Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

In the face of the local election results last week, it is undeniable that what we have done so far is not enough. The long tail of austerity means that we have so much more to do. People see a world moving at a rate of knots and are frustrated at this Government’s slow pace of change. We live in a world where we can order almost anything we want in the morning and have it delivered later that same day. For consumers, satisfaction is now almost instantaneous. That is in complete contrast to Government, where improvements are seen as slow. The expectations and the challenge that we face are there for all to see.

What does the King’s Speech do to address what I consider to be the holy trinity of what good Labour Governments do: jobs, homes and health? First, there are two pieces of legislation on homes. The social housing renewal Bill will alter the right to buy by increasing the eligibility requirement by 10 years, amending percentage discounts to better align with new maximum discounts and exempting newly built social housing from the right to buy for 35 years.

This area is like so many other Thatcher legacies. The sugar rush felt in the short term by those able to buy their home at a substantial discount has long been replaced by a broken social housing market in which people living in identical properties next to each other can pay massively differently rents. It is a market in which the taxpayer often subsidises inflated rents through housing benefit and millions of young people who might once have seen a council home as their natural route into adulthood have the option forever denied to them. We can see where the logic of right to buy takes us. Between April 2012 and March 2025, 133,000 social homes were sold, but only 51,000 were replaced. With 1.3 million people on council house waiting lists, the problem is obvious for all to see.

Secondly on housing, the long-awaited draft commonhold and leasehold reform Bill will bring us closer to ending the feudal leasehold system. It will finally ban the use of leasehold for new build flats, it will place a cap on ground rents, and it will create a new legal framework for commonhold. There is huge demand for this to be done as soon as possible, and I know the Minister is going as fast as he safely can, but he also needs to tackle rip-off estate management fees—he has to stop that model in its tracks. If we are determined to tackle the cost of living crisis, that is one obvious and indefensible practice that we can end.

Alongside addressing the problems that people face now, the Government must take steps to address the problems that are coming down the track. I believe that the unwritten social contract that if a person works hard and plays by the rules, they can expect a good standard of living in return, is disintegrating and under real threat. Across this country, economic growth no longer translates to better outcomes in life, something that is only set to continue with the increase in AI in the workplace and developments in automation. Graduate roles have already been hit—graduate vacancies have fallen by more than one third this year—and that trend will only continue and diffuse across other areas of the labour market. Young people are therefore growing up and entering a world of work that is detached from previous norms, and we are nowhere near ready for the resulting changes that we will see in the next decade. The state needs to be ready to respond to those shifts, to ensure that not only those entering the workforce, but those who are already in it and those who are displaced, are properly skilled for the needs of the future labour market.

That future labour market has to include significantly more manufacturing roles, as the Secretary of State acknowledged in his speech. The more we can make ourselves, the more insulated we will be from the inevitable disruption that AI is going to cause to jobs, particularly in the service sector, but it will also better protect us from the global supply chain shocks that we are far too exposed to at the moment. The moves to protect UK steel are the right first step in recognising that we need to do much more to protect our manufacturing base. I am not proposing that we nationalise everything—I will leave that for other people to do—but my visit to the local Vauxhall car plant last week was a clear lesson in how we need to sharpen up across the whole of Government to protect manufacturing, and the UK automotive sector in particular. The decision on employee car ownership schemes in the last Budget was welcome, as is support for energy costs next year, but of course, the industry would like that support to be much sooner and much stronger than what is proposed.

There are a number of factors challenging the automotive sector, but the biggest one and the one over which the Government have the most control is the ZEV mandate. There has been huge investment in the Ellesmere Port plant so that it can manufacture electric vehicles, and I believe that most of the UK automotive sector is supportive of an electric future. However, the reality is that the current level of sales is nowhere near where it needs to be in order to hit the ZEV mandate, and that gap is only going to get bigger each year. We need to be clear that this is not just a case of “Oh, well, we aren’t going to hit the target.” Every sale short of that target has direct financial consequences for UK manufacturers.

