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Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is, as ever, on the ball. He has just demonstrated to the House how knowledgeable he is on these matters and he rightly says that there are different cases. Either case makes the point, but I am sure that the House will be happy to benefit from his expertise on both if the need should arise and there is any further confusion. I believe I am right in saying—he will correct me if I am wrong—that in the case of Network Rail v. RMT the dispute was largely over safety. So far as I can tell, the case was not about an employment matter, because the signallers were not subject to any proposals for staff redundancies—it is not as if their jobs were being threatened—and the RMT was complaining about a safety issue. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington gave the impression, to me at least, that these cases were clear-cut victories for the unions in terms of their recommendation for a strike and that there should be no impediment to that democratic process being applied. I have to take issue with that initial premise, because the result of the ballot in the case of Network Rail v. RMT was that 3,199 votes were cast, 1,705 of which were in favour of strike action and 1,481 of which were against, with 13 spoiled papers. Therefore, the majority was just 224. I do not know whether or not my hon. Friends would say the same, but I was not originally given the impression of that margin of victory in the speech made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. He seemed to imply that there had been an overwhelming vote for strike action. Before we get on to the niceties of why the unions fell foul of the law and why it is right that they fell foul of the law, as it stands, we must take into account—I think that the law should take this into account—the effect of strike action, if it were to go ahead, on the employer, on the economy and on the general public. That should be a factor in determining whether an injunction is granted. If it is going to have a disproportionate effect, we would want the judiciary to be risk adverse in deciding whether to grant an injunction. According to Network Rail, the cost of the strike action would have totalled about £20 million. That is a substantial amount of money and it was perfectly right that a judge should insist that everything was done rightly and properly, all above board, before action with such a financial impact on a business—on the taxpayer, I might add—was proceeded with. In the court papers, Network Rail claimed—the RMT did not dispute this, so we can safely say that we are on firm ground—that the strike action would have had the effect of preventing 80% of all rail services in the UK from running. That would have had not only a devastating effect on Network Rail as an industry but a massive effect on many employers, businesses and people who rely on getting about by rail to fulfil their daily duties. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington might think that the RMT had a perfectly legitimate complaint against Network Rail that Network Rail was being irresponsible. That might or might not be true, but I am not entirely sure what grudge the RMT has against businesses, commuters and shoppers up and down the country who would have been negatively affected by that action. I am not entirely sure why they should be penalised for any actions by Network Rail that the hon. Gentleman seems to disagree with, but that is the impact that the strike action would have had. The RMT union did not dispute that in the court case. It is perfectly proper that a judge should consider the impact on other people when bearing in mind whether to grant an injunction. Network Rail made it clear that it would have caused immense damage to the economy, to businesses that depend on rail for freight or transport, to commuting workers and to a great many individual rail users.