Performance of Royal Mail

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is concerned about the performance of Royal Mail; and urges the Government to work with Royal Mail to improve its performance levels.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the debate and the more than 100 hon. Members from across the House who put their names to the application. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who applied for the debate alongside me. May I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a member of the executive of the trade union group of Labour MPs?

Today’s debate is not an attack on our posties, the men and women trying to deliver a quality service with their hands tied behind their backs; it is about holding Royal Mail and Ofcom to account until the service that my constituents receive is the one they pay for. I called for the debate because in Redditch and the villages, the post—or the lack of it—is now one of the most common reasons that people write to me as their Member of Parliament. My constituency is a mix of urban, suburban and rural, from Batchley and Church Hill in the town itself to Inkberrow, Feckenham and Wychbold in the villages. The difference between postcodes can be stark.

Let me begin with the ordinary complaints from my casework, with the Radio Times arriving a week late, first-class birthday cards taking five days to cross Redditch, and Christmas cards arriving on 23 January. One Feckenham family always receives birthday cards due on 12 January five days late; it would be funny if it was not so sad. Some receive no post for days and then one bundle tied with the obligatory rubber band. One received nothing between 3 and 20 January. Another in Wychbold gets deliveries once every 12 days.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member. Just last week we had a debate in Westminster Hall, and today hon. Members have a chance to ask the very same questions. What is happening to independent traders in my constituency, in Newtownards, Comber and the Ards peninsula? Delays are choking cash flow, ruining customer relationships and threatening their very survival. Royal Mail has got to grasp the nettle and get it right—now, not later.

[Chris Bloore]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. I will get to the impact on businesses later in my speech.

A letter from my own office sent on 11 June arrived on 25 August. Bills arrive overdue while people struggle to reach complaint lines or their local sorting office. The consequences can be far more serious: one constituent received a hospital letter on 6 October about an appointment on 17 September.

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous. This is such an important debate. I have a constituent who had exactly that problem—they received delayed post for scans and cancer treatment plans. That is unacceptable and distressing. Does he agree that this is the worst type of post to be delayed?

[Chris Bloore]

I completely agree. Another resident of mine, whose husband has cancer, has had to wait anxiously for medical correspondence about a diagnosis.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Chris Bloore]

Could I make a little progress? I am conscious that many hon. Members wish to speak, but I need to get through some of my speech.

A council letter about a husband in a nursing home took from 14 November until 3 March to arrive. His family had six months to appeal and almost four months had already passed. A Department for Work and Pensions letter dated 5 January required a response by the 14th, but it arrived on the 20th. My constituent’s benefits were withheld. She had done nothing wrong; her letter was late. Benefits withheld, appointments missed and appeal deadlines lost—all because the post failed. If my office cannot trust Royal Mail to deliver a letter, how can I assure constituents that their hospital correspondence will arrive in time?

One more thing struck me with this casework. Almost every constituent says that their parcels arrive on time; it is the letters that do not. Is that a coincidence, or is that what happens when a company chases the parcels market and treats letters as an afterthought while holding a monopoly on them?

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way on that point?

[Chris Bloore]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) as she asked first.

[Carla Lockhart]

I thank the hon. Member; he is making a powerful speech to which we can all relate. On hospital appointments, there was discussion that Royal Mail would engage with each of the different hospital trusts. Does he agree that that needs to progress and that there needs to be some screening process to ensure that hospital appointment letters are delivered on time?

[Chris Bloore]

The hon. Lady is completely correct, and I will touch on that issue.

[Tom Gordon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being very generous with his time. Earlier today, I opened the new Friends of Harrogate Hospital garden at the hospital. I spoke with the chief executive, who made the point that Royal Mail has told them that NHS appointments are meant to be prioritised, but the reality that we are all experiencing clearly shows that that is not the case. Does he agree that Royal Mail needs to pull its finger out, so that lives are not lost as a result of its negligence?

[Chris Bloore]

I agree.

The Government’s response to the Business and Trade Committee makes the point well: a lack of capacity that forces a company to prioritise some items over others is no justification for failing to deliver the expected service. Royal Mail must deliver 90% of its first-class letters the next working day. It is managing 85%. Against the target of completing 99.9% of delivery routes each day, it is completing just 70%. Those targets have been missed for five years running, while the price of a first-class stamp has risen by 137% to £1.80 and the price of a first-class medium parcel, where Royal Mail competes, has fallen by half. Where there is competition, prices fall; where there is monopoly, prices rise and services continue to fall.

