Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Paula Barker Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a proud union member and I was a trade union official before entering this place.

After 13 years of Conservative Government, life for ordinary people in this country has got harder. This country is again an outlier on workers’ rights, and has been for some time. What a sad indictment of a Government who purport to be a standard bearer of democratic rights in defence of a free society. This legislation, amounting to yet another brazen attack on an already fragile settlement for workers in this country, flies in the face of the basic liberty to withdraw one’s labour. This legislation does not protect the public—quite the opposite. This Bill, hastily put together, is incoherent and unworkable, and I am sure that in time it will prove unlawful.

This bosses’ charter will make it easier to sack workers across several sectors: our paramedics, firefighters, nurses, train guards and many more. It will not make those workplaces safer. Key workers are demanding a decent settlement amid an economic crisis they had no part in creating. Those workers received the adulation and applause from Conservative Ministers throughout the pandemic, only to be abandoned, threatened and dehumanised when the going got tough. I will oppose this Bill with every fibre of my being.

It was the trade union movement that delivered the weekend, paid holidays, paid sick leave, equal pay, maternity and paternity rights, and the minimum wage. Our collective role now in Labour is to defend the trade unions, provide a voice for their members and our constituents in this place, and prevent this latest attack on our communities. If Conservative Members want to know how Labour would resolve these disputes, they should tell their leader to call a general election and we will soon find out.

Industrial Action

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Lady described people as working in “servitude” if there are minimum service levels, but I point out to her that they would be paid for that servitude. At Network Rail, the average worker is on £46,000 of servitude and the average is £62,000 of servitude for train drivers. If we are going to have a serious debate about minimum service levels, I should say that they are designed to ensure that school kids can get to school again; that office workers, who may be on lower pay, can get to their job; and that the constituents of Members across the House can be guaranteed minimum safety levels during a strike tomorrow. The idea that that is somehow enforcing servitude is absolute nonsense.

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

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Government Members talk about hard-working members of the public, but will the Secretary of State acknowledge that trade union members are also hard-working members of the public? Will he confirm whether the reported £320 million has been paid to the train operators during these strikes because they are indemnified? How much of that £320 million would it have taken to settle the strikes? We have heard a lot about safety measures today, so when will the Government stop trying to force through driver-only operated trains, and when will the NHS get the workforce strategy that it desperately needs?

[Grant Shapps]

The Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) reminds me that driver-only operated trains were introduced under the Labour Government. They are entirely safe; as I mentioned, they operate on my Govia line and I have never had a single constituent come to me to say otherwise. The hon. Lady asks whether trade union members are hard-working; I absolutely agree that they are. Many of them work extraordinary hours, as I already said, particularly in the health context but across the economy.

A responsible Government have to balance the pay in the public sector with the pay in the private sector and across all elements of the economy, which is why we have the independent pay review bodies. Unless the Opposition are now trying to destroy the independent pay review bodies and say that we should ignore them and go beyond what they say, I do not see a better alternative.

The hon. Lady fundamentally misunderstands the way that the railways operate in this country: the receipts are collected and the train operating companies simply receive the money for operating the service.

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.

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[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.

Draft Trade Union (Levy Payable to the Certification Officer) Regulations 2022 Draft Trade Union (Power of the Certification Officer to impose Financial Penalties) Regulations 2022

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 General Committees

[Imran Hussain]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes the point perfectly about the great work of our unions at this most difficult time. Over the past two years, we have seen the real values of our trade unions.

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

I declare an interest as a member of Unison and Unite the union. Does my hon. Friend agree that those on the Government Benches are treating trade union members as if they are not taxpayers in our society? They are taxpayers—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Not all taxpayers.

[The Chair]

Order. Carry on.

[Paula Barker]

Nothing has been said about the money that the trade unions save the economy every year.

[Imran Hussain]

Again, a point well made that needs no further explanation by me. The value of our trade unions is a good point—again, Government Members are nodding. They accept the value of the trade unions. I do not think that there is a debate about that.

To go back to my point, in imposing the levy, the Government have deliberately misunderstood the role of trade unions, treating them not as a voice of working people but as profit-making companies. Let me be clear: this Government know full well that trade unions do not exist to make profits for themselves; they exist for the betterment of their members and the workforce as a whole in this country. I have already made this point, but given that we would not think to force charities to pay such a high levy to the Charity Commission, it is frankly outrageous to ask the trade unions to do so.

