Employment Rights Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Alex McIntyre Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I come back to this point of principle: either we have autonomous bodies that can make their own decisions or we do not. If the Government’s answer is that we do not, I certainly understand why they do not want this amendment, but I do not understand why they persist with their support for that which they created in the first place—the academisation of so many schools—and resist making the more straightforward argument for a one-size-fits-all education policy. I hope they do not adopt such a policy, because of the progress that the Labour party made through academisation in the first place. However, that is the natural conclusion of what the Minister is saying.

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

I refer to my membership of the Community and GMB unions. In the break, the shadow Minister challenged me, saying that I had been very quiet this morning—I was feeling festive, but perhaps I am feeling less festive now. Let us take the analogy about choice that he is trying to set out and put it in a slightly different context. Private limited companies are often seen as the drivers of growth, and we have heard lots about that from the Opposition. Those companies have lots of freedoms to make decisions and to invest where they want, but they are all subject to the national minimum wage. Is the shadow Minister suggesting that a national set of terms and conditions will remove academies’ freedom to make entrepreneurial decisions? I am interested to hear whether the Conservative party’s position is now that the national minimum wage should also be abolished.

[Greg Smith]

No. I did challenge the hon. Gentleman on his quietness in the morning sitting, and he has not disappointed this afternoon, but of course that is not the position of the official Opposition. The last Labour Government brought in the national minimum wage, but the last Conservative Government brought in the national living wage. We are absolutely committed to that, but it is a rule that applies equally and evenly across every sector in the economy. In schedule 3 and amendment 168, we are talking about a specific carve-out of an existing position for one specific sector.