Member

Ministers will not admit it here, but I suspect in their private moments they must be asking to themselves whether it is a good idea to have a nationalised rail service that counts as a single employer where trade unions are given the power to have national rail strikes so that they are able to demand unlimited amounts of money from us for fear of bringing the country to a standstill. Perhaps in their quieter moments they might just reflect on whether that is entirely sensible; I would argue that it is not. Putting this in place means that, if you had a dispute on a particular part of the passenger network—perhaps because of local issues, as my noble friend Lord Moylan said—it would not be possible to turn that into a national rail strike. It would also mean, for example, that, if there was a pay dispute on the part of the network where there was an open access competitor, you could not have the network going on strike and shutting down the open access operator to strengthen the bargaining power of the passenger operator in competition with it. Because that is what could happen.