Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Alex Norris)]

We are clear that dangerous buildings need to be remediated. That is why the best thing that any building owner can do is get into a scheme today to unlock the funding and meet those duties they have as building owners. When they do that and when they are approved for the grant, they would have an inspection at that point, so I am surprised to hear that dangerous defects would be locked in, as the hon. Lady says, but I am interested in having a conversation with her to understand that further.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

T3. A block of 50 flats in my constituency was built by the public sector 60 years ago and has now been found to have a major structural fault that will cost over £1 million to fix. The flat owners are also shared freeholders of the block and cannot afford the cost of the repair or to sell their flats. As it is an unusual situation, will the Minister meet me and the resident owners to consider a way forward before the situation gets critical?

[Alex Norris]

Yes, of course. The issue of cladding defects is exceptionally important and, indeed, the subject of a debate later today, but so are non-cladding defects and protecting leaseholders from their impacts.

Employment Rights Bill

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my membership of the GMB. I support this landmark employment Bill, the biggest expansion of workers’ rights for a generation. Today we see the difference that a Labour Government can make for people up and down the country.

Although I support all aspects of the Bill, I will focus specifically on the transport sector. During and following the covid pandemic, transport workers faced the short end of the stick of poor employment practice. I welcome the end of fire and rehire. That unfair practice was used as a sledgehammer against workers, particularly during the pandemic, by companies such as British Airways, which tried it on more than 35,000 staff members, including many of my constituents in Hounslow. BA staff who had worked for decades faced the prospect of being sacked and rehired on poorer pay and weaker terms and conditions.

After huge pressure from trade unions, Labour MPs and the Transport Committee, BA dropped its plans, but other firms such as P&O have also exploited the weakness in UK employment law that the Bill is intended to address. Those practices are still happening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) highlighted in his intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister. When workers were facing fire and rehire, Labour was clear that a Labour Government would ban that practice, and I am pleased the Government are doing that. I welcome clause 22.

On minimum service levels, the Bill will also repeal and scrap the previous Government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023—a farcical bit of legislation designed to limit strike action. In Committee, when I pushed the rail operators on the proposed legislation, it was clear that they had not sought it and they appeared to have no plans to use it. The fact that so few rail operators chose to use the powers once they were enacted showed that the companies themselves doubted their value and use.

This Bill also brings in much-needed modernisation of our maritime laws. In the last Parliament, the then Chairs of the Transport Committee and the Business and Trade Committee—one Conservative, one Labour—jointly wrote to the then Government about the need to update our laws to protect maritime workers. I welcome the Bill’s closure of the loophole whereby ships registered overseas previously did not have to inform the UK Government of collective redundancies, and the fact that this Government have committed to further strengthen workers’ rights at sea.

In conclusion—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Shivani Raja to make her maiden speech.