Looking around the world, we see that most countries that have put in place sales targets for electric vehicles have had to row back from them in light of the evidence that uptake just is not where it was predicted to be. We need to bring the review forward and make the decision now that the escalation of targets under the ZEV mandate needs to be turned off. This is not something to be looked at in the abstract, on a graph in the corridors of Whitehall; it needs to be looked at in the context of the cold reality of consumer choice and the importance of protecting UK manufacturing. Let us not lose good manufacturing jobs in pursuit of the unattainable—all that will do is supercharge the Chinese automotive sector. That is not going to help the planet as much as we would like, and it certainly is not going to help this country. We have a great tradition of building vehicles in this country, and we want to be at the vanguard of taking the industry into the future, but let us do it in a sustainable way that protects and builds on what we have.

We need to do more to support UK manufacturing through procurement. I was delighted recently to take a Royal Mail delivery van made in Ellesmere Port for a spin, with permission from the owner. That electric van, made down the road, is delivering mail to my constituents. We need to see much more of that, and we need to encourage UK companies to buy from the UK. Every part of the public sector should be required to buy British. Every council, every hospital and every school should seek to maximise that, because every taxpayer pound spent on UK goods goes back into our economy. We can do a lot without legislation, but we need to pursue it with great zeal.

This is all about levelling the playing field, because more needs to be done. When people see barber shops and vape shops proliferate on their high streets, they know that something is not right, as there simply is not the market to sustain them all. When they see some shut down, perhaps for selling illicit goods or for illegal working, it confirms their suspicions that they are not competing with legitimate businesses. When we see them reopen a few months later, perhaps under a different name, people see a system struggling to cope with the scale of organised crime infecting our high streets.

The time for which a shop can be closed for breaching the law will be doubled, but let us also go after the landlords for, at best, failing to do due diligence, and at worst for being complicit in illegal activity. We can do more to support our small businesses on the high street and get the level playing field that we desperately need.

We also need a level playing field in how we treat people at work. We have to accept that bogus self-employment is a business model based on denying workers basic protections at work, and it is absolutely the wrong direction for this country. We promised in our manifesto that we would tackle this, so we should get on with it.

On a related note, the proposed strengthening of the growth duty, which will apparently reduce unnecessary risk aversion, is misguided. Good businesses want their staff to work in safe environments, and they want them to be treated well. This so-called unnecessary risk aversion, referred to in documents that the Government have produced, is an illusion—a straw man—and it has been used to put up with other shortcomings.

We face many challenges. I think we are on the right track, but we need to go much further and much faster. The public are telling us that they need to see results. We are now two years into this Government, and as much as the news cycle is hyper-focused on personality, the King’s Speech is all about policy. It is about how we shape a better future and show voters that they were right to put their trust in the Labour party to deliver for them.

Everyone here knows the perils that lie ahead if we are not bold enough, if we are not determined enough and if we do not use the time that we have to deliver real change. We are nearing the halfway point of this Parliament and, while progress has been made, it is abundantly clear that we need to go much further if we are to show that we have the power to transform the lives of ordinary people in this country.

The clock is ticking. Incrementalism will not cut it. We now need a response that rises to the urgent challenges that our country faces, so let us go out there and do it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Sir Desmond Swayne.

British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

I could have listened to the hon. Lady for much longer, because she is listing important areas across the sector. I am very aware of the challenges and opportunities in an economy that is full of great enterprise and a lot of highly profitable businesses doing great things with great entrepreneurs. Listening to her, we would think that the economy was not full of people and businesses that are thriving. She only focuses on the challenges.

Let me be clear on how BICS happened. It came about through consultation with the very businesses that the hon. Lady is asking us to listen to. They have been part of designing the system. We will release and implement a targeted scheme that will have maximum benefit. We will announce over the summer an eligibility checker, so that businesses can see their eligibility for the scheme. Of course, as we move forward, we will make payments for costs that may have been incurred this year.

