Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords]

Graham Stuart Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We would say with confidence that there was never a danger to the pint, but because of the concerns that were raised in the other place and perhaps by some colleagues here, I am more than happy to have made the changes to assure everyone present and everyone watching that the pint will be defended and secured in the Bill. I have to say that I have received no entreaties from businesses that they wish to sell in imperial measurements. However, if the right hon. Gentleman believes that there is an absence of provisions in the Bill, he can write to me and I shall write back to him and hopefully be able to reassure him. I think he may be misplaced in thinking that that is a principal issue for UK businesses.

As all hon. Members know, the digital age in which we live has created significant growth opportunities. The consumer and technology landscapes that we have today are almost unrecognisable from those we had 20 or 30 years ago, so the products that we buy and the way in which we buy them are evolving rapidly. That means that the relevant rules and regulations must adapt, too. If we are to protect consumers and businesses, especially smaller firms, that is essential.

As we have examined in some detail, product regulation and metrology are policy areas that have largely been repatriated from the EU following our withdrawal in 2021. Since then the UK Government have simply not had the necessary powers to continue regulating these areas effectively. We have brought forward this legislation so that we can respond to anticipated changes in the global regulatory landscape. That is why, to be frank, I am somewhat bemused by the reasoned amendments tabled today.

The Bill will ensure that the UK is better placed to address modern-day safety issues. It gives us the power to better regulate items such as potentially dangerous baby sleep products and toys. It will enable us to reduce burdens on business and keep up with technological developments, for example by updating the outdoor noise regulations in Great Britain. It will align testing methods across the UK, which was overwhelmingly supported in our recent call for evidence, and it will protect the public from noise pollution from products like lawn mowers and power generators.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I have only closely scrutinised the Bill today, so I am just bringing myself up to date on this. It appears to give the Secretary of State the power to ban any product he wishes for whatever reason. We make law in this place not for when we are dealing with a Minister of the moral calibre of the right hon. Gentleman, but on the basis that we might have someone who lacks such qualities; that is who we legislate for. Is it true that this Bill would give the Secretary of State the power to ban literally any product, and that all that would have to be done is to notify this House?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his concern and his regard. I believe that if we were of the view that a product was a danger to the public, the right hon. Gentleman would expect me as Secretary of State in my Department to take action. If he is concerned about provisions in the Bill, he can look to the changes that have been made. It has been through an extensive scrutiny process in the other place, particularly in relation to the powers and delegated powers given to the Secretary of State. I think he recognises the case we are making for the safety of the public; indeed, it is why Opposition Members themselves recognise the need for a Bill of this kind.

The Bill will help to create a level playing field between the high street and online marketplaces. Critically, we are able to protect consumers by reducing the number of unsafe and non-complying goods that are sold online. This could include asking sites to verify third-party sellers before allowing them to list their goods or to have a product safety reporting function for customers on their sites. One example is e-scooters and e-bikes, which like many products are reliant on lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have been attributed as the cause of a number of fires in recent years, both in households and on public transport.

While we know that the vast majority of products are safe, in recent years we have seen some goods mis-sold by a minority of unscrupulous manufacturers and sellers. As a result, low-standard, high-risk products have been able to enter the UK market. Some people have paid for this with their homes and, in some cases, their lives. I think we would all recognise that that is unconscionable.

I want to pay tribute to the family of Sofia Duarte. Sofia tragically died when a bicycle that had been converted into an e-bike burst into flames. The bike’s lithium battery pack failed, causing a fire on new year’s day 2023. I know that the whole House will join me in recognising the bravery and courage of Sofia’s family in campaigning for change in memory of their daughter and in fighting for better regulation of e-bikes, along with the batteries and chargers associated with them. I also thank the London Fire Brigade for its campaigning on this issue in recent years. It has been on the frontline, seeing at first hand the devastation that has been wrought by some of these products.

This Bill is about keeping the public safe. The Office for Product Safety and Standards has taken action in this area already. It has issued 26 withdrawal notices on eight online marketplaces, two manufacturers and 16 sellers. This has removed two dangerous models of e-bike battery from sale, and I am glad that the legislation we are discussing today will allow us to consider further steps on enforcement.

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[Jonathan Reynolds]

I find that when political parties go into opposition, all of a sudden they seem less keen on the Government having decisive powers to take action in a whole range of areas. We have listened carefully to the criticism from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and significant changes have been made to the legislation, which I am happy to take the hon. Member through. They relate to the number of Henry VIII powers, the consultation requirement and the additional affirmative resolution procedure. We are always seeking feedback.

I will now go through some of the other amendments that were made in the other place.

[Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The question I always have for the right hon. Gentleman is: is it going to be good? I will give way one more time.

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[Graham Stuart]

It will be brief. Forget the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee; what about the Secretary of State’s colleague, Lord Leong? He said in the House of Lords that he did not think the Bill was right. In what way does it need to be improved? Will the Secretary of State look carefully at the extent of these powers? Even from this short debate, it is clear how wide-ranging and over the top they are.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

On Second Reading, we have a Bill that is even stronger than the one that started in the other House. Once again, I thank all our colleagues in the other place for their constructive feedback and contributions to the debate. I will not go through every change that has been made, but I will mention some aspects of the Bill that have been strengthened.

First, we have amended the Bill to ensure that there is more parliamentary scrutiny, and we have provided for a statutory consultation requirement to ensure that regulations are informed by those who would be impacted by them. There will also be that additional use of the affirmative procedure for regulations stemming from the Bill. Secondly, the Bill now includes a requirement for me, as the Secretary of State, to publish a statement setting out how my Department expects to identify and assess high-risk products.

Finally, contrary to previous suggestions from the Conservative party, the great British pint will clearly not be affected by this legislation, whether that is ale, cider or indeed milk. We do not believe that the Bill in its original form posed any threat to the pint, but we do not want to run the risk of colleagues thinking that my reassurances are small beer, so we accepted an amendment tabled in the other place that will give the pint statutory protection. That means, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in a few weeks’ time, when I hope you will confirm to the House that the Bill has received Royal Assent, we will all be able to raise a pint—protected under statute—to the Bill. I did inquire about whether I was allowed to bring a pint with me to the Chamber to illustrate the point, but that is apparently not in order; only the Chancellor has that ability. Given the week I am having, perhaps we will look at that at a later date.

To summarise, this legislation will finally enable the Government to properly regulate in areas where we have been unable to do so post Brexit. It will also give us the tools we need to better regulate modern-day consumer products. The Bill will help to create a fairer environment for high street shops and small businesses, support our growth mission and provide better protection for millions of consumers. For all those reasons, I commend the Bill to the House.

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[Andrew Griffith]

Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am nearing a conclusion in any case. However, I do think that the issue of product safety—the rules and regulations that govern our economy, as the Secretary of State himself said—is intrinsically linked with trade, mutual recognition and growing the economy by removing trade frictions and barriers rather than erecting them and subjecting businesses to the tyranny of simply not understanding the corpus of rules and regulations.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he, like me, hope that the Liberal Democrats, despite their hobby-horse love of the EU, do not allow the EU flavouring of the Bill to blind them to the frankly illiberal Executive-enhancing, legislature-diminishing aspect of the Bill? If they genuinely aspire to being His Majesty’s Opposition, they will join us this evening in voting against Second Reading.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I hope, as the Secretary of State slightly alluded to in his remarks about the ability of a country to make its own rules and regulations, that we will soon be back in the House with a Government statement at which we can celebrate the mother of all Brexit benefits: securing the ability to conduct our own trade. I look forward to hearing from the Liberal Democrats exactly how much they welcome that ability on behalf of their constituents.

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[Michael Wheeler]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. I will happily admit to the House that I am not an expert on AI. I do, however, recognise that the fast-developing nature of AI as it relates to consumer safety and product regulation requires a rapid response, which is potentially not necessarily suited to a full debate on the Floor of the House.

[Graham Stuart]

Can the hon. Gentleman give a single instance of a Government at any time in the past decade not being able to take action on a seriously risky product? I cannot think of one.

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[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

I declare an interest having spent 40 years in the toy industry and, in another life, having been the chair and the president of the British Toy & Hobby Association. It was a wonderful job—the second-best job. The best job is being the first ever Liberal Democrat MP for Wokingham.

