Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Sam Tarry and Rachael Maskell

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[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?