You are very kind, Mr Speaker. What the Bill in fact offers, contrary to what we have heard from Opposition Members, is a set of protections for two sets of working people: those who utterly depend on public services for their everyday lives and those who work in public services and find that they are often engaged in pointless, costly strike action because of the actions of a politically motivated minority.
I agree with everything in the Bill as proposed. It cannot be right that it is still possible to have a strike on the basis of a ballot that took place many months or, indeed, years ago. It is still technically possible to have a strike without a fresh ballot upon the removal of guards from the underground, a piece of modernisation that took place in the 1990s. It is utterly wrong that public workers should be subject to intimidation— sometimes reduced to tears—on the picket line or elsewhere. It is high time that that code of practice was put into law. Clauses 2 and 3 take us furthest and offer the greatest hope.