Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

It is an excellent question. My hon. Friend and I corresponded about this and spoke directly about this when I was the Minister of State for Energy. I am very pleased to tell him that we are committed to regulating the heat networks market within this Parliament, and we will bring legislation forward at the earliest possible opportunity. It is clearly a really important thing to be doing, and he and his constituents can rest assured that we are acting with due speed.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I want to return to fire and rehire. Chris is a British Gas engineer who lives in Spelthorne, the Secretary of State’s constituency. Chris says:

“Working under fire and rehire has been horrific. It has caused stress and anxiety not just for me, but my family. I can’t overstate the effect that it has on mental wellbeing. And the Government and the Business Secretary, who is supposed to represent me…in parliament is doing absolutely nothing about it. I voted for Kwasi Kwarteng in 2019, but he’s failed us on this. A total let down.”

Chris met the Business Secretary recently and asked him why he had not acted on fire and rehire. What did he tell him?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I remember the meeting well. I met Chris, I think on the Avenue in Sunbury, and I said very clearly to him that we had an ACAS report that we hoped to publish in due course, and that once we published that we would set out further action, as the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), very ably mentioned earlier.

[Edward Miliband]

The problem is that the right hon. Member is the Business Secretary. He is in charge. He promised an employment Bill two years ago. He has had the ACAS report for three months. He is not even telling us what is in the ACAS report. Maybe he can satisfy Chris and millions of people around this country by saying from the Dispatch Box today that he agrees with the principle that we should legislate to outlaw fire and rehire, and he will bring forward an employment Bill to do it. If he does not do that, people will suspect that the truth is not that he is not acting because he cannot act, but that he is not acting because he does not want to act, because he thinks this kind of one-sided power for employers is necessary for our economy to succeed.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We all know the Marxist trope of the employers versus the workers, and we have moved on from that—most of us. There are two issues there. One was related to the employment Bill, which we are committed to introducing to this House when we can, and that has always been our position. The second is that the whole point of having an ACAS independent report was to allow it to happen and then we would consider, after publication, the steps forward. I know the right hon. Member is impatient, and I know he is probably wishing that there was a leadership change in his party, but we have to stay focused on delivery.