It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald). I will pick up where he left off. The right to strike is neither absolute nor unlimited. He was correct to point the Committee to the 87th convention of the ILO on freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, and he will be aware that article 9 of that convention sets out the limited circumstances in which any member state has a margin for discretion to decide whether certain sectors can be banned from striking altogether. As a matter of fact, the United Kingdom exercises that qualification in restricting the right to strike for police officers, members of the armed forces and prison officers.
Despite the hon. Gentleman’s language about this country’s having very restricted union rights, Opposition Members must concede that there has been a high degree of consensus while in government. I gently remind him that when Labour was last in government, after the numerous changes to strike law in the 1980s, it published the “Fairness at Work” White Paper in 1998. Its foreword stated:
“There will be no going back. The days of strikes without ballots, mass picketing, closed shops and secondary action are over.”
Where I agree with the hon. Gentleman, although I present it from a different angle, is that the issue throughout debate on this Bill is whether the proposed restrictions are necessary and proportionate. Amendments 9 to 14 and 73 to 75, tabled by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who is no longer in her place,
and other Labour Front Benchers, would hack out each of the sectors that have been designated as sufficiently important to warrant a minimum service level—education, transport, nuclear decommissioning, border security, fire and health.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough was a tiny bit disingenuous when he read from the ILO’s publication and said that the ILO allows a minimum service level only in
“services the interruption of which would endanger the life, personal safety or health of the whole or part of the population”.
He knows as well as I do that he could and should have read on, because the ILO allows minimum service levels in
“services which are not essential in the strict sense of the term, but in which strikes of a certain magnitude and duration could cause an acute crisis threatening the normal conditions of existence…or in public services of fundamental importance.”
Earlier today, every Member of this House received a House of Commons Library briefing on this Bill. It included an important 2012 report from the ILO, which I know many Members will have read, that provides some assistance:
“the right to strike is not absolute and may be restricted in exceptional circumstances, or even prohibited”.
The report gives three examples of where that might apply. The first is certain categories of public servants, and relevant to this debate is the reference to teachers:
“the Committee considers that public sector teachers are not included in the category of public servants ‘exercising authority in the name of the State’ and that they should therefore benefit from the right to strike…even though, under certain circumstances, the maintenance of a minimum service may be envisaged… This principle should also apply to postal workers and railway employees, as well as to civilian personnel in military institutions when they are not engaged in the provision of essential services in the strict sense of the term.”
In relation to the National Education Union, which is striking on Wednesday, and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which seems to be striking most of the time, the Opposition know, or at least ought to know, that the ILO thinks that minimum service levels should apply both in education and transport.