Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Under this legislation, workers can be sacked for taking strike action that has been agreed in a democratic ballot, which is a gross infringement of working rights and goes against the long-established principles set out in the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. It also goes against the pledge in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, which said that sanctions would not be directed at individual workers. In the light of that, does my right hon. Friend agree that we simply have not been given enough time to debate a Bill that goes against everything that we stand for?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that Labour stands against this sacking nurses Bill—the Minister chuntered earlier about that not being the case; if he would like to prove that, then the Government could accept our amendment that would resolve the unfair dismissal situation.

We oppose the Bill in the strongest terms on principle and by virtue of the serious flaws that render it utterly unworkable.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my friend. We may not be in the same party, but we are in the same trade union.

These brave, hard-working men and women struck local life-and-limb deals on a trust-by-trust basis ahead of all the strikes. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says it is trust by trust, but it is the best way to ensure that the right care is provided, and those employers know that. When I was a home help, we always put patient care first. We negotiated to ensure minimum safety levels, which is more than I can say for the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, under whose watch we have seen excess deaths and an increasing crisis in the NHS.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I, too, declare an interest. As a proud trade unionist and trade union lawyer for many years before entering Parliament, I represented striking workers day in, day out. I know that no worker takes the decision to strike lightly. These strikes have been caused by the cost of living crisis caused by this Conservative Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this Bill is just a further attack on workers’ rights, like the anti-trade union legislation passed by this Government in 2016? It is just another attack on working people who keep us safe, day in and day out.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree. People watching this debate can see from the Secretary of State’s opening remarks, and from his previous remarks, what this is: a smokescreen about allegedly needing minimum service levels. We know that because, last autumn, his own Government assessed that minimum service levels were not needed for the emergency services due to existing regulations and voluntary arrangements. We all want minimum standards of safety, service and staffing levels, and we want them every day, but it is the Minister who is failing to provide them. Instead of holding them to account, they Government are seeking through this Bill to grab sweeping new powers to impose burdens on employers and to remove basic rights from workers across our public service. This is an attack on every nurse, health worker and firefighter in the country. They have gone from clapping nurses to sacking them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Forestry is not one of the Department’s many responsibilities, but I will certainly take up my hon. Friend’s excellent point with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

T5. Postal workers at the depots in Forest Hill and Anerley in my constituency do a brilliant job, but they have faced weakening pay and conditions and now their jobs are under threat as Royal Mail looks to cut 10,000 positions. During a cost of living crisis, how can the Government allow that company to turn its back on hard-working staff? How is reducing the workforce compatible with maintaining the universal service obligation?

[Dean Russell]

That is a matter for the management of the company and its workforce to resolve. Disruption due to strike action impacts on consumers, businesses and other users. We are monitoring the dispute and urge both sides to reach an agreement as soon as possible.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill because, notwithstanding the need to address the future status and suitability of retained EU law following departure from the European Union, the Bill creates substantial uncertainty for businesses and workers risking business investment into the UK, is a significant threat to core British rights and protections for working people, consumers and the environment as signalled by the wide body of organisations opposed to the Bill, could jeopardise the UK’s need to maintain a level playing field with the Single Market under the terms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, and contains powers which continue a dangerous trend of growing executive power, undermining democratic scrutiny and accountability.”

I thank the Minister for stepping in to do a speech at the last minute; that is not an easy task.

Before I turn to the detail of the Bill and the reasoned amendment that has been tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends, it is important to revisit the grotesque chaos that we have had over the past few weeks, because it goes to the heart of why the Bill should not become law. The Bill asks the British public to place blind faith in the Government—to trust them with our rights at work, our environmental protections and our legal rights—but why would we trust a Government who have crashed our economy, driven up the cost of borrowing, dashed the hopes of homeowners across the country and hiked up mortgages for the rest? This is the Government who pledged to ban fracking and then voted for it, and who sacked their Chancellor, their Home Secretary and finally, their Prime Minister, only to try—but fail—to bring back the Prime Minister that they sacked before while he is still under investigation by the House. We find ourselves debating a Bill that would transfer vast powers to the Business Secretary, covering every part of national life, yet we do not even know who that Business Secretary will be. It is clear for all to see that where the Conservatives go—like a bull in a china shop—chaos follows. It is just not good enough.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s speech. He cannot assuage the concerns of any of us, on both sides of the House, about the Bill. I do not think he denied that the sunset clause will be a huge source of uncertainty for businesses and workers. Contrary to his claims, rather than taking advantage of the freedoms that Brexit could conceivably grant the UK, that reckless approach threatens many of the core rights and protections that the British people currently enjoy. Far from taking back control, the Bill risks diminishing democratic scrutiny and accountability in key areas of British law.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, unlike the Minister. Does my hon. Friend share my concerns about the lack of a reference to employment rights in the Minister’s speech? Limits on working time, the right to paid holiday, rights for temporary and agency workers and parental leave all derive from EU law. Those fundamental workers’ rights could all disappear under the Bill. Given that the previous Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), stated that holiday pay is not an “absolute…right”, does my hon. Friend agree that we need confirmation that our hard-fought-for employment rights will be protected?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is an expert in such matters and she is absolutely right to highlight those concerns. That is what the Bill is about. It is not about Brexit—Brexit has happened; it is a fact. For most people, there is no appetite to revisit those arguments. Although many people have strong views on how it has been done and how the Government have not delivered on the promises that they made—I understand that—the task for us in the House is to get on and make it work. It is therefore important to recognise that the Bill is not about whether people think Brexit was a positive or negative thing. It is about whether we wish to give the Government the power to sweep away key areas of law that are of great importance to all our constituents with no scrutiny, no say and no certainty over their replacements. Put simply, do we wish to bring more Conservative confusion and chaos into the British economy?

