My noble friend has kindly made the point that I was about to make about the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. Perhaps I should say finally that we do not want confusion and conflation of the two terms. In any event, the supervisory bodies of the ILO fulfil an informal advisory role and their decisions are not legally binding on the UK.
I turn to Amendment 18, which proposes that the Government will have only one chance to make subordinate legislation on the services to be covered by the 40% threshold, which I think is what the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, explained. In our skeleton regulations we specified important public services, as I have said, according to the available evidence but we acknowledged that the significance of public services could change in the future. Today’s important services are not the same as those of 50 years ago and they will again be different in 50 years’ time, when the next transformational change—the successor to the internet—has arrived. Moreover, it would not be right for services to remain specified in secondary legislation if reduced service levels and staff absence become less disruptive to the public. Equally, it would not be right if the Government could not capture further public services within the limits set by the Bill, if further evidence was obtained on the impact of strike action in those areas.
My noble friend Lord Leigh does not seem to be here but, to give a curtain raiser, I was not intending to accept the amendment that we were about to discuss next. I hope that is not unparliamentary, but we did discuss this at Second Reading and that amendment, Amendment 4, expands things in a way that is not the Government’s intention.
Finally, Amendment 6 is a good example of the kind of agreement between the Opposition and the Government—in fact, all sides—which is often possible in this House. We initially included ancillary workers because staff who are not on the front line but play a supportive role could be critical to the delivery of important public services. There is a case here, but we have accepted, on reflection, that it would add unwelcome complexity for unions and others involved. We can all agree that the word “ancillary” is open to a number of different interpretations. Having agreed this amendment, the Committee can be assured that only workers who deliver an important public service would be included within the threshold. The regulations would specify, as now proposed, exactly who will be covered. Unions would not have to consider whether there were any additional ancillary workers on top of this. I commend Amendment 6 and hope that the Committee will be able to agree it.