Rishi Sunak has gone from clapping nurses to threatening them with the sack. The prime minister’s fresh assault on rights at work comes hurtling into parliament on Monday with proposals to impose minimum service levels on workers across England, Scotland and Wales. Ministers would be handed new powers to order compulsory “work notices” to be issued to striking workers, who could then be sacked for going on strike.
This shoddy, unworkable bill is a grotesque insult to key workers. As a former union official myself, I know first-hand that taking strike action is always a last resort – not only because it involves giving up a day’s pay but because the commitment to being there for the public runs deep. But the goodwill upon which our public services have been running hit breaking point long ago. While ministers seek to foist the responsibility for crumbling services on to the shoulders of those on the frontlines, they ignore the fact that workers and their unions already shoulder responsibility, ensuring “life and limb” cover even during industrial action.
Meanwhile, hundreds are dying each week due to NHS delays as trusts declare critical incidents and workers on the frontline compare the health services to a “war zone”. But all ministers have to offer are bad-faith arguments: passing the buck for their own failures, and demonising, gaslighting and coercing key workers who feel they’ve been left with no choice. The days of ministers clapping for key workers are a distant memory.
The buck stops with the government, whose duty it is to protect the public’s access to essential services – yet livelihoods and lives are already being lost. We all want minimum standards of safety, service and staffing – but it’s Conservative ministers who are failing to provide them. The dereliction of duty we are seeing today isn’t on the streets of Britain, it’s in Downing Street.
Their proposed legislation is not merely insulting, but stupid, too. Sunak’s own transport secretary has admitted the proposals would do nothing to resolve the current strikes. His own education secretary says she hopes the new law is not applied to schools. His government’s own assessments warned that the plans could lead to more strikes and staff shortages in transport, and were unnecessary in other sectors. Ministers are desperately seeking to justify the legislation by using disingenuous comparisons with France and Spain. This just won’t wash, as both lose significantly more days to strikes than the UK.
Our public services are on their knees. So many dedicated professionals are leaving their life’s calling because they can’t cope. Ministers know that the NHS cannot find the nurses it needs to work on the wards, and that the trains do not run even on non-strike days, such are the shortages of staff. How can they seriously think that sacking thousands of key workers will not just plunge them further into crisis?
The prime minister’s threat to bring redundancy notices to the negotiating table will serve only to inflame disputes and plunge workforce morale to new lows. It’s perhaps little wonder that he is trying to rush the legislation through parliament. This bill simply won’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Instead, the hapless business secretary, Grant Shapps, has been dispatched to make increasingly desperate and nonsensical arguments at the prime minister’s behest. If Sunak wanted to fulfil his pledge to bring rights at work in line with European standards, he would be bringing forward the proposals that were promised in the 2019 Tory manifesto but which have now been abandoned.
This new legislation does, however, serve one purpose. It offers the Conservatives a cloak of distraction from the crisis in the NHS they have caused, the economic crash their party inflicted on the country, and the cost of living emergency so many are facing. But beneath the delusion, reality bites. The cold, hard truth is the only way these disputes can and will be resolved is at the negotiating table and in good faith, so fair settlements can be reached. Instead, this government has resorted to threatening nurses with the sack because it just can’t stomach negotiation.
In his damning catalogue of the prime minister’s failings, one former Conservative health secretary has warned: “It is simply extraordinary to waste parliamentary time by introducing legislation which removes the right of NHS staff to withdraw their labour in a future dispute at a time when ministers and MPs should be focusing on resolving the current dispute.”
This dead-end government’s supply of sticking plasters is fast running out. It’s increasingly clear that this out of touch prime minister is out of his depth. What next? Banning certain workers from joining unions at all? Well, he’s been considering that too, for those under any lingering misapprehension that the Tories are the great defenders of civil liberties. He wouldn’t hesitate if he thought they could get away with it.
For our part, we won’t stand by and let him play politics with key workers’ lives. The right to withdraw your labour is a fundamental freedom and we will always defend it. Labour MPs will be voting against this bill today and resisting the government’s attempt to rush it through parliament without proper scrutiny. If it passes thanks to Tory votes, the next Labour government will repeal it.
Labour has a plan to make Britain work for working people by resetting industrial relations for a modern era, ensuring workplace rights fit for the 21st century, and by negotiating in good faith to reach resolution rather than escalating disputes.
Try as it might to coerce nurses on pain of the sack, it’s this clapped-out government that richly deserves its marching orders.
Angela Rayner is deputy leader of the Labour party
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