Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill

Imran Hussain Excerpts

Friday 22nd October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) for the incredible campaign he has fought up and down the country over recent months to stop fire and rehire. I also put on record the thanks of the whole House to my hon. Friend—

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Imran Hussain]

I have yet to begin, so the hon. Gentleman might want to wait, but okay.

[Dr Mullan]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman can clarify something. The campaign is to end fire and rehire, which is what Unite says, but the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has clarified several times that the legislation would not end fire and rehire, so I am a bit confused as to what he is seeking to achieve.

[Imran Hussain]

If Members intervene before someone has really started their speech, it does lead to confusion, so they may want to wait a little longer on occasion. There is probably a lesson there for the hon. Gentleman. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North has made it absolutely clear that although he does not seek to ban fire and rehire, it should end. There is a difference, and I will come to that later.

First, let me thank my hon. Friend, who cited real examples of working people who are being impacted by this abhorrent practice. Sometimes in the Chamber, we move away from real examples and towards theses or even the law, which is important, but we must always keep in touch with the real impact on real people.

As I made clear in the Westminster Hall debate in April, fire and rehire is a deplorable tactic used by unscrupulous employers. Using the threat of permanent dismissal, employers bully their staff and force them to reapply for a job that they already had. They force them to sign away their pay, rights and conditions and rip up their original contracts. These bad bosses—these unscrupulous employers—do so knowing full well that staff cannot refuse without being cast out into an uncertain job market. Let me be clear: these are not negotiating tactics, they are nothing more than a form of legalised blackmail, with all the power in the hands of bad bosses. They are tactics that leave working people worse off to the tune of several thousand pounds a year while working longer hours on exhausting shift patterns. They leave working people with fewer days of annual leave, with no paid lunch breaks and with no protections when they fall ill. They leave working people without the dignity in work that they deserve, all while CEOs pay themselves inflated salaries and bumper bonuses worth millions of pounds.

So let there be no doubt. Fire and rehire is abhorrent, morally bankrupt and a stain on our economy. Put simply, these employers are employing bully-boy tactics—surprisingly, those are not my words but the words of the Minister.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

The shadow Minister has used the words “abhorrent” and “deplorable” when it comes to the use of fire and rehire. Could I suggest that he has a word with his boss, the Leader of the Opposition, so that the Labour party stops using these practices itself? Perhaps he should look closer to home at his own party.

[Imran Hussain]

This is a serious debate, where working people are looking towards this House for guidance on an important issue. The hon. Gentleman, I have to say, may on occasion make a decent point, but today is not that day for him. He needs to look again at the point he made.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I want to follow up on that point. The hon. Gentleman says we are fabricating news. Would he like to explain why a senior Labour MP is reported as criticising Labour’s employment practices? They have said:

“To learn that our party are now using what can only be described as fire and rehire appals me. It is everything we as a party should be aggressively opposing.”

That is after the Labour party made a whole load of redundancies and then appointed people in exactly the same departments. It is not fake news.

[Imran Hussain]

That point has already been clarified. Let me echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North made earlier. Fire and rehire is an abhorrent practice, regardless of who is involved. I do not understand why Conservative Members seems to think this is an opportunity for them to stand up one after the other and make a point that has already been addressed.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Imran Hussain]

I have given way enough on this. [Interruption.] Let me make some progress and I will—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. It is up to the hon. Gentleman whether he wants to give way.

[Imran Hussain]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

For those who seek to minimise the scale of fire and rehire, let us remember—the point was made earlier—that one in 10 workers, around 3 million people across the country, of whom a worrying proportion are young or from an ethnic minority background, face having their pay cut or their rights stripped away, or losing their job. What is most alarming is that fire and rehire is being used not by smaller companies but by big national names such as British Airways, British Gas, Tesco, Clarks, Argos and Weetabix, to name a few. All of them are established companies. Many saw bumper sales during lockdown. Workers at these companies, whether in the warehouse, in the factory, on the shop floor or in HGV cabs are also the workers who kept us moving during the pandemic.

Some companies threatening their staff with fire and rehire, such as Tesco and British Airways, even received Government handouts during the pandemic, only to take the money and then show their staff the door. That is scandalous. Rather than helping working people, the Government have subsidised their dismissal during the worst health and economic crisis in a generation. This is a national disgrace.

[Laura Farris]

Is not it the reality that it is not that big employers are unscrupulous or evil, as opposed to small employers? The truth is that it is only larger employers who are bound by the obligations under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and it is only they who are consulting with larger numbers, so, inevitably, the focus will be on large employers.

