Employment Rights Bill

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I have already given way to the right hon. Member, and there are so many other Members who want to speak.

This Government know that the current system does not support working families. We said that we would make flexible working the default, and the Bill will do just that. Flexible working makes workers happier, and we know that businesses that offer it benefit from bigger, better and more diverse recruitment pools. At the same time, we recognise that not all workplaces can accommodate all flexible working requests, so businesses will be able to negotiate or reject unworkable requests as long as that rejection is reasonable.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

Who would decide whether a rejection is reasonable or unreasonable?

[Angela Rayner]

There will be statutory guidance, but of course, it would depend on the various different circumstances. We saw during the covid pandemic that people were able to be incredibly flexible in their work. It is with that mindset that I ask employees and employers to look at how they deliver services, because far too much talent goes out of our economy because of inflexibility. Employers should think about how much talent they can retain in their business by keeping people in work; many of the good employers already know that, and offer way more flexibility than we are suggesting in our Bill.

The current parental leave system is also outdated, which is not right. Under the Bill, fathers and partners will be able to give notice of their intention to take paternity leave and unpaid parental leave from their first day in a new job. New mums also lack the protection they deserve. We know that the Conservative party’s solution is to go back to the dark ages and scrap maternity pay altogether; if the Conservatives had their way, as a single mum, I would have been left with nothing. It was a Labour Government who introduced the maternity allowance as the number of mothers in the workforce grew, and while the Conservative party—out of step with modern Britain—cannot wait to get rid of it, I say that we will never, ever stop defending it.

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[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I will speak to the amendment, especially about the Bill being rushed through without full consultation.

On 13 May 2014, I tabled a ten-minute rule Bill on the Prohibition of Unpaid Internships, as Members will see in volume 580 of Hansard, column 593. On 14 November 2016, I tabled a private Member’s Bill, the National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships)—volume 616 of Hansard, column 1156. On 27 October 2017, Lord Holmes of Richmond tabled the Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition). And on 5 February 2020, I co-sponsored the Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) Bill introduced by Alex Cunningham, the former Member for Stockton North, now retired.

Despite unpaid internships being mentioned in the Government’s policy documents on work, they are not in the Bill. The Government have said that they will tighten up the ban, but there is no ban on unpaid internships—they exist, as they did in the last Parliament, not least with many a Member on the opposite side of the House. If there were such a ban, it would not have to be mentioned in policy documents.

A ban should have been brought in alongside the Bill. There will be a lot of hubris on the Government Benches about bringing forward a landmark employment Bill, with Labour Members saying the Conservatives did nothing, despite all the evidence laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) in his excellent opening speech. [Interruption.] It is all very well burying one’s head in the sand, but every one of the Bills I brought forward got kicked into the long grass, not least my private Member’s Bill, when the only Labour Member present was the shadow Minister. If Labour MPs had turned up, we might have been able to get a closure motion, but they decided not to. That has been the story throughout. If the Deputy Prime Minister does want the Bill to go through, she needs to fight off whatever it was that stopped it each time; I always started out with the commitment that it would happen, and then somehow people were convinced not to do it. I say that in a constructive way to the Deputy Prime Minister, who I know very well.

An intern should be defined as a worker. We were talking about an amendment to the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 that says that work experience is important, but after 20 days or four weeks in work, an intern should be treated as an employee. Work should always pay, and if someone is contributing after that period of time, they are adding something to the business.

[Bradley Thomas (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the fundamental approach behind the Bill should be one of pragmatism rather than tribal ideology?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; pragmatism is important when we talk about business. In that spirit, there is a pragmatic reason why the Bill should not be given its Second Reading today—perhaps at some point it should, but I fear it has been rushed through to meet the spin about the first 100 days.

I would wager that few Labour Members today had plans to talk about unpaid internships, which is a very important issue. I could talk for a very long time about unpaid internships, as I have for hours in this Chamber previously. To ensure equal opportunities for young people, the issue of internships is vital, but it is one that is sadly lacking from the Bill. That speaks to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton: the Bill has to some extent been rushed.

Shale Gas Development

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mark Menzies]

The companies concerned argue that there are substantial reserves of shale gas. The issue, and the difference between the United Kingdom and large swathes of America, is population density. We are not Dakota or rural Pennsylvania, where people can travel for hundreds of miles without seeing a farmhouse.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is about not just population density, but unique areas. In my constituency, the villages of Allerton Bywater and Great Preston have many unmapped mine shafts. Looking at what is happening in Lancashire with seismic movement, there is a real concern with the exploratory licence that has been granted that, in areas with unmapped mine shafts, seismic movement will cause collapses and sinkholes at the top. Decisions at the local level are, therefore, more important in this kind of planning application.

[Mark Menzies]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made.

Draft East Suffolk (Local GOvernment Changes) Order 2018 Draft East Suffolk (Modification of Boundary Change ENactments) Regulations 2018

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 General Committees

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies.

I start by thanking the Minister for setting out the proposals before us today. Local government reorganisations are often quite contentious issues. We often find that local populations are not in favour of local government reorganisations; more often than not, local councillors certainly are not in favour of them; and often in the past, Governments of all political persuasions have had to pursue local government reorganisations against the wishes of the elected members and the local populations. That has resulted in some very odd creations over the years, which have not always stood the test of time, whether that is Avon, Humberside or a number of other local authorities that have long since gone.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

In the 1974 local government reorganisation, the town of Wetherby was put into West Yorkshire. I was born in 1976, yet on the doorstep people still complain about not being in North Yorkshire.