[Graham Stuart]

And the last.

[Clive Jones]

I doubt that very much.

Nearly a decade since the Brexit referendum, this House is still grappling with what it means to be outside of the European Union. Away from the big headlines about trade deals and newly erected borders, the technical nitty-gritty of product safety and metrology is ever more important now that we must decide what we want our policies to be in this area. Our original framework, derived from EU law, must now keep up with fast-evolving technologies and consumer behaviours. Technological changes in the 21st century may have created new opportunities, but they have also left us exposed to new risks, such as AI, battery hazards and e-bike fires.

Our online marketplaces and the complex digital commerce that facilitates them have reduced barriers to small and medium-sized enterprises sharing their products across the UK and the world, but the internet is still a wild west in many ways, leaving small businesses and consumers exposed. That is why the Liberal Democrats welcome aspects of this Bill. We fully understand and support the need to update the regulatory framework for the UK marketplace to give businesses and consumers confidence in their products. We welcome in principle the powers in the Bill to put new responsibilities on online marketplaces throughout the supply chain, and we support enhanced consumer protection for products that pose a safety risk.

The product regulations falling in scope of this Bill will have an impact on our country’s trade policy, and the Liberal Democrats are clear when it comes to trade: we believe the Government must pull the most powerful and readily available lever at their disposal to kickstart economic growth by urgently launching negotiations for a new UK-EU customs union. That would create jobs, boost our public finances and reverse much of the damage inflicted on our economy by the previous Conservative Government’s terrible trade deal with Europe. I take this opportunity to urge the Government to move in that direction and to commit that, as part of these trade negotiations, they will use the provisions in the Bill to facilitate a new customs union, which could have such a transformative effect on our economy.

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[Kirsteen Sullivan (Bathgate and Linlithgow) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituents would be forgiven for thinking that the clock had turned back, so I will focus on the issues that they have asked me to raise, which are not political in the slightest, but relate to safety. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that while this is a small Bill, it is very important. It is of great interest to my constituents, especially the members of Torphichen community council in my constituency who asked me to speak in this debate. They back the Electrical Safety First campaign, and they spoke to me about the danger of fires caused by lithium-ion batteries in e-scooters and e-bikes and in everyday products. The lithium-ion battery safety campaign is calling for stronger measures, including improved enforcement efforts, particularly online; disposal guidance at the point of sale; and measures to ensure safer charging. I hope that the Ministers who are present will give strong consideration to those suggestions in due course.

Lithium-ion batteries are integral to many modern devices that most of us have in our homes, from e-scooters to laptops, but widespread use has exposed significant safety concerns, largely owing to the lack of oversight. Batteries have been linked to numerous fire incidents and pose serious risks of injury or worse. Thermal runaway is a dangerous phenomenon: battery cells overheat and catch fire, releasing toxic gases and often causing extensive damage. By their very nature, e-scooters are often left in town centres, walkways and communal areas in flats and hallways, putting other members of the public at risk in the event of thermal runaway. As we have heard, in London e-bike and e-scooter fires occur as often as once every two days. Worse still, I am aware of domestic incidents in my constituency, including one in which, sadly, a family lost their home and all their belongings as a result of an e-scooter fire.

The Bill introduces welcome steps to deal with those risks, creating a landscape to address the dangers associated with products that are so widely used. The mandates on safety standards for the storage, use and disposal of lithium-ion batteries will help to mitigate the dangers associated with thermal runaway. I also welcome the new powers to monitor compliance and enforce regulations effectively. It is critical that only safe and reliable products reach the market, and reach our homes. Such measures are essential to prevent incidents and protect people from serious harm, such as that which affected my constituents.

There is much in the Bill that has been long awaited at a local level, and I am glad that the Government are responding to people’s concerns in a timely and stringent manner. The danger posed by poorly maintained or unsafely stored lithium-ion batteries is too great to be ignored.

[Graham Stuart]

Is it the hon. Lady’s understanding that the existing regulations on lithium-ion batteries are insufficient? There is a British standard, and there are environmental and disposal regulations. There is a swathe of regulations relating to lithium-ion batteries, but if there is a failure to enforce them, that should not give Ministers carte blanche to decide on a whim what products, in this area or any other, should be available for sale in the UK without any recourse to Parliament.

[Kirsteen Sullivan]

I do not think that we want to rerun the arguments relating to Brexit, which is what this debate has largely been about so far. The Bill has clearly been introduced to address gaps that have left consumers exposed to great harms.

The prominence of online marketplaces is an established trend in our society. We all know from the pandemic how important essential—and sometimes non-essential—online purchases can be to our daily lives. They have become commonplace, and that trend is only set to continue. By the end of the decade, online purchases will be worth £156 billion. Nevertheless, many products are poorly regulated, faulty and—too often—dangerous. Whether it is the carbon monoxide alarms that do not work that have been used to kit out a cheaply renovated student flat, the faulty chainsaw attachments used by a neighbour or the faulty e-scooter sitting in a back garden, these faulty products have come about because the pace of change online has been poorly matched by regulations. We are now in a situation where regulations in the online world do not match the protections in the real world. Quite simply, if a product is too dangerous or fails the standards for those sold in shops, it should not be available in online marketplaces. As a society, we need to be protected in our increasing reliance on and use of the digital world; otherwise, the lack of online protections will have yet more devastating real-life impacts.

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[Ms Creasy]

There are so many things to unpack there, not least the right hon. Gentleman’s recognition that our previous regulations as part of the European Union were perhaps not that bad. With rules on bicycle safety, for example, perhaps it was pretty sensible to say that if something was safe in the UK, our colleagues in Europe might also be looking at it and we could share the burden of working out good regulation. That is not what happened with the retained EU law Act or with divergence, and it does sound like he needs to look at divergence. Thankfully, I have some statistics for him—I know he will be delighted to hear them.

Before we move on, let me just say this. Opposition Members have not spoken for British business today, although I accept that the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones), did try, and I recognise his expertise in toy manufacturing. He will recognise that we are talking about thousands of British businesses that are affected by regulations. What rules will those businesses have to follow to be able to sell in a market that makes their business sustainable? Some 12% of businesses in this country will be affected by this legislation, not because there are new rules, but because if we start to diverge from existing regulations, they will face a choice. Do they continue to follow European legislation so that they can sell into a larger market, or do they try to follow UK legislation, EU legislation and maybe Japanese legislation as well, with all the paperwork that comes with that?

[Graham Stuart]

rose—

[Ms Creasy]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman; I can see that if I do not, he will have a heart attack.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, but I shall survive. Given the time that she has spent in this House, I am surprised that, like some newer Members, she may have been taken in by the Government’s wording. The Bill gives Ministers such blanket powers. Sure, they can align more with EU regulation, as she desires; equally, another Government or Minister could go the opposite way and do all the damage she is talking about—needlessly differing from Europe purely out of ideology—and the House would have no say in it. Surely, the hon. Lady must be more like the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) and share with her colleagues the need to restrict Ministers’ powers.

[Ms Creasy]

I tried in vain to make exactly such arguments to the right hon. Member when he was a Minister telling me that European legislation was not good enough for this country. [Interruption.] I now ask him to let me finish my speech, because I want common sense in this legislation, as I think Ministers do. We need to stand up to those who puff and spout about Europe as though somehow it is a bad thing to make it possible for British businesses to trade with our nearest neighbours post Brexit. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an argument about rejoining the European Union.

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[Laurence Turner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that was one of the areas to which he paid a lot of attention in the transport brief. I am sure that as the Committee continues to look into this area, it will build on that work. As he says, this is an issue that comes up time and again in my constituency. We might not ever be able to get every single one of those vehicles off the road, but we need the powers to bring more of them off our streets where they pose a threat to people’s safety.

To illustrate the seriousness of the challenges the Government face and the need sometimes for very swift progress, we need only to look to the scale of technological advancements in the field of hybrid warfare and the implications of those advancements for dual-use civilian technologies. I note that clause 1(4)(d) draws specific attention to products that can

“cause, or be susceptible to, electromagnetic disturbance.”

