Employment Rights Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I rise to speak to parts 4 and 5 of the Bill, and specifically to new clause 19, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), and new clauses 110, 111 and 112, which stand in my name. I wish to put on record my thanks to my two Liberal Democrat colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Torbay and for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson), for their work in the Public Bill Committee, alongside many other Members of the House.

Overall, throughout its passage, we Liberal Democrats have indicated our support for many aspects of the Employment Rights Bill, such as those we debated yesterday, including boosting statutory sick pay, strengthening parental pay and leave, and giving people on zero-hours and low-hours contracts more certainty. However, a lot of crucial detail has been left to secondary legislation, to lots of new Government amendments and to continuing consultations, which makes it impossible to explicitly endorse the Bill as a whole at this stage. Even with 264 amendments in Committee and 457 Government amendments on Report, major issues are still yet to be determined, especially in part 4. Even after all those amendments, the Government say that they intend to

“consult further on modernising the trade union landscape following Royal Assent”

of this Bill, including on admissibility requirements, a code of practice and secondary legislation. It is therefore clear that part 4, which we are debating today, is still far from finalised.

We Liberal Democrats believe that employee participation in the workplace is vital, but we also believe that it should go hand in hand with wider employee ownership. That is so important for diffusing economic power, promoting enterprise, increasing job satisfaction, improving service to customers and getting long-term economic stability and growth. The Government’s proposals on trade unions are aimed at strengthening employee rights in what can often be a combative and confrontational working environment, and we Liberal Democrats see this Bill as a missed opportunity to improve employee engagement and ownership to provide collaborative working environments and long-term growth, whether by reforming company purpose rules or putting a duty on employers to encourage employee ownership in large listed companies. However, given what we have before us, we have tabled a few amendments.

First, new clause 19 is about the right to be accompanied, and it does what it says on the tin. It would expand the right for staff to be accompanied by a certified companion at disciplinary and grievance hearings. That is a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy, and I hope it is not too controversial, as it simply rectifies an anomaly. The current law allows only trade union representatives or colleagues to accompany an employee, and that leaves many without proper support. Some sectors, such as the medical profession, already allow accompaniment by non-union companions, yet that is not reflected in law. Our targeted amendment would fix that anomaly, and I urge the Government to accept it.

New clause 110 simply requests that the Government conduct a review on the impact on small business. Throughout the Bill’s passage, we have expressed concern about the cumulative impact of all the Government’s work in this area and the impact it will have on small businesses in particular. Just the other day, the Federation of Small Businesses told me that it spends thousands and thousands of hours giving advice to small businesses on employment matters, and these new obligations will create a huge amount of extra law for them to understand, interpret and apply.

Small businesses do not have the same resources as big business. They often have no legal department, no compliance team and perhaps no human resources specialist. Because small businesses are often rooted in their community, they are conscious of their reputation. They know their employees and they want to get things right. That means it will take extra time, effort and cost for them to navigate and comply with this part of the Bill, and that is before we get to everything else that the Government are seeking to introduce.

Small businesses are telling me that, taking the measures of the employment Bill together with the changes to national insurance and business rates and everything else, they feel overwhelmed. All that new clause 110 does is ask the Government to conduct an impact assessment. We know that small businesses are passionate about their employees. Small businesses are often the ones to give people their first job. They are often the companies that give people a second chance. They provide part-time, flexible working and opportunities to return to work, so I encourage the Government to look at the impact of part 4 on small businesses.

New clause 111 is about introducing legal aid in employment tribunals. When legal aid was first introduced, the intention was for it to become the NHS of the justice system, but we know that today legal aid is far from that. Our amendment would require the Secretary of State to report on options for expanding the right to legal aid in employment tribunals. We already know that many employees cannot afford legal representation, and that creates an imbalance of power when facing well-resourced employers. The amendment simply asks the Government to look at the options that might be available in that regard.

New clause 112 asks for a review of the single enforcement body. We Liberal Democrats positively support the Government’s efforts to create a single point of contact, rather than four. A similar measure was in our manifesto, where we called for a powerful new worker protection enforcement authority. As a matter of good practice, when putting different organisations together, it is important to make sure that no gaps are created in that protection. The review we ask for is not just a formality, but an important safeguard to ensure that employment rights enforcement is effective, fair and fit for purpose.

