Meeting of the Parliament 14 December 2023
The Liberal Democrats are opposed to the application of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, and my Westminster colleagues made their opposition clear during the bill process in the House of Commons. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats tabled an amendment that, had it passed, would have resulted in the house declining to give the bill a second reading.
Our reasons for opposing the legislation are many. It is simply another attempt by the Conservatives to distract from their appalling mismanagement of the economy and from their failure to avert strikes in the first place.
The legislation will simply not work. Minimum service levels will not avert on-going crises in public services or help to solve staff shortages in the NHS. Its scope is far too wide and goes well beyond critical services. Not only will it not work, but the UK Government’s legislation does not contain any detail about what minimum services will be, while it hands extraordinary powers to UK Government ministers to change current legislation without adequate parliamentary scrutiny.
The legislation does nothing to resolve industrial disputes. Instead, it will only increase the disruption caused by future industrial action. The best way to avoid disruption during strikes is to prevent them in the first place, which means the Government getting round the table with staff and employers to find a solution.
As my Westminster colleague, Christine Jardine MP, said,
“the cause of these strikes is the deterioration in our public services”
that the Government has presided over. She went on to say that the act does not
“undo that deterioration, and it will not help our public sectors.”—[Official Report, House of Commons, 16 January 2023; Vol 726, c 106]
She also said that the act is an attempt to use the workers and the state of public services as
“a political football to distract from the mismanagement of public services that has led us to this point.”
She argued that
“Those poor levels of service have not arisen through anyone’s will to have low services”
and that, rather, they are as a result of a
“lack of resources and investment in our public services, which ... staff have struggled to improve on and work through”.—[Official Report, House of Commons, 30 January 2023; Vol 727, c 107]
I do not need six minutes for my speech, Presiding Officer, because I will conclude by saying that, rather than impose minimum levels of service in a strike situation to make a political point, the UK Government should invest in public services to improve levels of service all the time.