I was disappointed to see the government pushing ahead with anti-strike laws.

This is an astonishing, desperate measure by a failing government. They have undermined our public services over thirteen years, leading to chronic labour shortages. This means that there isn’t an adequate level of service on many non-strike days – and it is one of the reasons why our key workers feel pushed to take industrial action, because they are working in intolerable and often unsafe or inadequate conditions.

This damaging, counter-productive step will not solve these disputes and will only increase staff shortages. Such draconian measures have been tried before in other countries and never work. I will keep pushing the government to resolve these disputes through negotiation.

As a Labour MP, I will always support people’s right to organise, withdraw labour and take other industrial action for better pay and conditions.

From reading messages from nurses, lecturers, postal workers, housing advisors and many others in Bristol, I know they don’t take such a step lightly. Many of them have been working in very difficult conditions for a long time now. This Tory government has failed workers and the country.

The government has created these problems; it is the government that must speak to the unions and resolve them. Tory Ministers cannot be allowed to keep letting people down.

I’m working with our Shadow Cabinet Office colleagues led by Angela Rayner, and our colleagues in the trade unions, to bring in an Employment Rights Bill and a New Deal for Workers in the first 100 days of the next Labour government. Trade union leaders, including the leader of my own union Unison, have urged us to focus on getting the Tories out so we can get a Labour government in and bring about the transformation we so badly need for the sake of working people everywhere.