What has the regulator done, really? Since 2015, Ofcom has investigated Royal Mail seven times and fined it four times. Last year, Ofcom lowered the very targets Royal Mail was missing and cut second-class delivery days, saving the company up to £425 million—“rewarding failure”, as Citizens Advice put it. More fines will not fix this, yet Ofcom has never come to this House seeking the powers it needs to hold Royal Mail to account. A regulator that can punish failure but cannot compel improvement must answer a fundamental question: what is it for? If Ofcom cannot do its job, a new regulator, with real teeth, must be considered.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being so generous with his time. I echo what he said about my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson), who has led this campaign so strongly in Parliament. In Stroud, our Cotswold Vale Talking Newspaper puts news and music on USB sticks and sends them out to blind and print-disabled listeners in Dursley; the chairman says that those now take six weeks to arrive and that many subscriptions are being cancelled. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to take Royal Mail back into public ownership?

[Chris Bloore]

That is a cheeky question, and I might get back to it.

In May, the Business and Trade Committee called the service unacceptable and called Ofcom’s regulation into question. It demanded a road map to improvement. We are still waiting. Meanwhile, last Christmas, 16 million people experienced delayed letters, 5.7 million missed a vital letter and 19 million received bundled deliveries. Behind every statistic is someone let down by a service they have paid for and have every right to expect.

Royal Mail points to £500 million of investment and a promise to meet targets by April 2027. I welcome the investment, but a voluntary plan and relaxed targets are no substitute for accountability. No future promise can undo a missed hospital appointment or restore the time lost fighting for a loved one. That is why I joined my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield and for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron) in writing to Royal Mail’s chief executive, Alistair Cochrane, asking him to meet affected MPs in Parliament. Our constituents deserve more than a briefing from a distance.

However, we must also confront uncomfortable questions. When Royal Mail was privatised, we were promised flexibility, investment and competition. Instead, the taxpayer lost hundreds of millions of pounds through an undervalued sale, and performance levels fell. If privatisation was supposed to secure Royal Mail’s future, why are we now facing these challenges, and what needs to change to put the service back on a sustainable footing?

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the passionate speech he is making. I have heard similar issues from my constituents about delays from Royal Mail. One elderly lady, who is 96 years old, has been waiting for three weeks to get a replacement PIN from her bank. These are stories of real people across the country who are being let down by Royal Mail. Does he agree that its representatives need to come to Parliament and answer questions from MPs?

[Chris Bloore]

Yes. We are not going there; they should be coming here.

I understand that the world has changed. Letter volumes have fallen from around 20 billion at their peak to 5.6 billion, while Royal Mail must serve 4 million more addresses. The economics of the universal service do not shrink with the volumes. A postie still walks the same streets for 10 letters as they do for one. Around 1,000 delivery offices are changing how they operate in a compressed period. The answer cannot be another round of job cuts, which put more pressure on the very service we want improved. Other European countries subsidise their postal services. We must be prepared to have an open debate about whether further Government support is needed to protect the universal service and whether a new operational model is required

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is being kind in giving way. Does he recognise that the point about subsidies is really important in constituencies like Frome and East Somerset? We have fantastic, hard-working and very overstretched posties who are each trying to cover a large area. We also have people who may not have access to broadband, and who rely even more on the post that they are not getting.

[Chris Bloore]

I agree. That is incredibly frustrating and impacts so many different areas.

I am going to make some progress and finish. Recognising the need for change does not mean accepting the unacceptable. Before I turn to what must change, let me deal with the tired old narrative that we must pick a side between consumers and workers—the customer who wants their post and the postie who wants decent pay. That is a false choice, and the evidence contradicts it. Citizens Advice, the statutory champion of postal consumers, and the Communication Workers Union, the voice of postal workers, have reached almost the same conclusions from opposite ends. Both want a regulator that protects the universal service, the same rules for competitors and an end to bogus self-employment. A fairly paid, properly employed postie is how a customer gets their letter.

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bloore]

I am sorry; I have to make some progress.

