Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

If there is anybody whom the hon. Gentleman thinks was not able to contribute to the consultation, I ask him to please let me know, but it was open to anybody to make a submission to the consultation, and all those submissions will be properly assessed by Ministers and officials.

I turn now to the Lords amendments that would restrict the ways in which we can ensure that minimum service levels are achieved, Lords amendment 4B still leaves employers powerless to manage instances of non-compliance when workers strike contrary to being named on a work notice.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Could the Minister set out the timescale for the consultation and how he intends to carry it out?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As the hon. Lady may know, our initial consultations closed around the middle of May—9 May to 11 May. Those submissions will now be considered, and we will report back to the House accordingly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachael Maskell]

I should refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the jurisdiction of trade unions. I have said this in the House before, but Government Members just do not seem to understand it. It is the members of the trade union who determine what happens within a trade union—it is not a general secretary or even an executive, but the members—so how are they, as individual members, going to instruct workers to attend work?

[Justin Madders]

That is really a question for the Minister, and one that I think the Government have failed to answer adequately. I think the point my hon. Friend makes is a good one. When Conservative Members traduce the union barons, they actually traduce every single member of the trade union who has voted in support of industrial action, and I am afraid that that is no way for any Government to operate.

I would ask Conservative Members, not that there are many here, to consider what the Bill actually means. Representatives of trade unions will be required to encourage, cajole, advise, pressurise or even demand that their members cross a picket line. They will be asking trade unions to actively go against the very thing they were set up to do. I would say that it is a bit like asking a Conservative MP to vote in support of higher taxes, but I guess that, with the highest tax burden in over half a century, we may have to drop that particular analogy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens]

I, too, refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In opening the debate, the Minister skirted round amendment 4B and just said that the Government were opposed to it. A number of us intervened at the time, but I really do think that he needs to consider the Government’s position carefully, particularly on that amendment, because it gets to the heart of the Bill and why so many of us are expressing concerns about the attacks on natural justice and on human rights.

Lords amendment 4B asks that employees receive a work notice in good time. It seems fairly uncontroversial that a work notice should be issued to a worker in good time if they are to attend their work. If we do not accept the amendment, we will end up with a scenario where someone returns to work after a day of industrial action and is told they are being dismissed with no evidence whatsoever that they have been given a work notice. Of course, the Government do not want to give the responsibility for the work notice to the employer, so the employer will have no obligation at all to serve an employee with a work notice, but they could dismiss them the very next day after industrial action.

Let me emphasise that the employee would have no recourse to an employment tribunal. Surely it is a fundamental human right, and fundamental to natural justice, that if a worker is dismissed, they have recourse to a tribunal to challenge that decision. That, to me, seems fairly self-evident and obvious, but the Government are allowing a situation where rogue employers will be able to dismiss a worker for taking part in industrial action with no recourse to a tribunal, and they will not need to evidence the fact that that worker was served with a work notice.

The Government find themselves in a preposterous situation by opposing Lords amendment 4B, so I hope that the Minister will be able to answer some of these questions. Is it really the Government’s position, as I have outlined, that it is okay for an employer to dismiss those on strike and that they will not need to provide evidence that the employee was obliged to go into work? It is ludicrous.

[Rachael Maskell]

While the Government clearly do not want workers to have access to justice through the employment tribunal, of course those workers’ human rights will have been infringed, so will they not have access to other courts to challenge this egregious legislation?

[Chris Stephens]

Hopefully the Minister will answer that question.

The Minister did say in answer to my intervention that it happens in other countries. Yes, it happens in Russia and Hungary. Are Government Members really going to justify the Bill by saying, “It happens in other countries like Hungary and Russia”? Is that the Government’s example? Let me name another country—Italy, where workers can be disciplined but short of dismissal. But the Government do not want to follow the Italian model; they want to be in line with Hungary and Russia. It is incredible that the Government have found themselves in that position.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

That is not what has been said, and I disagree with that perspective. The fact that other jurisdictions and other nations use this approach to making sure there are minimum service levels to protect the public, their lives and their livelihoods is indicative that it is the right thing to do. Indeed, as the hon. Gentleman knows, derogations exist in parts of our public services that do exactly what we are requiring services to do with minimum service levels; it is just that they do not work effectively all the time.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister finds himself in an isolated position. At the Health and Social Care Committee on 9 May, NHS Providers, NHS Employers and NHS Confederation all said that the Bill was incredibly unhelpful and that additional legislation could make things more difficult, rather than improving the situation. Sir Julian Hartley, the chief executive officer of NHS Providers, said so. Why is the Minister going against the employers, not just the trade unions?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We do not see that as being the case and we do not agree with that position. We think the Bill is effective and that it is the right thing to do to make sure that people can go about their daily lives unhindered, without fear or concerns about not being able to access vital public services.