The Government have also failed to set out a real case for why they need to impose the levy. As democratically accountable organisations in their own right, trade unions have high compliance rates with their legal duties. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East pointed out, the certification officer dealt with just 34 complaints against trade unions, not one of which ended up with an enforcement order being pursued.

The reality is that if this draft statutory instrument passes, trade unions will have to meet the costs—my hon. Friend made this point—of politically motivated, malicious, vexatious and unsubstantiated investigations into them. Those investigations will almost certainly be initiated by those who have long-standing opposition to our trade unions. That is why we must vote the instrument down today.

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[John Spellar]

I think that applies to all sorts of activities. Of course, the hon. Gentleman is assuming that those 10 million retired people were not trade unionists when they were at work—a great majority were. They may actually believe in trade unions and think that there were very good in their time, and may regret that the role of trade unions has been diminished by persistent attack from Conservative Governments and employers.

[Paula Barker]

Does my right hon. Gentleman agree that some retired people are still members of trade unions, participate fully in their structures, and benefit from them?

[John Spellar]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

In addition, even those who are not union members benefit from union activity. If they work in an establishment, they will benefit from a pay rise. If they move from employer to employer in an industry that is mobile in and of its nature, such as the construction industry, union agreements underpin their terms and conditions. Interestingly, in Western Australia, when the Conservative Government was trying to bring in very rigid regulation of unions, many well-paid non-union members in the mines recognised that their terms and conditions and balance of power with the employer were underpinned by trade union activity and organisation. Basically, when unions are working well, everybody benefits—not just workers, but the economy and good employers.

What we have seen with the international attack led by the Republican right in the United States, as indeed with their so-called voting regulations—again, to address non-existent problems—is the labour share of gross domestic product around the world steadily declining in the face of those attacks, and that directly reflects the decline in union influence in the workforce.

Of course, that plays into the economy as well, because what we see then is a demand deficit in the economy. As money has been put into the economy, particularly during the era of covid, the amount of money that has been skewed towards the ultra-rich and super-rich has been going up while living standards have been kept down. Again, we saw that with Thatcher-Reagan and—

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[Paula Barker]

Listening to the debate, it is literally like going back to the future. Such is the obsession of this Conservative Government, like every one before them, with taking a sledgehammer to trade union power—what little there is left in 2022—that anyone would think that it is 1979.

Let us be clear: this measure represents a further attack on our civil liberties, for which the governing party has little regard anyhow. In this instance, the very organisations that defend workers’ rights and advance the call for better conditions are now in line for a further degradation of their powers. Trade unions have always sought to resolve conflict as a first resort. They balance the scales of the unequal distribution of power in our labour market, and are a force for overwhelming good in eradicating the inequalities that are deeply embedded in our society.

This statutory instrument represents a tax on trade union activity. It will give rise to the perverse situation that a trade union will have to pay its own regulator to regulate its activities.

[Mark Garnier]

I would like to correct an earlier intervention. The tax actually works out at 1.5p per member per year. I apologise for getting my maths wrong earlier, Mr Davies. I was an investment banker for 17 years.

[Paula Barker]

I did not make any comment about how much the tax is; I simply said that it was a tax.

[Jessica Morden]

The proposals treat trade unions like profit-making companies. Political parties do not pay for the Electoral Commission, and charities do not pay for the Charity Commission, so why should trade unions pay for their regulator?

[Paula Barker]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. No other organisation with social activities pays a levy of this sort, and it is wholly inappropriate for trade unions to do so.

This tax is unjustifiable, and is set to be grossly exaggerated by the certification officer’s own distorted valuations. The trade union levy will become the double levy, going far and beyond covering the base operational costs—the TUC estimates £415,000 in the year 2022-23. Some £1.15 million to cover £700,000 worth of costs simply does not add up. I do not know how the Government can justify that.

The levy is a double tax, with little safeguard, scrutiny or accountability. Trade unions will have to pay for potentially vexatious investigations, initiated by friends like the “TaxAvoiders Alliance”, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley called it, or the Institute of Economic Affairs. I know at first hand that our trade unions have a long-established reputation of complying with their legal regulations. I have been a member of the trade union movement for over 30 years. I was also an activist for over a decade before taking my place in this House—[Interruption.] Mr Davies, I think it would benefit Conservative Members to actually listen to what is being said.

[The Chair]

Order. I think the hon. Lady is absolutely right, to be perfectly honest. There are some very loud conversations taking place opposite the hon. Lady. It is distracting to me and completely disrespectful to her. Please can we listen to what she has to say? It is the least she can expect.