When workers are squeezed, consumers pay the price—and squeezed they are. I do not blame the posties. I have spoken to a postal worker with 36 years of service, who told me that morale is at an all-time low. Staff are told to complete half a delivery one day and scramble to catch up the next. Overtime is restricted, yet posties work extra hours unpaid just to keep the show on the road. Royal Mail runs a two-tier workforce: new starters on £13.68 an hour against £15.50 for long-standing colleagues. Is it any wonder that the company cannot recruit or retain? All the while, parcel competitors undercut Royal Mail with bogus self-employment—paying nothing in employer national insurance, while Royal Mail pays £650 million a year—and cherry-pick the profitable addresses while passing difficult ones back to the national network to which they never contribute. That matters for Redditch’s small businesses, too. They rely on the post for invoices, cheques and supplies. For them, a late letter is not an inconvenience; it is a cash flow problem.

I have four clear asks of the Minister. First, I ask her to strengthen regulation: to ask Ofcom what powers it needs to hold Royal Mail to account, to tie above-inflation stamp prices to meeting service targets and to require transparent reporting of efficiencies to Parliament. If Ofcom cannot regulate effectively, we must question whether it remains fit for purpose. Secondly, I ask her to level the playing field: to tackle bogus self-employment through the employment status reforms, to extend minimum service and consumer protection standards to competitors, and to examine the case for a levy on operators that profit from the universal postal network. Thirdly, I ask the Minister to protect the workforce: to address pay inequalities, to work constructively with the CWU on the new delivery model and to build workloads a human being can actually complete. Finally, I ask her to convene an emergency national summit, bringing together the Government, Ofcom, Royal Mail and the unions to agree a sustainable future for this vital service.

We must acknowledge that the postal market has changed, and have an honest conversation about service standards and funding, but change cannot be an excuse for declining standards or intolerable pressures on our workforce. This House has not always got it right when making historic decisions about Royal Mail’s ownership, but we must learn from those mistakes. What matters now is that we act decisively to secure Royal Mail’s future, protect its workforce and safeguard the communities that depend on this vital national service.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Dame Harriett Baldwin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bloore]

I have already had the best part of 20 minutes, so I probably will not be long.

I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response. I also thank the many right hon. and hon. Members from all parties for taking part in today’s Backbench Business debate. I have learned things about the service that I did not think I would ever learn, whether that is the infidelity of a former Prime Minister—I do not know if I am letting the cat out of the bag here—or the Jane Austen quotes that we have heard.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) talked about the direction of travel and what is likely to happen if we do not take action. Despite the light-hearted and more serious stories that we have shared today, we are in a position where we could lose universal services if we in this House do not take action. While I may not have set out the same plan as my right hon. Friend in his speech, I really do think we have to understand that we are at a point of no return if we do not take strong and positive action. Our constituents will not forgive us if that universal service disappears, and it will cost us a lot more to try to rebuild it in the future.

Once again, I thank everyone for taking part today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House is concerned about the performance of Royal Mail; and urges the Government to work with Royal Mail to improve its performance levels.

Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

I may look suave and debonaire, but I am not James Bond, so I will resist commenting on the attribution of that. It would be for the Minister for Security and the Home Secretary to do that; these are serious matters. What I will say is that we were right to put that £1.5 billion in place. It has not been drawn on, but it did give a vote of confidence to one of our most important manufacturers at a moment of genuine crisis.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement. I represent Redditch, which has a proud automotive history and is home to thousands of the 100,000-plus jobs that are part of the supply chain that supports JLR, and we are all deeply concerned about the statement from JLR. This Government did everything they could with the £1.5 billion loan—not bail-out—to support JLR, so will the Minister assure me that, if worse is to come, the Government will not falter in any way in giving support to protect these jobs? If the jobs are lost further down the road, they will never come back, as other areas in Birmingham can attest. Will the Minister assure me that this Labour Government will make sure that, whatever the headwinds facing JLR and the pressures from China, we will not lose this crucial industry in our country?

[Blair McDougall]

I can reassure my hon. Friend on that. I should say that in our conversations, Jaguar Land Rover has been at pains to talk about this. It was described earlier as bitter medicine, but JLR is not in any way rowing back from its investment. It is investing really significantly in the future of the company. We will be alongside it as it makes those strategic investments, and as it makes sure, as my hon. Friend says, that it continues to flourish for a long time to come.

British Steel

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

I thank the Father of the House for the spirit in which he asks that question. The key moment for jobs was the intervention last year, which resulted in the cancellation of the consultation on about 2,700 redundancies. The blast furnaces on the site will continue for some time to come. We have said in our steel strategy that we believe the future of the industry is in modernised, cleaner technologies. I am sure that will be at the forefront of the minds of the new board members as they look to transform and modernise the site.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mr Reynolds) on securing this urgent question, and the Minister on his answer and on the Government’s bold action. Redditch manufacturers rely on British Steel, and to be frank, want more and different grades of it to expand their own production. I fully support the measure taken today—or, rather, last night—but can the Minister explain to us what engagement is happening on the ground to reassure workers?

