Amendment 33

Part of Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill - Committee (2nd Day) (Continued) – in the House of Lords at 5:15 pm on 23 March 2023.

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Photo of Baroness Chakrabarti Baroness Chakrabarti Labour 5:15, 23 March 2023

I totally agree, by the way, with the noble Baroness that there are areas of our common law in particular, and some statutes, where the inclusion of the adjective “reasonable” by itself will do the trick. I disagree that it is appropriate here because we are asking unions to do something that is inherently counterintuitive to their raison d’etre, which is to organise workers, in extremis, to go on strike. If one is saying to the union, “You are now having to push against the grain of your whole existence, the existence of your organisation, and your freedom of conscience and your association, which you are entitled to under the convention and the ILO”, and if one is pushing them in the opposite direction, one has to be very specific and proportionate about the nature of that totally counterintuitive duty.