Let me be really clear, however, about how those businesses are working. Most of the businesses—I include the business that was on the Radio 4 “Today” programme this morning; Sharon from Tees Components up in Teesside was on the programme—have entered into a contract with fixed prices for the coming year. Most companies in the categories that we are targeting, which have manufacturing processes in which electricity is a high-component cost, are either hedging, or are in contracts, so that they have some stability into the future. We have designed a scheme that takes that into account, will be there when they need it, and supplies support for costs that they would have had this year.

On CO₂ and the issues that are in the news, six months ago, within days of becoming Secretary of State, I mothballed Ensus up in Teesside—a fantastic company. I have had to un-mothball it, and I did so in the first couple of days of the strikes in Iran to ensure resilience in key parts of our economy. That was leaked; we do not normally comment on leaks, but that is out there now. These are the things that I am doing. I am being bold and creative, and am acting in the interests of the whole of society and the economy to make sure that we have the resilience to carry on doing business, and come out of this with growth in our economy.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

We will not prosper as a nation without a lot of support for the manufacturing sector—vital for our security and our resilience—so I welcome today’s statement. I notice with some irony that the fertiliser sector is included. A producer in my constituency closed under the previous Government, and as the Secretary of State has already referred to, several hundred million pounds have already been spent correcting the failure to foresee the risks of such a move.

It is good to see that a number of sectors in my constituency are covered by the scheme, including automotive. The Secretary of State will be aware that the automotive sector faces multifaceted issues, not least on the supply side, but also to do with competition and European proposals. Will he say a little bit more about what else he can do to support the wider challenges facing automotive and manufacturing more generally?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his work when he was in my Department, upon which I seek to continue. He is right to point to the closure of the fertiliser plant in, I believe, 2023. Those are the sorts of things that have stripped out resilience from our economy and society and which I have sought to rebuild in turbulent times. The automotive sector will qualify for the BIC scheme and other high energy- intensive industries outside automotive will also benefit from the supercharger before it does. I regularly meet automotive industry figures, and the Department is deeply engaged with the sector. He will know some of the outcomes of those conversations and that it is a sector that has this Government and me on its side.

Single Status of Worker

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of creating a single status of worker.

Good afternoon, Mr Efford; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I am grateful for the opportunity to draw attention to an issue that has the potential to transform the world of work for millions of people up and down the country.

The Government’s plan to make work pay was one of our central policy commitments at the last general election. I was proud to play an important part in shaping the package and begin delivering on it in government. As a result of changes that this Government have made, the lives of working people are already improving. Minimum wage rates now take account of the cost of living, which is massively important to people on low incomes in this time of rising energy and fuel costs. Fathers are now entitled to paternity leave from day one; they no longer have to wait months to accrue that important right. Statutory sick pay is also now an entitlement from day one, and the lower earnings limit and the waiting period have been removed. This transformation of the world of work will continue as measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025 come into force over the coming months and years.

However, noticeably absent from that list is the promise that we made to the electorate to move towards a single status of worker, on which we committed at the election to launch a consultation in the first year of government. We are approaching the end of the second year with no further indication of when there will be a consultation or, indeed, whether there will be one at all. I understand that the focus of most of our time in office has been the mammoth process of passing and implementing the Employment Rights Act. I know only too well how significant an undertaking that has been and I commend the work of officials in the Department for Business and Trade to pass that transformative Act within less than 18 months of our entering office.

Although the Act has been implemented, we must not forget that a number of commitments in the plan to make work pay fall outside its scope. They include changes to the parental leave system and carer’s leave, reform of TUPE, the review of health and safety guidance, changes to allow collective grievances, and what we are debating today—the commitment to move towards a single status of worker. I know that steps have been taken to implement change in some of those areas, and I would welcome a substantive update from my hon. Friend the Minister on the progress being made to deliver on all the commitments in the plan to make work pay.