[Blair McDougall]

This decision is of critical importance to the entire economy, our national security and our national infrastructure. However, as the Father of the House has said, it is also a matter of getting to the end of the month for thousands of people. This morning, the workers on the site have been briefed on the decision. We would expect the new board to remain deeply engaged with the workforce, who will be central to ensuring a revitalised and resilient future for British Steel.

Steel Tariffs

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

There are two things there. Our steel strategy said that we had an ambition to increase domestic steel production from 30% to 50% of market share. I have mentioned that the Speciality Steel sale has been delayed by a few months, but that component of the UK steel market is not the largest part. There are about 1 million tonnes of capacity there, whereas British Steel and Tata Steel each produce about 3 million tonnes. I realise that we are talking about different grades, but to answer the hon. Lady’s specific question: the overall capacity issue is very much about those two larger companies.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

I fully support the need to buy British, but companies such as Springmasters, KM Products and Accurate Laser Cutting Ltd—all of which are based in Redditch—cannot source the grade and size of steel required for their machines entirely from the UK; in fact, most comes from the EU. Will the Minister meet me and representatives of my local businesses to hear their suggestions about how we can protect local businesses but also meet the good intention of this Government to support British steel?

[Chris McDonald]

I am aware of the challenges for spring steel businesses. Spring steels are incredibly difficult to produce and use high-quality, high-value steel. They are clearly within the capability of Speciality Steel, but the business is not operating. Given the number of requests for meetings, we might do a roundtable or something similar, but there will certainly be an opportunity for my hon. Friend to speak to officials. Perhaps we can get together with the Minister for Trade.

Private Sector Investment: Lancashire

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Maya Ellis]

I completely agree. As many of my constituents regularly tell me, the congestion we get when the M6 fails or has a closure is a nightmare when it falls on to the A-roads around the constituency, so a second bridge around Preston to create a ring road is critical.

Staying with the subject of transport, my hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) and for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) are having to fight relentlessly for better connectivity in their constituencies, which is where devolution could really help us. The Government may say that Lancashire did not come to the table when the offer was first there for devolution, but that is not the fault of Lancashire’s places and people, so it does not seem fair that they should suffer. Lancashire leaders are at the table now, so let us crack on.

The disparities are reflected in our venture capital and equity investment volumes, which trail significantly behind Greater Manchester. In the first quarter of 2024, Greater Manchester reached approximately £104 million in investment, while Lancashire secured just £7 million. That innovation gap is not due to a lack of ingenuity; it is a lack of investment that acts as a direct drag on our wider commercial performance.

When I speak to private investors—both those investing in small companies and those investing in big infrastructure —they often sheepishly tell me they know they should probably be doing more in Lancashire, but that they are creatures of habit. I am making it one of my missions to coax more of them up to Lancashire to see what is on offer, but I ask the Minister not to let this Government fall into the same bad habit of sticking to what we know, even though there is clearly such growth potential in Lancashire.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is giving a passionate articulation of the frustration felt by many of us outside non-metropolitan areas. We feel that frustration greatly in Redditch, where we are south of the West Midlands combined authority border. I find that difficult to explain to my students who want extra funding in education or to those who want transport links that do not get funding because we miss out on every partnership and every strategic housing fund. If we are really going to get the economy moving and growing, that has to happen in our towns—towns like Redditch—that led the industrial revolution many years before we had even heard of metro mayors.

Single Status of Worker

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) on securing this debate. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding my union support and membership of the trade union group of Labour MPs.

In my constituency, I hear from postal workers, delivery drivers, care workers and many others who feel that the current system simply does not reflect the reality of the work they do. At the heart of the debate is a simple question: does our system of employment status match the modern day labour market? At the moment the answer is clearly no. We have a three-tier system that is overly complex, often unclear and too easily exploited. This is not a marginal issue. The TUC estimates that approximately 4 million people in the UK are in insecure work, including those on zero-hours contracts or in forms of precarious self-employment.