There is much in the Bill that we Liberal Democrats welcome, but there are many parts of it that we simply cannot support because it is not yet clear what the Government’s intentions are. We urge the Government, in the strongest possible terms, to look at the impact on small business, as it is an area about which we are deeply concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)]

My membership of Unison, and of the national executive of Unison prior to my election, is well documented. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

What people on this side of the House probably do not know is that I am also an associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the professional body for the people profession, and I have spent over 20 years as a manager and an employer. I have therefore spent most of my career working with people, managing people and employing people. I have ensured that staffing levels are maintained on the hours that people are contracted and available to work, and I have managed their flexibility without having to resort to bank or agency staff every week. However, as a trade union rep, I have prepared for and worked on consultative ballots, statutory industrial action ballots and—oh yeah—political fund ballots. I have done the hard yards: I have walked the wards at 3 o’clock in the morning to speak to the night shift, and I have gone out to remote workplaces to engage with people. But I have also met management to agree on what essential levels of service are.

I pay tribute to all of those who have worked on this Bill to get it to the place where it is today, and I welcome its coming back to the House. I believe in fair work; a relationship between the employer and the worker that is based on equality; a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work; and the right of an individual to withdraw their labour should workers collectively vote to do so. We discussed yesterday what a healthy employment relationship looks like, and it is about more than just pay. It is about how people are treated at work, and it is about ensuring that work pays and that people have not only a job but guaranteed hours, if that is what they want. If someone wants to work full time, they should not have to work two or maybe three contracts with the same employer to make up those hours, or to work the same excess hours every week for months and months—until they want to take an annual leave day, when they lose their entitlement to that.

Today’s amendments focus on two main aspects of the Bill: the rights of trade unions to organise in a way that we recognise in the 21st century, and how this vital piece of legislation is enforced. As we have been reminded, the world of work has changed fundamentally in the last 20 years, and so has the world of trade unions. I listened very carefully, and with great respect, to the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), who spoke of the combative and adversarial nature of trade unions, but that is not the world that I recognise.

[Daisy Cooper]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for addressing some of my concerns, and I look forward to hearing what she says. Just to be clear, I was talking about what can be a combative working environment for employees and employers, and I said there was a missed opportunity to create more collaborative environments. I was not necessarily accusing the trade unions, but working environments can be combative.

[Katrina Murray]

Thank you very much for your intervention. I have 20 years’ experience of working in a partnership arrangement, and staff-side trade unions have been the agreed and recognised bodies for staff in the NHS. It is natural to sit down together and say, “These are our issues. How do we resolve them?” It is a lot more financially advantageous if we do not end up in a situation that is adversarial.

Electronic balloting has long been common practice, but not for statutory trade union ballots. This is not just about public votes on “Strictly Come Dancing” or “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!” I noticed that the Conservative leadership election in 2024 made great use of electronic balloting. It is absolutely time for trade union ballots to be brought into line with society, so I welcome the measures in the Bill to widen the methods of voting in industrial action ballots.

While I am on the subject of balloting, let me also say that I support the extension of the period of time before a re-ballot takes place to extend the mandate for strike action. The ultimate aim of any form of industrial action is for disputes to be resolved by all of the parties involved, ideally before any action is taken, before labour is withdrawn, before individuals lose their money and before the public are affected. The role of the Government should be to ensure that intransigent parties get round the table and talk in order to resolve any issues. Conservative Members have reminded us that when faced with that opportunity, they did exactly the opposite. They introduced the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, a piece of legislation that is so useless that it has stopped precisely zero strikes. It was used precisely zero times and is rightly being repealed as part of this legislation.

What Conservative Members do not recognise is that trade unions and trade union members do not take action lightly. I do wonder what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), was thinking, because he has obviously never talked to trade union members. People know their rights, they want to belong to things and they want to be involved. People collectively make such decisions, and they individually make decisions about their subscriptions—and by golly they know, because they have told me. These provisions have not been brought in with businesses kicking and screaming. Most businesses that work well with people know exactly what is going on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

Is the hon. Member surprised, as I am, that there is so much support on these Benches for caps on political donations and greater transparency about them?

[Gregor Poynton]

We have mentioned that, of course, and it is certainly the case. I would love to see more transparency from the Conservative party.

It is right and proper that we reward the good businesses that contribute to good employment and sustainable growth, and it is right and proper that we take action against rogue employers that do not. With this Bill, the Government are also calling it quits on the Tories’ scorched-earth approach to industrial relations, which led to the worst strikes chaos in decades. A new partnership of co-operation between trade unions, employers and Government will ensure that we benefit from more co-operation and less disruption.

North of the border, the Bill signals the largest upgrade of workers’ rights in Scotland for a decade. It marks an end to exploitative zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire practices. It will establish day one rights to paternity, parental and bereavement leave for millions of workers. However, it will also be beneficial for employers in Scotland, helping to keep people in work and reduce recruitment costs by increasing staff retention and levelling the playing field on enforcement. It is both pro-worker and pro-business.

