David Davis: Labour has to accept issues with trade unions monopolies

David Davis has one of the few Conservative opponents of the Trade Union Bill. The second reading of the bill is currently being debated in the Commons and the former home secretary popped up to clarify his position. After acknowledging that his public comments on the Bill had helped Labour — likening parts of it to something under General Franco’s Spanish dictatorship — Davis said the opposition had to accept that strikes can have a harmful impact on the public:

‘There is an issue when a monopoly – it doesn’t matter if it’s a private sector monopoly or public sector monopoly – goes on strike. The victim then is the public. It’s not the workforce because they tend to get their money back through overtime. It’s certainly not the owners – if there are any owners – because they don’t lose anything lose, their market share doesn’t go away. It’s a monopoly, the public has nowhere else to go.