Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 41 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, to which my right reverend friend the Bishop of London has added her name, and the other amendments in this group. My right reverend friend regrets that she is unable to be in her place today. In fact, given that she is at this very moment leading a debate among fellow bishops on the subject of sexuality, I think she would much rather be here in your Lordships’ House alongside me. Therefore, in supporting these amendments, I wish to include a number of points which she would undoubtedly have made had she been here.

As we have heard earlier today, including from the noble Lord, Lord Allan of Hallam, proportionality is a central principle of law. I hope that noble Lords will allow me to draw attention from these Benches to an important biblical perspective on that topic. I suggest we should respect the limitations set by Moses over 3,000 years ago in the Hebrew scriptures. When Moses laid down a simple rule,

“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”,

he was not advocating mutilation as the proper means of punishment. He was making the crucial point that the punishment must never exceed the gravity of the offence.

Dismissal for failing to comply with an instruction to work on a strike day is, in my view, the view of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and, I suspect, the view of many others, grossly out of all proportion. I also wonder how enforceable it would be. Were I a worker issued with such an instruction, the stress I would suffer in consequence could quite likely render me unfit to turn up to work on the day—and, as I trust your Lordships have begun to recognise, I am a fairly tough nut. Will the Minister therefore agree to explore, before we reach Report, whether some lesser maximum penalty would be more appropriate?

Moreover, as the Royal College of Nursing has said, sacking workers for failing to accede to such an instruction to work

“would exacerbate severe nursing workforce shortages”

that we already face. Nursing vacancies are already high—is it more than 43,000? That is a 10% increase over the last 12 months. There are similar shortages elsewhere in the public sector.

The first day in Committee highlighted major unresolved questions about the application of the Bill. The breadth of the roles under the titles of “health services” and “transport services” is huge. Providing minimum service levels that are of the same urgency, and providing for penalties of the same severity, for those who drive blue-light emergency vehicles and the driver of my local 98 bus is absurd.

The amendments in this group would continue protection of employees’ rights and would protect our workforces from further exacerbation of already severe shortages. I urge the Minister to accept them.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. We have already discussed at length the proportionality concerns about the minimum service level agreements being imposed per se, but now we get into the sanctions and consequences for trade unions in what will follow, but also for individuals. We must now talk not just about the vital human rights principle of proportionality that we discussed before but about the vital principle of non-discrimination.

This gives me the opportunity to reflect on an earlier exchange between the Minister and my noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway. There was a dissonance about this concept of victimisation. As I understand it, the Minister was saying, “For goodness’ sake. It’s not victimisation to say that there needs to be a minimum service level agreement to protect the public, and therefore there have to be work notices”. However, what perhaps the Minister did not hear or understand is that when you give employers the power to pick and choose between individual employees, we are opening up the Pandora’s box of abuse of power. When we legislate in your Lordships’ House, we have to guard against potential abuses of power.

If employers, scrupulous or otherwise, are allowed to pick and choose between individuals, some people will never be on the list but other people will be, and sometimes the people will be selected for that list on grounds that include their race, sex, sexuality and possibly even their role within trade union activity. I think that is the point my noble friend was trying to make to the Minister, and this is the power that is being handed to individual employers, in contrast with years of struggle for protection against discrimination, including discrimination on the grounds of trade union activity as well as membership.

If, as I fear, the Minister will not pause the Bill or introduce greater parliamentary protection before the powers can be triggered in the first place, please will he look at the powers given to individual employers over groups and particular employees in the workplace, because it is invidious and, I think, very dangerous?

Public Order Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Lord Bishop of Manchester

Report stage
Tuesday 7th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

This being not Committee but Report, the simplest and speediest answer that I can give to the noble Lord’s question is that Clause 11 is about suspicionless stop and search. He has picked out a particular subsection in the scheme, which would have been interesting in Committee. But the crucial thing is that Clause 11 is on stop and search without suspicion, not in the context even of terrorism, where it can come with greater justification—for example, when everybody is stopped and searched on their way into the Peers’ Entrance if they are not a Peer, or at the airport, where everybody is treated the same. But, by definition, that will not be the case in this scheme. This broad power will be used against young people all over London on the day of a protest. It will cause such strife and will poison relationships between the police service and the people it serves. For that reason, I urge all noble Lords to reject in particular this power to stop and search without suspicion even of the protest offences to which I object in the Bill.

[The Lord Bishop of Manchester]

I too speak in support of the amendments to remove Clauses 10 and 11, to which I have added my name. I declare my registered interests as the co-chair of the national police ethics committee and the chair of the Greater Manchester Police ethics advisory committee.

Stop and search can be an extremely useful tool in the police kit box, but, like many tools, it works far less well if it is overused or used for the wrong task. Eventually, it loses its efficacy entirely. I have several broken screwdrivers at home that bear witness to my own excesses in that regard, as well as to my very limited DIY skills. That is the danger we run when we extend stop and search powers in what, at times, feels like a knee-jerk reaction. They are simply the most obvious tool at the top of the box, whether they are appropriate or not. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, indicated, stop and search becomes, as it has in the past, so discredited that it reaches a point where, like my screwdrivers, it is counterproductive to use it, even in circumstances where it would be right and appropriate to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, reminded us, with some chilling figures, of its disproportionate use against certain sectors of society—young black men in particular —which damages confidence in policing not just with regard to stop and search but more generally. It is because I am passionate to support our police that I have such worries about anything that tends to diminish that public confidence. I have the greatest concerns where stop and search is undertaken without suspicion; such powers are even more at risk of simply being used against people who look wrong or are in the wrong place. They become especially prone to the unconscious bias that we might try to shake off but all to some extent carry within us. Should these amendments be pressed to a Division, they will have my full support and I hope that of your Lordships’ House.

I conclude by offering a modest proposal that goes beyond these clauses and the Bill. Could the Minister seek to gain a commitment from His Majesty’s Government to refrain from any extension of stop and search powers until such time as it is clear that the existing powers are being used properly and proportionately? Such a self-denying ordinance might lead to us have an intelligent conversation about how better to focus the use of stop and search. We could then look at whether there are circumstances in which those powers should be radically extended—but not before then.