Members of the Scottish National party—including the hon. Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law) today —have been calling for the devolution of employment law for many years, but at no point have they explained how, beyond the banning of zero-hours contracts, those powers would be used to improve workers’ terms and conditions, to increase productivity and to accelerate economic growth. Moreover, it might be nice if the SNP practised what it preached. During the Rutherglen by-election in 2023, it chose to use zero-hours contracts to employ people to deliver leaflets. In government, the same party has chosen to include zero-hour contracts in their definition of positive destinations for school leavers. Financial insecurity, anxiety and stress do not sound like my idea of a positive destination.

The SNP says that it wants to transform Scotland’s economy for the better—to boost wages and productivity and grow key sectors—but the fact is that Scotland has a higher rate of zero-hour contracts among people in employment than any other UK nation. How are people supposed to plan financially and improve their quality of life when they wake up on a Monday morning to find out via text message whether this week they will have eight shifts, two shifts, or no shifts at all?

The reality is that the Scottish Government already have the powers to introduce changes to many workers’ terms and conditions through public procurement, but they choose not to do so. They would always rather blame someone else, and further constitutional grievance, than use the extensive powers that they have to improve the lives of ordinary Scots. That is why the Bill is of such paramount importance. Across the UK, acute benefits will be delivered to the people who need them the most, and in Scotland the Bill will right the wrongs of the SNP’s laissez-faire approach to regulating zero-hour contracts.

The tenure of this Labour Government is still measured in months and not years, but this Bill is yet another example of their delivering the new direction that the workers, businesses and people of Scotland and the wider United Kingdom deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper]

As I noted in my speech, there are problems with the Bill. The hon. Member has mentioned the problems on public transport. Does he recall that in 2022 the train unions and the train operating companies actually resolved their dispute, and does he regret that the Transport Minister at the time intervened to block that agreement to resolve the strikes?

[Mr French]

My experience as an MP is great frustration, particularly in outer London, about train companies constantly going on strike, with a very small minority of train drivers going on strike. What we saw from this Government was a load of money going straight to those same unions, without the productivity changes that we would like to see, and no adaptation in the system. My personal opinion on some of these proposals is that it is increasingly likely that automation and a loss of jobs will be direct consequences of the rigid trade union laws being forced on to more businesses. I suspect that the only thing that will rise in this Parliament is unemployment.

These strikes are costly, disruptive and damaging to Britain. They ought to be a last resort, but this Government’s proposals will take us back to the 1970s—before I was born—when strikes were a political tool for division, damage and disruption. This is yet more evidence that Labour is not on the side of working people or of serious economic growth, as its own impact assessment—even partial—tells us. Londoners will not thank this Government if this results in yet more disruptive and longer rolling strikes that grind our city down even further than Mayor Khan has. Working people will not thank this Government for empowering their trade unions to bring our country to a standstill, especially as we pick up the Bill as they fill their pockets.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jayne Kirkham]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare my Unison membership, although I am also an ex-solicitor. I am going to address the Government amendments relating to enforcement, rather than trade union rights.

We have a large demand for social care in Cornwall, as is the case in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell). Our population tends to an older demographic and, with many people leaving friends and family to retire to Cornwall, the availability of care is very important. Our social care system is close to breaking point due to the combination of years of underfunding and a fragmented privatised system. Skilled care workers are chronically underpaid for what they do, often at minimum wage, and we struggle to get and retain care workers.

The Bill contains many provisions that will help: strengthened sick pay; parental leave; protection from unfair dismissal from day one; improved family-friendly rights and flexible working; measures to tackle zero-hours contracts, including for agency workers and workers at umbrella companies, as well as for direct employees; and strengthened redundancy rights. The Bill also specifically gives social care workers respect and recognition through a fair pay agreement, and reinstates the School Support Staff Negotiating Body. It will be a game changer for those low-paid workers—mostly women—who work in care and schools.

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Lady will be aware that there is a debate on the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill next week, where we will debate whether health and social care providers should be excluded from national insurance contributions. Would she care to comment on whether Labour Members will support that amendment made in the House of Lords?

[Jayne Kirkham]

Local government funding will, of course, be increasing to take that into account, and funding for adult social care is rising and will rise further in the next three-year settlement under this Government.

To return to my speech, in Cornwall we have seen the rise of care workers coming from other countries to work on sponsorship visa schemes. These workers are often in a financially precarious situation, which increases their dependency. Some have been charged by their employers for induction, travel or training; in some cases, workers receive a salary below the minimum wage to make up the cost of their flights to the UK.

