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The government's new anti-strike bill is so bad even Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised it

The government's new anti-strike bill is so bad even Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised it
How will the new anti-strike bill affect workers?
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The government has finally passed its anti-strike bill, and it continues to prove controversial.

So much so that even Jacob Rees-Mogg has come out against it in part, calling the bill "badly written" and "an extreme example of bad practice" during the pre-vote commons debate, as reported by Sky News.

The bill will set minimum service levels set for fire, ambulance and rail services for when the sectors go on strike. MPs voted 315 to 246 meaning it will now face scrutiny in the House of Lords.

Rees-Mogg said he was a "supporter" of the proposed law's aims, but added "it is a badly written bill" - criticising a lack of detail when instead it should "set out clearly what it is trying to achieve".

He said: "This is almost so skeletal that you wonder if bits of the bones have been stolen away by wild animals and taken and buried somewhere, as if, you know, in cartoons."

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He backed Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, over her criticism of so-called Henry VIII clauses in the bill - allowing ministers to change it without the full scrutiny of Parliament - saying such measures "should be used exceptionally", or it was "bad parliamentary and constitutional practice".

And he agreed with the SNP's David Linden who questioned the need to rush the law through, saying: "This isn't emergency legislation. This is a piece of legislation that we have been conjugating about in the Conservatives since at least our last manifesto, if not back to 2016.

"I have supported it all the way through, I have wanted this bill to come forward, I think it is the right thing to be doing, but there is no excuse for failing to do it properly."

"If this House passes good, well-constructed legislation, it is much less susceptible to judicial review," he added. "So there is a Treasury bench interest in good, well-crafted legislation... which this is not."

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to repeal the bill if his party comes to power, saying it is "likely to make a bad situation worse" so we doubt this is the last we will hear of it.

Aside from that, all we can say is we've never seen Rees-Mogg and Mick Lynch in the same room...

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