a standard part of the law of tort and of our common law. It is worth making the point that it applies to all of us in all our relations with one another; it is not unique to the unions. The starting point is that every organisation is responsible in damages for a tortious breach of its duty of care.

I turn to the specific problem with trade unions and trade union-inspired strikes. Although the withdrawal of labour is a fundamental right, as the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) made clear, it can lead to a huge number of breaches of tortious duty if a strike is illegal, because public sector work has an impact on so many other organisations. In previous legislation, the Government created an exemption for unions on legal strikes—the official protected industrial action clauses—but illegal strike action is not protected under the law, so the risk remains that trade unions are open to crippling damages being awarded against them. Why should they not be? If through their illegal actions they have caused identified losses to other individuals, why should they not be responsible for them?

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

Could the hon. Member identify the last time that there was an illegal strike, please?

[Jerome Mayhew]

Since 1982, there has been effective legislation to dissuade that kind of act, but the effectiveness of that legislation has diminished over time to such a level that it is no longer worth applying. The damages cap is so low in real terms that it has become ineffective as a disincentive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a proud member of the Unison and Unite trade unions.

Many Opposition Members will make well-reasoned and well-articulated arguments as to why the Government’s intention to break strikes with agency workers and to bankrupt trade unions violates international law and threatens safety-critical infrastructure in key sectors during periods of industrial unrest—not to mention its economic illiteracy. Those arguments will undoubtedly fall on the deaf ears of a governing party looking into its own spiral of moral depravity. For all their so-called love of liberal democracy, the Conservatives are now effectively seeking to remove the fundamental right of workers to withdraw their labour. As we enter this leadership election and the insufferable spectacle of hopefuls distancing themselves from the low-wage, high-tax, low-growth economy they have created with unrealistic, unfunded promises, I have no doubt that looking tough on trade unions will feature as part of the show for the Tory party faithful. They say we live in the 1970s, but it is they who live in their own warped reality of more than 40 years ago.

I remind the Conservatives that they are the ones who changed the rules with the Trade Union Act 2016, which brought in ballot thresholds set at what they thought were unrealistically high levels. Guess what? Trade unions are meeting them, so can we drop the phoney rhetoric that the likes of Mick Lynch and other trade union bosses are taking members on strike? It is the members of the RMT and other trade unions who take these decisions. They do not stand behind their trade union leaders; their leaders stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

Other unions will undoubtedly follow as working people attempt to claw back a fairer slice of the pie, rather than the crumbs they are being offered—like the Communication Workers Union workers in Crown post offices who are taking their third day of industrial action today. I support every worker taking a stand for their livelihood, their family, their dignity in the workplace and the prosperity of their communities. This Government fear that the action taken by the RMT and the CWU will encourage other working people to do the same. All this comes at a time when the Government’s boss mates are dipping the till by suppressing wages, paying out millions in dividends and giving themselves bonuses while millions of people cannot afford to eat, to heat their home or to put petrol in their car.

After so many decades of believing their own dogma, the Conservatives are running out of things to privatise, with Channel 4 and the Passport Office in their sights. Similarly with the trade unions, they have pushed the needle so far that the obvious next step is to break strikes using agency labour and to break international law—on which they have form. What next? Ban trade unions altogether, or simply legislate them out of existence? How far the Conservative party has descended into the throes of authoritarianism. We must oppose this with everything we have.