In Ukraine, the two adversaries are locked into a cycle of innovation and reaction in drone warfare and electronic countermeasures that are escalating at a blinding speed. Some of those developments have implications for the potential misuse of civilian drones in this country. To suggest that primary legislation is capable of keeping pace with that is not realistic.

Similarly, in respect of intangible products, again an issue on which the House of Lords spent a large amount of welcome scrutiny time, there is a case that primary legislation cannot cover enough eventualities in good time, especially in the age of artificially generated code. I think back to the Volkswagen emissions scandal 10 years ago, when so-called “defeat devices” were intangible in nature.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant speech and he has focused on some of the key issues in ways that not every speech has. He makes a powerful case, but why does he think that those arguments have not persuaded, in three different attempts in three different reports, the cross-party Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which provides expert insight into precisely such proposed legislation?

[Laurence Turner]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, although I do not agree with his characterisation of the speeches we have heard today. I think hon. Members have brought a wide range of perspectives, and that even though there has been some disagreement across the House—and, on occasion, on the same Benches—all Members have made their points sincerely.

I have read the reports the right hon. Gentleman references and the Minister’s evidence. My reading of that report is that the Committee held a very strong view on the principle of skeleton delegated legislation, but the point it made is that the case must be made for the use of such powers. My view is that the case has been made in this instance because of the seriousness of the matters we are discussing.

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[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. We have had excellent speeches from across the House. I think the whole House agreed on the brilliance of the speech made by the hon. Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson), and—perhaps I would say this—great speeches have come from Opposition Members in particular. My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew), the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) and the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) got to the heart and the nub of the critique of the Bill.

We have also heard many good speeches, including the last one, about issues of product safety and the need to have a system that can keep up. The speech that addressed both that issue and whether the Bill is appropriate—it was the outstanding speech by a Government Member—was made by the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner). He did not like my praise of his speech in so far as it disparaged in any way anybody else’s, but he faced up to the issues directly. He did not just say, “Well, there are these problems with products and product safety, and here’s a Bill that could do something about it.” He dealt with the fact that the Bill gives enormous power to Ministers. As colleagues across the House have pointed out, the purpose of this honourable House is to hold the Executive’s feet to the fire, hold them to account and hold them in check, and ensure that we champion the will of the people who sent us here. As has been said, not only the Minister but, back in 2018, the Secretary of State warned the House that

“the use of delegated powers carries a risk of abuse by the Executive”.––[Official Report, Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Public Bill Committee, 1 February 2018; c. 305.]

The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) is not here, so I will try to be more polite than I would have been if she was, but if Brexit derangement syndrome is a condition, it is one that affects not only people who are maniacally in favour of Brexit, but those who seem unable to think rationally from the other side. The point that I tried to make to the hon. Lady in an intervention—I would make it again—is that giving such untrammelled power to Ministers is frightening, regardless of whether we prefer closer alignment with the EU. She said that we need common-sense alignment, but these powers would allow a super-ideological future Minister to come in and seek, entirely for ideological reasons, to stop any alignment with the most sensible of EU regulations purely to have some Brexit difference. That makes no sense whatsoever.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

I will press on a little, but I may come back to the hon. Lady.

I understand that, following the loveless landslide that brought the Government to power, the Government, and Government Members, have done an about-face. They now delight in more powers for the Executive, so much so that the Bill’s very first subsection gives the same Secretary of State I just referenced the power to make regulations anywhere in the UK, without consulting Parliaments in Westminster, Holyrood, Cardiff Bay or Stormont, on more or less anything he likes.

I was so pleased that the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim raised the devolution question. I was a Minister for eight years, and such is the complexity of the devolution settlement now that even with thousands of civil servants working on primary legislation, Ministers can come to the House and suddenly it gets pointed out to them that they are in breach of the Sewel convention and ignoring how Northern Ireland has a slightly different environmental or energy regulatory environment from Scotland or Wales. They find that the situation is more complex than they first thought. Now, we are giving powers to Ministers who will not have to go through any of that rigmarole. They will not get to find out how they are trampling on the devolution settlement, and that is a serious issue.

We on the Opposition Benches can make the arguments, but what we must really do is engage Government Members and get them to recognise that they are not here just to back the Government. They need to question these things, and not just ask whether the powers could be used for good. The hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield gave a brilliant speech with examples of the speeding up and pace of technological change—I think he spoke about the drones in Ukraine. Even though Opposition Members may maintain that the system that we had worked perfectly well, he made the case that perhaps we need something speedier going forward, and I can see that he made a strong argument. None the less, is the answer just to hand to Ministers, in this skeleton Bill, all the powers in the world? I suggest that it is not.

I know the Minister and the Secretary of State are decent people, and I hope that we will see, as the legislation proceeds through this House, ways to curb some of the powers while allowing us to have a regulatory system that can speedily respond to inappropriate products. None of us wants to see parliamentary pride getting in the way of an effective system; we have to find a way of making things work. This Bill, however, goes too far the other way. That is why the cross-party experts on the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee have looked at it and said that they do not feel that the case has been made to justify such massive powers.

Some parallels were raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow, and I think it is fair enough to say, “Look at the way that Henry VIII powers and delegated powers were taken by the Government in the last Parliament.” Quite rightly, people questioned it, but that was about implementing Brexit; it really was something enormous that had to be done at a reasonable speed. Those of us involved were cognisant of the fact that we did not want it to set a precedent; we did not want Government to take the unique conditions of implementing Brexit and take it as a new way of governing. To the comment from the hon. Member for Erewash about rebuilding the world that the ancient Egyptians had, they were very good at centralising authority and I do not think that that is an entirely good thing. That is exactly what the Bill does, so I agree with him on that.

I am sure the Secretary of State is an excellent judge of things such as the safe operation of a laptop, say, for a trainee solicitor, but he will now have the power to regulate any product for sale in the UK on the basis of safety or functionality. The immense power given to him will allow him to decide what is and is not sold in the UK, without consulting this place and by merely providing a written statement. The Bill goes further, with Ministers acquiring the power to give inspectors the right to enter somebody’s home to seize any product that the Minister has decided, on the basis of non-compliance. That can be imposed on manufacturers, marketers, installers, importers or people who run an online marketplace, the definition of which, by the way, can be altered on a ministerial whim and at any point.

We have heard about dangerous and often unpopular electric bikes and scooters, but the powers in the Bill allow a future Secretary of State—we have had some eccentric ones in the past—to decide to ban bicycles because he considers them to be dangerous. He might look at the figures on that. After publishing a statement, he could instruct anyone he likes to enter the house of every bike owner and every bike shop to seize every bike in the United Kingdom. The Secretary of State could effectively end cycling in the UK without coming to Parliament. He could create legions of cycle inspectors who could enter people’s homes or businesses and seize their property before disposing of it. And the Government want to hide this act under the innocuous name of the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. It is a massive power to give to the Secretary of State.

I say this to the many new Labour Members: I am not very keen on any Government, even the one of which I was a member. It was Lord Acton who said:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Well, there is an element of absolute power in this Bill, but we have an opportunity both to recognise the powerful case made by the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield for an appropriate system and by his colleagues talking about different challenges, and to make sure that we limit and reduce those powers as the Bill goes through the House. I know that my cycle example is a little extreme, but it is also true. It would not require the Government to return to this House; they would be able to do it.

The Prime Minister has told us that the No. 1 mission of this Government is growth, yet his Ministers, not satisfied with taking the fastest growing economy in the entire G7 and bringing it to a shuddering halt, have introduced what may be the most tediously named but potentially dangerous Bill in the history of Parliament. We can look at what the Government have done for business so far. They have ended the rate relief for hospitality, made part-time workers too expensive to hire, hiked the cost of employing people through next week’s jobs tax, strengthened the trade unions and made it impossible to fire new workers. I would not want to exaggerate this Bill’s role, but in a crowded field, it takes the biscuit in many ways. Businesses are struggling to cope with all these things already, and now we will have greater business uncertainty caused by the fact that Ministers can, on a whim, choose which products can and cannot be sold. This will provide the exact opposite of the certainty that Labour Members suggested the Bill could bring, in a way that has no logic behind it.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Every single one of the measures in that infamous list that my right hon. Friend just went through required a vote in this House, and Labour Members had to put their name to each proposed legislative change. They will not have to do that under this legislation, will they?

