Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)

Seema Kennedy Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Stephen Doughty]

Q 133 I assume you both also deal with complaints about passenger fares, increases and issues around ticketing and so on. Would you be able to comment on the role that trade unions have played in highlighting passenger concerns similar to those you are representing on the rise in fare complexity and so on?

David Sidebottom: Particularly through the research that we have done, we know that value-for-money ratings on Britain’s railway are a lot lower than overall satisfaction with rail journeys among passengers. As we get around to January, the time of year when regulated fares increase, we will see the unions do what they do and be quite vocal about the need for reinvestment in the railway. What we articulate is the view of the passenger, particularly through poor value-for-money ratings. That is something we challenge the Department on, in terms of franchising, individual operators and improving the lot for passengers.

Janet Cooke: In terms of the unions, we do not formally engage with them, but the unions have done good work over the years in essentially being proxy passengers if you cannot talk to passengers themselves. Our board has never called them to give evidence or to speak to the board formally, but if there is a board meeting—particularly one where we are looking at such things as applications to change ticket office opening hours or, more recently, TfL’s proposals to close ticket offices—it is usual for the unions to attend and be in the public gallery. At the chair’s discretion, they might be invited to say something giving the passenger perspective through the unions’ eyes, and our chairs have usually allowed them to do that. It has probably been helpful.

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q 134 It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. This is a question for both witnesses. You have spoken about the threat of action on the railways in particular. Do you have experience of people saying to you, “I am worried about the strike”, and perhaps changing their travel patterns and pushing traffic on to the roads and off the railways and the underground—all parts of TfL and the commuter lines—because of the threat of action?

David Sidebottom: On the slightly broader subject of disruption generally, we know that passengers crave timely information that is targeted at them specifically. In the early part of the summer, with the potential strike by Network Rail, both sides were able to negotiate right to the wire. The railway planning system is not sophisticated or agile enough to get emergency timetables up on the system and taken off again at short notice.

People are trying to make decisions about whether to take a journey. I have no evidence of people shifting on to the road, although I suspect that they probably did. They were thinking, “I need to be somewhere in two weeks’ time and there is a threat of a strike on that day.” That is the slight difference with the threat of strike action—bargaining seems to go right to the wire, which is probably inevitable in the game that is played, but for passengers that creates more uncertainty than engineering works on a bank holiday weekend. At least with engineering works, passengers know that it will happen, although they may not like it, and information can be put out to help them.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 135 So you think overall that the threat of strikes can have a much broader effect that is perhaps difficult to quantify.

David Sidebottom: Passengers may innocently go on to websites to book a train ticket, unaware that there will be a strike. They may buy their ticket in advance for a day when there might be strike action. They can get their money back and that is sorted out, but if you are aware of the strike, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I am not speaking on behalf of the train industry, but it is equally difficult for them. They can put all the emergency planning in place, but at what point do they allow it on to the systems to give passengers a definitive answer as to whether they can make a journey?

Janet Cooke: In outer London people are able to use their cars—certainly, looking at the BBC reports, there was a big increase in congestion—but for most commuters travelling into central London the car is not a realistic option because there is too much congestion. So there is crowding onto other modes. You made comments earlier about being packed in like sardines; that is the London commuter experience already. So if during peak times you have further congestion because one mode is unavailable that makes things very difficult. The threat of strikes is almost as disruptive, because people change their plans for the day.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 136 In what people submit to you, do they talk about crowding, the stress in terms of organising their lives, business things and childcare, and about travelling on very crowded buses?

Janet Cooke: Yes, we have never done any formal research, so I have no sound evidence that I can quote, but we do get feedback from passengers. I think that 25 people contacted us during the summer specifically about the threat of the tube strikes. That is a lot for us. It gets mentioned in other activities and, by and large, people are not happy about it, but they tend to put up with it. They see it as part of London perhaps—I do not know.

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[Seema Kennedy]

We have.

Dave Smith: Some have—I did say most.

[The Chair]

May I stop you for a minute, Mr Smith? It is not really your duty to question the role of the Committee and Members of Parliament. We have decided and agreed to invite you in to give evidence to the Committee. You cannot then criticise the whole process of allowing you to do so.

