Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gavin Newlands and Mims Davies

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

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

My constituent, Jennifer Bell, was made redundant following the collapse of Thomas Cook, but secured a job with Jet2 late last year, which fell through given the DWP’s refusal to pay for a training course. She has now landed a job with Virgin Atlantic, which involves five and a half weeks’ training in Crawley. However, her application to the flexible support fund at Renfrew jobcentre for accommodation costs has been denied, despite other former colleagues having secured funding at other jobcentres. Will the Minister please look into this discrepancy for Jennifer?

[Mims Davies]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue, which came through to us in jobcentres after the collapse of Thomas Cook. I am happy to take it away as a learning point. We are doing all we can on the Flybe issue, and I urge anybody affected to go to their local jobcentre and ask for support and benefits.

Discrimination in Football

Debate between Gavin Newlands and Mims Davies

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for standing up for the good fans. There are many of them, but the bad behaviour tars everyone with a very bad brush. We need to support the people who are doing the right thing.

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

Can I bring consensus back and thank the Minister for early sight of the statement? I associate myself with the comments made by the Minister and the Labour Front-Bench spokesman, and it is not often that I can say that.

The recent high-profile instances of racism in the game fly in the face of the fantastic work done over the years by groups such as Show Racism the Red Card and Kick It Out. Sadly, however, although football in England at any rate is swimming in money, a relatively small amount is spent by the game on such initiatives. I very much welcome the Minister’s tone and the actions she has set out. I think we can all agree that it is time for footballing authorities and top-level clubs to take the issue more seriously and invest in resources appropriately, and not just invest but make proper policy and disciplinary decisions. The example of James Kinsey, whom the Minister and shadow Minister referred to, being disciplined for taking his team off the pitch following racist abuse is shameful. I praise the reaction of players such as Raheem Sterling and Danny Rose to their abuse, but they must be better supported by bodies such as UEFA, which all too often issue paltry fines that amount to a pittance in the modern game.

As the shadow Secretary of State outlined, since 2012 the Scottish Government have invested £14 million to support the delivery of anti-sectarian education in schools, prisons, workplaces and communities. Does the Minister agree that knowledge education is one of the best means of tackling ignorance and must be part of the solution? Does she also agree that it is important to increase public awareness of the options open to fans to report racist incidents? The fact that less than half of all fans are aware of the Kick It Out smartphone app is disappointing to say the least.

Finally, the lower leagues and the grassroots take their example from the top-level game. It is simply not good enough in this day and age that only 4% of coaching and management roles across the top four leagues in England are held by black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals. Does the Minister agree that reducing discrimination in the boardrooms and on the training grounds would go a long way towards changing wider attitudes in society?

[Mims Davies]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising important points about the ability to report with confidence through the Kick It Out app and about the education piece, which is vital. We want our football clubs across the land to be welcoming, diverse and representative of the communities they serve. They should absolutely be tolerant places where people want to be, not places where they feel they have to speak out about behaviours that are not acceptable, whether in the pub or the wider community. We must work together as fellow sports fans and do our level best to ensure that football is welcoming at every level.

Immigration Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Gavin Newlands and Mims Davies

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mims Davies]

Q 94 Fantastic. Are you also able to expand on the CBI’s concerns about the apprenticeships levy? It is obviously the Government’s ambition to see apprenticeships grow. Will the levy affect your members, or the immigration skills charge? What is the impact that you see on businesses?

Neil Carberry: Apprenticeship levies are quite complex at the moment because there are two of them. They have become known in the CBI’s employment team as the big levy and the little levy. There is the large apprenticeship funding model levy, which is a deep concern for the CBI.

On the question of the skills charge, although we do not welcome additional costs, we fundamentally disagree with the idea that immigration is used to resolve skills issues and to avoid training, because companies in the UK do extensive amounts of training—more than many other large western European competitors in terms of spending.

Having said that, if there is to be a skills charge, we need to make sure that it is effectively targeted, so that the money raised does go into apprenticeships that are training people towards the levels of skills that people who came in on a visa were helping to resolve the shortage of. More broadly, it is probably preferable to us that these charges exist than that we make changes to the pay bands for tier 2 migration. Additional cost for a visa is one thing, but being unable to get a person you need at any given point because of changes to the pay bands is more of a business problem. For us, in the grand scheme of things, although we do not like it, we would rather have an immigration skills charge than a much higher entry level of pay to bring people in.

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

Q 95 In trying to target action against criminals who exploit workers, which is something we can all agree on, do you think the Bill blurs the lines between employment law and criminal activity?

Neil Carberry: I think that is a significant risk, less so around the role of the director than the recent discussion about expanding the role of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The role of the GLA so far has largely been an employment process. Since its creation the GLA has spent rather more time telling my members where the commas should be in employment contracts, which is an employment issue, than kicking down doors in parts of the country where doors need to be kicked down.

My sense is that we need to maintain that gap, for exactly the reasons that your colleague raised earlier, which are that employment law is a civil issue; most of its infraction is inadvertent or due to lack of knowledge, so it is really important that people are able to address that—there are routes for people to address that—and it is about the bit of the labour market where workers are not able to secure their rights, which should be at issue in the Bill. The CBI’s test for this Bill, in practice, when it finishes its passage, is to make sure that the actions contained within it are about addressing those issues of exploitation.