The need to deal with worker status has been an issue since long before we entered office. It is almost nine years since the publication of “Good Work: The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices”, which made some proposals on status, and more than seven years since the then Conservative Government accepted that changes needed to be made. It is a matter of record that nothing has been done since then to implement those proposals. It has therefore long been recognised that employment status is overly complicated, outdated and no longer reflective of the complexities of the modern labour market. We will see whether we can reach consensus on the solution, but we should at least begin to try to address it.

It might be helpful if I set out the current legal framework. I hope that that will demonstrate the need for reform and why this is a complicated area that requires careful consideration. First, there are those who are classed as employees, who receive almost all working protections, depending on service length. Then there are workers, or limb (b) workers—under section 230(3)(b) of the Employment Rights Act 1996—who have access to some working protections, such as the Working Time Regulations 1998 and the minimum wage, but not others. And then there are the self-employed, who have no rights to working protections.

In practice, differentiating each status can be tricky, and reliance has been placed on court cases to establish the boundaries between them. It can therefore be a significant challenge for an individual to understand under which status their employment falls. If they do not readily know the answer, it can be difficult to enforce their rights without legal support. Matthew Taylor noted pithily in his report that

“without an encyclopaedic knowledge of case law, understanding how this might apply to your situation is almost impossible.”

People’s status and their rights under it should not be subject to their willingness to fight, sometimes for years, through an employment tribunal.

It might be said that people’s status and rights ought to be obvious from day one of their employment. For many that is true, but it does not recognise the explosion in what might be described as gig economy-type work in the past 15 years or so. By the end of the previous Administration, the number of people classed as being in insecure work stood at about 4 million, according to a TUC analysis. That represented a growth of about 1 million during the Tories’ time in office. Job growth in that period was driven largely by a rise in insecure work, which increased three times faster than secure forms of employment. Of the 4 million in insecure work, the TUC found that about half were low-paid self-employed, and many of them were unlikely to be genuinely self-employed at all.

During that period, the emergence of platform work saw the size of the gig economy explode. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs estimates that there were 1.6 million people working in the gig economy by 2022. Advances in technology, combined with ageing status laws, have allowed employers to avoid their responsibilities by advertising for positions that are described as for a “worker” or for the “self-employed” but, in reality, have all the hallmarks of direct employment.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow member of the Business and Trade Committee for giving way. We have sat in a number of hearings where different industries have expressed to us the competitive disadvantage that they experience because people in the industry use the gig economy or platform work to avoid responsibilities. We heard evidence from Royal Mail about the disadvantage in the parcel delivery network, and from the British Hairdressing Association about the end of direct employment in hairdressing. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to think about the competitive disadvantage for employers who do the right thing in considering these issues?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the arguments put forward by not only those who represent workers, but those who represent businesses about the need for a level playing field. I will draw on some of the examples and evidence that the Select Committee has heard of the imbalances that are created.

Those who might be classed as being in bogus self-employment may perform work under the direction of a manager, and be told where to be and when; they may wear a uniform and follow policies; and they may not, in practice, have the opportunity to substitute their work to someone else. To all intents and purposes, they are acting as employees, yet they do not have the associated rights, such as sick pay, parental leave, protection from unfair dismissal or any sort of redundancy process. While that might be sold as flexibility to the worker, it is clear that the employer retains most of the flexibility.

I saw this at first hand a few years ago when I accompanied a self-employed delivery driver working for one of the large parcel companies. I saw the time pressure he faced each and every day just to make an hourly rate equivalent to the minimum wage, which, once overheads such as his van and fuel were taken into account, was not actually reached. If he was an employee, he would have the right to a minimum wage for each hour worked and the right to rest breaks, and he would not be forced to rush on a very tight delivery schedule just to scrape by.