Draft Reporting on Payment Practices and Performance (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2024

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 General Committees

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

In so many sectors, we have this enormous power imbalance between large companies and the smaller companies that they often contract through their supply chains, and construction is no exception. The Liberal Democrats have no objection to this and broadly welcome it. Anything that increases transparency is a good thing. Anything that tries to redress the power imbalance in those supply chains is also incredibly welcome.

I have just two questions for the Minister. As a liberal, I strongly believe in the power of incentives, and we always hope that incentives work. In many cases they do. My first question to the Minister is that if these incentives show that they do not work, will the Government have some system for monitoring that process? Is there some point at which, in the future, the Government intend to review the effectiveness of this legislation? Secondly, the Minister mentioned that more broadly the Government are looking at the issue of late payments: is he at liberty to mention, either now or at a later stage, the scope of that particular review and which sectors that might apply to?

UK Supply Chains: Uyghur Forced Labour

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

May I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing the urgent question, and welcome the Minister back to Parliament and to his place?

Food labelling and food safety are among the most important issues for our diet and for our health. They allow consumers to make informed choices, and to ensure that food is safe and consistent with consumers’ ethical and moral beliefs. I am very pleased to hear the Minister say that the Government will look at the impact of legislation in the US, the EU and other countries, particularly where it may involve import bans on products that have been produced using forced labour. May I press him to tell us the timetable for doing that review?

[Mr Alexander]

I thank the hon. Lady for her observation, and for the characteristically calm wisdom with which she spoke about issues on which I think there is a high degree of consensus across the House. Given that we have been in government for five months, it is appropriate that we review the effectiveness of the Modern Slavery Act, which, in its day, was clearly a pioneering piece of legislation that commanded support across the House. In that sense, the review and the desire to understand the impact of the Act are informed by more recent innovations, such as those in the United States, the EU and Canada. I can assure the hon. Lady that alongside the trade strategy that we are publishing and the industrial strategy that we aim to publish in the spring, we are already carefully considering the critical elements of other legislation and seeing whether there is scope for strengthening the approach taken by the UK.

Budget Resolutions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), who has given another customarily powerful speech and reminded us of the injustices facing those who fall between the cracks.

We live in an uncertain and unstable world, and the US election result makes it more so. As we debate how to rebuild our great country after the mess left by the Conservatives, many of us will have a sense of apprehension today about what the presidential result means for the US—including women and minority groups—as well as for the UK, Europe and the world. Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage that President Trump and his Administration may do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining NATO and emboldening tyrants such as Putin. None the less, that may well be the context within which we must rebuild Britain.

We Liberal Democrats believe that rebuilding Britain starts with rebuilding our NHS and social care. Never before have I heard so much desperation as at the last general election. The legacy of the last Government was to leave people saying that they could not see a GP or a dentist, and were waiting months for mental health assessments or special educational needs documents. People were asking me on the doorstep whether maybe everything was so broken that it could not be fixed at all, but we Liberal Democrats know that health and social care must be fixed hand in hand. We welcome the Government’s investment in the NHS, but they cannot remain silent on social care—they cannot dismiss it as a second-term issue. Businesses know that people’s productivity plummets when they have to pick up the pieces of a broken social care system.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady makes absolutely the right point about the NHS and its interdependence with social care, but the Government have done more than be silent on social care: through the minimum wage and the NICs, they have imposed £2.5 billion of additional costs on social care while giving just £600 million to local authorities. They are taking an already difficult situation and making it rather worse.

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. He may remember that at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, I raised precisely that point with the Deputy Prime Minister and advised the Government that if they went ahead with the rise in national insurance contributions, it would affect social care. The right hon. Gentleman will, however, remember that it was the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson who stood on the steps of Downing Street in 2019 and promised to reform social care “once and for all”, but clearly failed to do so.

[Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)]

Two managing partners from GP practices in my constituency have written to me about the significant impact of the increase in employer NI contributions, which they say will directly undermine access and patient care. They will also have a huge impact on the brilliant work of Princess Alice hospice in my constituency, which is already hugely stretched—it will cost that hospice £400,000 a year. Does my hon. Friend agree that that hospice and those GP practices should be exempt?

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. I absolutely agree that they should be exempt; I think the rise in national insurance contributions is the wrong thing to do, full stop, but if it is going to go ahead, there must be exemptions. In my own area, for example, one local hospice in Hertfordshire will see its national insurance contributions go up by £150,000. Its warning is very clear: that if this rise goes ahead, beds will have to close.