I turn next to Lords amendment 1, which changes the application of the Bill from the whole of Great Britain to England only. The amendment would mean that strike action would continue to have disproportionate impacts on the public in Wales and Scotland. As the Government have always maintained, the purpose and substance of the Bill is to regulate employment rights and duties and industrial relations in specified services. Industrial relations is clearly a reserved matter and therefore we consider it right and appropriate to apply the legislation to the whole of Great Britain.

I also point out that the employer has statutory discretion on whether to issue a work notice ahead of the strike, specifying the workforce required to achieve the minimum service level. We hope that all employers will issue work notices to ensure that minimum service levels are achieved where it is necessary to do so. Employers must consider any contractual, public law or other legal duties that they have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sam Tarry]

The Minister shakes his head, but that is a fact. If he does not believe me, I will take him to my local hospital to see that and to have discussions with the union reps, who regard the safety of their patients as their outright priority.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that very point, because I used to negotiate those deals with employers when I was head of health at Unite. Those negotiations are about the relationship that we build between the employer and the worker, but that will not be possible under the Bill, which is why employers have asked that it does not proceed.

[Sam Tarry]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. When we cast around for anybody actually supporting the Bill who is not a Minister or on the Conservative Benches, we struggle to find anyone. In fact, the Rail Safety and Standards Board chief executive has said nobody thinks this is workable and that it will worsen industrial action. The chief executive of Greater Anglia, who is obviously involved in the railway industry, has said nobody —nobody—in the whole of the rail industry has even asked for this. Then, as we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and many other Members who have spoken, there are the condemnations from the ILO general secretary.

This attack on rights is making our country an international laughing stock. The Government have said many times that the Bill matches or is very similar to some of the minimum service level processes in many other countries, but there is not a single person in Europe saying this is good idea, because it is not anything like what is in place in comparable countries around the world—not at all. One in five workers could be covered by this Bill’s provisions. They are the nurses, firefighters, teachers, paramedics, rail workers, civil servants and key workers the Government praised during the pandemic, who are all at risk of arbitrary dismissal. What a slap in the face for the heroes we clapped for weeks on end during the pandemic.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 4, on unfair dismissal. Currently, workers who are on strike are automatically deemed to be unfairly dismissed if they are sacked when taking part in an official, lawful strike. The Bill as introduced would remove that protection for those named by an employer in a work notice. It would mean that someone disciplined for not following a work notice could lose their job and then their livelihood. Lords amendment 4 is much fairer. It would reverse that measure and prevent the failure to comply with a work notice from being regarded as a breach of contract or constituting lawful grounds for dismissal. To be fair to the Government, I have not heard even them say that people should be sacked for trying to enact democratic rights. That would be a U-turn on what the Government said when minimum service level legislation was first brought forward. It was pledged in the 2019 Queen’s speech that

“sanctions are not directed at individual workers.”

The Bill clearly does do that, but the Lords amendment would help the Government to develop the policy set out in their own manifesto, so why not go ahead and back it tonight?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lavery]

Absolutely. I fully agree with those sentiments.

When employers are considering who they might wish to give the work notice to, Lords amendment 3 suggests that when deciding whether to identify a person in a work notice, an employer cannot consider whether the person “has or has not” taken part in trade union activities, made use of their services or had a trade union raise issues on their behalf. That amendment should not be needed in the UK in 2023, because everybody clearly understands that if bosses give work notices, they have a clear idea who they will give them to: the trade union reps and the people who do not have a fantastic employment record. That is why that Lords amendment about who the company identifies for a work notice is really important.

In reality, this legislation is simply a battering ram against ordinary working people. I have mentioned the resistance that will be shown in this country if we start sacking the nurses, the teachers and the posties. Blaming the posties for breaking the universal service obligation; blaming the teachers for education in their classes; blaming the nurses for the backlog—you name it, that is what the bosses will do. That will start under this legislation, as they will have the power to sack people. This is a sackers charter, no doubt about that, criminalising our heroic workers.