It is important to note that the abuse of employment status has a knock-on effect on the competitiveness of businesses that choose to do the right thing by their workforce, which my hon. Friend the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) referred to. The Select Committee has seen the impact of the race to the bottom on standards and on responsible employers, such as Royal Mail, that meet the full costs of employment and maintain good, unionised jobs, but are not able to compete with companies that choose to treat their couriers as self-employed or limb (b) workers. They may be doing so lawfully, but it means that they can undercut the likes of Royal Mail by not having to worry about the minimum wage, sick pay or holiday pay. It also means that they can, and do, treat their workforce as ultra-disposable commodities. I do not believe that is fair competition, nor do I believe that it is the direction that we should be going in as a country.

Recently, the Communication Workers Union and Royal Mail gave evidence to the Select Committee, and they argued for reform in this area. When unions and management speak with one voice, they send a powerful message that should be heard. The sad reality is that large multinationals have been able to exploit the UK’s ageing status laws to completely undercut and undermine one of our oldest institutions. That is bad for workers in the sector, bad for competition and bad for the Exchequer, which loses out on their national insurance contributions and may incur additional costs of supporting low-paid workers in the welfare system.

These practices are on the march. Over the past 15 to 20 years, they have expanded from their traditional home in the construction sector into food and parcel delivery, services and, most recently, hospitality and retail. When I was a Minister, I was concerned to learn that digital platforms, which laughingly called themselves “talent platforms”, were moving into these sectors to match companies with individuals to work shifts, not as agency workers but as self-employed contractors. It is reported that big high street names such as Uniqlo, Gymshark and Lush have used those platforms to advertise work, but, to their credit, they stopped when concerns were raised. However, the TUC found that as late as last year, Urban Outfitters, Claridge’s hotel and Colicci cafés all continued to advertise on the platforms.

These digital platforms mean that, increasingly, the shop assistant helping us bag our clothes or the barista serving us coffee no longer receives the working protections that we all believe they should have. What happens when the coffee shop across the road finds that it can no longer compete with the prices of its competitor because the competitor has everyone bogusly self-employed? It puts those who want to do the right thing in an invidious position.

This has already happened in other sectors, including delivery driving and the hair and beauty sector. The massive drop-off in apprenticeships in the hair and beauty sector is blamed, at least in part, on the rise in the chair model, which of course is another form of bogus self-employment, forcing other salons to make difficult and unpalatable decisions. It is clear that bogus self-employment is driving the race to the bottom.

Bogus self-employment is also facilitating illegal working by those who do not have the right to work in this country. There have been repeated reports that platforms in the gig economy were failing to check people’s right-to-work status. Measures have now been introduced to legally require gig-economy companies to carry out checks to confirm that anyone working in their name is eligible to work in the UK. This is the first time that such checks have been extended to these casualised sectors, making employers liable to fines of up to £60,000 per illegal worker. However, that is only one approach to tackle illegal working, which requires stronger labour market enforcement across the board. The introduction of a single worker status would mean that the stringent checks that employers are already required to carry out on those who want to work for them directly are also applied to those who work through an app.

There is no time to waste on tackling bogus self-employment. It is already unlawful, but the law must be enforced properly. It is happening at scale in this country, and the Government should take stronger action now. There is no need to wait until single worker status policies have been finalised.

Steps that could be taken now, ahead of a consultation, include introducing a presumption of worker status, which would require an operator to prove that individuals it engages are not workers or employees, rather than putting the onus on an individual to test their rights and try to enforce them via the legal lottery. That presumption is already standard practice in relation to the minimum wage. We could also empower the Fair Work Agency to conduct investigations when status is in question.

We must move away from the piecemeal approach whereby workers fight tooth and nail in a clogged-up employment tribunal system, possibly waiting years to establish their working status. Too often, even when a worker succeeds, the business tweaks its terms of business so that it can avoid the consequences of the tribunal judgment and move people back into bogus self-employment. How is that gaming of the system in the interests of working people in this country?

