Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Bacon Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
The Government’s impact assessment for the adult social care sector confirmed that collective bargaining will be very costly for business. If pay awards match those of junior doctors, the cost of the increased wage bill will be £5.8 billion, driving up business rates, reducing employment or hours, and imposing further costs on business. Can the Minister confirm when further collective bargaining will be rolled out, to which sectors, and by how much those businesses can expect to be clobbered?
Justin Madders
If the shadow Minister is complaining about the state of the adult social care sector, he should look to his own party and how the sector was left to rot for 14 years. The impact assessment says that the overall cost to employers will be 0.4% overall and, as the economic analysis says, the make work pay package will help to raise living standards across the country and create opportunities for all. I think 0.4% is a fantastic achievement to get such a deal. If he does not want to support improved working conditions for people, an end to fire and rehire and better maternity protections, he should continue to vote against the Employment Rights Bill, but I do not think his constituents will thank him for that.
Paternity Leave and Pay
Gareth Bacon Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Shaun Davies) on securing the debate. I also thank the numerous Members who contributed to the debate. I would run through them all—I have written them down—but there are 17 and I am conscious of time, so I will move forward.
I welcome the fact that so many Members have come here to talk about this important subject. Opposition Members want to ensure that employees do not have to choose between a rewarding career and a fulfilling life. Due to reforms that were introduced by the previous Government, Britain now has a vastly improved paternity leave package.
In July 2019, the previous Government consulted on whether the existing arrangements for parental leave and pay were adequate, and whether more could be done to better balance the gender division of parental leave and pay between parents. The consultation sought views on the costs and benefits of reforming parental entitlements and any trade-offs that might need to accompany such reform. The Government response, published in June 2023, set out detailed reforms to paternity leave and pay, fulfilling a previous manifesto commitment to make it easier for fathers and partners to take paternity leave. The reforms included: giving employed fathers and partners more choice and flexibility around how and when they take their paternity leave, as we have just heard, allowing them to take two separate blocks of one week of leave; giving employed fathers and partners the ability to take their leave at any time in the first year after the child’s due date or birth, rather than just in the first eight weeks after birth or placement for adoption; and changing the requirements for paternity leave to make them more proportionate to the amount of time the father or parent plans to take off work, cutting the amount of notice of dates from 15 weeks before the expected week of childbirth to 28 days before the leave will be taken.
Moreover, the previous Government supported the passage of what was then called the Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Bereavement) Bill—a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Chris Elmore), who was at that time the hon. Member for Ogmore—to remove the qualifying employment condition for shared parental leave when the birth mother or adopting parent had died. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bridgend for steering the Bill through Parliament. It provided an important extension of support and protection for parents facing one of the most challenging situations in their lives.
I am conscious of time, so I shall wind up. His Majesty’s Opposition have taken note of the measures proposed in the Employment Rights Bill concerning paternity leave and pay. The Conservative party has always been the party of business, but we have also been pro-worker; getting the balance right is vital. We will therefore closely review the Bill’s provisions as it progresses through the House and will assess them on their individual merits.
Whistleblowing Protections
Gareth Bacon Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on securing this debate. I thank the hon. Members for Wokingham (Clive Jones), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), for Congleton (Mrs Russell) and for Redditch (Chris Bloore) for their contributions this afternoon.
I welcome the fact that so many Members recognise how valuable it is that whistleblowers are prepared to shine a light on wrongdoing and believe that they should be able to do so without recrimination. Whistleblowers do absolutely crucial work to expose wrongdoing and ensure accountability. Forty-three per cent of economic crimes are highlighted by whistleblowers, and workers are often the first people to witness any type of wrongdoing within an organisation. Information that workers may uncover could prevent wrongdoing that may damage an organisation’s reputation or performance, and in extreme circumstances, even save people from harm or death.
For authorities tackling corruption, fraud and other forms of crime, whistleblowing is a crucial source of evidence, as those activities and their perpetrators can often be exposed only by insiders. That was keenly felt during the height of the covid-19 pandemic when the Care Quality Commission and the Health and Safety Executive recorded sharp increases in the number of whistleblowing disclosures that they received; and during the Horizon scandal, when a whistleblower was featured in a BBC “Panaroma” documentary in 2015, as has been mentioned, which helped to expose the truth, contributing to the successful postmasters’ legal case in 2019.
The UK’s whistleblowing framework was introduced through the Public Interest Disclosure Act. It was intended to build openness and trust in workplaces by ensuring that workers can hold their employers to account and then be treated fairly. It provides a route for workers to make disclosures of wrongdoing, including criminal offences, the endangerment of health and safety, causing damage to the environment, a miscarriage of justice or a breach of any legal obligation.
The previous Government recognised that there was weakness in that framework and made numerous attempts to improve it. In 2013, the Government published a wide-ranging call for evidence on the effectiveness of the framework, and in 2014, set out a plan of legislative and non-legislative means to improve it. That plan included extending protections to student nurses and midwives, regularly updating the list of prescribed persons and introduced a requirement of prescribed persons to produce an annual report on whistleblowing disclosures that they receive.
Moreover, under the guidance of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), the previous Government launched a review in March 2023 of the whistleblowing framework. That review examined the effectiveness of the framework in meeting its intended objectives, which are to enable workers to come forward and speak up about wrongdoing and to protect those who do so against detriment and dismissal. The initial fact-finding element of that work was completed by Grant Thornton in January this year, as I think the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned in his opening speech. The Government response and the recommendations were awaited, and that work was yet to be completed before the election was called.
We on the Opposition Benches welcome the Government’s decision to strengthen protections for whistleblowers, including by updating protection for women who report sexual harassment at work. We will support the related measures in the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill. As Protect set out, this will
“send a clear signal that anyone who has been sexually harassed, or witnessed it, can raise their concerns through whistleblowing channels and will be protected from being victimised or dismissed if they do so.”
The Government have not yet published a response to the review of the whistleblowing framework. The review would provide an up-to-date evidence base on whistleblowing, allowing the House to effectively scrutinise the Government’s proposals. Will the Minister commit to publishing that review and, if so, when?
Oral Answers to Questions
Gareth Bacon Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gareth Bacon (Orpington) (Con)
The Government have repeatedly stated that securing economic growth is their fundamental mission, and that is, of course, an entirely laudable aim, but the fact is that more red tape will have the opposite effect. In the light of the right hon. Gentleman’s plans to introduce radical new labour laws, what would he say in response to the Federation of Small Businesses, which has made it clear that firms are increasingly worried about the Government’s proposals, fearing that they will drive up the costs and risks of doing business and thereby reduce their competitiveness and financial stability?
Jonathan Reynolds
I welcome the hon. Gentleman and the new shadow ministerial team to their posts. I have sat on those Benches in many questions sessions and understand how it can be at times.
Businesses of all sizes overwhelmingly supported the Labour party at the general election. How we behave in government will be exactly how we behaved in opposition, and we will co-design policy to ensure that. There is nothing in what we call the plan to make work pay—the new deal for working people—that is not already in the public domain. We had a manifesto with all that in it.
It is important to recognise—[Interruption.] There is a bit of chuntering coming from the Opposition Front Bench; again, something that I am not unfamiliar with. Look at the success of businesses in this area. Look at the businesses that already recognise trade unions and that already pay the living wage—look at that success. We are going to raise the employment floor, but it will be to a level above which many UK businesses are already operating. It is important to talk about the really successful things that businesses are doing to make sure that their workforces are treated with dignity and respect and get the living standards and prosperity that Members on this side of the House are all about delivering more of.