Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud member of Unite the union.

“The trade unions are a long-established and essential part of our national life. We take our stand by these pillars of our British society as it has gradually developed and evolved itself, of the right of individual labouring men to adjust their wages and conditions by collective bargaining, including the right to strike.”

They are not the words of a trade union giant, nor even of a Labour politician. They are the words of the late Winston Churchill, but today his own party intends to unashamedly deny workers the very fundamental rights that he believed in with a Bill that threatens key workers with the sack for simply exercising their right to raise the alarm on low pay, erosion of terms and conditions, and grave concerns over the safety and future of their sectors.

Worse still, the Government do this in the full knowledge that the provisions of the Bill are almost certainly illegal. That includes breaching the Human Rights Act 1998, the European convention on human rights, International Labour Organisation conventions and various other statutes. The Government shamefully claim that the reason behind this legislation is that NHS trade unions were not providing minimum service agreements on strike days. That just is not true. Our ambulance workers, like our nurses, have never gone on strike without first putting agreements for life-and-limb cover in place. It is therefore no surprise that the Government have refused to publish any required impact assessments. What is even more absurd is the notion that this Bill will somehow reduce the propensity for strike action. We only need to look back in history to know that such authoritarian legislation has the opposite effect.

Instead of introducing this Bill, the Government should be listening to the concerns of key workers and facilitating negotiations. Instead they seek to divide a nation and demonise, demoralise and even threaten to sack the very workforce who have tried to hold our country together. Returning to Winston Churchill, there are no Winston Churchills on the Government Benches today, and I have no doubt that he would be absolutely devastated and disgusted that his party is treating our workforce with such disdain.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

I am conscious of time, so I will draw my remarks to a close by saying that the Bill is fundamentally undemocratic, it will do nothing to resolve industrial disputes, and it is the complete antithesis to taking back control and strengthening employment rights, which was what was promised during Brexit. The only option left to Opposition Members tonight is to ameliorate a Bill that this Government should be thoroughly ashamed of. I therefore encourage Members to support amendments 21 to 24 en bloc.

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud trade union member. I rise to support the amendments in the names of my hon. Friends and myself and those of the official Opposition.

There has been much discussion today about whether the Bill has been badly or incompetently drafted, but we should not be taken in by that diversion. This is a Bill that is drafted very specifically to achieve a very specific aim: to extinguish the right to strike and to stop key workers from speaking out.

Trade unions have been given no opportunity to feed into any pre-legislative scrutiny. There has been no consultation with any of the impacted sectors and no impact assessments have been published, as highlighted by the Regulatory Policy Committee, and it is no wonder. The Bill will undoubtedly breach the Human Rights Act, the European convention on human rights, International Labour Organisation conventions and various other statutes. It gives the Secretary of State sweeping authoritarian powers to set minimum service levels by regulation in six sectors, the contours of which are undefined, and it grants the Secretary of State sweeping authoritarian powers to amend, repeal or revoke provisions in primary legislation, including Acts of the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament, as we have heard today. Worse still, it strips away employment rights. Any worker identified in a work notice who refuses to work as directed will be without unfair dismissal protections, meaning they can be sacked immediately, without notice. But it does not stop there. The Bill also says that the relevant trade union must “take reasonable steps” to ensure that its members comply, but, again, “reasonable steps” are not defined; they are at the whim of the Secretary of State.

Staggeringly, the consequence of not taking those undefined reasonable steps is that the strike would be unlawful and unofficial and all workers taking strike action would be without unfair dismissal protection and could all be sacked at the whim of the Secretary of State.