There will be resistance like we have never seen before. The difference is that the public are on the side of the workers on this one, so be ready. I raise a stark warning: be ready. When the bosses have the books out, ready to sack individuals, and when the Government are telling them who to sack and what the reasons might be, they should be ready for the resistance, because there will be huge issues. How can the Government expect a trade union to take responsibility for individuals who might not want to accept a basic human right? It is bizarre. It is absolutely crazy. I am trying to explain it, but it is very difficult; it is not simple. The trade unions have a huge role to play.

The Bill not only escalates an already febrile atmosphere in this country; it is a vicious attempt the pin the problems that we have on trade unions, from a party that has completely run out of steam. When will the Government start doing their job, for heaven’s sake? How many more hospital appointments need to be set back? How many teachers need to be made redundant or letters and parcels be delivered late before they stop making excuses and demonising workers, and get on with the job that they were elected to do?

[Rachael Maskell]

My hon. Friend is making an outstanding speech about the reality of industrial relations. Does he agree that trade unions do not have any jurisdiction over their members; it is the members who have the jurisdiction over the trade unions? Therefore, it is for the members to decide what action they take or do not take. The Government do not seem to get it.

[Ian Lavery]

My hon. Friend makes a good and valid point that the trade unions are the workers themselves. It is as simple as that.

In conclusion, will Government Members tell us why we are not having a minimum service Bill for non-strike days? In the past year or so, in particular when the paramedics and ambulance workers have gone on strike, efficiency has increased and has been first class on strike days. On non-strike days, like the 360-odd days other than those strike days, unfortunately what we see is people lying on pavements or having heart attacks who cannot get an ambulance. Let us look at a Bill for non-striking days so we can enhance the efficiency of all of the services outlined tonight. If the Minister did that, he would get our support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for the amount of work that he does as a trade envoy. We both met our Indonesian friends this week, and the Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) will be visiting Indonesia shortly, so we are certainly building those relationships. We are always keen to look at future opportunities for trade agreements and, outside trade agreements, at enhancing the relationship through a variety of fora, for the very reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) explains. We look forward to continued engagement with Indonesia.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

16. Whether it remains her Department’s policy to bring forward an employment Bill.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

The best thing we can do to help people with employment is to have a strong economy with low unemployment, and I am pleased to say that we have both. Although there is no employment Bill, the Government are supporting six private Members’ Bills to deliver on our manifesto commitments: helping new parents and unpaid carers, giving employees easier access to flexible working and giving workers the right to request a more predictable working pattern. The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 has also now completed its journey.

[Rachael Maskell]

According to Stop Hurt at Work, 27% of employees experience bullying or harassment at work. There is no legal definition of workplace bullying and no simple path to restitution. Although we have been promised employment legislation by this Government since 2017, and in the light of Matthew Taylor’s “Good work” report, we have not seen an employment Bill in this Parliament to protect workers at work. Can we expand employment rights in legislation to ensure that there is a clear path to restitution for people experiencing bullying at work?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I point out that the unemployment rate in York is at a record low of 1.4%, which is below the national average, as I am sure the hon. Lady would welcome.

Since the good work plan was published, the Government have taken forward a wide range of commitments, including giving all workers the right to receive a statement of their rights on day one and the right to request a more predictable working pattern. I am very happy to meet the hon. Lady following these questions to discuss the points she raises.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the mental health and wellbeing plan.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.

It is now 11 years since there was a major debate in Parliament on mental illness, when I and many other hon. Members spoke about their own experiences. That debate changed attitudes in this place towards mental illness and wellbeing, and both the press and members of the public have made great strides in being able to speak about mental health. We also now have members of the royal family speaking about their own mental illness, and it is heartening to see the Prince of Wales taking mental health and wellbeing as one of their charity initiatives. Unfortunately, however, there is still a lot of progress to be made in delivering timely treatment, particularly prevention and early intervention.

In England, the numbers speak for themselves. Around 1.7 million people are in contact with mental health services, and according to NHS England’s monthly statistic dashboard, 26,000 of them are occupying hospital beds or have a hospital bed open to them. We have also seen severe pressures on ambulance services and the police due to people in mental health crisis asking for help. However, according to the National Audit Office, there could be around 8 million people with mental health needs that are not currently being met by mental health services.

I am sure the Minister will tell us shortly that the Government are delivering record levels of investment in mental health services, but according to research by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, almost a quarter of people are waiting more than 12 weeks for any form of treatment. Some 43% of mental health patients say that longer waiting times make their conditions worse, and 78% resort to attending A&E because they cannot access services. I am sorry, but that is unacceptable. It shows that despite the amount of money going into mental health—I would argue that there needs to be more—much more needs to be done on prevention. We need a joined-up approach across Government to reduce the demand on services and to get people more timely treatment and intervention.

