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Mr. Hammond: The background to the Bill is the long dispute in the fire service, for which the Fire Brigades Union and the Government must share some responsibility. Notwithstanding the history of this matter, I believe that all hon. Members—whatever opinions they have expressed this evening—hope that there will be a settlement on 12 June. The Government have decided to press ahead with the Bill anyway, perhaps as a form of insurance, or perhaps as part of their negotiating tactics—something that the Minister effectively alluded to earlier.
The Conservatives look forward to the White Paper and to having an opportunity to discuss in a more leisurely way the long-term future of the fire service to ensure that it delivers the service that the people of this country need while providing the career structure and fair pay and conditions that firefighters delivering an incredibly important service to the community expect and deserve.
Mr. Roy Beggs (East Antrim): Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the services provided by the fire service go beyond attending fires? Will he bear it in mind that, when there are serious accidents, the fire service is often called upon to relieve the suffering that occurs? I have in mind a recent serious incident in my constituency, in which a young man died as a result of a motor cycle accident. The road was covered with blood, yet there was no arrangement in place to ensure that it was hosed down. The blood was emerging through the sand covering the scene of the accident. Let us therefore take account of the wider involvement of members of the fire brigade.
Mr. Hammond: The hon. Gentleman is right; it is not called the fire and rescue service for nothing. As a Northern Ireland Member, he will know of the role that fire brigades play in protecting us against the effects of terrorism, which, sadly, we on the mainland also increasingly have to consider.
We have supported wholeheartedly the strategic objective of the Government and the employers to link pay to the reform of working practice, even if we have not always agreed with the Government's tactics. We have indicated to the Government our willingness to give a fair wind to a piece of emergency legislation designed to impose a settlement, ensure public safety, lift the burden from the military and pave the way for a longer-term and fairer arrangement that will ensure fair pay and conditions for firefighters while recognising the public's need for certainty in the protection that they expect from one of the key front-line emergency rescue services on which our safety and security increasingly depend.
Conservative Members made it clear at the outset on Second Reading that we required three changes to enable us to endorse the Bill as an effective, if draconian, emergency measure: first, it needed to be time-limited; secondly, there needed to be provision for proper canvassing of the views of all fire brigade employees before the Secretary of State's emergency powers were used; and, thirdly, there needed to be a power to invoke a no-strike provision to give the Bill teeth. The Bill introduced on Second Reading did not meet those criteria.
I am delighted that the Government have recognised the need for the Bill to be time-limited so that it is clearly seen as a response to the specific situation in which we find ourselves, but I am surprised by the resistance of the Minister for Local Government and the Regions to the idea of a ballot. I thought that he and the Deputy Prime Minister had indicated that they feel strongly that sense would have prevailed long ago if only all members could have been balloted and that a ballot is an essential step that should be taken. The public would find it difficult to accept the Secretary of State imposing a settlement because of a failure to reach agreement on a negotiated settlement when nobody had consulted, through a secret postal ballot, all the people being asked to accept that negotiated settlement about whether they were in favour of it. I am disappointed that the Government did not accept such a provision.
Of course, I am not surprised that the Government did not accept the proposal for a no-strike provision, although I am disappointed. I emphasise the fact that the no-strike provision had a specific target, just as the other powers have a specific target. The powers would have been permissive to the Secretary of State—they would not have required him to do anything. The Bill has a limited, two-year life, so Labour Members who got terribly excited about what a future Conservative Secretary of State might do with those powers need not have done so.
Jeremy Corbyn: It will never happen.
Mr. Hammond: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, because even in my wildest dreams I do not expect a Conservative Secretary of State to exercise those powers in the next two years, so it is simply not an issue. He should have put more trust in his Deputy Prime Minister and Government.
The Bill has a limited life in which to deal with the emergency period when we simply do not have the military resources to cope with a strike, and the Deputy Prime Minister himself has acknowledged that any such strike would place lives in danger. What the arrangements for the future should be is an open question. The Minister says that the White Paper is still coming soon, as it was when we last debated these matters a month ago. We recognise that, if there are any restrictions on the rights of fire brigade members to take industrial action, they will have to be compensated for in such circumstances by an independent and fair mechanism to determine pay.
Despite all the trumped up and fantastically exaggerated scenarios advanced by Labour Members and despite all the synthetic anger about what was imagined to be the thin end of a very large wedge driven into industrial relations, no one answered the key question: what is the point of this emergency Bill and the powers that the Secretary of State is taking if he has no sanction with which to enforce them? How can he ensure public safety when he has acknowledged that strikes will put lives at risk, but has taken no power to prevent them?
The Bill was a far from perfect vehicle, but it was a vehicle, as the opportunity existed to grasp the nettle, to put public safety first and turn it into an effective, short-term emergency measure that would restore public
safety, relieve pressure on the military and settle the pay dispute. We could also have considered, in a less pressurised atmosphere, the future role of and arrangements for delivery of a modern fire and rescue service following the publication of the White Paper.The Government have accepted that the Bill should be time-limited, which is a great step forward, but it would be inappropriate to go down the route of imposed settlements—perhaps less generous than those previously on the table—without properly testing rank-and-file opinion through a secret ballot. It is pointless to introduce the powers that the Government are taking without also taking powers to enforce a settlement made under them.
Sadly, the Government have not been able to bring themselves to follow the inexorable logic of their own Bill, and match the power that they are giving themselves to impose a settlement with a power to enforce such a settlement and protect public safety and military preparedness by imposing, if necessary, a strike ban during the two-year life of the Bill.
Perhaps, given his background and history, it was optimistic of us to expect the Deputy Prime Minister to be able to break out of the mould; but that is what is required to make the Bill the effective emergency measure that we were prepared to support—a Bill that would do what the people would expect the Deputy Prime Minister to do, and put public safety, and the concerns that he himself has expressed in regard to public safety in the event of a further strike, ahead of any other consideration. I strongly believe that that is the primary concern of our constituents, and that they will see protection of public safety as the principal purpose for which they sent us here.
The Deputy Prime Minister has not grasped the nettle. We wish him well in achieving a settlement of the dispute, but he has failed the test that we set as a condition of our support for the additional powers. Therefore—I say this with some regret—we cannot support the Bill.
9.41 pm
John McDonnell: We have had a long, continuing debate during the current dispute, and we all hope that we are nearing the end of that dispute: we hope for a settlement next week.
I suspect that the Bill may be used to try to threaten the union—that it will be used if there is no dispute. I do not think that firefighters can be threatened: I think that they will stand firm no matter what, and that they will only allow this dispute to be resolved if they feel that the resolution is just. If the Bill does not constitute a threat, it is intended for practical implementation; and I do not think that it stands up to the test of scrutiny in that context.
Let me make a point that has already been made about the logic of the Bill. What will the Government do if, after they have sought to impose a settlement, the trade unionists still refuse to accept it? They will be drawn down the path represented by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond)—that of banning strikes and banning trade union membership.
I hope that there will be a settlement next week; but I also hope that the Bill, with its sunset clause, will not be needed for implementation purposes. I hope that we will
allow the individual negotiations that will be necessary after next week's hoped-for resolution—negotiations on hours of work, shift patterns and the provision of local services—to take place locally, in the atmosphere that once prevailed in the fire service. There used to be local negotiation, and co-operation between union and employers.In that event the Bill will not be required; but we must send a message to our own Government that we should never present such legislation again, we should never again try to undermine trade union rights, and—more important, we should never again get into a mess of this kind. The dispute could have been settled last July. We had a second opportunity to resolve it in November, and we failed to take it. Let us hope that we do not fail next week and that the Bill and its implementation will never be necessary again.
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