[Paula Barker]

Thank you, Mr Davies. We have to ask what could possibly be the motivation for such continued, sustained attacks from the Tory Government. The certification officer’s annual report for 2020-21 shows that she dealt with 34 complaints last year. That is one for every 200,000 union members, and not a single enforcement was imposed. It does not take a genius to work out that political ideology rather than good governance is the driving force behind the trade union levy.

Not satisfied with stringent balloting laws, interference with trade union democracy and outlawing acts of solidarity, the Government are now trying to bring in a new tax with criminal-like fines to boot. It is worth reiterating what has been stated several times today by hon. Members: other issues stemming from the Trade Union Act 2016—most significantly electronic balloting—remain outstanding. Why is that? Up and down the country, working people are feeling the pinch. Inflation is at 5.4%. There are rising energy prices. This is a real cost of living crisis. What are the Government doing? They are here, saying that valuable parliamentary time is better spent in this Committee Room today than actually dealing with the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting so many working people in this country.

As the hon. Member for Glasgow South West said, we are waiting on the Government to bring an employment Bill. I want to place on record that I had a private Member’s Bill, and the Minister was extremely generous with his time. We had very cordial and constructive conversations. We talked about the employment Bill coming to the Floor of the House. We talked about the fact that low-paid care workers, predominantly women, were not being paid what they are legally entitled to.

It is not about what these care workers could be paid or what the trade unions could negotiate, it is written in law that they should be paid travel time between visits. Are the Government addressing those sorts of issues? No, they are not. They are looking to bring back anti-trade union laws to this House. Quite frankly, I think that is morally reprehensible. My final question to the Government is: where does this all stop? Will the Government not stop until they finally outlaw the trade unions?

Covid-19: Requirements for Employees to be Vaccinated

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) on securing this incredibly important debate and on his superb contribution.

We are sleepwalking into a crisis. The motives for making vaccination mandatory for NHS staff may have come from an honest and sincere place, but one issue is not properly resolved if that inadvertently creates a bigger problem elsewhere. So polarising is this debate that we often find ourselves qualifying our support for the vaccination programme. I am double-jabbed and boosted, and I encourage my constituents who are staff in the NHS to get vaccinated if they have not done so. However, this can be done through encouragement and consent; it does not have to be mandatory.

I laid out my concerns to the Health Secretary when the statutory instrument was considered in the Chamber. I said then that it would cause a workforce crisis; I said then that such a practice should not be applied to the law, as it was in the case of hepatitis B, as hon. Members have already mentioned. Increasing vaccine uptake should be built on consent and negotiation with those who have not yet been jabbed. I also said in December that forcing people to get vaccinated when they have already given blood, sweat and tears during the most dangerous periods of the pandemic is not only immoral but illogical.

The founding principles of the NHS were built on consent. This legislation flies in the face of that. We clapped for the workers on a Thursday evening at the start of the pandemic. Those brave souls put their lives at risk because most of them did not have the appropriate PPE—the Government failed them on that, yet again. A variation of either delaying, pausing or scrapping this move entirely is the position of the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Nursing, the British Medical Association, Unison, Unite the union and other organisations that represent most NHS staff. Like them, I know that creating a workforce crisis when our NHS can least afford it, in its 74-year history, is reckless. It will be on this House if such a crisis comes to pass.

What is really interesting is that the Health Secretary believes that these people are such a danger to the public that, in December, he did not want them to immediately be moved from the workplace. No, he wanted them to get us through the Christmas crisis in the NHS and then he would thank them by sacking them on 1 April. It is morally reprehensible.

We do not know what the impact of losing up to 8% of its workforce will be on the NHS, because the final number is yet to be revealed. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee raised credible and critical concerns that have had no impact whatsoever. There has been no thorough impact assessment from the Department and there is a lack of clarity on whether the benefits of this measure are proportionate to the NHS losing up to 126,000 staff members and then spending over a quarter of a billion pounds on recruitment to fill the resulting vacancies.

I did not come into politics to sack thousands of health workers on the back of an unprecedented public health disaster, but that is what this Government are going to do—this Government who disregarded their own rule book throughout the pandemic; who had “bring your own bottle” parties; who are led by a Prime Minister who claims he did not know whether it was a party or not, and who has come to this House and circumvented answering the most precise questions, while the rest of us obeyed the rules and while care and NHS workers worked tirelessly to save people’s lives. Those health workers are now going to be sacked. It is absolutely disgraceful.