[Graham Stuart]

They will not. The Secretary of State—not the current wonderful, benign, insightful and genial Secretary of State, but a future rather less palatable one—could wake up one day and impose new regulations on business that effectively strangle and bring red tape to every business in the land. Remember how close we were in 2017 to having a Government that would have been very different from the one that is opposite us today, or indeed from the Conservatives.

Why are the Government doing this? I cannot look into a man’s soul, but I have an idea, because Labour spent years fighting the UK’s attempts to remove the burden of regulation on business after we left the EU. At every turn, Labour tried to cling to nurse rather than let businesses innovate and sell their goods. This Government are seeking to undermine and erode the freedoms we have won over the last few years. Indeed, that is in black and white in the Bill. The Secretary of State may reimpose EU law on products without the requirement to come to this place and ask our permission to do so.

I am not saying that this is the worst thing the Government have done. As I have said, there is quite a packed list, including cutting the winter fuel payment for pensioners, the farm tax, the jobs tax, imposing stamp duty on first-time buyers, which comes in, I think, today—[Interruption.] Suddenly someone wants to buy a house. There is also the hospitality tax. I could go on, but executive powers are at their most pernicious when they have no limits. This legislation is not about metrology or about the better regulation of products; it is about giving the Government the power to do what they like, when they like, for reasons they do not have to explain, and then impose it as they see fit. The fact that we might like, and even trust, the current Secretary of State is no reason to give powers like this to Ministers about whom we know nothing now. I hope that Labour Members will join us in opposing this Bill.

Scunthorpe Steelworks

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I am very much looking forward to the meeting with my hon. Friend’s constituents, who are an important part of the steel chain. He makes an important point: we make many different products and have many different assets in the UK that we need to protect, beyond the big six steel companies.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is now clear that domestic virgin steel production is a national security imperative. Acting on it is not acting on a whim. Will the Minister respond to her hon. Friends and to Conservative Members by recognising that domestic virgin steel production is a national security imperative? Whether it is through nationalisation, golden shares or the other ideas that have been suggested, if it is a national security imperative we must act, regardless of technology. Will the Minister please tell the House that she agrees with that?

[Sarah Jones]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will recognise the conversations that we are having from your experience as Minister of State in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The Opposition seem to have a new-found enthusiasm for virgin steelmaking that in government they did not have at all. We will make sure that we are doing the right thing. [Interruption.] I do not have time to go into this conversation at this point, but I will be very happy to have it with the right hon. Gentleman. There are some important points to note, including that we make a lot of our steel for defence not from primary steel but in electric arc furnaces. It is about getting the right mix. That is what we will make sure we do.

Employment Rights Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

There are 5,310 businesses registered in my constituency of South Northamptonshire. Of those, 99.6%—or specifically 5,245—are small businesses. This Bill, among many of the Government’s policies, is a calamity for those small businesses. Not only are many of them rural, meaning that they will be affected by the family farm tax and now by the removal of the sustainable farming incentive, but as the chair of the Federation of Small Businesses has said, these small and medium-sized enterprises will struggle to adapt to the 28 major changes that the Bill makes to employment law.

First, it was the Government’s jobs tax, then it was their cuts to rate relief for hospitality businesses, and now they are smothering SMEs with red tape. Analysis published by the Department for Business and Trade says that this will impose a cost on businesses in the low billions of pounds per year, but that is not money that many of my small businesses can afford right now. This is why the Opposition have called for small businesses to be exempt from the parts of the Bill that would heap unsustainable costs on them.

Why do the Government seem to hate small businesses so much? Perhaps it is because the majority of the Cabinet have spent their careers in the public sector and have zero understanding of what life is like for the many entrepreneurs with SMEs across the UK, including in my constituency. We learned this week that, for the first time since records began in 2012, the number of companies registered at Companies House has fallen. Growth forecasts have been downgraded and the number of vacancies has declined. All this is a result of the choices the Government have made and continue to make in this Bill.

With all of this, the UK risks becoming a globally uncompetitive economy, particularly when other countries such as the United States are slashing regulation and unleashing their businesses to grow their economies. The Opposition have tabled new clause 90 for exactly this reason. It would ensure that when the Secretary of State makes regulations under part 4 of the Bill, he has to have regard to growth in the medium to long term. I join the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), in calling on the Government to support new clauses 89 and 90 to ensure that growth happens. Our economy is already struggling under the weight of Labour’s tax rises. Why are the Government opposing our efforts to ensure that they consider how burdensome regulation might impact on businesses?

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

A lot of people outside this place might feel that the answer to that question is that the trade unions have funded Labour Members—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), who is talking from a sedentary position, received more than £27,000 from two unions in the latest year of declarations and did not think it appropriate in this debate even to mention that number, which may well have influenced his thinking and led to the dire outcomes that my hon. Friend is explaining to the House.

[Sarah Bool]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I think all Labour Members must reflect on this because we need the public to understand truly why this legislation is going through.

That the Government have seen fit to table 87 of their own amendments at this stage alone is indicative of how uneasy they must feel about the Bill. We are even told by the media that the Treasury has warned the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State about the consequences for the economy of enacting these laws, yet they seem to have seen fit to plough them through anyway. As per usual, Labour is paying lip service to growth while sticking true to form with their socialist ideology. I was not born in the 1970s but it appears that I am going to live through the equivalent in the years ahead, as Labour plays Abba’s 1976 hit “Money, Money, Money” for its trade union paymasters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gregory Stafford]

I am sorry that I am such a disappointment to the hon. Lady, but maybe she will get over it.

The Bill is a roll-back of the most important changes that we made when we were in government. It is no surprise that trade unions have warmly embraced the legislation, over 200 amendments having been hastily shoehorned in to satisfy those who line the Government’s pockets. Perhaps it is purely coincidental that their wishes have been granted, although one might wonder if the £5.6 million in donations the Labour party has received since July has something to do with it.

[Graham Stuart]

Despite her proud membership of trade unions, the last Labour Member to be called to speak, the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), did not mention the more than £9,000 that she received just in the last year, any more than the Labour Member who spoke before her, the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), mentioned the £24,000 plus that he received. If Labour Members were truly proud of the way that they have been bought and paid for by the trade unions, perhaps they would be open about how much they have received.

[Gregory Stafford]

My right hon. Friend makes a key point. The change since yesterday has been interesting. Yesterday, Labour Members were clear about declaring that they were members of trade unions, but only today have they suddenly realised that they should be declaring the amount of money that they are receiving directly.

We heard yesterday from the shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), that the legislation will allow unions to bypass current rules, such as the rules on opting out of political donations. It must be fantastic news to the Labour party that it will now receive donations from workers by default, while businesses will face reduced notice periods for strikes, leading to even more disruption and economic damage. It is clear to me, and to the hundreds of businesses that have pulled their support for this Government, that this is not about protecting employment rights, but about consolidating union power.

Let us briefly look at some of the amendments. Amendment 292 would require trade unions to notify their members every year of their right to opt out of the political fund, and to obtain an annual opt-in. That change would ensure that unions do not continue to fill Labour’s piggybank, and do not lock workers into automatic donations unless they actively opt out, which is as much a memory test as an admin task. Unamended, clause 52 is not about transparency, but about keeping the money flowing to the political party with the most to gain.

Likewise, there are new clauses and amendments that would have introduced transparency about the facilities provided to trade union officials, learning representatives and equality representatives. Clauses 54 and 56 are designed to reduce transparency and accountability for union spending, allowing union officials to continue to benefit from facility time without proper scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

This Bill is not a modernisation of employment rights; it is a gift to the trade unions at the expense of economic growth, job creation and business confidence. The Government have failed to strike the right balance, and we will continue to oppose this legislation.

[Graham Stuart]

The impact assessment states that these measures could have a £5 billion impact, in addition to the £25 billion impact of the national insurance contribution changes. Does my hon. Friend agree that what the impact assessment is missing is how much union funding the measures will drive directly to the Labour party as a result? We ought to know how many hundreds of thousands or millions extra will come to the Labour party and to Labour Members to make them support this growth-killing set of measures.

[Alison Griffiths]

It is a fascinating question, and we wait to hear the answers from Government Members.

[Graham Stuart]

The Minister will tell us, we hope.

