Thank you, Dame Rosie. I rise to support many of the amendments. Not only is this Bill bad law, but it will make the industrial landscape far worse. The Minister is trying to make a monster out of something that does not exist and a problem that does not occur.
The Bill needs correcting to comply with international law. I am grateful to Members for tabling amendments 39 and 34, which highlight how the Bill is at odds with ILO convention 87. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) tabled amendment 83, which would bring that convention into law by creating a framework by which the Bill must go forward—otherwise, it will just spend months in the courts, and I expect that that is where it will end.
We are talking about safety, so not having an impact assessment is quite unbelievable, not least when we know that many of the clauses could well result in services being more unsafe than they are currently. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that we already know that those services are unsafe. On Second Reading, I raised statistics from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine about the health service being unsafe, with 500 additional deaths every single week. The Secretary of State dismissed those figures. However, a witness
from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine set out his peer-reviewed workings when he appeared before the Health and Social Care Committee.
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Every day, the Government are failing in their duty to ensure that the NHS is safe. Even today the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care appeared before the House and announced that he has now downgraded response times for paramedics to reach desperate people in category 2 calls—including strokes and heart attacks—from 18 minutes to 30 minutes, making patients even more unsafe. We can talk about minimum service levels, but this Government have some nerve coming to the House and saying that workers across the NHS are creating an unsafe environment.
I will focus in particular on section 240 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which covers “life and limb” arrangements by putting in law a framework under which a person who breaks a contract of service
“knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the probable consequences of his so doing will…endanger human life or cause serious bodily injury”
could receive a criminal sentence. “Life and limb” arrangements are already covered, so the Bill is superfluous.
Let me address the mechanics of how those agreements are reached, looking in particular at negotiations. As I highlighted earlier, there has to be a dynamic relationship between the employer—a local employer—and the worker, because throughout the day there is negotiation. There can suddenly be an incident in a health setting that causes more staff to be required. Of course, if that is the case, a nationally agreed protocol would not provide the day-to-day, minute-by-minute approach that is needed. That is why it will be unsafe. If the Secretary of State were to agree a protocol that set minimum levels, but there was a major incident and more people were required, that could not be executed and put in place. It is a nonsense piece of legislation.
Let us face the reason why we are where we are: the unions are sitting at the table but have had no one to negotiate with for weeks. The Secretary of State has run around the media studios dreaming up legislation that restricts workers but avoids addressing the dispute. Workers are on those picket lines because they know that their services are completely unsafe. They know the level of agency spend being put in place. Instead of blocking the path to resolution, the Minister should really get around the negotiating table and stop the ideological fight with working people that he is pursuing. I hear the point about affordability but, as a result of what is happening at the moment, £3 billion has been spent on agency workers in the last year. That money should be in the pockets of NHS staff. It is embarrassing to listen to the arguments that the Government are putting forward to deny working people their freedoms and rights.
I want to come to the point in the legislation where we look, line by line, at what the Minister is trying to do in removing workers’ protection against unfair dismissal. We have to remember that workers are out on strike because they know that staffing levels are unsafe. When I went on picket lines and talked to those staff, they were in tears because they are so broken and they know
that more people are leaving the service because they are not being paid or respected. This legislation kicks them in the teeth and says, “We are not even going to protect you,” and it means that the industrial landscape will decline rapidly. If that is what the Minister wants, that is certainly what he is going to get if this legislation passes.
The NHS has no more resilience. The staff have no more resilience. Yet the Minister is sitting there saying, “I’m going to take away your protection from unfair dismissal, which could mean you are out of a job,” making that landscape—that industrial workplace—even more unsafe. If that becomes even more unsafe, more people will die in our NHS day by day. That is the reality, and that is why I say to the Minister that he needs to get out on those picket lines and listen to the workers and what they are saying, instead of hiding away and dreaming up this legislation. The Bill needs to change, and that is why I welcome the amendments to bring that about.
The Minister also needs to ensure that there are talks between the parties, and that is what has not happened. Unison said that five weeks went by from announcing its ballot before there was any engagement, and then there was no discussion of the issues appertaining to the dispute, so how does he expect it to be resolved? It needs to be meaningful negotiation between the employer and the workers, and that is what this legislation does not cover, because the Minister clearly does not see that as an important part of resolving a dispute. Ultimately, these threats coming through this legislation will make the industrial landscape more challenging in trying to settle those disputes, because there will be a breach of trust between the employer and the employee.
When does the Minister expect to bring an impact assessment before the House? We are in Committee and will be dealing with Third Reading today. Are Members in the other place going to receive an impact assessment before they get the opportunity to look at this legislation? We not only need to know about the impact on services; we also need an equality impact assessment. I am interested to know which workers will be sent into work against their will, crossing a picket line when they want to stand in solidarity with their peers. When will that assessment emerge? If the Minister does not know, will he write to Members and make clear exactly what he will be doing with that impact assessment? It seems completely self-defeating to keep such information from this House as the Bill moves through its legislative stages.
Finally, if workers do not get enshrined those rights to take industrial action and to withdraw their labour, they most certainly will take action short of a strike, and then the Minister will start to understand the dedication that these workers have. If they take a long period of action short of a strike, when people in some professions are already working more than eight hours a week in unpaid overtime, that will certainly harm these services and it will certainly make them unsafe. By bringing in these measures, he makes things far worse. This Bill is just not fit for purpose. Instead of it being a toy, or a game that the Minister wants to play, it is time that the grown-ups in the room had the opportunity to negotiate a proper deal for working people across our country, and to no longer see this legislation. I know that one thing Labour will do is ensure that this Bill is removed from our statute book.