Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Sarah Champion Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I rise to speak as a proud trade unionist. I have been a member of a trade union all my working life, so I completely fail to understand the division that Government Members are trying to draw between union members and workers. The general public are not buying it either.

Our nurses, teachers, doctors, paramedics, rail workers and firefighters have all worked consistently hard over the past decade, particularly since covid, yet they face real cuts in their pay and drastically worse working conditions. NHS nurses are earning £5,000 a year less in real terms than in 2010; for midwives and paramedics, the drop is more than £6,000. We need to retain workers in those professions, but instead they are being driven away by the Tories running our public services into the ground. Instead of trying to resolve the issue at the heart of these strikes, this Government are undermining workers’ basic right to strike and are trying to turn the public against them. It is not working.

I am deeply concerned by the sweeping powers in the Bill, which will allow the Government to dictate what the minimum level of service should be in a given industry, with only a meaningless requirement for the Secretary of State to “consult” whoever they consider “appropriate”. It is disgraceful that employers will have the ability to pick and choose which individuals will be compelled to work and forced to cross a picket line or be sacked. That is not a balanced or fair approach, nor will it resolve any of the core issues that workers are trying to raise through these strikes.

There are already more restrictions on strikes than ever before, and they are being followed to the letter, so the strikes that are going ahead have already met the legal requirements. Steve Rice, the head of the GMB union’s ambulance committee, recently wrote to the Prime Minister to call out his dangerous claims that ambulance workers are putting lives at risk. Surely the Prime Minister knows that unions have been working with NHS trusts to guarantee emergency cover during the strike action; if he does not, that is really quite damning. In reality, on 21 December, when GMB ambulance workers undertook industrial action, the proportion of patients delayed for over an hour actually dropped significantly, so where is the evidence that striking essential workers are not already providing the minimum level of service? It is not there.

I understand any fears that the public may have of not being able to access emergency healthcare when they need it, but the Government should be honest with constituents rather than demonising hard-working staff who want to be able to provide the best service possible. Better yet, the Government should meet workers to negotiate and understand their concerns instead of dismissing them. It is not striking workers who are causing the crisis in the NHS; it is a decade of Tory mismanagement.