People must see opportunities in enterprise as well, but the rise in national insurance contributions will hit small businesses hard, especially those on the high street. The success of our high streets really matters, not just for growth but for confidence: for so many people, the high street is the most visual and visceral mark of whether or not the economy is thriving. I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate later today whether the Government intend to bring forward a high streets strategy, and if so, when we might see it.

I have been inundated with messages from small businesses on my high street in St Albans. Here are just some of the quotes: one business said that

“the reality of last week’s budget will mean no more investment and no further recruitment as was planned and in all likelihood redundancies.”

Another small business said:

“I provide employment locally, raise money for local charities and have created a much-loved addition to our town centre…I am worried about how much longer I can go on.”

One business said that it

“would be impacted mainly with our business rates increase and my plea is that that can’t happen. The high street challenges are hard enough as they are”

without having to face

“an uncertain Christmas trading period.”

Other colleagues have mentioned the impact on medical charities, hospices and GPs. In Hertfordshire, the local medical committee said:

“Since 2014 we have seen 56 practices close or merge across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, representing 35% of the 216 practices that existed back in 2014.”

GP practices need certainty as to whether any of these costs will be passed on to them at a time when they are already feeling the squeeze. I can guess what the Minister may say: he may encourage Members on the Opposition Benches to indicate how we would raise taxes instead. In the spirit of constructive opposition, we Liberal Democrats urge the Government to think again, because we believe the burden of fixing our public services should fall on the shoulders of the big banks, the gambling companies and the big tech companies, not the small businesses that are the beating heart of our communities. Suppressing small business is not the route to growth.

The business rates reforms in the Budget not only fall short of what we need, but actually make things worse in the short term. The last Conservative Government promised to reform the business rates system, but failed to do so. The current system penalises bricks-and-mortar retailers, while out-of-town retailers manage to get off almost scot- free. Pubs, high street shops and the rest of the hospitality sector have been hit really hard, with the discount being reduced from 75% to 40%. That is going to have a major impact. St Albans is renowned for its pubs—as many of the more long-established Members will remember, I talk about the pubs in St Albans on many occasions. We have more pubs per square mile than anywhere else in the UK, but those pubs will now face additional business rates bills of between £5,000 and £35,000. Some fear that this could push them over the edge.

Over the past few days, much has been said about food security as well. We Liberal Democrats agree that the loopholes that are being exploited by big corporations that buy up swathes of our land must be closed, but we are concerned that the Government’s approach is rather crude—that as they try to close those loopholes, some family farms will be collateral damage. Again in the spirit of constructive opposition, I encourage the Government to look again at our proposal for a proper family farming test, as is used in some other countries.

Finally, I will say a word or two about investment. We Liberal Democrats believe that the Government have done the right thing in changing the fiscal rules, and in principle, we believe in the importance of borrowing for productive investment. However—once again, I say this in the spirit of constructive opposition—I think the Government have put all of their growth eggs in the building back basket. I understand why they may be doing that. However, given the Trump presidency and the prospects of potential tariffs and trade wars that could drive up the price of products such as semiconductors and construction materials, there is a very real risk that the investment that the Government make will not reap the rewards that we all hope for—through changes in the global climate, rather than any fault of their own. We need a resilient economy, so I praise the Government for investing, but urge them to look at the question of resilience. At this time, it is even more important that we look to small businesses and high streets for growth, so I urge the Government to think again and unleash the power of our high streets and small businesses, rather than hamper them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Irene Campbell to make her maiden speech.

Post Office Ltd

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

To be clear, those schemes are run independently of the Post Office. There are independent processes all the way through, and an independent panel assesses the loss. I think my hon. Friend is talking about the Horizon shortfall scheme, but it is clear that any tariffs that might go with payments are not a ceiling—they tend to be a floor. People should of course be fully compensated for both their financial and their non-pecuniary loss; that is a principle we have adhered to all the way through the process. We are looking at the recommendations of the advisory board on how to make sure people who have been through those schemes have received fair payments. In the group litigation order scheme, there will effectively be a minimum £75,000 fixed-sum award. We are keen to ensure not only that we get the money out of the door, but that that compensation is fair and seen to be fair.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

The Post Office bullied, threatened and lied to sub-postmasters and, as we have heard, there is huge frustration that throughout the entire compensation process it has tried to minimise payments, or used extra-long and complex forms to avoid making payments to them. Is the Minister confident that the compensation programme is truly independent and that sub-postmasters will get the full and fair payments they deserve?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I do not accept that premise. I do not see any evidence of the compensation schemes trying to minimise payments. The independent panel for the Horizon shortfall scheme included Lord Garnier, for example, and seven or eight KCs—very reputable people seeking to do the right thing—so we must be careful in our rhetoric. Of course we want to ensure that people get their full and fair compensation. That is why we implemented the Horizon compensation advisory board, which includes Lord Arbuthnot, the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), Chris Hodges and Professor Moorhead. They are decent people who want to ensure that people get treated fairly, and full and fair compensation is what people will get.

