Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

In yesterday’s programme for government, Bills that will make it harder for people to vote, scrap fixed-term Parliaments and reduce judicial oversight of the Government were announced. Yet the Government found no room in their programme for a clear and unequivocal pledge to make fire and rehire illegal, and this at a time when workers’ rights are under attack from some of the biggest businesses in the land. The results will be all too predictable. Continued inaction will inevitably lead to yet more companies telling their staff to accept wage cuts, with no negotiation or discussion, or face the sack.

Minister after Minister has condemned the practice. The Prime Minister himself said earlier this year that using threats to fire and rehire was unacceptable as a negotiating tactic. Questions from myself and many other Opposition Members have been met with the response that the Government are studying the ACAS report that was delivered to them—a report that has now been sitting on their desks for three months. We do not know what is in the report—the Government have not published it—but I have to ask: what is the point of commissioning ACAS to produce it if nothing is to be done with it?

Given the indignities that millions of employees have been expected to tolerate over recent months at the hands of unscrupulous and immoral employers, it is shocking that there is no employment Bill or any reference whatever to workers’ rights and dignity, nor any mention of levelling up for those subject to employment practices that are more reminiscent of the Poor Laws than those of a 21st-century society—and this despite the fact that back in November the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), said of the employment Bill that it was a matter of when, not if.

In recent weeks, as we have heard others mention, hundreds of British Gas workers have lost their jobs because they refused to be fired and rehired. Where is their levelling up? Sites are filled to bursting with British Gas vehicles—van graveyards, deliberately created by the company because no one is left to work in them—with the entirely predictable result that service visits and repairs are hugely behind schedule.

Last year it was British Airways telling staff to sign on the dotted line or join the dole queue, just weeks into lockdown. In Ireland and Spain, where BA’s parent company also operates, these tactics would be illegal. Workers in those countries were safe from fire and rehire, but in the UK, BA saw no legal obstacle to effectively telling staff, in some cases with decades of service, to take 40%, 50% or 60% wage cuts, or face the sack, all while BA was using money from those same taxpayers to stay afloat.

Ultimately, the state has a responsibility to ensure that the rights of workers are protected by the force of law against the deep pockets and power of huge corporations. By failing to act yet again, the Government are abandoning that responsibility and instead appear to be content with issuing stern lectures from the Dispatch Box about how naughty these companies are. Lectures do not level up for workers. Lectures do not pay mortgages, they do not pay the bills and they do not protect jobs.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I was struck by the speech from the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). He said at one point that the Government had not changed; in fact, the one thing that had not changed was the right hon. Gentleman. I listened to his speech and was taken back to when I was a Back Bencher in 2014 and he was the Leader of the Opposition—he could have said exactly the same thing. It is always the same thing: he does the country down and says that we always talk about austerity. How can he talk about austerity when he himself acknowledged that the Chancellor has spent £350 billion on unprecedented support—on furlough and for British business? The world that he describes is the world of his tenure as Leader of the Opposition—there may well be a vacancy; who knows whether he could come back?—but it is not a world that many millions of people in this country recognise.

We continue to protect the lowest-paid workers: we have raised the national minimum wage and again raised the national living wage—having been the first Government to institute it, we raised it only in April, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman forgot that. He has certainly forgotten the immense help and the grants that have supported businesses that would otherwise have closed. The bounce back loan scheme has approved more than £46 billion of loans for 1.5 million businesses. As we follow the Prime Minister’s road map out of lockdown restrictions, new recovery loans and restart grants will help businesses in urban areas.

The country that I see is completely different from the gloom and doom that the Leader of the Opposition—forgive me; the right hon. Gentleman is not the Leader of the Opposition any more, although he may be in future—paints. It is not recognised by millions of our fellow subjects. The Queen’s Speech builds back better and delivers on real people’s priorities. We are embracing a green, vibrant economy. It was extraordinary to hear the right hon. Gentleman again denigrate our achievements in the green industrial revolution. Only a month ago, John Kerry said to me—and he was good enough to say this publicly—that the efforts of this Government and this country had been extraordinary and we were world leaders in the fight against climate change. That is acknowledged. The right hon. Gentleman cited the United States: their target is a 50% reduction by 2030 from the 1990 level; our target for 2030 is a 68% reduction. It is far in excess of the United States’ target, yet the right hon. Gentleman once again points to other countries with the assumption that here in Britain we are terrible and everybody else is doing it better, whereas in fact the reverse is the case. It is Britain that people look to as leaders on climate change. Inwardly, the right hon. Gentleman probably acknowledges that.