Dave Smith: I do apologise. My point really was this question about why it is that the trade unions exercising a democratic right—a human right under the European convention on human rights—are penalised to such an extent, exactly as Sara said. Nobody else in any other circumstances in the country is being given this. If there is disruption because of strikes about asbestos or unpaid wages, the people responsible for it are the employers, not the trade unions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

Q 167 And you feel that this is completely different from a code?

Sara Ogilvie: When people choose to do something, and when people are required to do something and there are very strong consequences because of that requirement, I think that is a difference, yes, and it is a significant one.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 168 I want to go back to this picket supervisor code. If you have large public assemblies—even on things such as school trips, which I have supervised, I have to wear an orange tabard. Is it the actual armband that is causing the great objection? You might have thousands of people on the streets. Surely, just for public order, somebody needs to be able to identify who is in charge.

Sara Ogilvie: If we want to compare it, there are rules in place that govern marches and other kinds of protest. There are not rules about demonstrations; there are rules about marches. If you have a rule about a march, then the organiser must be known to the police. But that organiser could be, if you take the union example, Frances O’Grady; everybody knows who she is. If you have someone who is in a local trade union, they might not want to be known; as we have heard, there are really serious consequences. It is not so much about the organisation; it is about the identification, and the fact that that can then be used to void a whole strike.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 169 Nobody wants to condone blacklisting—absolutely not—and it is very much to be welcomed that in the building industry we are moving away from that. [Interruption.] I sense some scepticism, looking at the Benches. But of course we want to move away from that; people should have the right to strike. I wonder whether there is an objection to the use of an armband particularly.

Dave Smith: What there is an objection to is that if you are on a school trip, you are not being asked by the police to provide your name, and if I am on a picket line, I am not breaking any laws. I have not done anything illegal, and without any suspicion, or due suspicion that I have broken laws, the police will come and take my name.

A number of people have mentioned the London underground during this debate. For the London underground, you might need a picket supervisor on every single station; on large stations, you might need a picket supervisor on different entrances. And for the RMT or whichever union, they would have to provide a list of possibly hundreds—literally—of picket supervisors to the police, and they have not committed any crime. That information will be collated and will be put on a police database, and we have fears where that goes. How can you stop it being given to special branch?

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 170 I understand that, but this is a side issue of blacklisting, which the Government are consulting on—[Interruption]—they are.

Just on the school trips issue, there are checks that one would have to go through; you need Disclosure and Barring Service checks, and things like that. Okay, perhaps it was not the best analogy. All I am saying is that in terms of public order—

Sara Ogilvie: In terms of public order, the usual rules that would apply to public demonstrations or public protests already apply. These are specific additional requirements that are being placed on pickets, and pickets tend to be pretty small as well, so the requirements seem disproportionate. As I say, the normal rules apply; these are additional ones.

Shane Enright: Can I add something, and I will do it in one sentence? I do not understand what problems this Bill is seeking to solve. I simply do not see the evidence before me of disruptive pickets, of intimidation or violence on picket lines; there is simply very little evidence of it. Twenty million days a year are lost through workplace injury or workplace illness; 0.8 million days a year are lost through strikes.

[Seema Kennedy]

Q 171 The thing is, we want to get rid of all days lost. Yes, of course it is a small proportion and getting smaller, and we want to tackle days lost through workplace injury and things like that as well, but even though it is a small proportion, it is still having an effect on our economy and it is still disrupting people’s lives, the way they organise their families and their travel. That and the idea of threshold is the whole thrust of the Bill. I know that Liberty has spoken about the balance between employers and employees, but we go back to the people whose lives are disrupted and who have not taken part in that ballot. They cannot say whether their schools or trains are not running on that day.

Shane Enright: I appreciate that there is disruption, but what is entirely absent from the Bill is any recognition or acknowledgement of the positive roles that trade unions play in the delivery of effective and efficient public and private services for the common good. I understand that the Royal College of Nursing has done an impact analysis of the role of trade unions in the health sector that comes to the conclusion that effective industrial relations involving trade unions has substantial positive impacts on safety, on the levels and quality of workplace training and across a range of key issues. So rather than talking about trade unions as necessarily being civil actors that have negative economic consequences—

[Seema Kennedy]

I do not think that that has been said.

[The Chair]

Sorry, can I stop you? We have very little time left and this is not the place for a conversation; it is a question and answer session for Members to ask questions of the witnesses. I am going to draw this section to a close and move on.