Opposition parties should play no part in taking this sledgehammer to our national health service—and that is exactly what this will be. It is morally reprehensible and I implore the Government to change course on this, because it is not too late.

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[Paul Scully]

I will come to the issue of NHS workers in a second, and show what we are doing regarding non-patient-facing NHS workers and the moves we are taking to help people get vaccinated.

[Paula Barker]

I am interested in what the Minister is saying, but he has just referred to an economic argument. Does he not agree that sacking up to 126,000 NHS staff would have a severely detrimental effect on our economy?

[Paul Scully]

My economic argument was not specifically about the NHS. It was about the fact that vaccines are the way out of this, to get back to a sense of normality—a new normal, whatever that normal is—and allow people to protect businesses, livelihoods and jobs around the country as best we can. Clearly, the best way to work with the NHS is to make sure we can work with those who are unvaccinated to get them vaccinated and, eventually, boosted.

Green Energy in the North-west

Paula Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) for calling today’s important debate. We both share a passion for new job creation and investment in infrastructure across Merseyside and our north-west region.

As my hon. Friend said, the north-west of England was the birthplace of the industrial revolution. The history of our region, the ingenuity of our people, our culture and our belief in the dignity of work as the tide that lifts all boats, mean we are well placed to lead on the coming industrial revolution—to innovate, to build and ultimately tackle the climate crisis head on.

Although we look back at our history, we do not dwell on it. Rather, it acts as a catalyst to ensure that we meet the demands of the 21st century, to create good jobs, to use the climate emergency as an economic opportunity for a just transition that takes manufacturing workers and communities on a journey that leaves no sector behind, especially the jewel in our crown—the automotive sector.

A new generation of leaders is taking up the fight to realise those demands. The Government talk a big game on levelling up. All I hope is that the substance behind the slogans matches the scale of the ambition that our metro Mayor Steve Rotheram has for Merseyside. The Liverpool city region was the first region to declare a climate emergency in June 2019, and the metro Mayor has committed to reaching net zero carbon by 2040, a decade ahead of the UK target.

The tidal range of the Mersey estuary provides us with a unique opportunity to create a low-carbon electricity generation project that has the potential to create up to 5,000 jobs. Highly skilled, green manufacturing jobs should power our economic recovery beyond the pandemic. It is calculated that the Mersey tidal power project has the potential to generate up to four times the energy of all the wind turbines in Liverpool bay: enough energy to power 1 million homes.

Sadly, we do not have much time this afternoon, but I want to use the time I have to champion the Mersey tidal power project. The Government have the levers at their disposal to make that happen, so give us the tools to get on with the job, not least through the north-west energy hub. In the year of COP26, we need bold affirmations in our devolved Administrations to assist in the UK-wide strategy to address the climate emergency.

As Mayor Rotheram’s manifesto states,

“The River Mersey has been the lifeblood of our fortunes for centuries.”

He is right. Let us make it so for the next century.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paula Barker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

Spending from the UK Government will be complementary to that coming from the Scottish Government. We want to add to that and to make sure that the UK economy can flourish. Scottish business will be at risk without the regulatory certainty of this Bill, so we want to prevent additional layers of complexity.

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

What steps he is taking to support (a) the Mersey tidal project and (b) other new jobs and environmentally sustainable energy production on Merseyside.

[The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I reassure the hon. Lady that we are looking with great interest at the Mersey tidal project and that the Government have already funded the north-west energy hub so that we can drive huge opportunities for the region in renewable energy. I know that BEIS officials recently met representatives from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority to discuss the very Mersey tidal project that she mentions.

[Paula Barker]

Highly skilled, green manufacturing jobs should power our economic recovery beyond the pandemic and it is calculated that the Mersey tidal scheme could have the potential to generate up to four times the energy of all the wind turbines in Liverpool bay—enough energy to power 1 million homes. Liverpool city region’s Mayor has already secured £2.5 million of funding for the next phase of work. Given the Minister’s positive response, will he meet with the metro Mayor, local MPs and industry experts such as Martin Land, who now heads up the project, to help to accelerate it to feed stage development at the appropriate juncture?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I would be very happy to meet with MPs and representatives in the Mersey region. I know the Mayor, Steven Rotherham; I met him in my previous life as a DExEU Under-Secretary. I am happy to meet him and others again.