Measles

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

We have a vaccine damage payment scheme, which provides a one-off payment of £120,000. That is accessible for any vaccine that someone takes up, but I have to say that part of the problem is misleading information about the safety of vaccines. The measles vaccine is safe. At one point, we had eliminated measles in this country. Most children will be fine, with a mild illness, but we have had episodes of children getting encephalitis, which is a swelling of the brain that has lifelong consequences. We must move away from the narrative that vaccines are not safe. The measles vaccine is one of the safest vaccines people can have. I really do not think that that messaging is helpful.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

During the covid pandemic, my constituency of St Albans had one of the highest rates of vaccination. That was, in part, because of the work of our GPs and pharmacists, but we were also incredibly proactive at recruiting community champions, who could have those vital conversations to tackle hesitancy within particular pockets of our community. The Minister has mentioned pop-up clinics and vans, but she has not mentioned the role of community champions. Will she work with and support the directors of public health to recruit those community champions, who can have those vital conversations so that people can put their questions to people they know and trust?

[Maria Caulfield]

The hon. Lady is right that we used community champions during covid. We had some particularly effective campaigns for those communities that do not traditionally come forward for vaccinations, and that was done by using community leaders, faith leaders and trusted organisations within communities. We are doing that in the west midlands, in London and across the country.

Those people tell us that one of the key things that prevents Jewish and Muslim communities in particular from coming forward is their fear about the porcine vaccine. Just to reiterate, we have two types of MMR vaccine. Priorix does not contain gelatine and is safe and effective as an MMR vaccine. It is available on request, but we are also pushing out its availability so that people do not have to request it and it is offered up front. It is important that people know we have sufficient supply of the gelatine-free MMR product, and faith leaders, community groups and organisations are trying to get that message out to those two particular groups.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am keen to work with the hon. Lady on that. We are aware of CPS and DWP cases, and I would be keen to find out exactly what happened in that case. It is our intention that anybody who suffered a conviction because of Horizon is properly compensated, so I can give her that assurance. The case she raises illustrates some of the complexities around isolating exactly what was responsible for somebody’s conviction. When we considered solutions, we looked at how people tried to compensate for a loss suffered in one part of their business, resulting in a conviction in another part of the business. That is how we arrived at the solution to comprehensively overturn convictions.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

We all want to see swift financial redress and justice, and many Members from across the House have talked about accountability. Paula Vennells has, quite rightly, handed back her CBE, but many sub-postmasters are asking why she was given it in the first place and why she was given a role as a director of the Cabinet Office. Will the Minister explain why in 2019, after the High Court judgment was handed down exposing her full involvement in the Horizon scandal, she remained in post as a director of the Cabinet Office and was not sacked? If he is unable to explain that today, will he write to me with an explanation of what conversations were had at the time?

Abuse and Sexual Assaults in the NHS: Investigations

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I will call Daisy Cooper to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as this is a 30-minute debate.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the adequacy of investigations into abuse and sexual assaults in the NHS.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. Today’s topic is one that I never in a million years thought I would have to table for debate, but because of two brave constituents and two investigative journalists, I am here to share their stories and shine a light on the shocking scale of the problem.

It should go without saying that hospitals should be places where all patients, visitors and staff should feel safe and be safe. Vulnerable patients entrust themselves and their care to strangers in an unfamiliar environment. Overworked nurses and other NHS staff work long shifts in understaffed buildings, often arriving or leaving their place of work in the hours of darkness. Patients, visitors and staff can find themselves isolated in cupboards, clinics or car parks out of public sight, and it is seemingly in those places that thousands of instances of sexual assault, misconduct and rape are perpetrated every year.

A brave constituent of mine—let us call her Joan, which is not her real name—told me that she was a survivor of sexual misconduct by a medical professional during her treatment. Soon after it happened, Joan disclosed it to her GP, who raised a complaint to the specific NHS trust. The complaint was treated by the NHS trust’s human resources team as an employer-employee dispute. What was Joan’s status in this? Not a victim, not a complainant. She was relegated to being nothing more than a third-party witness: a third-party witness who not only was treated appallingly by the medical professional’s council, but was not even entitled to know the outcome of the case—the case in which she was the victim.