Energy Update

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a telling contribution on Blackpool’s behalf that I am sure the Government will study closely. We are also studying the British Geological Survey report into this matter, to which the Government will respond in due course. Over the past year that I have been Energy Minister, I have heard my hon. Friend stick up for and make a strong case for Blackpool on several occasions in relation to fracking.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Lewisham Council’s energy bill has already doubled from £7 million to £14 million a year, with bills set to go up further. But instead of setting out a plan of support, the Tories have spent this summer fighting among themselves and have even claimed that rising costs should be found from existing public sector budgets—budgets that have already been decimated over the last 12 years. We need serious leadership and a plan now, so will the Minister commit that, in any emergency Budget, public services will be properly supported with rising energy costs?

[Greg Hands]

Public services have always been well supported by this Government throughout the 12 years that we have been in power. When it comes to future taxation, that is, of course, a matter for the Treasury and the Prime Minister.

Supporting Small Business

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the importance of British businesses to high streets and communities across the UK and the exceptional challenges they face due to the pandemic and rising costs; regrets the Government’s current plan to end all temporary support for businesses from April 2022; calls on the Government to support businesses by freezing the business rates multiplier and extending the threshold for small business rates relief from £15,000 rateable value to £25,000 in 2022-23; and further calls on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to update the House in person before January 2022 on his Department’s assessment of the impact that removing the temporary business support will have on small businesses.

Our high streets are not simply units of economic activity or just a place to buy the things we need. They are an important part of the tapestry of where we live, work and share our everyday lives. It is where people meet, eat, catch up over a cup of tea, bump into old acquaintances, receive a smile or a kind word. My first Saturday job as a teenager was working at a chess shop called the Chess and Bridge Centre on the Euston Road. People would come from miles around not just to buy, but to ask the advice of the owner and those of us who worked there. I learnt a lot. Our shops are as much about people as they are about products, and that is why they must and they will endure. That has been so many people’s experience during the course of the pandemic. As businesses have done everything asked of them—despite advice from Government often chopping and changing—they have bent over backwards to find new ways to serve their customers and to keep their own businesses afloat. We should all be thankful.

Some 2.8 million people are employed in retail in our country. As the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers points out, retail is one of the few sectors that regularly offers flexible opportunities for workers to balance their work alongside caring commitments they might have. Yet, incredibly, there is no Government industrial strategy for the retail sector to work with business to increase wages, skills and productivity. We have allowed an imbalance to be formed where bricks and mortar businesses are at a significant disadvantage to online retailers—online retailers whose warehouses typically attract considerably less business rates and, indeed, may not even pay corporation tax in our country.

One in seven shops remain shuttered after the lifting of pandemic restrictions, with the north of England seeing a higher proportion of closures. A British Retail Consortium survey concluded that business rates were a factor behind two in three shop store closures in the last two years. That cannot be allowed to continue. It should alarm this House that the Office for National Statistics business impacts survey data suggest that 330,000 business, responsible for over 800,000 jobs, are at risk of closure in just the next three months. Even a fraction of those losses will be deeply felt in all our communities.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Some 99.8% of businesses in Lewisham are small and medium-sized enterprises. They are the lifeblood of our high streets and they support our local community, and many have suffered during the pandemic. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s plans to remove temporary support are an unfair cliff edge that could see many viable small businesses go under?

