Trade Union Bill (Third sitting) Debate
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Victoria Prentis
Main Page: Victoria Prentis (Conservative - Banbury)Department Debates - View all Victoria Prentis's debates with the Department for Education
Trade Union Bill (Third sitting)
Victoria Prentis Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Stephens
Q 281 Was that in a professional or personal capacity?
Commissioner Dobson: It was professional, because I was commissioner for London, but it was in my personal opinion, rather than that of my fire authority.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Q 282 Mr Palmer-Jones, you were just touching on intimidation and the picket line you saw yesterday. Could you tell us a bit more?
David Palmer-Jones: I was not actually there yesterday, but we had reports back from my staff. Again, there is a movement from the Wilton construction site to our own sites and threats of other, secondary protesting. That was why I was very keen to come today, to explain the grey area that could expand.
Victoria Prentis
Q 283 It would be very helpful to hear more about that.
David Palmer-Jones: This is something that is very much condoned by the unions. When I meet with Merseyside and those unions, I am meeting the senior national levels of the union, which in some way tacitly approve of the tactics being deployed up in Teesside at the moment. We have a situation where council employees who are delivering household waste vehicles to the site feel quite intimidated to go across a picket line and a protest that is very much dressed in the union colours and waving union flags. They do not want to cross what is not an industrial action. This is very important to understand: there is no industrial action on any of our sites, yet I am still facing the difficulty of a sponsored, wider protest that is of a more national scale.
Stephen Doughty
Q 284 I just have a specific question, given what the commissioner has been saying. Can you confirm whether during the 2010 dispute any FBU members were actually arrested or prosecuted for their behaviour in picketing; and, secondly, can you confirm whether any agency staff brought in were arrested or prosecuted for their behaviour?
Commissioner Dobson: No, nobody was actually prosecuted.