My Lords, I declare an interest as London’s deputy mayor for fire and resilience. However, I am speaking in my capacity as a Member of your Lordships’ House.
I have had the privilege and pleasure of over a decade’s involvement in the fire service. Until last summer, this has included being involved with the collective bargaining referred to by my noble friend Lord Hendy, as a member of the national pay negotiating body for fire, the National Joint Council—NJC—which is made up of employers and employees, including the FBU. The NJC is a negotiating body that successfully negotiated a two-year agreement on pay last year, in stark contrast to the Government’s many failures in negotiations in other parts of the public sector. The Government’s failure to negotiate successfully is not a good enough reason to introduce unreasonably restrictive legislation. On these Benches, we are committed to repealing these measures.
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Over the past few years, we have had a number of Home Secretaries and Fire Ministers. We have had consultation on fire reform and assurance after assurance from Ministers that there was no intention to ban firefighters taking strike action. However, it is patently clear that this is fundamentally what this Government intend to do through this action.
The recent correspondence to employers from the Home Office, in effect, sets the bar at 73%—so high that it renders strike action virtually impossible. The Minister
quoted the Home Office view that provision on strike days should be as if it were not a strike day. This is an Alice in Wonderland use of language as it is, in effect, a ban on strikes. In some cases, it probably sets the level of service higher than some fire and rescue services, particularly those reliant on retained or on-call firefighters, have on a normal working day.
Can the Minister say how the Government arrived at the figures sent out to fire and rescue services? What soundings were taken from the National Fire Chiefs Council and from the main fire union—the FBU—other fire unions and employers’ representatives, through the Local Government Association or the NJC? Have the Government tested the level set against service levels on any other day of the year? How is the Home Office going to manage a situation in which on-call firefighters have no legal requirement to work, but the minimum service level legislation suggests that they might have to in a strike situation? Given that there is already a crisis in recruiting and retaining on-call firefighters, what impact assessment has the Home Office undertaken to ensure that this does not exacerbate it?
The Government clearly believe that the solution to their failure to negotiate, and their apparent deep hatred and misunderstanding of the trade union movement, is restrictive, regressive legislation. In the case of fire, there has not been a national strike over pay for more than 20 years and the pension strike, in the last decade, was triggered by the Government’s own heavy-handedness.
During the pension dispute, I had the opportunity to speak to firefighters on the picket line. No firefighter or trade union official I spoke to at that time took the decision to strike lightly. No firefighter actually wants to go on strike; no union wants its members to lose pay. Firefighters do their job because of their sense of public duty. Part of the contingency arrangements in London, as in other parts of the country, is a recall agreement in the event of major incidents of the type that the Minister described. The picket lines outside fire stations, and an understanding that firefighters will leave picket lines in extreme circumstances, are central to this. This is similar to the derogation arrangements for the ambulance services last winter, which, in London, included having union officials in the London Ambulance Service control centre to ensure transparency and ease of discussion over decision-making in relation to major incidents.
These arrangements are born of good industrial relations and of respect. The Government’s lack of understanding of the value of good industrial relations has led them to introduce the anti-strike legislation we are discussing today. This is Victorian legislation from another era, out of touch with public opinion. It would damage rather than enhance public safety, by setting employers against employees. I am not naive enough to believe that the Minister will do anything other than defend the Government’s position, but I ask that he answers the questions put during this debate.