Lincoln Jopp

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance). She is such a compelling advocate that I am tempted to go on strike myself. I do sense a certain amount of antipathy between the two sides of the House, so, before I come on to make a fair point in support of amendment 292, I want to prepare the ground by doing two things. First, I want to try to convince Labour Members that they missed an opportunity, because I am, at heart, a rabble-rousing potential motivator of people. When, about three Christmases ago, the ambulance drivers went on strike, it irked me that the soldiers who were going to stand in for them at no notice would have their Christmas ruined, so I started a campaign to try to get them an additional £20 for every day they stood in for the ambulance drivers. This plan was—the Chancellor would have loved this—net positive to the Treasury. Of course, the departments that employ the ambulance drivers and the arm’s length bodies do not pay them on strike days, and the pay differential between them and the £20 bung to the soldiers meant that the Government still saved money. I managed to get The Sun on board and get a letter into the paper, and did a bit of television.