That is why I welcomed the Government’s announcement of the development of a cross-departmental 10-year mental health and wellbeing plan last year, and it was also broadly welcomed by everyone in the mental health sphere, including many charities. It was launched with a great fanfare of publicity as a major initiative by the Government, who said at the time of the launch that

“now is the right time to think about bold, long-term actions to build the mentally healthy society that we want to see in 10 years’ time.”

The then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), said that

“our new 10-year plan will set an ambitious agenda for where we want the mental health of our nation to be in a decade’s time.”

Over 5,200 individuals, organisations and stakeholders responded to the discussion paper. Charities such as Mind said that a truly cross-Government plan will play a key role in making sure that support for our mental health starts to rebuild, post pandemic, to the same level as our physical health, so it was a bit of a shock when the 10-year plan was quietly scrapped in January this year. Instead, the Government say that mental health will be addressed in their major conditions strategy. As I have already stated, it is clear from the number of people requiring interventions that mental health should be included in any such strategy.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I completely concur with his concern. There is a challenge. We know we are very interconnected beings, and our mental health and physical health are joined up. If we do not provide the focus required around mental health, it can get subsumed into other priorities, with mental health not having its day, its funding or real impact.

[Mr Jones]

Yes, but that is what was so good about the 10-year mental health plan. That was going to do exactly what my hon. Friend suggests. It was going to look at the interconnections between physical and mental health, and some of the reasons it occurs in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

Personally, I would not call it emotional intelligence; I would call it emotional robustness and I will come on to say more about that. However, the hon. Gentleman is right about the importance of trying to make sure that young people are as robust as possible in dealing with the situations that face them now in modern life.

The discussion paper for the 10-year plan mentioned no fewer than 18 disparity factors relating to mental health, including financial insecurity, discrimination, the criminal justice system, poor quality of work or employment, living standards—the list goes on. It is important to acknowledge those factors, because the Government themselves said that they needed to be addressed in mental health and wellbeing plan. Colleagues will know that I have often been on the record saying that the way to tackle mental health and wellbeing is to make sure that we hardwire into Government policy consideration of mental health and resilience across Departments. That is why I welcomed the approach in the plan.

However, building consideration of mental health into a major conditions strategy means that only one disparity factor is likely to be taken into consideration, which is physical health. Many other disparity factors, which are often complex, obviously relate to people’s wellbeing, but I fear they will be sidelined in the strategy.

Let us just take one of those other disparity factors, which is financial insecurity. According to the Office for National Statistics last autumn, around one in six adults experienced moderate or severe depressive symptoms. That increased to one in four for those who find it difficult to pay energy bills, or rent or mortgage payments. And according to a YouGov poll for Barnardo’s, almost a third of parents said that children’s mental health has worsened during the cost of living crisis.

We know that the effect of wellbeing on health includes its effect on mental health, which is substantial. This was such a key priority for the Government that they outlined its importance in their levelling-up agenda. The levelling up White Paper said that

“wellbeing has a bearing on all four of the UK Government’s objectives for levelling up”.

The 10-year plan discussion paper specifically said that

“a new plan for mental health is needed to deliver the Government’s levelling up mission to narrow the gap in healthy life expectancy between local areas”.

However, we now have no mental health 10-year plan, so where does that leave those good words that were in the levelling up White Paper?

We also need early intervention and prevention, which are so important. We know for a fact that around 50% of mental health conditions are established by the time that a child reaches the age of 14 and 75% of them are established by the time someone is 24. However, it is estimated that 60% of children and young people who have diagnosable mental health conditions currently do not receive NHS care. I share the very valid concerns raised by mental health charities and others that scrapping the 10-year plan and merging mental health into the major conditions strategy means that the people who will be at most risk will be children and young people, who are less likely to have chronic physical health conditions, but are most likely to benefit from early intervention, for example counselling or psychotherapy.

I have spoken before about the importance of making sure that we get children and young people’s mental health right. Rates of probable mental health disorders in children aged between six and 16 have risen from 11.6% in 2017 to 18% in 2022. That equates to one in six children aged between six and 16 having a probable mental health condition. And as has already been mentioned, 700,000 children have accessed mental health services in the last 12 months.