Joan did not know whether any other complaint mechanisms were available to her or what the scope or limitations of each one might be, and she was not medically fit enough to find out. She trusted that the NHS trust would do the right thing. Thanks to her GP, Joan was then contacted by the General Medical Council, which wanted to investigate the professional concerned, but Joan was not mentally or medically in a position to progress the case. She tried to progress it about seven years later, but she was prevented from doing so by the GMC’s five-year rule, which prevents the GMC from investigating a professional’s fitness to practice if the case is older than five years. The GMC can, of course, still investigate where there are exceptional circumstances in the public interest, but the GMC told me that Joan’s case did not meet the threshold. It would not tell me how it defined “exceptional circumstances” and refused to disclose the legal advice that it had received about the definition.

Joan attempted to raise the case with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. The PHSO replied that its remit is more procedural and administrative, and that it would not be the appropriate organisation. It redirected Joan to other organisations that were better suited to investigate—the GMC and the trust’s own disciplinary process, both of which she had used and both of which had failed her. The Professional Standards Authority oversees the GMC and other health regulators, but it too said that it could not investigate the case itself. Separately, Joan had a personal injury case against the hospital and secured a significant payment as a result, but we believe that the medical professional concerned is still practising.

Since 2020, I have sent 14 letters to different organisations, including three to the Government, and have tabled a number of written parliamentary questions to work out how this could have gone so badly wrong. What we have uncovered is shocking. First, there is no tailored support available for patients reporting incidents of a sexual nature. Patients are unclear about which organisations they can complain to, with NHS trusts, the GMC and the PHSO sometimes suggesting that each of the others is better placed to investigate. The GMC’s five-year rule continues to be a major barrier for investigating the fitness to practise of medical professionals perpetrating sexual misconduct on patients or other medical professionals.

Secondly, there has been no discernible progress on implementing the recommendations of three inquiries and reports from the Professional Standards Authority. Thirdly, no clear or systemic collection of data of reports of sexual abuse and misconduct within the health service is available for public or parliamentary scrutiny. Fourthly, the recent revelations by investigative journalists, which were published in Byline Times, of thousands of rapes and sexual assaults across the NHS mean that immediate action is needed to make our hospitals safe from sexual predators.

On the first issue—the staggering lack of support for survivors and the opaque reporting process—the NHS directs all patients to the patients advice and liaison service for complaints in the first instance. However, the route to escalate a complaint of sexual misconduct is not straightforward. A search online fails to direct individuals to NHS or Government resources that are instantly and clearly available. The options that do exist to address sexual abuse and misconduct often have limitations that patients are unaware of when embarking on a complaint, meaning that they discover them only in the course of trying to make such a complaint.

I have already explained through Joan’s case how the NHS’s disciplinary hearings, and the processes of the PHSO and the GMC all have shortcomings. We urgently need a simple and clearly signposted process that is designed for complaints of a sexual nature. We also need the five-year rule to be scrapped. Any case of sexual misconduct in the NHS should meet the tests of being both exceptional and in the public interest to investigate, but that is clearly not how the rule has been interpreted.

Two years ago, in 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care held a consultation on proposed regulatory reform of the GMC that would include the removal of the five-year rule. That would rightly reduce barriers to the investigation of serious cases of sexual misconduct where patients may not have felt in a position to report them at the time or where they were simply unaware that they could do so. The GMC itself is in favour of scrapping the five-year rule but, two years later, the Government refuse to say when they will respond and scrap the five-year rule, which I hope they will do. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us in this debate.

The second major problem that I identified was the repeated failure to follow up on three inquiries and the Government’s own report. Each inquiry found systemic failures in the NHS’s handling of reports of sexual misconduct. One called on the Government

“to develop and publish specific accessible information for patients on what they should and should not expect in consultations and who they can speak to for advice and assistance in relation to disclosures of alleged abuse.”

But to the very best of my knowledge and research, there has been no subsequent publication or announcement by the Government or any other responsible agency that seeks to act on the recommendations of those three inquiries.

The third problem on which urgent intervention from Government is needed is the shocking lack of data that prevents anyone from identifying the real scale of the abuse in health services. I tabled a series of parliamentary written questions over the past two years about the recording and monitoring of sexual abuse in the NHS. The Minister may remember the responses she gave on 9 November 2021 and 17 February 2022. She advised that

“all National Health Service organisations must prepare an annual report covering the number of complaints the organisation received”.

She later confirmed:

“While there is no specific requirement in legislation to categorise complaints by allegations of sexual abuse, NHS organisations are required to record the subject matter of complaints. NHS organisations must ensure that their complaints annual reports are available to any person on request.”

