Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Angela Rayner and Kit Malthouse

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I do not know what the hon. Member is getting at. Maybe he is getting at the former Conservative Transport Secretary, who referred to them as pirates of the high seas or weasels—I do not know. I have just said clearly to all businesses in the UK that I want to work with them to ensure that we value their employees. Many of them are onboard: they recognise that it is good for business, good for growth and good for their employees.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

In relation to the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), I understand that the right hon. Lady believes she is fulfilling a manifesto commitment, and we have to respect that. However, I hope she recognises that while these regulations will apply across the whole of the economy, the dynamics within small businesses and—in particular—microbusinesses are very different from those within large businesses. For example, if a business only has four employees and all four apply for flexible working, as the Bill provides for, it becomes not just a logistical and administrative nightmare but a personal nightmare for the person who is trying to run that business. I hope that as the Bill progresses, the right hon. Lady will look at what has been a customary carve-out for small businesses and consider whether that might be appropriate for specific measures.

[Angela Rayner]

Some of the measures in the Bill do recognise the difference between large employers and smaller ones, but we also have to ensure fairness and clarity of purpose in this country, and I think this Bill strikes the right balance. As I have said to other hon. Members who have raised issues regarding small and medium businesses, we are working with those businesses. We have already listened regarding probation periods: the Bill now creates a new statutory probation period so that employers and employees can check whether a job is a good fit. If it turns out not to be right, the Bill allows for a new lighter-touch standard of fairness for employers to meet when they dismiss someone, so I think we are striking the right balance. We have worked very hard on this piece of legislation. If workers are dismissed unfairly, everyone deserves the right to protection, however long they have been in post. With Labour, they will have that right.

Turning to statutory sick pay, no one should feel forced to struggle through work when they are not well. Our view is simple: everyone should be entitled to sick pay from the first day that they are sick, regardless of their earnings, yet 1.3 million employees are currently excluded because they do not earn enough. That means that lower earners, including carers, go to work when ill because they cannot afford not to do so, risking infecting the vulnerable, the elderly, and others with whom they come into contact. No one should want that. Under this Bill, all employees will be entitled to sick pay however much they earn, and that sick pay will be paid from their first day of being ill.

Building Homes

Debate between Angela Rayner and Kit Malthouse

Tuesday 30th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Could the Secretary of State confirm two things? First, could she confirm that where local residents have complied with her mandatory targets through a neighbourhood plan, rather than a local plan, the neighbourhood plan will reign supreme and will not be trampled over by planning inspectors subsequently? Secondly, could she confirm that protected landscape—what used to be called an areas of outstanding natural beauty, which comprise 80% of my constituency, but is now called national landscape—will still have significant protection within the planning system?

[Angela Rayner]

Yes, I can confirm that neighbourhood plans and the protections will remain, which is really important. Again, we are saying that the release of grey-belt land has to be for the benefit of local natural spaces. We want to see areas where people are within walking distance of such spaces. Many people do not have access to green-belt areas, but we will protect them, as we have always done. There is no change to areas of natural beauty, parks and so on.

Heatwave Response

Debate between Angela Rayner and Kit Malthouse

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

The events of the last few days have been incredibly traumatic for communities across Britain. Individuals and families have had their homes destroyed and, as the Minister said, lives have been lost. As the mother of teenagers, I reiterate that they must not swim in our rivers—it is too dangerous.

Farmers and businesses have seen their livelihoods go up in smoke. We saw horrifying images of the A2 on fire yesterday. I join the Minister in paying tribute to the incredible bravery of our fire services and those whose job it is to head straight into danger as the rest of us escape it. Sadly, four firefighters have been hospitalised in South Yorkshire and over a dozen have been injured in London. I know that the whole House will give them our gratitude and wish them well, but for too long our public servants have been underappreciated and undervalued by this Government. The Minister mentioned our fire services; over the last 10 years, the funding and staffing of fire and rescue services has been cut, and response times have gone up by 8%. Yesterday, no mutual aid was available to services facing literal firestorms.

Mr Speaker, this statement is far too late. The impact of this heatwave was completely predictable, so why the delay in coming to this House? It has literally taken the country going up in flames for the Minister to turn his focus to this emergency. Climate change will cause more and more national emergencies like this, from heatwaves to fires, floods and pandemics, but as we have seen over the past week, the leadership contenders are doing their hardest to outbid each other on how they would cut action on climate change. They will leave us vulnerable to more freak natural disasters.

The caretaker Minister says that it is his job to chair Cobra meetings, but it should be the job of the Prime Minister to lead. Yesterday, the remaining Cabinet gave the Prime Minister the complete volumes of Sir Winston Churchill as a leaving gift—but he is no Churchill. He has been missing in action. Can the Minister tell us where the Prime Minister was as the country burned? Where was he when Cobra was called last weekend? Has he attended any talks with Ministers or senior officials in the days since? Is the truth not that the Prime Minister and his entire Government have gone missing while Britain burns?

We might have cooler temperatures today, but another heatwave is inevitable as our climate heats up. Britain cannot continue to be so unprepared. The Minister tells people to drink water and wear a hat. It is just not good enough. We need a long-term emergency resilience plan for the future, so can the Minister answer these questions? Where is the plan for the delivery of essential services? How will people be kept safe at work, on transport, in hospitals and in care homes? Where is the guidance for safe indoor working temperatures?

