Trade Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is always interesting to hear maiden speeches and I particularly enjoyed the speech of the right reverend Prelate, focusing on equality.

As my noble friend Lord Stevenson indicated, there are significant gaps in this Bill. We will hope and expect to remedy these with amendments as the Bill progresses. I note that the Government’s own amendment on gender equality, which featured in the previous Bill in 2019, is now gone, stripped out from the current Bill. It is fervently to be hoped that this disappearance is not an indication of misogynist tendencies in either the UK Government or any person from Australia, or anywhere else, who may be invited to advise on trade. Gender equality must be, and must remain, a priority.

It is well known too, of course, that workplaces in which workers are organised in and by trade unions are safer places to work. As we face not just this Trade Bill but the ongoing Covid pandemic, health and safety at work—a bread-and-butter issue for trade unions—needs to be uppermost in our minds and policy.

The issues of food quality, animal welfare and environmental protection, especially given climate change and the global climate emergency we face—argued but rebuffed in another place—will no doubt return in this House’s Committee stage. Crucially, too, we will argue for trade union rights of workers, not just from the health and safety perspective, vital though that is, but on fair pay and decent working conditions.

Those workers whose contribution to fighting the coronavirus in our NHS was so warmly applauded must be acknowledged not just in pay but by securing the future of the NHS as a public service, publicly funded and publicly provided, free from the ravages of predatory privatisation. I note that the Minister asserted that the NHS will not be for sale. I therefore look forward to the protection of the NHS being enshrined in legislation.

What is needed from a Trade Bill are detailed policies to protect workers’ rights and to secure the supply chain, as well as to tackle global challenges. As we face a jobs crisis wrought by the Covid crisis, this Bill must ensure that trade plays its part in ensuring sustainable jobs in the workplace, where all ILO conventions and trade union rights are respected and promoted.