Does that mean Royal Assent is therefore meaningless for immediate actioning purposes and will that fact be legally stated in the Bill?
This is simply the way that legislation works these days as the Executive (i.e. Prime Minister) continues to denude Parliament of any actual power and ability to hold it to account (not that Parliament appears to be especially interested in doing so). A process that has been ongoing for a while now (as in at least a couple of decades) but seems to have accelerated since 2019 in particular to the point that Parliament often doesn't have enough work to keep it busy and what work it does have is little more than nodding through what the Prime Minister wants them to nod through.
There is no real scrutiny of legislation anymore by the Commons at any stage of a bills progress through the Commons, few MPs have the ability to actually do it anyway and even those that do hardly have the time as the Government, which sets the timetable for Commons business, only allows the bare minimum amount of time for debate in the Chamber in any case. Legislation is therefore typically full of problems which the Lords are required to iron out themselves as legislation passes through the Lords following its passage through the Commons. There is a certain irony that the unelected Lords do a far far better job of scrutinising and revising legislation to try and get it into a fit state than the Commons ever achieves. Why do you think various Prime Ministers have been keen to do away with them? They're the one bit of Parliament that still holds them properly to account!
This particular act, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, is the same as many acts that come through Parliament. It is basically a vehicle to give the relevant Secretary of State powers to create regulations (Statutory Instruments to use the lingo) and it is the regulations which will actually provide the legal powers to give the Act effect. The reason for this? Well, Statutory Instruments, depending on the exact mechanism used, in theory require the consent of the Commons (and Lords) or at the very least can be blocked. But in reality it is neigh on impossible to do so once an SI is laid it will nearly always become law (or will instantly become law and won't be objected to).
No annoying votes to worry about, no whipping operation required, no amendments from disgruntled MPs yours or theirs, far less scrutiny, much easier to get on with what you want to do without ever troubling silly little Parliament.
So yes, Royal Assent was granted and gave this Act the force of law. But without the regulations it was simply a skeleton with no meat or muscle it had no effect on its own. Now the regulations will be laid and it is extremely unlikely that they will not become law as written by the relevant Secretary of State. The bulk of the Act is just amendments to existing legislation to accommodate the new powers and penalties for non-compliance. It however this tiny part of the Act which is actually the important part of the Act tucked away in a section amending the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 to add the following:
234B Power of Secretary of State to specify minimum service levels
(1) The Secretary of State may, for the purpose of enabling work notices under section 234C to be given, make provision by regulations for levels of service in relation to strikes as respects relevant services (“minimum service regulations”).
(2) Minimum service regulations may be framed so as to have effect in relation to any strike that takes place after the day on which the regulations come into force, even if—
(a) notice of the strike under section 234A was given on or before the day on which the regulations come into force, or
(b) the date of the ballot in respect of the strike was on or before the day on which the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 comes into force.
(3) In this Part, “relevant services” has the meaning given by regulations made by the Secretary of State.
(4) Regulations under subsection (3) may specify only services that fall within any of the following categories—
(a) health services;
(b) fire and rescue services;
(c) education services;
(d) transport services;
(e) decommissioning of nuclear installations and management of radioactive waste and spent fuel;
(f) border security.
www.legislation.gov.uk
And, er, that's it. That's the full extent within the Act itself about the minimum service levels. (1) is the part which creates the power to make the regulations, (2) is just to make sure that any outstanding strike action is covered even if it started before the regulations came into force, (3) provides the definition of what a "relevant service" is (basically whatever the Secretary of State says it is) whilst (4) provides at least a small check on (3) to make sure that the Secretary of State can't go completely mad and specify anything at all that they like as being a "relevant service" but is still a very broad power within those selected categories of services.
The Statutory Instrument (the regulations) will now be laid I think under what is called a "negative procedure" which is to say that they take effect, if they follow convention, 21 days after they were laid. There is, in theory, a process that can be followed by either the Lords or the Commons to annual (revoke) an Statutory Instrument laid under this procedure but the last time it was successfully used was in 1979 so that seems unlikely (this is why Governments like SIs, they're very hard to stop).
But this is how Government works now! They force through an Act which gives the relevant Secretary of State wide ranging and unspecified powers which are then given effect by Statutory Instruments which are basically unscrutinised by Parliament and very difficult to stop once they've been made!
