I will not be supporting this legislation, for three reasons. First, the Bill is not really about safety levels at all. Secondly, claims that the Bill reflects current practice elsewhere in Europe are inaccurate. Thirdly, there is the very real risk that these proposals are in breach of the United Kingdom’s obligations under the European convention on human rights and international labour law. As other hon. Members have said, the word “safety” does not even appear in the Bill. It is a Bill about minimum
service levels, not minimum safety levels, yet repeatedly Conservative politicians have talked about minimum safety levels and seem very happy for confusion between the two concepts to be caused. I suspect that is because this is a deliberate attempt to hide from the public the real intentions behind the Bill.
Secondly, on European standards, most European countries, as others have said, have a very different model of labour relations from the United Kingdom, which, thanks to successive Tory Governments, has one of the strictest systems of regulations of industrial relations in Europe. In other countries, trades union rights are protected in their written constitutions. Labour law experts will tell you that in most European countries minimum service levels are established by collective bargaining and, in so far as legislation exists, it provides a framework for these agreements, rather than for top-down regulation. The Bill would enable the Secretary of State to impose sweeping regulations from the top on millions of workers in a number of different sectors.
That brings to me to my third point. As I said when I intervened on the Secretary of State, the measures in the Bill go considerably further than the minimum service levels envisaged by the Transport Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill published last October. The Government’s own human rights memorandum which accompanied the previous Bill set out in some detail, with reference to existing legislation, the reason their lawyers then said that minimum service levels imposed by legislation were not justified in fire services, health settings and education. Yet that is what they are now proposing and their human rights memorandum for the Bill is very different. I can absolutely guarantee to hon. Members across the House that as Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I will be making sure we scrutinise very carefully the difference between the two human rights memorandums.
On compliance with international labour law, the International Labour Organisation has enshrined the right to strike in its convention, to which the UK is a signatory. It is true that minimum service levels are allowed, but not if they are imposed from the top down. They need to be set by negotiation or, if the negotiation breaks down, by an independent body, as happens in Italy. Only in European countries well known for flouting fundamental rights, such as Hungary and Russia, do we see Government-enforced minimum service levels leading to the sacking of workers and the bankrupting of unions fighting for fair pay and conditions. Yet that is exactly what the Tories want to do in the Bill. Perhaps we should not be surprised that, despite all their anti-Putin rhetoric, the Tories want to emulate Putin’s approach to striking workers. Perhaps it is not so surprising given that the Deputy Prime Minister told us he is not ruling out leaving the European convention on human rights and the Home Secretary is keen it should happen as soon as possible. Given that they are keen to be on the same side as Russia on human rights, it is perhaps not surprising that they are doing that in the Bill.
The bottom line is that key workers are striking because their wages have not begun to keep in line with inflation and because the interest rate hikes caused by Tory economic incompetence mean they cannot afford their rent or mortgage. The Government need to recognise the stark reality of those people’s lives and work with their unions respectfully to reach agreement.
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