Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Justin Madders

Thursday 31st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland and Fakenham) (Con)]

After receiving millions from the trade union paymasters for its election, Labour is rewarding them with a package of 1970s, French-style workplace regulations, which will increase the cost of doing business in the UK to the tune of £5 billion a year, disproportionately falling on SMEs. That is before the £25 billion body blow to business delivered by the Chancellor yesterday in her anti-business Budget of broken promises. Does the Minister agree with the Office for Budget Responsibility that this Government’s decisions will make workers poorer, not richer, as increased employment taxes are passed on in lower wages, and that business investment will fall, not rise, as a direct result of this Government?

[Justin Madders]

I find it incredible that the Opposition quote French-style labour laws, because when they introduced the minimum services legislation, they always held up France as the example of where that works already. I wish they would make their minds up. The implication behind the question about trade union funding says rather more about their attitude to how legislation is made in this country than ours. We do things because we believe in them. If he looks carefully at what the OBR is saying, £1,400 into people’s pockets as a result of the national living wage increase is a fantastic achievement that we should all be proud of.