[Alison Griffiths]

Indeed, perhaps the Minister will give us the answer.

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[Gregor Poynton]

I will certainly come on to that, but one way is that the Bill will improve employment relations in workforces. In the past 14 years, we have seen strike after strike because of the Conservatives’ approach to industrial relations. This change will improve productivity.

The Bill will deliver real-life improvements that will be felt across Britain. Key amendments that strengthen protections for the lowest-paid workers will ensure that all workers are treated with the decency they deserve. I welcome the vital steps that the Bill takes to extend protection, from exploitative zero-hours contracts, to protecting the voice of working people and strengthening statutory sick pay.

As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I have been able to scrutinise large businesses that choose to have zero-hours contracts in place. In one evidence session, I heard from a company representative who revealed that employees can have their shift changed at 24 hours’ notice, but not receive a single penny in compensation. The Bill is vital in addressing the challenges of financial planning faced by families who are dependent on zero-hours contracts. More than 1 million people on such contracts will benefit from the guaranteed hours policy. Crucially, the Bill will ensure that Governments work with businesses, and will support employers who endeavour to comply with the law. With the Government amendments, it will also expand and strengthen the powers of the fair work agency to bring civil proceedings against non-compliant employers at employment tribunals and to issue civil penalties, such as fines, to employers who breach pay-related rights and underpay their staff.

[Graham Stuart]

Given that the measures we are debating will give so much more power to the trade unions, why has the hon. Gentleman not felt it incumbent on him to declare the thousands of pounds that he has received from trade unions in the last year?

[Gregor Poynton]

I thank the right hon. Member for highlighting that, because I am proud of the money that I receive from unions. I am also proud of the fact that entrepreneurs and business people donate to my campaign as well. The right hon. Member neglected to mention that when he brought the subject up. Because I am both pro-business and pro-worker, I want to see growth in the economy. I am proud to receive donations from employers and people who have created wealth in this country, and I am also proud to receive donations from trade union members in my constituency.

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[Mr Frith]

I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—

[Graham Stuart]

How much?

[Mr Frith]

If the right hon. Member listens, he will hear.

From my entry, Members will see that I am a proud member of the GMB and that my donations include those from entrepreneurs and businesspeople alike who are collectively sick of the 14 years of the Conservative Government. I will take no lessons from that party, given its record over those 14 years, and none of the speeches by Conservative Members have defended any achievements that were made in 14 years relating to this Bill or anything to do with our economy. That is the party of “Eff business”, of a striking NHS, of 60% furlough settlements for Manchester workers, of cash for covid contracts, of inflation highs, of Liz Truss, of the mini-Budget disaster, of zero growth, of the collapse of infrastructure, of public spending power disappearing, and of the state of our roads and of our prospects. It is for this reason that my entry includes a combination of GMB membership, given the members and the workers that we represent, and of the entrepreneurs who wanted rid of that lot over there.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Frith]

I will make some progress. The right hon. Gentleman has said plenty already, and he came in only halfway through the debate.

I am proud to stand on the Labour side of the House as someone who has founded a business, run businesses for others and run my own business. Fifteen years ago, I made a commitment to be the voice of experience for good small businesses in the proud Labour movement that we now have in government, not least to challenge the claim of the Conservatives that they alone represent business interests. I am proudly pro-business and pro-worker, just as this Government are. Fixing the foundations of our economy means fixing the foundations of our employment. Just as the Government are strengthening our economic base, they are now laying down stronger employment foundations.

Running a business is hard work. It requires an initial leap of faith, the courage to embrace risk, the ability to adjust, the resilience to overcome failure and the perseverance to celebrate success. The role of government is to improve life and living for everyone in this country. The role of good employment is exactly the same. Small businesses are at the heart of this effort. That is why the Government are right to focus on skills, value for money with public spending, opening up public sector commissioning to SMEs and challenger companies, and, crucially, the Bill making employment a more positive, rewarding experience. Insecure work leads to insecure living, and neither will improve life in Britain. We should highlight and support those employers who are already leading the way. Much of this legislation simply catches up to their high standards.

The weight of responsibility that comes with creating somebody else’s payslip cannot be overstated. It is humbling, sometimes worrying and never easy. It requires teamwork and the skills of others, but also leadership—sometimes lonely leadership. It means shouldering risk and sharing rewards. That is why the Government’s ambition for growth is the right one. The focus must be on net growth, locking in certainty for those in work by upholding rights for the many, while fostering new opportunities to expand our economy.

I want to salute those businesses and entrepreneurs for whom much of this legislation emphasises the good practices they already uphold. In Bury, businesses such as the Lamppost Café, where—a declaration of interest, Madam Deputy Speaker—my daughter works part time, Life Store in Ramsbottom, Wax and Beans record and coffee shop in Bury, Bloom, Avoira, MSL Solution Providers, Ernill’s Bakery, Wallwork Aerospace Heat Treatment, and Hargreaves. These businesses, often family run, are the backbone of Bury, and so they build the backbone of Britain; rooted in their communities; providing stability, pride and good honest work for an honest day’s pay. Many stand ready to do more to grow, invest and create more opportunities.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Could he tell us which of that fine list of businesses have said that they support the Bill?

[Mr Frith]

I have had conversations with the vast majority of them. They support the general emphasis—[Interruption.] Actually, if the right hon. Gentleman has been listening, he will know that the argument I am making is that on much of the proposed legislation—giving rights on day one, being fair minded, making work pay—they are already doing that. The point I am making—[Interruption.] I have just named several. The most recent conversation I had was with MSL Solution Providers. Its challenges and arguments are around R&D tax credits, an argument I will make in due course. But the Conservatives’ claim of being the voice of small business and entrepreneurship is misguided, misrepresented and, frankly, out of date.

Once we have laid the new employment foundations, we must support them in building their businesses further. In particular, for some that means ensuring that AI enhances and expands prospects and prosperity in the employment market and the wider economy.

Lastly, I am proud to highlight my support for extending bereavement leave to those who experience a miscarriage—a compassionate and essential measure that I proudly support alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen).

The Bill is not just about a legislative process; it is about our values. It is about recognising that a thriving economy and a fair society must go hand in hand with tackling our inequalities. It is about ensuring that whether employer or employee, the foundation on which our employment is built ensures strength for all.

Draft Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment of Schedule A2) Order 2024

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2024 General Committees

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornaby East) (Lab)]

It is a delight to see you in the Chair, Mr Mundell. I had wondered whether it was necessary to speak, but given some of the comments I have just heard, I feel compelled to do so.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the Employment Rights Bill, on the back of the “New Deal for Working People”. The Bill will be the single and foremost change to working people’s terms and conditions in this country for more than a generation. It is long overdue. When I first saw this order, however, I got quite a shock. I thought, “Is this it?”, although I suppose a 25% uplift is better than nowt. But of course it has not come from our Front Bench, thank goodness; it is something we have inherited.

I want to look at this draft measure through the prism of fire and rehire—actually, not fire and rehire, but fire and replace—that we came up against in P&O Ferries and Peter Hebblethwaite. I was a member of the Business and Trade Committee that heard evidence from that chief executive. He made it abundantly clear that he was quite prepared to break the law of the land on consultation periods and to price it into the compensation, the pay-off, of his workforce.

All we got from the then Government was a wringing of hands, a condemnation and very little else. The draft order seems to be the sum total of their response to that travesty. I have to tell the Committee that the 25% uplift would be a doddle to the likes of P&O. It would not be impacted one jot. I am delighted that the Minister mentioned interim relief; when we go forward with our excellent Employment Rights Bill, I am sure we will discuss what that will look like.

I gently say that if we are going to be able to stop another P&O, we will need injunctive relief because trying to bring out interim relief after the horse has bolted will be no good whatever. I also gently suggest that the sorts of financial penalties that need to be imposed on the egregious behaviours of the likes of P&O will have to be significantly higher. There was discussion about unlimited fines being visited on those who had deliberately prepared to break the law for their own ends. We have to look at those issues very carefully.

In addition, now that we have the opportunity we have to reflect on the appalling record of enforcement across the piece. The number of tribunal awards that are not paid out by employers is legion, and the ability of people to then pursue their enforcement is sadly lacking. It is critically important that we should have rights and protections for our workforce and the powers to have those enforced. I will close with that; I just express my relief that we did not bring the measure forward—

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

You are bringing it forward—that’s what we are doing here!

