Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

That is a fair point. Obviously, I cannot answer on what the Government have to hide, other than to say that we know about a raft of answers that show how unworkable and prejudiced this Bill is.

Subsection 5(b) in the amendment is about consulting the ILO. The Government keep telling us that this Bill brings the legislation in the UK into line with international norms, but it clearly does not; the ILO has said that the UK already has some of the most draconian strike legislation, even before this Bill. So there is no doubt that the Government are frightened to consult the ILO because they are frightened about the answers that will come back and the evidence about how draconian this really is that will be put into the public domain when it is published.

As I say, it looks as if the Lords are going to back down after this. There is no more scheduled business to allow further consideration of the Lords message, which suggests they are not going to push the amendment beyond that. That is disappointing, especially given that the Government have tried to argue before that this is a manifesto commitment. The actual manifesto commitment was to require a minimum service for transport. That commitment is not as wide ranging, so the Lords would be completely justified in continuing to resist for as long as possible.

As the shadow Minister said, because the amendment is to consult, as opposed to what was set out in previous amendments, unions are still at risk of facing big fines. Unions are still going to comply, effectively helping employers disrupt strikes and single out workers. Worst of all, workers can now get sacked for not complying with a work notice that they have not received.

Why the Government would not even consult and publish an impact assessment on that is beyond me. Again, they know that it allows employers to unfairly discriminate, pick out the awkward squad, then discipline and sack them, with no recourse to a tribunal. Welcome, Madam Deputy Speaker, to 21st century authoritarian Britain, where sacking workers like that brings the UK in line with Russia and Hungary, not the international norms, although the Minister and Government try to tell us otherwise.

I will be voting against the Government motion to disagree with the Lords. I hope the Lords do not give up the fight, but I am frightened they will. That is why we want away from this Union, because it is certainly not working for anybody.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The Minister has let the cat out of the bag in relation to the Government’s attitude to this dreadful Bill and to amendment 2D from the other place. The Minister objected to Lords amendment 2D because it would delay the implementation of the Bill. Let us be clear: the Bill makes history for all the wrong reasons. It is the biggest attack on the role of our trade unions in our democracy for many a long year. Why are the Government so desperate to rush the Bill through? One almost thinks they cannot stomach the idea of even a small delay because they want it to be presented at the Conservative party conference as a bit of red meat to the party faithful—classic anti-trade union politics and trade union bashing.

Let us think about where we are in terms of industrial relations. The Bill, which the Government do not want to consult on properly, comes shortly after over 100,000 nurses in this country voted to take strike action—the result in that recent ballot was that 84% of nurses who cast a vote did so to take strike action. However, because of the Government’s dreadful Trade Union Act 2016, an 84% vote in favour of strike action does not count, is worthless and does not result in strike action, because the turnout was 43%.

The Government helped drive down the turnout by not allowing people to vote by electronic ballot. The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who made such a mess of this country in her short tenure, was elected by electronic ballot of Conservative party members. Not allowing people to vote by electronic means reveals the contempt the Government have for the biggest voluntary organisations in our society—the trade union movement. They will not even give workers in our country the modern dignity of being allowed to vote online or in the workplace.

The Government object to Lords amendment 2D and do not want to consult on it. Is that any wonder? The greater the consultation that takes place in relation to this abhorrent Bill, the more it becomes clear that the Bill is a complete offence. Let us be clear: the Bill, which the Government do not want to have a proper consultation on, requires trade unions to take reasonable steps to get their own members to break trade union picket lines. This Bill requires trade unions to completely change their function in our democratic society. It is the job of a trade union to persuade trade union members to honour a strike vote, not to break a strike. We see the hand of this authoritarian Government attempting to extend into our trade unions, trying to try to use them as a tool of the state to do the bidding of a Conservative Government, or the bidding of employers. The Bill is rotten and it is no wonder that the Government do not want to consult on it. Any fair-minded person, whatever their politics, would realise that that is not the function of trade unions in our society. We have heard Ministers boasting about how this will result in people being sacked if they do not comply with the requirement to go to work.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

indicated dissent.

[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.