We can also quickly reform the law on substitution clauses, which are used widely to provide a façade of self-employment, no matter how someone typically works. They allow companies to disavow employee and worker status, on the basis that someone no longer owes any contractual obligations to perform a service personally. Downgrading the importance of that when determining worker status could help to reduce the number of times that it is used to avoid obligations. These things could all be introduced as interim measures to help improve the situation while the consultation and subsequent legislation are pursued.

Governing is all about making choices and intervening to solve problems, no matter their complexity. Doing so might not be popular with everyone, and it might not be easy, but effective Governments are guided by their principles on what is right and what is wrong. I think that most Members would agree that the current employment status system does not treat working people fairly. It is unnecessarily complex, it is no longer appropriate for our modern labour market, and it facilitates rampant bogus self-employment and exploitation. The Labour party decided that it was no longer fit for purpose, and we fought the last election pledging to “move towards” a single status of worker to simplify the system.

I will be the first to admit that that commitment was not as strong as I or others on the Labour Benches would have liked, but moving towards a single status of worker would at least be a step in the right direction. However, it is a step that we have yet to take, and that needs fixing. The Government must not forget about this important strand of the Make Work Pay agenda. I understand the challenges of doing this alongside implementing the provisions of the 2025 Act, but we entered government to deliver transformative change for workers, and that takes hard work and determination. We should not take our eye off the ball.

I have sympathy for the Minister; she is wholeheartedly committed to the Make Work Pay agenda and, indeed, was closely involved in its development while we were in opposition. I know that she will advocate for the package in internal discussions among Departments and push tirelessly for its implementation in full. Sadly, as I know from my own experience, she will also be facing scepticism and belligerence from other parts of the Government that are against bringing forward a consultation on worker status.

The Minister has my support, and no doubt the support of a large number of the Back Benchers here today, to continue pushing in internal discussions. She should remind those she has discussions with of not just what was in the plan to make work pay but the commitment at the Dispatch Box in the other place by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, who I pay tribute to for all her work on the Act. On 23 July 2025, she said:

“I am pleased to be able to confirm to your Lordships’ House that we will publish our consultation on employment status by the end of this year.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 July 2025; Vol. 848, c. 358.]

The Minister will not need it pointing out that we are already well into the next year.

I am concerned that some may have the view that the Make Work Pay agenda was completed as soon as the Employment Rights Bill received Royal Assent, but the job is not done. We cannot let this opportunity to transform the world of work slip through our fingers. We owe it to working people in this country to deliver on the change that we promised. The Government need to demonstrate their commitment to moving towards a single status of worker by opening the consultation this spring and setting out a timeline for delivering change. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—it was my oversight to not mention that earlier.

Technically, the problem for a lot of the people who we are discussing is that they are not employees, so they have no recognition process. The debate has been interesting. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald), who made some very important points, particularly on the tax take. That is something that we absolutely need to address, but this issue is fundamentally about fairness. Our Make Work Pay agenda has to be bolstered by action to address this problem. I hope the Minister gets the message that we need to do that soon.

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

Congratulations to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Torsten Bell) for keeping the debate in the main Chamber going long enough for us to finish this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of creating a single status of worker.

Department for Business and Trade

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

At the end of a long day, let me express my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee for providing us with this time to debate the supplementary estimates and the priorities of the Department for Business and Trade.

I rise to open this debate and simply make three broad points. This is an important debate because, of all of the supplementary estimates that have been laid before the House this afternoon, the Department for Business and Trade has had by far and away the most significant increase. Day-to-day spending has been increased by some £360 million, which is a rise of almost 18%. Investment spending has risen by £626 million, which is a 41% rise. Those are significant sums, so I pose the following questions to the Ministers. First, are these increases justified? Secondly, is the Department spending its money on the right priorities, given what we have heard from the business community? Thirdly, I want to underline this question about why there is not more significant support for small business, which is suffering what our Committee has found to be pandemic-style pressures but without a pandemic-style support package in place.

