Seasonal Work

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair.

We have heard from Members from across the House who understand a fundamental truth: that the hospitality sector is the cornerstone not only of our economy but of our society. It is a great strength of our parliamentary system that we all represent unique districts that are all, in one way or another, replete with high streets and hospitality businesses—pubs, restaurants and hotels—which we all wish to support. Members on both sides of the House have observed the importance of binding our communities together, giving people a warm place to stay—a refuge from loneliness—and keeping our high streets vibrant. Those are places where life happens.

As we have also heard, hospitality performs a vital and arguably unique role in providing the next generation with that vital first step on the career ladder. I imagine that many of us had our very first experience of the world of work—that priceless exposure that helps us become world-ready—in retail or hospitality. I certainly did, and we have heard many other such examples. The sector does that precisely because it is a feature, not a bug, that it provides flexible seasonal work that allows young people to earn their first wage, combined with other responsibilities or opportunities, and, in so doing, to learn the important dignity of labour.

As we have heard from my right hon. and hon. Friends, pubs, hotels and restaurants in particular are hurting as a direct result of the Chancellor’s choices, not just in last year’s Budget but once again in this year’s Budget, which was delivered from the Dispatch Box just a few weeks ago. More than a dozen venues from my South Downs constituency have contacted me in the last 24 hours alone, having heard about this debate. Ruth and Martin at the Cricketers in Duncton described to me how their rates are going up by £4,500 to £5,000 a year—that is money that they do not have. The Fox Goes Free in Charlton has been a public house, continuously serving the community, for over 400 years. Like every pub, it makes a huge contribution. Its business rates bill will increase by more than £13,000 next year. The House should bear that in mind when Labour Members talk about how they have introduced permanently lower business rates. That is a laughable idea. I have heard similar stories—and worse—from the Murrell Arms in Eastergate, the Half Moon Inn in Northchapel, the Labouring Man in Coldwaltham and the Onslow Arms in Loxwood.

[Graham Stuart]

Tom, the landlord of the Kings Head in Hedon, heard on Budget day that business rates would be cut for businesses like his. Instead, the rateable value of that pub, which provides such an important service to the people of Hedon and the surrounding villages, has gone from £9,000 to £32,000.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. I would not want to incur wrath by accusing anybody of misleading the House, but that is exactly the same story that I have heard from the Bridge Inn in Amberley, the Star and Garter in East Dean, the Bricklayers Arms in Midhurst and the Black Horse Inn in Byworth. That surely cannot be a coincidence; these cannot be isolated examples of those “permanently lower” business rates—

Supporting High Streets

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving a powerful speech. Hospitality is fundamental to social mobility. I would have thought that Government Members would be ashamed of a policy that means that those furthest away from the labour market—young people—are put off from trying to get their first job. Hospitality is essential to enabling them to join the labour market, and the Government have put blocks in the way of people who want a better life.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Let us be optimistic: we are here to celebrate our high streets, and perhaps all is not lost. The Chancellor could yet repent and reverse some of her most damaging policies, or adopt our policy of cutting business rates entirely for 250,000 high-street businesses.

Hospitality Sector

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House regrets the combination of catastrophic choices made by the Government causing the closure, downsizing and lack of hiring by pubs, restaurants, hotels and hospitality businesses across the United Kingdom, with an estimated 84,000 job losses over the last 12 months and an average of two site closures per day in the first half of 2025; further regrets the Government’s policies that have led to this such as the omission of the hospitality sector from the Government’s industrial strategy, increases in the cost of pavement licences, the reduction in retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief from 75 per cent to 40 per cent for 2025-26, the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions to 15 per cent and the lowering of the secondary threshold to £5,000, and measures in the Employment Rights Bill which will make hospitality employers liable for the behaviour of customers and others; and calls on the Government to publish a dedicated strategy for the sector, to consult with hospitality employers prior to any future changes to the National Living Wage, to amend the Employment Rights Bill to protect seasonal and flexible employment practices vital to the sectors’ contribution in providing a ladder into employment for young and often excluded groups and to introduce targeted support measures to prevent further business closures, job losses and damage to local communities.

From the great British pub to the family-run restaurant, from the small seaside bed and breakfast to world-leading hotels, hospitality businesses are the beating heart of our communities, our high streets and our economy. Yet today, under Labour, they are hurting like never before. We were promised a Government for jobs, for opportunity and for prosperity. What have we got instead? A concoction of catastrophic choices causing a lack of hiring and the closure and downsizing of pubs, restaurants, hotels and hospitality businesses across the nation; a jobs tax that goes out of its way to savage the part-time, entry-level opportunities that hospitality offers in abundance; soaring business rates; and over 300 pages of additional job-killing red tape.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My hon. Friend might have been like me: the first job I ever had was as a porter, and then a barman, at the Crown and Mitre hotel in Carlisle. These are opportunities for people who are coming into the labour market for the first time or trying to get back into the labour market. The hospitality sector offers opportunity to people who otherwise have none, and that opportunity has come under devastating attack from this Government.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. Opportunity is a word we are going to hear again and again, because of the huge contribution that the hospitality sector makes to the economy and to getting people on the ladder of opportunity with their first job in life.

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

I will talk about the difficulties facing steel around the world, but let us just be clear what is happening today: the British people must not have lost their winter fuel allowance and their disability benefits in order that China can walk away from its liabilities, leaving British taxpayers to pick up the bills.

Steel needs energy, and energy needs steel. No one denies that steelmaking has been difficult for some time, but Scunthorpe is the victim of a dishonesty that pretends it is better for the environment to ship coke halfway around the planet than from down the road, and of an energy policy that has driven costs higher than in any competing nation. No one is more responsible for this than the Energy Secretary and the Prime Minister who appointed him.

[Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]

[Graham Stuart]

I assume that applies after the warning, Mr Speaker.

We have a Government who, I believe, are shipping coking coal just off the Lincolnshire coast today from Japan, when it was perfectly possible to have the world’s greenest production of coking coal in Cumbria, with thousands of jobs. Is it not a disgrace that this Government turned their back on jobs in Cumbria and, indeed, in the North sea because they put ideology ahead of practicality and even ahead of the environment?

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is sad to say that Scunthorpe is the victim of exactly that policy: putting ideology before British interests.

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am nearing a conclusion in any case. However, I do think that the issue of product safety—the rules and regulations that govern our economy, as the Secretary of State himself said—is intrinsically linked with trade, mutual recognition and growing the economy by removing trade frictions and barriers rather than erecting them and subjecting businesses to the tyranny of simply not understanding the corpus of rules and regulations.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he, like me, hope that the Liberal Democrats, despite their hobby-horse love of the EU, do not allow the EU flavouring of the Bill to blind them to the frankly illiberal Executive-enhancing, legislature-diminishing aspect of the Bill? If they genuinely aspire to being His Majesty’s Opposition, they will join us this evening in voting against Second Reading.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I hope, as the Secretary of State slightly alluded to in his remarks about the ability of a country to make its own rules and regulations, that we will soon be back in the House with a Government statement at which we can celebrate the mother of all Brexit benefits: securing the ability to conduct our own trade. I look forward to hearing from the Liberal Democrats exactly how much they welcome that ability on behalf of their constituents.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Forgive me if the hon. Member has been here for more than 120 days, but I fully support the sectors, and the industrial strategies that the Government have articulated for them, because the strategies continue on from, and are identical to, those of the previous Government. Not for the first time, we see what I call name-plating from this Government. A British business bank—the UK Infrastructure Bank—is being re-name-plated as a national wealth fund. The modern industrial strategy takes the existing science, technology and innovation framework, our plan for financial services and our creative industries strategy and re-name-plates them under a different banner. That is welcome. There is nothing quite as flattering as plagiarism, and I am delighted that those really important sectors of the economy will benefit from a degree of continuity.

The Budget has been absolutely crushing for business. If the Secretary of State is honest, he will know that from his engagement. The only thing that it has delivered to businesses across the country is more burdens. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the increase in national insurance contributions amounts to a £25 billion tax on business. The reduction of the national insurance threshold by over £4,000 will keep small and medium-sized businesses up at night. Let us not equivocate: the measures in the Budget amount, in the words of the Chancellor herself, to a “jobs tax”. From industry leaders to shop owners, those in the retail, hospitality and leisure industries in particular will think back to what they heard during the election campaign.

[Graham Stuart]

I know that my hon. Friend follows these things closely. According to the OBR, the £26 billion jobs tax bombshell actually nets only £16 billion because of reduced investment and other funds, and three quarters of the £26 billion falls on workers’ wages. Only this socialist Government could be so incompetent as to reduce wages by more than they will take from a tax that they have introduced. I have not heard that observation yet in the debate, but I share it with my hon. Friend.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. We have heard talk from Labour Members of a circular economy. Well, this is entirely circular. As the OBR observes, the measure does not add to growth, and as my right hon. Friend mentioned, three quarters of the burden will fall on the low-paid. The Labour party has a distinguished record on these matters, and if Labour Members are serious and thoughtful about this, they will interrogate their Front-Benchers in much greater depth, because the measure will result in lower-paid, poorer jobs—and it will be much harder for people to get on the jobs ladder in the first place.

There is an enormous number of unanswered questions. The impact on GPs is uncosted.