[John McDonnell]

When we legislate in Parliament, we do not legislate for the good; we legislate for the bad. We have to interpret how this legislation could be used by a bad employer, and one way it could be used by bad employers is specifying individual workers who we know are trade union activists to be forced to break the strike. The Government will say that there is a responsibility and that the employer had no regard to whether someone was a union member. We had 20 years of blacklisting taking place with Governments refusing to acknowledge it. We know what bad employers will do: they will target trade unionists and ensure they are sacked, and when the union defends the trade unionists, they will come for the trade union itself.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

My right hon. Friend is 100% right. The problem with blacklisting was that it was done very much under the radar; we had Government institutions going behind legislation. This piece of legislation, however, would unashamedly carry out similar practices in broad daylight, with the full sanction of the Secretary of State and his Prime Minister.

This is an authoritarian and undemocratic Bill. The proposed amendments that I am supporting today are therefore designed simply to enhance parliamentary scrutiny, to constrain the unreasonable powers of the Secretary of State and to protect workers and trade unions, in particular by making co-operation with work notices voluntary on the part of employees, by providing that a failure to comply with the work notice will not mean a breach of contract or provide grounds for dismissal or detriment, and by limiting the reasonable steps that a trade union must take.

This despotic Bill not only represents a fundamental attack on workers’ rights, but dangerously divides a nation, demoralising and threatening to sack the very workforce who have tried to hold our country together over the last two difficult years. These amendments are the bare minimum necessary to take the dangerous edges off this very dangerous piece of legislation—but, frankly, this piece of legislation needs to be thrown in the bin.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey).

I rise to speak in favour of amendments 80, 84, 97, 20, 83, 93, 85, 95, 92, new clause 1 and all amendments tabled by the Opposition Front Bench. I am absolutely delighted to declare that I am a member of Unite and the GMB.

I start by congratulating members of the Fire Brigades Union on their resounding strike ballot today, which really was democracy in action, and expressing solidarity with all the workers in dispute this week. This is a pernicious Bill designed to target the very same workers who, as a nation, we clapped from our doorsteps not so long ago in gratitude for their heroics during the pandemic—the same key workers who, let us not forget, are being forced to use food banks in vast numbers because their work does not pay.

The old chestnut that work pays is becoming a bigger fallacy than some hon. Members’ tax returns. Nurses, firefighters, teachers and other public sector workers are all targeted in this Bill, prohibited from striking and risking dismissal if they resist. Let us be clear: these public sector workers are being forced into industrial action in the first place by a Government who have overseen 12 years of real-terms pay cuts, the erosion of job security and pensions and the destruction of our public services. I note that the Prime Minister said today, after finally sacking his party chairman, that he

“will take whatever steps are necessary to restore the integrity back into politics”.

Well, I cannot help but find that pledge laughable as I stand here speaking out against this Government’s Bill, which will see key workers lose their protection from unfair dismissal and trade unions sued for upholding workers’ rights.

It is clear that the Government are trying to fast-track the legislation through Parliament without proper scrutiny. The Bill lacks detail, and I note that the TUC has submitted a freedom of information request to ascertain why it has been published without an impact assessment. It is a further insult to our key public sector workers that this bonfire of workers’ rights is unfolding just as the Government are laying the groundwork for another bonfire—one of financial regulations, through the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

The Prime Minister speaks about restoring integrity, yet here he is presiding over the empowerment of speculators and lifting the bankers’ bonus cap as our key workers lose their right to strike. It is beyond shameful. I have sponsored 25 amendments aimed at protecting the right of workers to take industrial action, and at neutralising this appalling Bill, which attacks our fundamental right to strike. I support Labour’s amendments to safeguard protections against unfair dismissal, and further amendments that would require the Government to submit the legislation to greater parliamentary scrutiny, including by forcing the publication of assessments of how the Bill would impact on individual workers, equalities, employers and unions.

I am deeply opposed to the Bill, which further curtails the right to strike and other trade union activities. I fully support the rights of workers to take industrial action. I voted against this dreadful Bill on Second Reading, and I will continue to oppose it in this place and out on the streets with the public, who also oppose it. We can and must do better than this dreadful, divisive and potentially unlawful Bill.