The Minister now says that the Government’s national resilience plan will be published in due course, by the new Administration. It is already 10 months overdue. Why should the British people be forced to wait for a whole year? It is the primary duty of any Government to keep the public safe, and Britain deserves much better than this. Labour already has a resilience plan for the long term. We would implement a Department-wide approach and appoint a Minister for Resilience. We would give local government the resources that it needs to plan and prepare for emergencies. Local government has been on the frontline, and I pay tribute to its response to this crisis—and to what it did during the pandemic—but its resilience has been eroded by 12 years of cuts and austerity at the hands of this Government.

Finally, Labour would empower businesses and civil society organisations to strengthen our response. Homes have been destroyed, our brave firefighters have been hospitalised, and lives have been ruined and lost. Enough is enough. If the Minister is not willing to take the action that is needed, we on this side of the House are.

[Kit Malthouse]

What a shame that—notwithstanding the loss of some homes and some tragic deaths in water-related incidents—the right hon. Lady did not take the opportunity to recognise that by and large the system worked, and that, owing to our planning and the resilience that we built into all the public services and, indeed, public servants whom she lauded, the country got through this particular extreme weather event in pretty good shape. We obviously recognise that there were some unfortunate incidents—as I said, a number of homes were set on fire—but the fact that we kept the damage to a minimum and the vast majority of the population got through this difficulty well was not recognised by the right hon. Lady at all, and I think that that is a real shame.

The right hon. Lady claimed that no mutual aid was available. That is not correct. One fire and rescue service, Norfolk, called for national mutual aid, and mutual aid was provided from other parts of the country. The system that we have for flexing the use of the fire service throughout the country worked extremely well, as the chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council was able to confirm to the Prime Minister last night and, indeed, this morning.

The right hon. Lady seemed to claim that this was the first time I had turned up in the House to discuss this issue. It is not; it is the second time I have done so, and we have been working on this since the weather forecasters notified us that an extreme weather event was likely to occur. It is, however, the first time the right hon. Lady has turned up in the House. [Interruption.] You were doing a radio interview.

[Angela Rayner]

I was in my office.

[Kit Malthouse]

Being in your office is not being on the Front Bench. “Present but not involved” is, I believe, the claim from the Labour party. Before the right hon. Lady starts flinging stones and claiming that others are not doing their job, perhaps she should polish the glass in her house.

As for the involvement of the Prime Minister, he has been kept in touch with our work throughout, either through personal briefings from me or, last night and this morning, through briefings from the chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. As the right hon. Lady will, I am afraid, never know—because, I hope, she will never be in the Government—No. 10 and the Cabinet Office work together very closely when emergencies such as this arise and we need to establish plans and specific co-ordination work to ensure that we all understand what the picture is.

As I have said, the resilience plan is in progress and will be launched as soon as we have a new Administration in No. 10, but the right hon. Lady should not mistake the question of the publication of a national resilience plan for our not having any plans at all. As we saw in all manner of elements of the function of our country, the plans that we had in place worked well, the capacity that we stood up flexed, often brilliantly, to deal with an ever-changing situation, and, as I have said, most of the country got through it in good shape.

As for the appointment of a Minister for Resilience, I am afraid that we already have one: it is me. The job of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is to look after the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, whose purpose is to deal specifically with issues of resilience and ensure that the system works, as it did—largely—yesterday.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angela Rayner and Kit Malthouse

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Ministers to their places on the Treasury Bench for what could be their first and last Cabinet Office orals. It is a pleasure to be here with them. Last week, the Prime Minister finally admitted to meeting former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev, a man who was sanctioned by the Canadian Government. This was directly after a top-level NATO meeting and just weeks after a chemical attack by Russian agents on British soil. No officials or security were present. I have written to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster but am yet to receive a reply, so I hope he will answer my questions now. Did the Prime Minister take any papers from the NATO meeting? Was his phone compromised? Why do Foreign Office records show the presence of an unidentified guest? Given his responsibilities for national security and ministerial standards, does the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster believe this was inappropriate conduct by the Prime Minister?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am in receipt of the right hon. Lady’s letter. Obviously, a number of those questions have to be answered by No. 10. We will forward it to No. 10 and will be replying in due course.

[Angela Rayner]

I really hope that that “due course” is very quick, because this is an issue of national security, which is obviously of concern to many of our constituents. Let me move on to another very serious issue. Yesterday, our country reached the dark milestone of 200,000 covid deaths, which is a tragedy for our country and all those who have lost loved ones. The Prime Minister delayed the start of the public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the pandemic, with the hearings not expected until 2023, making a full inquiry unlikely before the next election. This week, reports suggest that the Government are trying to block evidence to the inquiry, with Ministers fearful that they could be sued for damages and officials apparently making evidence that could be withheld. There can be no hint of a cover-up or excuses for Ministers dodging scrutiny. Does the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster deny those reports that have been put in the press? If not, how can he assure us and the public that the process will be independent?

Points of Order

Debate between Angela Rayner and Kit Malthouse

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

rose—