[Andy McDonald]

I get the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but the legislation did not originate from the Government side. We are taking this first step, but I put the Opposition on notice that it is simply a first step.

Budget Resolutions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That is not what it says. First, on the figures, we cannot make a like-for-like comparison because we know that the information provided by the previous Government in their financial information was erroneous. They did not square their own spending pledges with what was in those documents. The analysis by the OBR shows that long-term improvement in GDP growth is vital, but the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that it cannot model some of the wider parts of the Government’s agenda. It cannot model those changes in the planning system that are so important to the Government. It cannot model the changes involved in having a long-term industrial strategy. It cannot model our changes to trade policy.

I recognise that there is more to do to prove the case of the Government’s overall commitment, but I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that fundamentally fixing the foundations, honesty and stability in the public finances, and a focus on long-term public investment are essential to the long-term growth of the country. Also, one thing that has not had sufficient recognition is that many of the real benefits of greater public investment do not accrue in this Parliament; they accrue beyond it, and it is about time we had some long-term focus again in this country. Not before time, if I may say so.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman will, I hope, be aware that the long-term economic growth of this country relies not primarily on public investment or indeed public infrastructure, but on a healthy private sector—the wealth creators from whom we can take the funding to deliver into those goods that he talks about and that are part of a balanced and successful society. This Budget does not help them. It does the opposite.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am sorry but, again, the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. I agree with part of his assessment, such as that a strong and thriving private sector is crucial to growth, but I find his analysis a little simplistic. Private firms will say that they also need skilled workers, and that they need a decent transport system so they can get to work.

Under the last Government, I would often get up in the morning and check my phone for updates from people using the trans-Pennine line I just mentioned—the one we are upgrading—and it would be full of people saying, “I cannot get to work.” I need the right hon. Gentleman to make a slightly broader analysis.

Despite the previous Government leaving us with a raging skip fire in many areas—we have to raise money, not to deliver our pledges but to deliver their pledges that they did not properly fund—we have had a regard and a heed for the level of competitiveness in the UK economy. For instance, on the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions, over half of all firms with national insurance liabilities will actually pay less or the same, not only because of the changes to the employment allowance but because of how we have removed the threshold so that all firms now qualify.

Despite the frankly terrible inheritance bequeathed to us, we have done our best to meet those needs and to deliver a long-term focus on the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I always listen to the hon. Gentleman because he is genuine and conscientious in representing his constituency’s interests. I will always listen to what he has to say. We can judge the exact impact of these changes by looking at the value of claims to date. The Conservative party’s analysis has forgotten to aggregate the impact of the changes to those allowances, such as agricultural property relief, alongside the existing nil-rate band and the ability to transfer the allowances between spouses in all cases. The total number of farms across the UK that will be affected by this change is actually only 500 for the 2026-27 financial year. That has been missed, and I remind colleagues that any inheritance tax liability has a 10-year, interest-free payment period. To be frank, there has been some scaremongering from the Opposition, and we have to be clear with people.

We have had to restore economic stability to deliver that investment, and we should not shy away from explaining why this has been so necessary. The previous Government’s scattergun approach to growth left our country starved of investment, economically divided and struggling to maintain a competitive edge in the global economy.

The previous Government’s claim to have delivered the fastest-growing economy in the G7, based on its performance in the first half of this year, is laughably false. I believe that The Sunday Times likened it to someone walking a marathon in six hours but, because they ran the last 100 yards, claiming to be the fastest runner in the world. The truth is that consistency and stability have been sorely lacking. We have had seven growth strategies since 2010 and 11 Business Secretaries in as many years, to say nothing of the UK’s revolving door of Prime Ministers.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I have already given the right hon. Gentleman a go. I will make a little progress, and we will see whether he can do a better one next time.

The result was a protracted period of anaemic growth. Had our economy grown at the average rate of other OECD countries over this period, it would have been £171 billion larger. Imagine the difference that would have made to all of our communities and to today’s Budget debate. British firms, facing such uncertainty, have not seen investing domestically as a sufficiently attractive proposition. They have been reluctant to adopt new technology, to upskill their employees or to plough money into research and development. We have even heard that, in any given year, roughly 40% of UK firms choose not to invest at all. We want to change that for good. We want to give businesses certainty, confidence and stability so that they can make decisions for the long term.

That is why, at the Budget, the Chancellor reaffirmed our new modern industrial strategy. Invest 2035 will be a central pillar of our growth mission. The strategy will allow businesses to plan not just for the next 10 months, but for the next 10 years. It has already won the backing of Make UK, which has told us that businesses will no longer have to

“fear the constant chop and change in policy we have seen over the last decade.”

Instead, they can focus on the long term.

Our industrial strategy will create a strong pro-business environment, making it simpler and cheaper for companies to scale up and invest. It will unleash the potential of our high-productivity services and industries, because our recent economic history has taught us that we have to play to our strengths. Over the last 25 years, high-productivity sectors were responsible for roughly 60% of our economy’s entire productivity growth. Looking at the figures since 1990, over half of the UK economy’s GDP growth has come from just three sectors—information and communications technology, financial and professional services, and advanced manufacturing.

That is why our industrial strategy will channel support to eight key growth-driving sectors, those in which the UK services sector will excel both today and tomorrow—the services and industries that present the greatest opportunity for output and productivity growth over the long term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Griffith]

Forgive me if the hon. Member has been here for more than 120 days, but I fully support the sectors, and the industrial strategies that the Government have articulated for them, because the strategies continue on from, and are identical to, those of the previous Government. Not for the first time, we see what I call name-plating from this Government. A British business bank—the UK Infrastructure Bank—is being re-name-plated as a national wealth fund. The modern industrial strategy takes the existing science, technology and innovation framework, our plan for financial services and our creative industries strategy and re-name-plates them under a different banner. That is welcome. There is nothing quite as flattering as plagiarism, and I am delighted that those really important sectors of the economy will benefit from a degree of continuity.

The Budget has been absolutely crushing for business. If the Secretary of State is honest, he will know that from his engagement. The only thing that it has delivered to businesses across the country is more burdens. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the increase in national insurance contributions amounts to a £25 billion tax on business. The reduction of the national insurance threshold by over £4,000 will keep small and medium-sized businesses up at night. Let us not equivocate: the measures in the Budget amount, in the words of the Chancellor herself, to a “jobs tax”. From industry leaders to shop owners, those in the retail, hospitality and leisure industries in particular will think back to what they heard during the election campaign.

[Graham Stuart]

I know that my hon. Friend follows these things closely. According to the OBR, the £26 billion jobs tax bombshell actually nets only £16 billion because of reduced investment and other funds, and three quarters of the £26 billion falls on workers’ wages. Only this socialist Government could be so incompetent as to reduce wages by more than they will take from a tax that they have introduced. I have not heard that observation yet in the debate, but I share it with my hon. Friend.

[Andrew Griffith]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. We have heard talk from Labour Members of a circular economy. Well, this is entirely circular. As the OBR observes, the measure does not add to growth, and as my right hon. Friend mentioned, three quarters of the burden will fall on the low-paid. The Labour party has a distinguished record on these matters, and if Labour Members are serious and thoughtful about this, they will interrogate their Front-Benchers in much greater depth, because the measure will result in lower-paid, poorer jobs—and it will be much harder for people to get on the jobs ladder in the first place.

There is an enormous number of unanswered questions. The impact on GPs is uncosted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), who has given another customarily powerful speech and reminded us of the injustices facing those who fall between the cracks.

We live in an uncertain and unstable world, and the US election result makes it more so. As we debate how to rebuild our great country after the mess left by the Conservatives, many of us will have a sense of apprehension today about what the presidential result means for the US—including women and minority groups—as well as for the UK, Europe and the world. Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage that President Trump and his Administration may do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining NATO and emboldening tyrants such as Putin. None the less, that may well be the context within which we must rebuild Britain.