[Rachael Maskell]

The Government need to take on board the important point that addressing the scale of mental health challenges in young people will not just be about health and looking at that major conditions strategy and how it interrelates with other health conditions, but about looking at what society offers, such as the education system, the digital community and so much more, which put so much pressure on young people. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is why we need this focus?

[Mr Jones]

That was the beauty of the 10-year plan; it was going to do that.

Coming back to children’s and young people’s mental health, referrals have increased according to the Children’s Commissioner, but waiting times are growing and fewer children are receiving treatment. We need universal access to counselling for children, which we do not have at the moment. That is why I support providing special mental health support in every school. I stress that schools are not islands, separate from their communities. We also need clear links between the support given there and in the community.

I have already spoken about having a joined-up approach to mental health, but there is another issue: to use a Bill Clinton quote, “It’s the economy, stupid.” If media reports are correct, the Chancellor will stand up later today to deliver what he is calling a back-to-work Budget, but unless we take proper joined-up action on mental health, any ambitions he announces today will not be achieved. Adults with mental health conditions are more likely to be out of work or in lower paid work. The total annual cost to the Government is estimated to be between £24 billion and £27 billion a year, and the overall loss to the economy to be between £70 billion and £100 billion. That is money people could contribute to our economy, so this is not just about people’s wellbeing, but about ensuring the economy benefits from good mental health and wellbeing.

England is the only nation in the UK that does not have a 10-year plan. The Government’s current approach of scrapping the previous 10-year plan risks, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central said, sidelining mental health and short-changing future funding and policy decisions. It shows the lack of a coherent focus and risks losing the momentum that has been built over the past few years in mental health and wellbeing. Whether it is tackling disparities and the many complex drivers of mental health, or pursuing prevention and early intervention in children’s mental health, long-term planning is desperately needed in this sector. I cannot understand why the Government have put this to one side.

As I said last year to mark the 10th anniversary of speaking about my own mental health in the House of Commons, we need a dedicated public health strategy for dealing with mental health and wellbeing. We need a mental health strategy that is hard-wired into not just the Department of Health and Social Care, but every single Department and into local government. When the Government launched their paper for a dedicated 10-year plan on mental health and wellbeing last year, they said to

“challenge us to be ambitious”.

I am urging the Minister today to be ambitious.

--- Later in debate ---

[Maria Caulfield]

I am not one for reinventing the wheel. Consultation work has been done, and we received a significant response. The hon. Member for Blaydon is right to point out groups such as YoungMinds, who will be in Parliament next week—I hope to meet them to follow up discussions. We will publish the previous call for evidence this spring, because we want to use that work to navigate and develop the mental health part of the major conditions strategy. This is not about undoing the work that was done before; it is about including it with physical illness. Over a third of people with severe symptoms of common mental health disorders also report a chronic physical condition, compared with a quarter of those with no or fewer symptoms of a common mental health disorder. Physical and mental health are very much interlinked, and to address one without the other would be to do a disservice to those patients.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am glad that the Minister has talked about parity of esteem, but only 8.6% of the health budget is spent on mental health. I hope that we will see a real uplift in funding for and investment in people’s mental health. Will the Minister set out the timeline for the publication of the strategy? It feels like the can is being kicked down the road.

[Maria Caulfield]

For the mental health perspective, which is the area that I work on, we will publish the previous consultation responses this spring—in the forthcoming weeks. That will feed into the development of the mental health aspect of the major conditions strategy, which we want to publish very soon. We also have the suicide prevention strategy, which will be a stand-alone strategy that will dovetail into that as well. There are record levels of funding for mental health. I am sure that more will be required, but it is not just about the amount of money; it is about how we spend it. We want to deliver on mental health ambulances, crisis centres and community support. We want to get in as early as possible.

I hope that I have been able to reassure hon. and right hon. Members that, just because this is not a standalone mental health strategy, that does not mean that we are reducing elements of the work that has gone before. It is so important to include it with those other major conditions, which is exactly what NHS England is doing with its Core20PLUS5 strategy to reduce inequalities. We hope to do the same with our strategy.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rachael Maskell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

NHS dentists form a really important part of the primary care workforce. However, in places such as York, we have a complete desert, where my constituents just cannot receive NHS dentistry. What is the Secretary of State going to do for my constituents, so that their oral health needs are addressed?

[Steve Barclay]

We will set out to the House in due course a recovery plan to deal in particular with primary care but also dentistry. We recognise that, notwithstanding the fiscal support that was offered to protect dentistry through the pandemic, it is an area of acute interest across the House. The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), will be saying more on that very shortly.