In my community, insecure work shows up in very real ways: the delivery driver working regular hours who is told that they are self-employed, with no sick pay or job security; the worker who wants to speak up about unsafe practices, but fears that they have no protection if they do; and the families trying to make ends meet without the certainty of stable hours or fair conditions. In sectors such as distribution and logistics, which are so important to the economy, the problem is particularly acute.

The TUC has also highlighted that up to one in eight workers are now in some form of insecure work. Where a parcel is delivered in my constituency, the person carrying it is often classified as self-employed, without basic protections. That is not genuine flexibility; it is insecurity dressed up as choice, and it is costing working people in my constituency real security and dignity, and ultimately real income.

We can also see the wider consequences. Companies that rely on insecure models are able to undercut those that provide decent pay and conditions. That creates a race to the bottom, one that often harms workers, undermines responsible employers, and weakens our economy. We see that tension clearly in the postal sector. Royal Mail, which directly employs its workforce and provides a universal service, is competing with firms that can erode basic obligations by classifying workers as self-employed. As evidence to the Business and Trade Committee has shown, it is not a level playing field: decent employers are penalised for doing the right thing, while the Treasury loses out on revenue that should be contributing to our public services.

There is, therefore, a strong case for moving towards the single status of worker, with a robust test to distinguish genuine self-employment. This is not about removing flexibility where it works; it is about ensuring that flexibility does not become a loophole for rights to then be stripped away. It is also about ensuring that the gains we have made through measures such as the Employment Rights Act actually reach the people they are designed to protect. Rights such as protection from unfair dismissal, guaranteed hours and access to union representation mean little if they can be avoided through reclassification.

There is also a wider public interest in the single worker status. At present, too many people fall outside whistleblowing protections simply because of their employment status. That cannot be right. If we want safer workplaces and higher standards, we need a system that gives people the confidence to speak up without fear of losing their livelihood. On the day that we mark the 37th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, candour and truth in public and private life have never been more important.

Fundamentally, this is a cost-of-living issue. The TUC has found that insecure workers are significantly more likely to struggle to pay their household bills. When people lack basic protections, when their hours fluctuate unpredictably, when they have no sick pay and when they can be dismissed without notice, that instability feeds directly into financial insecurity. A fair labour market is essential to a fair standard of living. As a former chief executive who worked with a progressive Government overseas to improve employment rights, I believe in an economy built on fair rules, strong rights and shared prosperity, one that rewards good employers and protects working people.

I know the Minister has a long track record of supporting working people, so I have every faith that she will conduct this process well. I welcome the Government’s commitment to consult on a simpler framework to create a system that reflects the reality of modern work, closes loopholes and ensures that every worker has access to dignity, security and fairness at work. Ultimately, this issue comes down to a simple principle: people who work should have rights that they can rely on. For the people I represent, that principle cannot come quickly enough.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Kate Dearden]

To hear the Conservative party try to lecture us across the Dispatch Box on trade union engagement, industrial relations and how we operate our economy is very interesting. The hon. Gentleman knows that I am working really closely with businesses of all sizes—small and large—and with our trade unions and partners, because that is the right thing to do. The Employment Rights Act is a significant piece of legislation. We want to get it right, but we also want to fundamentally change how we do things in this country. That is the right thing to do, and we are taking the responsible action to do so. We recognise that there are lots of changes, which is why are working in a staged way over the next two years to implement them, and we are doing so in partnership with businesses and trade unions. We want to work together to deliver this. It represents significant change for 18 million people across the country, and businesses are vital in delivering it. That is why we are working together to do so.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

12. What recent progress he has made on the implementation of single worker status.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kate Dearden)]

I am having quite the outing today, Madam Deputy Speaker!

I welcome the question from my hon. Friend, whose business experience as the chief executive of an international trade association gives him acute insight into this topic. This Government are committed to tackling the pressing issues with the current employment status framework, and we will publish our consultation as soon as possible. The consultation will seek to address issues with the framework that can enable worker exploitation and leave vulnerable workers without core employment protections.

[Chris Bloore]

I thank the Minister for her answer. She will know that too many parcel couriers in my constituency and across the country are on bogus self-employment contracts and worse terms and conditions, with no holiday pay or sick leave. That is driving down standards across the sector and, of course, robbing the public purse of national insurance contributions. I welcome her commitment to announcing the consultation on single worker status. Can she guarantee that both employer and employee representations will be included in the consultation?