Let me move beyond the histrionics of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. We have laid legislation for the UK’s sixth carbon budget which, I am delighted to say, proposes a target that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 78% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. It is by far the most ambitious reduction plan in the G7 and the right hon. Gentleman knows that. He knows that the 10-point plan has been acknowledged throughout the world as a world-leading and world-beating proposal. [Interruption.] They scoff and laugh, as they scoff and laugh at their own voters. They scoff and laugh at the country endlessly, and I am afraid they have suffered from their scoffing and mocking attitude.

The right hon. Gentleman was good enough to mention the EU’s proscriptive state aid regime, which we have jettisoned, and welcomed the fact that we have a subsidy control Bill that will create a new domestic subsidy control system. He accepted that, which did require a measure of realisation that we are moving on from the EU. I am delighted that, among his colleagues, he at least accepts that Brexit is finished and that we can move with confidence beyond EU membership. I very much welcome that but, again, to hear his speech one would think that the United Kingdom was a place of irredeemable squalor and poverty, when in fact the opposite is the case. When people look at the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the way in which we have conducted the vaccine roll-out, they see a country that has been extremely successful. Only today I was speaking to Ministers from Japan and Italy, who mentioned, without any prompting whatever, the extraordinary work that our scientists, nurses, health service and, in fact—dare I say—our hard-working Ministers and civil servants had put in to effect a successful roll-out. People are looking at Britain and they see a successful country that is regaining its place in the world.

This country is home to a powerful combination of elite research institutions, thriving life sciences companies, superb research charities and, of course, an excellent national health service. This winning combination has led the world’s fight against covid and saved many thousands of lives while creating a high number of high-quality jobs across the United Kingdom. These are things of which we should be proud and which our Government are hoping to—and will—build on. Yet the right hon. Gentleman is looking back to the past, simply repeating all the tired old phrases of five, six or seven years ago.

The ARIA Bill, which will become an Act in this Session and formed part of the Queen’s Speech, is a world first. It is a great innovation. The Department is delighted to have introduced this Bill to create an Advanced Research and Invention Agency, which will fund high-risk, high-reward research with the potential to produce new technologies, new industries and new jobs. ARIA represents the very best of British ingenuity and creativity, but the right hon. Gentleman and his friends wish to pretend that we are the very worst—that nothing we can do is any good and that nothing we can do can compete with France, Germany and all the other countries that he mentioned. In fact, in science and innovation the opposite is true. The Ministers from the countries I mentioned were actually saying the opposite of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying.

I see a huge difference between Government Ministers and MPs and our people across the country, and the Opposition—a fundamentally different outlook about the future and possibilities of this country. Time and again as a Minister and even as a Back Bencher, I have heard nothing from the Opposition but a litany of complaint and, frankly, a dirge of abuse about the country. The Government have huge optimism and belief in the abilities of this country and of our people to overcome difficulties—

[Gavin Newlands]

rose—

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am not going to take any interventions. All I hear from the Opposition is scoffing, mocking and abuse. The truth is that across innovation with the vaccine roll-out, across net zero with the 10-point plan and the opportunities for COP26, and across enterprise, we have a Government who are committed to bringing progress and driving success across the entirety of the United Kingdom.

It would be indecent of me not to mention the latest addition to our parliamentary forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer). Consider this, Mr Deputy Speaker: this was a constituency that had never returned a Conservative Member of Parliament. Indeed, a former Labour Member of Parliament who is not so popular on the Opposition Benches these days, Peter Hartle—I can’t even remember his name! Peter Mandelson, now Lord Mandelson, said quite clearly that this was a seat that would never vote Conservative, but of course it did. And why did it vote Conservative? I suggest that, listening to the dirge-like pessimism of many Members of the Labour party, the people of Hartlepool took a different approach. They believe in the future of the country and of their community. We as a Government are determined to repay their faith in their country and their hard work, and to ensure that we not only level up but build back better.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(David T.C. Davies.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.