Anti-Semitism

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely. The shadow Secretary of State was brilliant in much of what he said and I feel he believes it genuinely. He went on to talk about the far right on social media and the far right in Hungary. Absolutely, there is a problem with the far right. What I did not hear him talk about quite so much, however, are the Labour members who have been defended by some of the people sitting beside him. One Labour member, who said that the Jews were responsible for the slave trade, was defended by a Labour Member who sits behind him.

What I saw throughout this debate was the Leader of the Opposition chuntering repeatedly when anybody stood up and tried to hold him to account for some of the things that people have said and done in his name. This is a leader of the Labour party who found himself not in one, but in four or five racist anti-Semitic Facebook groups by accident. He did not look at the material. He did not read the material. He did not know the material was there. He did not understand the material. He looked at the mural and made a comment on the mural, but he did not know about it. How are we supposed to believe any of this?

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

My hon. Friend spoke eloquently in the holocaust debate about the abuse he received during the general election from people campaigning for the Labour party. Why does he think that those people felt able to say, when they touched him, “I now have to go and wash my hands”? That was appalling. Why did they feel empowered to do that?

[Andrew Percy]

I will talk about those two cases in a moment. One of the individuals is currently on bail thanks to the actions of the South Yorkshire and Humberside police.

I am sorry the Leader of the Opposition has left his place, because he needs to be held to account. The question I would like to have asked him is why he still has not taken the opportunity to respond to the invite from the Labour party in Israel to visit Israel and to visit Yad Vashem. If I have time, I will say something about that in a moment.

What else have we seen? We have seen a campaign group launched within the Labour party called Labour against the Witch Hunt. I made reference to it when I spoke in the Holocaust Memorial Day debate. Labour member after Labour member has made all sorts of disgusting comments about Jews. I just want to give one example—that of a suspended Labour member, Laura Stuart from Hendon. Reference was made earlier to Sir Eric Pickles, the Prime Minister’s envoy on post-holocaust education. Laura Stuart felt the need to post a picture on Facebook of a photograph from the Holocaust Educational Trust that had been changed to include the words “Zionist fairy tales” and “fat Zionist conference”. A Labour party member did this. There are countless other examples.

I have to say to the leadership of the Labour party: this is in your name by people who are being motivated by the actions of the Labour leader. It is no good pretending otherwise. When you perpetuate a message about a small group of people manipulating the lives of people in this country, you create a space for conspiracy theories.

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[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Evil happens when good people stand by and do nothing. There is evil running through and infiltrating the Labour party, but it is full of good people and they are trying to do something about it. I commend them, appreciate them and have nothing but respect for them.

Yorkshire Devolution

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

I absolutely would envisage that. I hope my hon. Friend is able to put that point to the Minister, because I would be interested to hear the Government’s view. My view, as I reflected a moment ago, is that it is incredibly important that the deal is for Yorkshire and the Humber—both banks. Therefore, as part of the coalition of the willing, it is very important that the partnership relationship exists.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I have listened carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I seek clarification on his comments; I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong in my understanding. Is he saying that at the end of the process, if Sheffield and Rotherham councils do not want to break away from the Sheffield deal and carry on, only Barnsley and Doncaster councils will come into the Yorkshire deal, and Sheffield and Rotherham will stay separate and on their own? That is not the Yorkshire deal. Is this just a mechanism for Barnsley and Doncaster to remove themselves from the deal agreed on and come into another deal? That would undermine the whole “one Yorkshire” argument that he is making. I seek clarification on those points.

[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. It is designed to be a mechanism that provides the best possible deal for our region. I think that everybody here would accept that we have fallen behind. Other parts of the country, such as the west midlands, Greater Manchester and the city of Liverpool, are now moving forward with the devolution deals that they have agreed.

What we are looking to achieve is an arrangement that would give Barnsley and Doncaster the flexibility to move into a wider Yorkshire deal in 2020 if that were an option, but would also not bind the hands of our good colleagues and neighbours in South Yorkshire, Sheffield and Rotherham. It would be for them, in consultation with the Government and other members of the combined authority, to take a view on whether they see their future as part of a Yorkshire deal or wish to proceed with their own Sheffield city region deal, which could include neighbouring parts of the country as well.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being generous with his time. To develop that point, is it suggested that the East-West-North Yorkshire deal would be developed, and that Barnsley and Doncaster could then choose to join it, or is that what would happen at the start? If councils in West, East or North Yorkshire did not want to join in with South Yorkshire, would they be able to stay out of it?

[Dan Jarvis]

The hon. Gentleman rightly presses me on points of detail. Those are precisely the points that will be discussed by the coalition of the willing when it meets in York on Friday, and they are precisely the important points that should be discussed in any subsequent meeting with those leaders and either the Minister or the Secretary of State. However, the purpose of this debate is to provide a response to the constructive letter received by the leaders of Barnsley and Doncaster from the Secretary of State just before Christmas, and to continue that process of negotiation, so that we can work towards a deal that best serves the interests of the people across our region.