Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Andy McDonald Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It was always going to come to this, where the ideological and deliberate attack on workers, along with the carefully choreographed under-resourcing of the public services that the people of this country hold dear over these past 13 years, which have been so blatantly carved up by the spivs and the profiteers, comes hard up against the inevitable neoliberal endgame of in-work poverty; and where workers are left with no choice other than to stand up for themselves and their service by withdrawing their labour. They do so not simply because their wages are insultingly, woefully insufficient and shrinking in value, and do not pay enough for them to pay their soaring bills, and rip demand out of the beleaguered and disastrously managed economy; they do so also in order to save the very service that they so cherish.

What is the response from this lot on the Government Benches? Instead of listening to workers and coming up with a fair deal that they can accept, or producing a plan to sustain public services into the future, they hit out and turn the screws, depriving working people of their basic civil liberties and human rights to organise and campaign for a better deal. I am proud that the Labour party has made it abundantly clear that this anti-worker, anti-trade union, “sack the nurses” Bill will be immediately repealed when Labour comes to power, and that we will bring in the new deal for working people that our people so desperately need.

This attack is not new; at every turn, especially in the Thatcher era and during the past 13 years, the Conservatives have demonised trade unions as being the enemy within, instead of seeing them as the force for good and for economic and social change for the benefit of the working class that they truly are. With their nasty, pernicious propaganda spewed out by their chums in the right-wing press, this Tory Government have delivered the biggest rallying call to working people that there has been for many a year. I urge all those workers who want to protect themselves and their industry, profession or calling to join a union today, if they have not done so already. Yes, I am urging them to take back control and join the fight for a better deal for themselves, their families and communities.

This Bill is not the way to build good industrial relations—it is the exact opposite—so this is an important moment in our history. I have no doubt that the British people will have their say in fulsome measure when they turf these dreadful Tories out of office, and that day cannot come too soon.