[Rachel Reeves]

I know my hon. Friend is a keen supporter of businesses, including the Kirkdale Bookshop on Sydenham’s high street and Billings butchers. She is a fine steward for the people of Lewisham West and Penge. I cannot offer expertise on the shopping behaviours of all hon. and right hon. Members—[Laughter.]—but some of our shopping behaviours changing does not mean that our high streets should not have a positive future. There is scope for fresh ideas and a renewed relationship with our high streets, but without easing the pressure of business rates for next year, many shops, including many carrying debts from the pandemic, just will not make it. That is why action is needed now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with representatives from those business sectors most affected by the covid-19 outbreak.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with representatives from those business sectors most affected by the covid-19 outbreak.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

What recent discussions he has had with representatives from those business sectors most affected by the covid-19 outbreak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

I am sorry that the hon. Member does not feel that speaking to 3,000 or 4,000 businesses over the past few months to understand their issues is good enough. None the less, I understand the concern of the hospitality sector and other sectors in South Shields in particular, where there are local restrictions. It is so important that we get the economy up and running as soon as we can. The Government’s first priority is to save lives, but to save businesses and livelihoods is just as important.

[Ellie Reeves [V]]

I am proud of my many constituents who work in the creative industries, such as musicians, actors, producers and designers, to name but a few. Making ends meet in this sector can be difficult at the best of times, but it is now even more precarious as many businesses will not yet be able to reopen. What plans does the Minister have to ensure that workers in creative industry, including permanent, freelance, self-employed and those previously excluded, can receive financial support in the tough months ahead?

[Paul Scully]

That is something that I continue to engage with the Treasury and with businesses on, to understand it and to see what more we can do. I am someone who has in the past been a company director and paid myself through dividends, so I understand the position of those in the creative sector, who are doing much the same thing. We will work together to see what more we can do.

Net Zero Carbon Emissions: UK’s Progress

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 28th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran]

Indeed, and September 2016 was the last time that we debated climate change in the Chamber, which is shameful.

The year 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record with average global temperatures nearly 1°C above the pre-industrial average. Yesterday in West Yorkshire there were enormous fires on Saddleworth Moor. The weather was lovely, was it not? But do we remember a year ago and the “beast from the east”? Such extreme weather events are not to be welcomed. They are not good things. They are a sign that something has gone horrifically wrong.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Does she agree that there is no time left for delay, and that the Government need urgently to show that they are serious about tackling climate change, and enshrine in law net zero carbon emissions by 2050? That is a clear strategy that we can all get behind.

[Layla Moran]

The hon. Lady hits the nail on the head. We need to move faster and deeper. This is a climate emergency, and this place must stop taking as little interest in it as it has been doing.

Young Carers Support

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The response to today’s debate is extremely encouraging, and shows that there is clearly concern across Parliament, so I hope the Government will pay full attention to that.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous with his time. Two weeks ago, I was giving out awards at the inaugural Eleanor Marx awards ceremony in Lewisham. Schools were asked to nominate young women for their achievements, and the winner of the award was a young carer, in recognition of the work she did in supporting her mum and younger brother. She was overwhelmed by the recognition she got at that awards ceremony. Does he agree that more needs to be done to recognise the tremendous work that young carers are doing?

[Paul Blomfield]

It is brilliant that that award was allocated in that way. That sort of recognition is certainly something we should all be looking to, and maybe we can all seek out opportunities in our own areas to help to secure it.

UN Climate Change Conference: Government Response

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Anna McMorrin]

Absolutely. During those two critical weeks of discussions in Katowice, we saw a distinct lack of political will to tackle climate change with anything like the urgency required. Predictably, countries such the United States and Saudi Arabia sought to deny the science, and routinely disrupted proceedings. However, far too many countries came unprepared to strengthen the international climate process and to agree to finance all targets, leaving us with gaping holes in the rulebook for meeting those targets. Unfortunately, the UK was one such country.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. She talked about targets. Does she agree that if we are to meet our obligations under the Paris agreement, we have to aim for net-zero greenhouse emissions before 2050, and if we are serious about meeting that target, the Government must stop dragging their feet and legislate for that net-zero emissions target?

[Anna McMorrin]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend on that important point, which I will address in my remarks. I hope the Government will respond adequately.

We saw that too many countries came unprepared to agree to those targets, leaving gaping holes in the rulebook. COP24 was a perfect opportunity to achieve two crucial objectives. First, it was a chance for nations to come together and take the deeply troubling recommendations of the IPCC special report on climate change seriously. Secondly, COP24 should have been used to strengthen the pledges in the 2015 Paris agreement, which experts agree is failing to deliver the action needed to meet its ambitious goals. The Paris agreement has us on course to live in a world of between 2.7° and 3.5° of global warming. Yet we are currently set to reach 3° and more.