Employment Rights Bill

Alison Bennett Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The disparity in the terms and conditions for care workers actually impedes recruitment: we are seeing huge numbers of vacancies in the care sector. Through the fair pay agreement, I want to see carers being treated with fairness for the valuable contribution they make. They are also key to tackling the challenges we face in our NHS.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising the issue of care workers and the great contribution that they make by looking after those who need care. Does she agree that the minimum wage for a carer should be increased by £2 an hour, in line with Liberal Democrat policy?

[Angela Rayner]

We have already written to the Low Pay Commission, as I have set out, and we want to go further through the fair pay agreement to make sure that carers are recognised for the valuable role they play. Care workers are not just people who do the shopping or call in for 15 minutes; they handle complex needs in the community and look after some of our most vulnerable loved ones. They should get the recognition they deserve, and that is why we are taking these measures.

We know the valuable contribution that trade unions make. That is why we are resetting industrial relations. The Conservatives presided over strike Britain with their scorched earth approach to strikes. First, we are repealing the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023. Anyone with a brain could see that that legislation would do two things: increase tensions and fail to prevent a single day of industrial action. We said so at the time, and what happened? The rail dispute cost our economy over £1 billion. The law has failed and has no reason to stay on the statute book.

We are also repealing nearly every part of the flawed Trade Union Act 2016, which tried to smother trade unions in form filling and red tape and prevent them from doing their job. We will go further by strengthening the voice of working people by making it easier for trade unions to get recognised, giving them the right of access to workplaces and making sure that they have enough time to represent their members. When the rights of working people are flouted, a new fair work agency will be empowered to investigate. Today we are also launching a consultation on modernising trade union laws so that they are fit for the modern workplace and our modern economy.

In under 100 days, we have put together a transformative package that marks a new era for working people. We know that the Conservatives will oppose this every step of the way. We know because they have history, just as they opposed Labour’s minimum wage and now, shamefully, want to take us back to the dark ages when women were denied maternity pay. It is clear that they are out of step with modern Britain.

Our plans mark a new way forward—a new deal for working people, making jobs more secure and family friendly, banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, supporting women in work at every stage in their life, a genuine living wage and sick pay for the lowest earners, further and faster action to close the gender pay gap, ensuring that rights are enforced and that trade unions are strengthened, repealing the anti-worker, anti-union laws, turning the page on industrial relations and ending fire and rehire, while giving working people the basic rights that they deserve from day one in the job. This is a landmark moment, delivered in under 100 days. This is a pro-business, pro-worker, pro-growth Bill and a pro-business, pro-worker, pro-growth Government. Today, after 14 years of failure, we are starting a new chapter and decisively delivering a better Britain for working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I associate myself with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), and commend her for all her work on the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which came into play in the previous Parliament. I want to build on that, and to emphasise the importance of the interplay of paid and unpaid care in ensuring that we look after the people in society who need our care. The comments of a constituent of mine in Mid Sussex come to mind. She was an unpaid carer for her mother, and told me that having paid carers come in helped her to sustain a normal mother-daughter relationship for that little bit longer.

The care workforce, and looking after the care workforce, are extremely important, and the Liberal Democrats welcome the fair pay proposals in this Bill, but we would like the Bill to go further. As I mentioned when I intervened on the Deputy Prime Minister, we would like the minimum wage for care workers to be £2 higher than the normal minimum wage. We would also like to build the esteem and career path of people who work in paid care—for example, by establishing a royal college of carers. Without that, we have a blocker to our workforce productivity. Caring and working must go hand in hand, but because regulations do not enable unpaid carers to look after their loved ones adequately, 600 people a day give up work to care for a loved one.

One of those people is Amanda, who used to live in Mid Sussex. She and her husband Nick look after their 21-year-old son Archie, who is autistic and learning disabled. Amanda is a modern foreign languages teacher, and there is a shortage of such teachers. As Archie was approaching adulthood, they realised that West Sussex county council would not be able to provide enough care for him, so the best thing that she could do was take her teacher’s pension early and claim the carer’s allowance. Because of the £151 a week limit on earnings for those on the carer’s allowance, Amanda is now excluded from the workforce. She cannot take up offers of supply teaching or exam invigilating that would boost the family income and be good for her mental health. We need to ensure that people can give care while being in the workforce, because this situation is not good for the nation’s productivity, or for the Government’s ambition to deliver growth.

Employment Rights Bill

Alison Bennett Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Witherden]

I wholeheartedly agree with everything my hon. Friend has said. I am also pleased to see Government new clause 34 encouraging greater employer compliance and increasing compensation for workers subjected to fire and rehire by raising the maximum period of the protective award from 90 to 180 days.

Amendment 329, tabled in my name, seeks to further protect against that harmful practice, ensuring that any clause in an employment contract that allows an employer to change the terms without the employee’s consent would be unenforceable, especially in cases of unfair dismissal related to a refusal to accept changes. That would further help redistribute the power imbalance between employers and employees, which currently allows low wages and poor working conditions to become commonplace. The Bill also takes crucial steps towards banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, ensuring that all workers have predictable hours and offering security for their day-to-day lives. I am pleased to see amendments extending such protections to agency workers.

We have all felt the effects of a system that has left so many behind: flatlined wages, insecure work and falling living standards. It is therefore not just my former pupils but millions across the country who will benefit from the biggest upgrade to rights at work in a generation. I am proud to support our Labour Government in this historic step towards better quality employment across the country, and I look forward to the full delivery of the plan to make work pay. Diolch yn fawr.

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, which would make carer’s leave a paid right. We have an opportunity to give carers in employment a fair deal right across the country, while also bolstering our economy. The Government have an opportunity to build on the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), and take the next step in providing working carers with the flexibility they need to juggle work and care.

Carers UK estimates that the value to the economy of carers being able to work is £5.3 billion. When I have met major blue-chip employers such as Centrica and HSBC, and their employees who have benefited from those corporations’ carers policies, they are clear that having those policies in place to support caring is not only good for the employees, but makes them better employees for the employer. The employers really benefit from having members of staff who support them and are also able to do the best for their families.