However, when I asked NHS England about accessing that data, it said that

“there is not a specific code for complaints of a sexual nature. Therefore in order to extract this data would require us to review every complaint received. In each year we receive between 6,000-8,000 complaints. If this information was requested under the Freedom of Information Act, this would most likely be exempt as it would exceed the threshold for time taken to provide a response.”

That is gravely concerning, first and most obviously because the Government are currently unable to gauge the scale of the problem, and, secondly, because local organisations tasked with commissioning much-needed advocacy support services simply are not able to do so. Will the Government mandate NHS England to create a specific code for complaints of a sexual nature?

Tenacious investigative journalists have uncovered some data. Sian Norris and Sascha Lavin have revealed that more than 4,000 patients, visitors and NHS staff were raped or sexually assaulted in hospitals in England and Wales during the past four years. However, this data could not be collected from the NHS trusts themselves. Instead, it had to be gleaned from police force records, because—incredibly—the NHS does not collate this information.

I am sure the Minister will be aware of a survey for Nursing Times in 2021 that found that three in every five nurses had been sexually harassed at work, with barely a quarter of these incidents being reported to employers, because nurses just do not believe it will get them anywhere. I mentioned at the beginning a second constituent who is a medical professional. She raised a complaint with her managers, only to come to the same conclusion—namely, that her complaint just would not go anywhere.

Although all of this is incredibly shocking, none of it should be news to the Minister here today. She will know that I put all of this detail to the former Secretary of State more than a year ago, on 13 May 2022. I did not receive a response for several months, but when I did I am afraid to say that it simply regurgitated all of the routes that I had complained about in my original correspondence. In further letters to and fro, the replies told my constituents and me nothing that we did not already know, and a promised ministerial meeting, which was rearranged four times, never came to pass. Although my constituents are not physically in attendance, they are following this debate closely on parliamentlive.tv. I have no doubt that many more survivors of these abhorrent crimes will be listening, too. They all want to know what the Government will do.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. First, will the Government finally respond to the GMC consultation and scrap the GMC’s five-year rule, which allows perpetrators of sexual misconduct to evade investigation after five years and continue working in the NHS? Secondly, will the Government create a specific and clearly signposted complaints system for complaints of a sexual nature, so that patients, visitors and staff can report allegations within health services and are able to identify which organisations they should approach in order to do so?

Thirdly, will the Minister make a statement about the handling of sexual abuse cases in the NHS and say whether any recommendations from the previous three inquiries and the PSA reports will be incorporated into the existing systems? Fourthly, will the Government mandate the NHS to create a specific NHS complaint code to register, collate and monitor data on sexual abuse and misconduct within health services, which can be made readily available for public and parliamentary scrutiny, and for local bodies that commission advocacy services for victims?

Finally, but most urgently, will the Minister set out what action she has taken or will take to make our hospitals a safe place for patients, visitors and staff, free from the sexual assaults, misconduct and rapes that are seemingly happening in our NHS every single day?

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In fairness, I have had to put the urgent question on.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Despite this screeching U-turn, the Bill still includes a power grab over environmental protections. Living in a nature-depleted country, it really concerns me that the Secretary of State can still change thousands of environmental laws at will, through secondary legislation, without scrutiny. Many of those laws relate to sewage that can be dumped into our rivers and chalk streams and on to our beaches. Will she make a firm commitment at the Dispatch Box today that the Government will not repeal or change any environmental law without due scrutiny by this House?

[Kemi Badenoch]

Again, these questions worry me, because they show that the process we are changing is not fully understood by the House. [Interruption.] It is certainly not understood by the hon. Lady. I can tell that many others do understand this. The regulations that are being repealed are going on the schedule. If she has a specific one on that schedule that she thinks is environmental and should not be repealed, she should say so. Instead, she is speaking in hypotheticals. She should look at the amendments and what they are doing, and if there are specific things she has concerns about, she can write to me. Claiming that things are being removed without looking at the schedule shows that she does not understand what we are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

It is for schemes such as those that my hon. Friend highlights that we are investing a further £2.3 billion a year in mental health services, and that in turn is facilitating an extra 2 million patients accessing NHS-funded mental health support.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

More than £300 million of the NHS dentistry budget is set to be clawed back by NHS England at the end of this month. That is not because of a lack of demand; it is because the Government’s NHS dental contract is broken and dentists are walking away from NHS work. Will the Government ringfence these funds, rolled over to next year, so that people who desperately need dental treatment can get those appointments?

[Neil O’Brien]

That is exactly why we will continue to reform the contract as the hon. Lady suggests, and it is why we have started allowing dentists to do 110% of their UDAs, but she is right and we will go further.