Shropshire MP says anti-strike bill needed to stop lives being put at risk

Ministers are looking at passing a law which would require a minimum service level during strike action – meaning some health workers could be forced to work, even if they had voted for strike action.

It comes as Number 10 wrestles with increasing levels of strike action across the public sector, including from nurses and ambulance workers.

Telford's Conservative MP, Lucy Allan, backed the idea of the new Bill, saying: "I am pleased that the Government is bringing forward tighter legislation on strike action to ensure that basic services will be maintained in the event of industrial action.

"The recent strikes we have seen have had disproportionate impacts across the economy and directly on the public.

"As we work to build back the economy following the pandemic, strike action has had a massively detrimental impact on local businesses. It is not right that some sectors have the ability to hold others to ransom when they are struggling. In particular, hospitality, leisure and retail businesses are reliant on transport workers to ensure that customers can visit."

She added: "Whilst the right to strike is enshrined in law, it cannot be right that lives and livelihoods are be put at risk as a result in the way we have seen.

"The new legislation will not outlaw strikes; it will ensure that a minimum standard of service is maintained so that the public can be confident that the public services they fund are there for them when they need them.”

Montgomeryshire Tory MP Craig Williams said: "I support the Bill, because, for example, our armed forces are being leant on to support our emergency services during the strikes and fill the gap – and of course they are not allowed to strike, the police are not allowed to strike.

"I think it is right the Government look at a minimum safety level for critical public services.

"The derogations around ambulance cover for example where the unions tell the NHS what level of service they will provide during the strikes – they didn't tell the Department of Health what service they would be providing until 12 hours before the strike – you cannot run an emergency service like that.

"All this is doing is requiring a minimum level of service in critical areas of public services. It does not stop the right to strike, it does not change the threshold for strike votes, or putting pay offers to the full membership, it just sets a minimum level of service."

Wrekin Conservative Mark Pritchard echoed the comments of his party colleagues, saying: “I support the right to strike, but for key services there always needs to be a minimum level of service guaranteed, which is something this legislation seeks to protect.”

Shrewsbury & Atcham Tory MP, Daniel Kawczynski, said: "It is absolutely essential and critical for the economic security of our nation.

"Trade unions today are moving back to their extreme militant tendencies of the late 1970s which destroyed Britain and that must never be allowed to happen again."

But there has been strong criticism of the plan from elsewhere, with Helen Morgan, Liberal Democrat MP for North Shropshire, saying: “This looks like 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.

"Rishi Sunak should be focusing on ending the current strike action and reducing the appalling waiting times patients are having to deal with."

Shaun Davies, the Labour leader of Telford & Wrekin Council also criticised the move.

He said: "When a worker votes to strike or takes strike action they do so as a last resort and they lose pay as a result, no worker wants to do that. When a strike happens that is a breakdown and a failure between the employer and the workforce. But it is a fundamental right for people to withdraw their labour if they feel they are not being paid appropriately, if terms and conditions are not being upheld.

"This latest attack on workers' rights from this Government is desperate, and its natural conclusion is that nurses, health assistants, cleaners, train guards, would be sacked if they carried on striking. This is an affront to our workers rights but also and affront to democracy.

"What the Government should do is spend its time and effort getting around the table, talking to the unions, talking to the workforce to see a way through.

"It is the first time in history that nurses have gone on strike. It is the Government to blame, not workers, and it should back away from this dangerous rhetoric, and get around the table, get a grip, and lead."