Industrial Action on the Railway

Scott Benton Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

This is the great irony: the people whom the strike will hurt the most are not the white-collar workers who will sit behind their computers using Zoom and Microsoft Teams but the people trying to support tourist industries in places such as Cleethorpes—people trying to run bed and breakfasts—and people trying to get to work to do their jobs, and often they can least afford to lose a day’s work. However, they will lose not one day’s but at least three days’ work, and there will be chaos on the other days of this week. It is a disgrace, and the Opposition cannot find their way to condemning it, which is disgraceful, too.

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

The trade unions decided to go on strike without even knowing what the industry was offering on pay and conditions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that exposes the strikes for exactly what they are: political game playing from the Labour party and its trade union paymasters, without a second thought for the hard-working travelling British public?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. He has seen through it. The leader, Mick Lynch, said that he is “nostalgic” for the union power of the ’70s, and that is exactly what they are driving for. As my hon. Friend rightly points out, Mick Lynch called his members out on strike, telling them that it was about getting a pay increase, but not telling them that they would already be getting a pay increase because the pay freeze had ended.