Nuclear Test Veterans

Debate between Ian Byrne and Rebecca Long Bailey

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)]

I almost unable to be here today, because my mum, Una, has been critically ill in hospital. If you will indulge me for a few seconds, Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart the paramedics and respiratory nurses who saved my mum’s life on Friday night, and the team at the Countess of Chester hospital, who have been working around the clock to make her stable and give us the gift of a bit more time with her. She is now doing really well and is stable. She is watching this debate on her laptop, which my husband has managed to set up for her, and she told me last night that I had better get down here and do this debate—or else. Like most of the public, she is deeply angry about this issue, and she is right to be angry. It is one of the biggest scandals of our generation, involving decades of suffering, unimaginable loss and, ultimately, injustice inflicted on our own servicemen, their families and the communities affected by Britain’s nuclear testing programme.

I expressly thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes)—he has done far more than most—for his years of work and support on this issue, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest for his relentless work in the other place, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell), and so many other supportive Members who are here today. I also thank the nuclear test veterans campaign team: Alan Owen and LABRATS, John Morris and his lovely family, Steve Purse and his mum, and, most of all, journalist Susie Boniface, who has been relentless in her search for truth and justice. She has never wavered and never given up, and it is because of her groundbreaking search for the truth that I am standing here today to tell the House about the pivotal information that she has recently uncovered. I thank the Minister and the Defence Secretary for their work and support on this issue so far, and I hope that Susie’s recent work will now act as the catalyst for urgent Government action.

I also thank Mr Speaker for granting this important debate; I know that he has long supported the nuclear test veterans. Given the gravity of the recent developments that I am about to outline, I hope that he will look favourably on the request of my friend, the right hon. Member for South Holland and the Deepings, for a longer debate on this issue. So many Members have contacted us both in the past few days to say that they want to represent their constituents on this very important issue.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to all those who served in our armed forces as part of the nuclear tests overseas, to those who suffered illness or died prematurely as a result of the tests, and to the bereaved families and family members who were born with rare disabilities as a result of the radiation that our nuclear test veterans faced. I am fortunate enough to have worked closely with some of the nuclear test veterans and families due to the Hillsborough law campaign, and I thank them for their incredible solidarity with the Hillsborough families and survivors. I thank my hon. Friend for her outstanding work in trying to gain truth and justice for the test veterans, who have been victims of a state cover-up. Will she join me, the nuclear test veterans and the LABRATS campaign in calling on the Government to deliver the Hillsborough law in full, without carve-outs for any state institutions, as a matter of urgency, so that we can get justice for our nuclear test veterans and their families?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I thank my hon. Friend for his hard work and for his support of the Hillsborough law campaign over the years. He has done an inordinate amount of work to try to make justice for the victims a reality, and I know he continues that work on a daily basis. He is right: injustice is injustice. For that injustice to be rectified, we need full transparency. There cannot be any carve-outs of sensitive information or otherwise as part of the Hillsborough law, because that denies justice to those who need it most.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between Ian Byrne and Rebecca Long Bailey

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

My right hon. Friend is 100% right. The problem with blacklisting was that it was done very much under the radar; we had Government institutions going behind legislation. This piece of legislation, however, would unashamedly carry out similar practices in broad daylight, with the full sanction of the Secretary of State and his Prime Minister.

This is an authoritarian and undemocratic Bill. The proposed amendments that I am supporting today are therefore designed simply to enhance parliamentary scrutiny, to constrain the unreasonable powers of the Secretary of State and to protect workers and trade unions, in particular by making co-operation with work notices voluntary on the part of employees, by providing that a failure to comply with the work notice will not mean a breach of contract or provide grounds for dismissal or detriment, and by limiting the reasonable steps that a trade union must take.

This despotic Bill not only represents a fundamental attack on workers’ rights, but dangerously divides a nation, demoralising and threatening to sack the very workforce who have tried to hold our country together over the last two difficult years. These amendments are the bare minimum necessary to take the dangerous edges off this very dangerous piece of legislation—but, frankly, this piece of legislation needs to be thrown in the bin.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey).

I rise to speak in favour of amendments 80, 84, 97, 20, 83, 93, 85, 95, 92, new clause 1 and all amendments tabled by the Opposition Front Bench. I am absolutely delighted to declare that I am a member of Unite and the GMB.

I start by congratulating members of the Fire Brigades Union on their resounding strike ballot today, which really was democracy in action, and expressing solidarity with all the workers in dispute this week. This is a pernicious Bill designed to target the very same workers who, as a nation, we clapped from our doorsteps not so long ago in gratitude for their heroics during the pandemic—the same key workers who, let us not forget, are being forced to use food banks in vast numbers because their work does not pay.

The old chestnut that work pays is becoming a bigger fallacy than some hon. Members’ tax returns. Nurses, firefighters, teachers and other public sector workers are all targeted in this Bill, prohibited from striking and risking dismissal if they resist. Let us be clear: these public sector workers are being forced into industrial action in the first place by a Government who have overseen 12 years of real-terms pay cuts, the erosion of job security and pensions and the destruction of our public services. I note that the Prime Minister said today, after finally sacking his party chairman, that he

“will take whatever steps are necessary to restore the integrity back into politics”.

Well, I cannot help but find that pledge laughable as I stand here speaking out against this Government’s Bill, which will see key workers lose their protection from unfair dismissal and trade unions sued for upholding workers’ rights.

It is clear that the Government are trying to fast-track the legislation through Parliament without proper scrutiny. The Bill lacks detail, and I note that the TUC has submitted a freedom of information request to ascertain why it has been published without an impact assessment. It is a further insult to our key public sector workers that this bonfire of workers’ rights is unfolding just as the Government are laying the groundwork for another bonfire—one of financial regulations, through the Financial Services and Markets Bill.

The Prime Minister speaks about restoring integrity, yet here he is presiding over the empowerment of speculators and lifting the bankers’ bonus cap as our key workers lose their right to strike. It is beyond shameful. I have sponsored 25 amendments aimed at protecting the right of workers to take industrial action, and at neutralising this appalling Bill, which attacks our fundamental right to strike. I support Labour’s amendments to safeguard protections against unfair dismissal, and further amendments that would require the Government to submit the legislation to greater parliamentary scrutiny, including by forcing the publication of assessments of how the Bill would impact on individual workers, equalities, employers and unions.

I am deeply opposed to the Bill, which further curtails the right to strike and other trade union activities. I fully support the rights of workers to take industrial action. I voted against this dreadful Bill on Second Reading, and I will continue to oppose it in this place and out on the streets with the public, who also oppose it. We can and must do better than this dreadful, divisive and potentially unlawful Bill.