We Liberal Democrats believe that rebuilding Britain starts with rebuilding our NHS and social care. Never before have I heard so much desperation as at the last general election. The legacy of the last Government was to leave people saying that they could not see a GP or a dentist, and were waiting months for mental health assessments or special educational needs documents. People were asking me on the doorstep whether maybe everything was so broken that it could not be fixed at all, but we Liberal Democrats know that health and social care must be fixed hand in hand. We welcome the Government’s investment in the NHS, but they cannot remain silent on social care—they cannot dismiss it as a second-term issue. Businesses know that people’s productivity plummets when they have to pick up the pieces of a broken social care system.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady makes absolutely the right point about the NHS and its interdependence with social care, but the Government have done more than be silent on social care: through the minimum wage and the NICs, they have imposed £2.5 billion of additional costs on social care while giving just £600 million to local authorities. They are taking an already difficult situation and making it rather worse.

[Daisy Cooper]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. He may remember that at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, I raised precisely that point with the Deputy Prime Minister and advised the Government that if they went ahead with the rise in national insurance contributions, it would affect social care. The right hon. Gentleman will, however, remember that it was the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson who stood on the steps of Downing Street in 2019 and promised to reform social care “once and for all”, but clearly failed to do so.

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[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the Budget debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh) on making her maiden speech, and wish her well.

Last Wednesday, we sat in this Chamber to listen to the Chancellor’s Budget of broken promises, and as each day has gone by, we have witnessed the mask slip from this Labour Government. Even before the Budget, we saw the Chancellor start to set out her stall with the callous cutting of the winter fuel allowance, and just this week Labour has attacked students with a monumental hike in tuition fees—a tax on aspiration and on young people and their hard-working families. As the week has gone by, we have seen the Budget unravel as manifesto promise after promise has been broken. I have constituents —from pensioners and farmers to businesses, charities, community organisations, GPs and many more—coming to me with anxiety and worries.

My local farmers are devastated. Promises made to them have been broken with no consultation, giving them no opportunity to plan. The Government have shown that they are no friend of the farmer, the producer of our food and the guardian of our countryside. Farmers have gone from food heroes during covid to being abandoned in the cold. The Government seem to have failed to grasp that family farms are not only farms; they are much more. Family farmers invest in their businesses for the long term, for the next generation. The Government need to keep their promises, reverse the changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, and abolish what I and others now term the family farm tax.

[Graham Stuart]

I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the way that this Government are serially breaking all the promises they made during the election is corrosive for our politics?

[Wendy Morton]

Absolutely. Small businesses also face a tax on aspiration and entrepreneurship. Inheritance tax will be the death of enterprise. The increases to employer national insurance and the minimum wage will stymie growth and investment. Inflation looks set to be higher than growth under the Chancellor’s measures. In fact, far from this being a Budget for growth, the measures set out by the Chancellor will be a hindrance.

If we put all this together, who does it hit? Working people. Even the Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted that on TV. Think, too, of the jobs for working people that will be lost, or never even created, thanks to the Budget of broken promises. This is a Budget that punishes pensioners, destroys our countryside, chases after our motorists, denies working families and their children choice over education, and saddles young people with more student debt. It is a Budget about ever-increasing spending, ever-higher taxes and an ever-expanding state. Prosperity has never been the result of the state handing out more taxpayer money; it has come from empowering businesses, entrepreneurs and families, and it is about enabling opportunity.

Once upon a time, Labour would have been thought of as the party of working people, but not now. Far from fixing the foundations, it is digging an even bigger hole.

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[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Gosport constituency is a community built around a shared history of service in and for our armed forces. Thirteen per cent of my constituents are veterans. Those are good, hard-working people who have served our country and asked for little in return, but they are not wealthy people. They are disproportionately impacted by the Budget, which delivers the opposite of the growth we were promised: it delivers taxes and cuts that will leave my constituents disproportionately poorer. It started with the baffling decision to cut winter fuel payments. Many of my constituents exist just outside the pension credit threshold and are hanging on by their fingertips. The Government’s own data suggests that 13,000 of them will lose that lifeline through the cold winter months. Age UK says that it will be 5,000 more than that, which will be 91% of pensioners in Gosport.

I have real concern for the health of older people in Gosport during these winter months. That concern extends to the future of some of our most important businesses: the care homes and nurseries who do such vital work and employ so many of our constituents. At this stage, I must direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Those organisations are seriously impacted by the triple whammy of minimum wage increases, employer national insurance threshold decreases and contribution increases.

Hopscotch nursery in my constituency told me that the £25 billion tax increase will impact businesses that employ a high number of low-wage workers. It estimates that the changes will add almost £1 million in costs to their businesses. That cannot be alleviated by productivity increases or headcount reductions, because childcare ratios are set by the Government. The services to which we entrust our most precious and loved family members rely on face-to-face care and human interaction, so the extra costs facing childcare and adult social care services will be borne by their customers—working parents and the vulnerable elderly—and by employees through lower wage growth.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. It is good to see the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in his place. I hope he will take on board these arguments, and perhaps the overall settlement can be reworked to minimise the negative impacts that my hon. Friend outlines.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage]

I agree. I would love to see something done to exempt the childcare and adult social care sectors in particular from the policy.

The Budget also threatens many organisations that are central to the regeneration of our communities. I welcome the fact that the cliff edge for business rate relief for hospitality, leisure and retail has been reduced, but what the Chancellor gave with one hand she took away with the other, because hospitality venues can now expect to see their costs increase by £3 billion. In my constituency, that will potentially cripple 146 businesses, which employ around 2,000 people.

While Ministers talk about the value of our creative industries, tourism and hospitality, they are ignoring their fragile state. The chief executive officer of the Sound and Music charity has said that the measures will impose an extra £7 million in additional taxes on the grassroots live music sector. The Music Venue Trust estimates that, without additional support, 10% of remaining venues will see their doors close. That is up to 120 venues, 4,000 jobs and 25,000 performances opportunities all lost.

As well as being a Budget of broken promises, I suspect that this will become known as a Budget of unintended consequences. The decisions that the Chancellor has taken will have real, tangible impacts on the community and those across the country. Not only that, but we are saddling future generations with billions of pounds of debt to pay for it.

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[Dr Opher]

Sorry. I did get rather angry there, and I shall not get angry any more.

Let me talk about GP access. We need to get doctors, not receptionists or 111, to perform triage, and we need to start thinking in a different way. We do not want a protocol-driven NHS; what we need is a genuine doctor-patient relationship. We also need to develop neighbourhood—

[Graham Stuart]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Is it a relevant point of order?

[Graham Stuart]

It is.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Can the point of order not wait, Mr Stuart?

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[Graham Stuart]

No, it is relevant here. I wonder whether it is in order for the hon. Gentleman to have been given assurances by the Government that funding will be put in place to mitigate the impact on GPs, because that information has repeatedly been refused to this House. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker that you represent all Back Benchers, like me, in making sure the truth is out.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

You can definitely raise that in your contribution later. It is not a point of order for the Chair, but no doubt the Minister and Front Benchers have heard and can respond accordingly.

Dr Opher, you will shortly run out of time, so I would be quick.

[Dr Opher]

Okay. I worked in general practice for 30 years. There is always mitigation for tax changes, and I have no doubt that the Government will look after GPs.

[Graham Stuart]

No doubt?

[Dr Opher]

I have no doubt.

I would like to finish my speech, if I may. We need to invest in neighbourhood health centres. In Suffolk, Dr Tim Reed is developing a genuinely holistic service, which will save money and increase productivity in mental health provision and among paramedics. This is something that we need to explore much more.

I spent 48 hours with a loved one in Bristol Royal infirmary’s A&E department, and I saw the huge pressure that it was under. I notice that Dr Simon Laing is using innovative ways of going out with paramedics, keeping patients at home and working with paramedics in his department. That is the type of adaptation we need in the NHS.

This Budget begins the process of transforming the NHS and will reward NHS staff up and down the country, who continue to deliver excellent unscheduled care. We must fix the foundations of care and use the new funding to ensure that more patients are cared for at home. Difficult decisions are being taken, but all of us on both sides of the House want to see the NHS become the best in the world again, and this Budget starts that process.

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[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. We have heard fantastic maiden speeches from across the House, and I am sure that we have all enjoyed the insights from them. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson). I loved the way he set out his aspiration for the kind of country of abundance that we should seek. He is entirely right, but I am just not sure that this Budget is the way to get there. If the penny drops with him over time, I hope that he will be able to engage with us in coming up with a more constructive way of delivering the growth that this country needs.

Not only is this a Budget of broken promises, but unfortunately—and this is an important issue—it is a bad faith Budget. I do not want to rehearse—although there is so much to rehearse—the 50 promises not to raise taxes or the bogus £22 billion that was not validated by the OBR, but those are serious points. It is good to see the engagement from Labour Members, because in politics one cannot afford to have a reputation for being dishonest and not doing what one says. [Interruption.] Labour Members who laugh at that should remember Cicero’s advice. He was always better at giving advice than following it, but he said:

“The foundation of justice is…good faith; that is, truth and fidelity to promises and agreements.”

Without that, we lose trust.

[Mike Martin]

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the former Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip was honest at all times?

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Steve Tuckwell was a great man!

[Graham Stuart]

Yes. And with respect to the hon. Gentleman’s point, I think that the former Prime Minister and Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip was true to himself, true to his heart and true in his expressions—although, like all of us, he probably had his moments. What he never did was set out on a deliberate path to mislead people. He set out his honest view of the way the world should be.

Unfortunately, 9.7 million people, including 15,000 of my constituents, believed the promises of the now Labour Government, and even 410 Members of Parliament thought that they were being honest.

[Dr Caroline Johnson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the speech that he is making. Does he agree that many of those people will now feel betrayed?

[Graham Stuart]

I think people do feel betrayed. We need to conduct our politics as honestly as we can. The Labour Government broke their promise not to raise taxes on working people, because, as the OBR has made clear, the NICs raise will overwhelmingly fall on working people. In fact, if we go through the numbers, as I did, it turns out that there is a bigger reduction in wages than there is net receipt to the Exchequer. That is quite a remarkable achievement—probably only a Labour Government could do that.

Of course, the Government have also put up the cost of getting on the bus. If ever there was a symbol of working people, travelling from my constituency to a low-paid job in Hull, that is it. It will cost them £500 a year extra out of taxed income. I do not know why the hon. Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern) is grinning—I know he grins a lot, but it should not be funny to him that someone in a low-wage job who travels into Hull every day will pay £500 a year more because of the decisions his Government are making. For a couple, it is £1,000 a year. That cost is real, and it should not be glossed over.

There is just one train station in my constituency, and people who live in Withernsea have no choice but to travel 26 miles to get there. The Prime Minister’s constituents are blessed with a pick and mix of ways to get to the office: the tube, the overground, trains, Ubers, Bolts, and even Boris bikes. That is not the case in rural and coastal East Yorkshire: my constituents get the bus at 7 o’clock in the morning, and they get another bus at 6 o’clock at night. That is their lived reality, and the serious impact of this Budget should be recognised.

Another broken promise was to pensioners, who were told that they would have security in retirement—that their benefits would not be touched. Taking £300 from the very poorest pensioners is not keeping that promise. [Interruption.] The very poorest pensioners are those eligible for pension credit.

[Sam Rushworth]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart]

I will not. The very poorest pensioners are those eligible for pension credit, and nearly 900,000 of them will not get that £300. That is the truth—there is no point denying it.

Finally, there is the awful betrayal of British farmers, many of whom work from dawn to dusk to ensure our supermarkets are full of fresh fruit and veg. According to my constituent William Hodgson, who runs a small family farm near Withernsea, it is a “rural catastrophe”. I ask the Government to think again.

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[Dr Neil Shastri-Hurst (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow so many excellent maiden speeches this afternoon.

The Budget marks a seminal moment in the parliamentary calendar. Irrespective of party politics, there is a collective desire that any Budget provides the foundations for our great nation to succeed.

My constituency of Solihull West and Shirley, with its range and breadth of businesses, is an important economic driver for the west midlands. Having sat down with 17 business leaders last Friday, and having visited multiple businesses in the lead up to the Budget, it is important that I convey their balanced and market-led views.

Businesses look for stability. They want to understand the Government’s growth and economic plan for an industrial strategy. However, as one CEO described it, the Budget represents private industry versus public sector, employer against employee. One cannot have well-funded public services if there is no private industry to pay for them; one cannot have high employment rates if there are no private business to spur job creation; and one cannot have economic growth if private investment is driven out of this country.

This Budget has brought businesses more complexity and uncertainty. As a consequence of last Wednesday’s announcements, businesses in my constituency have already announced recruitment freezes.

By now, the Chancellor will have received my letter, sent yesterday and signed by approximately 40 Members of this House and the other place, regarding the impact that her new national insurance contributions policy will have on general practitioners, dentists, hospices and care homes. These vital services will be forced to decrease staff numbers, thereby creating further pressures on the NHS and public services.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. [Interruption.] Government Members do not like to hear this.

[Hon. Members]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Graham Stuart]

Not when an intervention is happening. Every Labour Government in history have ended with higher unemployment than when they began. From the look of these measures, does it not seem that this one will be exactly the same?

[Dr Shastri-Hurst]

rose—

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[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

This is a truly landmark Budget, not only for its glass ceiling smashing—I sincerely hope that the girls and young women in my constituency will be inspired to see the first female Chancellor for England after 800 years—but because it provides the basis for a clean break from the race to the bottom, trickle-down economic drivel, riddled with vested interests, to which the Conservatives have subjected the country for the past 14 years, with austerity, recession, dodgy personal protective equipment contracts and economic collapse. The public should never forgive and never forget what the Conservatives have done to our country.

This Budget marks an end to using public finances and the British people as guinea pigs in an economic experiment that sent interest rates and mortgage rates soaring and living standards plummeting and saw families gripped in the vice-like clutch of the Conservatives’ cost of living crisis. When I listened to the response of the former Leader of the Opposition—it is hard to keep up—it was crystal clear to me that the born-to-rule Conservatives simply have not understood that they are not ruling any more. I only wanted to hear one word from the former Leader of the Opposition: sorry. That word never came.

As someone with over 30 years of private sector experience, I am getting a bit bored of the trope that no one on this side of the House has any private sector experience—

[Graham Stuart]

What about on the Front Bench?

[Perran Moon]

The right hon. Gentleman asks about the Government Front Bench. I appreciate that a large proportion of Conservative MPs now serve on the Front Bench; that begs a question about the quality of the people left behind.

On the one hand the Budget places desperately needed money in the hands of the lowest-paid workers, where it will be spent locally, and on the other hand it heralds a new era of much-needed infrastructure investment—the kind that will stimulate growth in the economy and thousands of new jobs across the country, based on a coherent industrial strategy. It sets us on a course to rebuild depleted public services and lays the foundations for the pillars of a decade of economic and social renewal.

The Budget recognises the importance of the shared prosperity fund, which the Conservatives wanted to scrap to pay for their hare-brained national service plan —a decision that would have been devastating for the people of Cornwall, as well as for many other communities around the UK. The Budget places British workers at its heart—those same British workers who rejected the failed economic experiments of the Conservatives, along with the chaos, infighting and fiscal incompetence. They voted decisively for stability and security—a sea change from the previous 14 years. They voted for change; this Budget delivers it.

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[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I know that she is a doughty champion of the pubs in Carlisle. The pubs in my constituency are celebrating the penny off pints.

Let me get back to the previous Government, who were wrong when they claimed that they would fix the roof while the sun was shining. While chasing a budget surplus— for which, 14 years later, all they had to show was catastrophic public finances—they merely painted over the ever-growing cracks in the bedrock of our society and our country. That is why this Government are right to focus on fixing the foundations of our economy, because that is the only way that we can change the country, deliver for working people and rebuild Britain. Of course, buying a home is harder if the seller has misled us about its true condition by underestimating the size and cost of any required repairs. In that sense, rebuilding our economy is no different, because the previous Government’s public spending plans existed only on paper; there was no real allocation of money to back up any of the spending plans. They behaved no better than some huckster trying desperately to sell a flat that they know will never be built.

That is why the OBR has said that, had it been made aware of the scale of the spending pressures during the spring 2024 Budget, its assessment of the previous Government’s spending plans would have been “materially different”. That is why it was right that we took our time to conduct a full survey of the economic inheritance that they left us.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Hon. Members]

No!