[Kate Dearden]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue, and I thank him for doing so. I agree that it is completely unacceptable for businesses to seek to undercut others in a race to the bottom through bogus self-employment. Employers should never seek to deny people their employment rights and to avoid their own legal obligations by claiming that someone is self-employed when in reality they might not be. We will therefore consult on the changes to the status framework and our action to improve compliance, and we will of course engage with all stakeholders as part of that.

Employment Rights Bill

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney]

We are trying to create a balance, managing the burdens on employers in creating jobs. We have to ensure there is employment in the first place before we can ensure people’s rights. I entirely accept the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but placing these burdens on employers to track the hours that numerous employees are working will add to the costs that employers incur in taking people on. That is precisely the sort of thing that discourages employers from creating jobs.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Olney]

indicated assent.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I assume the intervention will be short. We have we only got 30 minutes left in the debate, so I assume that Ms Olney is coming to a conclusion soon.

[Chris Bloore]

I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for letting me intervene. She must realise that it is macroeconomic conditions, not improving employment rights, that affect a company. What is certain is that when people have zero-hours contracts, they cannot pay their mortgages when downturns and recessions happen, because they cannot get in the money that they need. She talks about the burdens on businesses, but what about the people who cannot even pay their basic bills because of the exploitative contracts they are on?

[Sarah Olney]

The goal of the Employment Rights Bill should be to strengthen the economy for all so that we can get better employment conditions for everybody. I strongly believe that we need to strike the right balance so that we can support the economy as a whole.

Business and Trade Committee

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the question and for his sterling work on the Committee as our inquiry has been driven forward over the last seven or eight months. I have not. It was striking to compare the evidence we took with history lessons from the 1920s and 1930s. As a country, we have developed infrastructure to tackle these kinds of threats in the past. Indeed, the forces that we assembled in the 1920s and 1930s were so important that they became known as the fourth fighting service. It was certainly crucial in helping us to stand up the Ministry of Economic Warfare in world war two with the speed that we did. We are now in a world of chokepoints, coercion and weaponised interdependence, and today’s cyber-attacks will be nothing compared with those in future. Frankly, the country is simply not ready. We have to get our skates on.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his report. I will not mention his vast experience though, because he is still young to me. Redditch was deeply impacted by the JLR shutdown, with many of our supply chains affected. My right hon. Friend talks in the report about the need for an economic security Minister and about the specific measures needed to upgrade cyber-security across our critical sectors. What powers would my right hon. Friend envisage such a Minister having, and how do Government support businesses to get up to date to meet the challenges mentioned in the report?

[Liam Byrne]

We have a very good Minister in place, but in a way, the report is designed to ensure that that Minister is empowered in his work and across Government. But first we must understand, and help the Minister have the powers to understand, the full breadth of the UK supply chains and where the risks are. The Jaguar Land Rover case was striking because the supply chain information was kept on the computers that went down. When the computers went down, they had to generate, I think, almost paper lists of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to work out who needed cashflow and who could survive without direct help. We must ensure that we have a full picture of supply chains and where the critical dependencies are, as the Japanese have been doing for many years.

Making sure that there is a proper backstop to the cyber-insurance market is important. That is why the proposals for a much bigger and better-equipped Pool Re are so important. Pool Re, as many will know, was set up to backstop terrorism insurance during the height of the IRA attacks. It now needs modernising for new times. The tax regime that we have in place today simply does not incentivise small and medium-sized enterprises in the way that we could, to draw down on subscription-based cyber-security policies. Making sure that there are the right incentives, powers and insights available are just some of the tasks that we think an economic security Minister needs to be fully empowered to perform.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bloore Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I understand the prominence of the issue in the right hon. Member’s constituency. We already import a significant amount of ethanol from the US: 860,000 tonnes of bioethanol. We recognise the competitive pressures that the US trade deal will bring—it is obviously not yet in operation—and have met the companies affected and continue to negotiate with them. They are already very distressed and lose significant amounts of money, so what they really need are regulatory changes from the Department for Transport for the market as a whole. I can assure him that we are working on that.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

T5.   Rusty’s Collectables is a great new addition to Redditch high street, offering unique items such as Pokémon and Marvel collectables. Owners Russell and Amee have successfully moved from online to the high street. Can the Minister explain how the Government will help more entrepreneurs like them to turn great ideas into high-street businesses?

[Gareth Thomas]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Through our small business strategy, we will set out very shortly further plans to support businesses to get on the high street. The increase in money in the British Business Bank, announced yesterday by the Chancellor, will also significantly increase access to finance for such businesses.