[Imran Hussain]

I agree in part with the hon. Lady’s point. The issue here is this. She made her points earlier. I accept that there are good employers and there are those who perhaps are not behaving in the manner that they should. Referring to one of her previous points, the issue is this: those employers that are acting in a just, proper and proportionate manner are actually worse off because they are being undercut by unscrupulous employers that are not acting in the manner that they should. The size is perhaps for illustration purposes, but I do take some of her points.

Faced with such scandalous and disgraceful behaviour by employers, the Government should have stepped in as fire and rehire spread through our economy like wildfire, but they did not. Instead, it has only been the Labour movement, trade unions and staff coming together to organise in the workplace that stopped the use of fire and rehire at places such as British Airways, Go North West and Heathrow. It was not Ministers and it was not the Government.

Let me make this point clear. The campaigns and victories of our proud trade unions fighting against fire and rehire, fighting against bad bosses, and fighting for their members and working people right across the country—whether it be Unite, GMB, Unison, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, Community or others—shows that, despite this Government’s every effort to diminish and grind them down, there is still power in the union.

[Mark Pawsey]

The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) accused my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) of overegging the cake. Is not the shadow Minister doing exactly that?

[Imran Hussain]

The hon. Member’s point does not even have a passing acquaintance with fiction, never mind fact, and does not deserve a response.

Trade unions and working people have been deliberately hindered in their efforts to fight fire and rehire as the Government put barriers in their way and bog them down in red tape.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Despite the hoots of derision from the Government Benches, does my hon. Friend accept the survey evidence that shows that three quarters of the British public back the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner)? Countries such as France, Spain and Ireland have already acted to make this appalling practice illegal.

[Imran Hussain]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very valuable point. The most pertinent point that he makes is that many countries in Europe are already ahead of us and have already acted in this area. Let me say this to him: the reason that Government Members are loud and make points that go towards accepting in part that there is this need is that they understand that, when they go back to their constituencies, there is a different argument that they have to face there. I urge them today to seriously consider this very sensible Bill.

The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North, with the support of trade unions, working people and the Labour party, would rebalance employment protection so that it is no longer overwhelmingly weighted in favour of the employer, and put workers and trade unions back on an equal footing. It would place power back into the hands of the workers who create the wealth, rather than the chief executives and shareholders who hoard it.

The Bill would also reward those countless employers who are doing the right thing by their staff in ensuring that they are well paid, well protected and well looked after, but who are being undercut by unscrupulous competitors. Yet even as Ministers claim to oppose fire and rehire, they are clearly telling their MPs to vote against the Bill, as is evident today. The reality is that the Government have nothing to offer working people.

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

In some ways, I am a bit disappointed, because the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) made a bipartisan speech, but unfortunately the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) is not. Fire and rehire is a cross-party issue that Conservatives in our constituencies are dealing with on the ground as well. In Rother Valley, Adam Tinsley, the councillor for Maltby East, fought against Sheffield University, which was going to use fire and rehire, as a Unite the union representative. I commend him for that. Let us take some of the partisanship out of the debate and work together to solve the problem.

[Imran Hussain]

The hon. Gentleman says that he supports a councillor who stands up against fire and rehire in his constituency. I say to him that he should stand up in the House and support fire and rehire [Interruption.]—support ending fire and rehire. Then he can take that message back.

Of course, neither I nor anybody on these Benches intend to make this a partisan issue. [Interruption.] Let me finish. Our issue is that the Government have instructed Conservative Members to vote against the Bill. [Interruption.] Well, in that case, I look forward to welcoming Conservative Members in our Lobby today.

Let us look at the Government’s shameful record. I am not surprised that they are voting against stopping fire and rehire, because over the last decade, they have done nothing but openly attack and undermine workers’ rights. They introduced the Trade Union Act 2016 that stripped away the power of trade unions and made it harder for working people to organise in defence of their rights. They preside over an employment tribunal backlog that means it is almost impossible to receive justice for mistreatment in the workplace. They leave the post of director of labour market enforcement vacant at a time when we are seeing more workers exploited in the workplace. They promised us an employment Bill that we are still waiting for almost two years later. Is it any wonder that we have a labour shortage when the Government could not care less about the rights of working people?

We all know that the Prime Minister likes to talk about levelling up and building back better, but the Government cannot have it both ways. They cannot talk about levelling up without levelling up employment protections. They cannot talk about building back better without building a better employment rights settlement. They cannot talk about fire and rehire being a “bully boy tactic” without voting for this Bill today.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Imran Hussain]

I have been very generous with my time.

I urge the Minister to back giving rights to working people, back an end to the disgraceful use of fire and rehire, and back the Bill today. If this Government will not, then the next Labour Government, as part of our employment rights Green Paper, will.