Let me start with the significant increases in the Department’s supplementary estimates. Some £375 million has been provisioned extra to support British Steel. That takes the total support that this House has agreed under the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025 to about £710 million. That is a significant sum. I think it has broad cross-party support. Certainly, the House did not divide when we were recalled for that unusual hearing on a Saturday to agree to the passing of that Act. None the less, there is one significant question that we have to ask this afternoon: where is the steel strategy to go with the extra money that the House is being asked to agree?

When representatives from Tata Steel came before our Committee just a couple of weeks ago, they were very clear that there are now just eight weeks to save the steel industry in this country. Therefore, having passed that Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act, and having been asked to agree this extra money, the House now has to ask the Minister today where that steel strategy is. As we know, a wave of subsidised Chinese steel is about to land on our shores. The United States has put up significant defences. The European Union has put up significant defences. We had significant defences, but they are about to come down in June. Industry is sending a message loudly and clearly to the Government that, unless they act and unless new defences and a steel strategy are put in place, we are looking at the end of the steel industry in this country. Thousands of jobs will go, along with a sovereign capability, which as a country we simply cannot afford to happen.

I would be very grateful if the Minister could explain how, if the House is to agree the spending, we are actually going to make sure that that money is not wasted, because there will be further policy measures in place to ensure that we do not lose our steel industry in the weeks ahead.

That takes me to the Post Office. Post Office provisions for the Horizon scandal and the payouts have now risen to about £1.2 billion. Our Committee has consistently criticised Governments of all stripes for not paying out the money to those victims much faster. The Committee has now agreed a further report on measures, which we think Ministers should take in order to ensure that justice is genuinely delivered to all of the victims of this scandal. That report will be published in a few days’ time. The House is being asked to agree this increase in the provision to £1.2 billion, yet the question we have for Ministers is this: where is the provision that Fujitsu is supposed to be making? After all, the Fujitsu system was at least half the cause of this scandal.

We now think that the total cost of the Horizon scandal, when we add in the legal costs, will be something like £2 billion, yet when we asked the head of Fujitsu what provision he had made for contributing to that bill, the answer was zero. When we followed up with the auditors, they confirmed that the directors had acted within the law because the Government had not yet made any demands on Fujitsu for the money that should come back from that company in order to help fund it. Just to add insult to injury, this is a company that has taken a grand total of £362 million in new contracts over the past year alone. It promised us a moratorium on bidding for new contracts, but that moratorium turned out not to be real and was merely a press stunt.

Why are we not asking for more money from Fujitsu, so that we do not have to put up these provisions of £1.2 billion? I would be grateful if the Minister could answer that question.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

I have enjoyed an interesting few months on the Committee so far. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is perplexing that we do not have any understanding as to why there is not more pressure being put on Fujitsu to come up with a figure? Fujitsu keeps saying that it is waiting for the outcome of the inquiry, but it has made a commitment and we would expect some kind of provision to be made to reflect that.

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The chief executive of Fujitsu came before the Committee to say that Fujitsu did indeed have a moral obligation to make a contribution. That is why we were so surprised when earlier this year, when we asked for him to return, he said that no provision had yet been made. For a company that is making hundreds of millions of pounds out of British taxpayers, it is simply egregious that it has not offered to pay, but it is also wrong that Ministers have not demanded that it pays up, and pays up quickly.

I have touched on a couple of the significant increases in the estimates. There are two more points I want to make in the time available. The second broad point is the question of whether the money that the Department for Business and Trade is asking us to approve is in line with business priorities. As a Committee, we spend a lot of time listening to the business community, and we set out priorities based on what the businesses we talk to when we travel the country think we should be focused on. On our last national road trip we visited seven cities and did many roundtables on that tour. Last year we had 1,000 witnesses appear before the Committee—three quarters in private and a quarter in public—and we received 168 bits of evidence as we set out priorities for the future.

We heard very clearly that what business is looking for is far more certainty about the investment environment for the years ahead. