Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Andy McDonald and James Wild

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in relation to support from trade unions, of which I am most proud.

The past four decades of structural decline in the share of the national income going to employees, decades marked by the erosion of trade union rights, has been exacerbated by 14 years of the Conservative Government forcing down real wages across the United Kingdom, leaving working families still struggling to recover. Against that backdrop, the most urgent task of this Labour Government is to raise living standards. Trade unions are critical to that mission and the Employment Rights Bill will help to deliver that.

The Bill represents a cornerstone of the Government’s new deal for working people, a vote-winning manifesto pledge. I very much welcome evidence of the popularity of these policies in the platform of Zohran Mamdani, New York’s newly elected Democrat mayor. Among other things, he pledged protection for delivery workers, including guaranteed hours. Yet the amendments to this Bill made in the other place would water down that commitment and deny working people the rights they were promised. I therefore must speak in strong opposition to the Lords amendments, which, taken together, would weaken the protections that this House has committed to deliver for working people across the United Kingdom.

Lords amendment 23 and Lords amendments 106 to 120, which concern day one rights, would remove the right not to be unfairly dismissed from the very start of employment. Instead, they would impose a six-month qualifying period and empower Ministers to introduce a further initial period in which only limited protections apply. That is contrary to both the letter and the spirit of the Government’s manifesto. It would leave new employees vulnerable to arbitrary dismissal and recreate the very insecurity that the Bill was designed to end.

[James Wild]

When the hon. Gentleman has spoken to employers in his constituency about this specific provision—I am sure that he has—what have they said?

[Andy McDonald]

The concept is pretty simple. Conservative Members are conflating different issues around unfair dismissal and probationary contracts. They are scaremongering. There is nothing in the Bill that prevents the continuation of probation periods. The only thing we are saying is that it would be unfair to dismiss somebody for an unlawful reason. I really wonder why it is so difficult to grasp that concept.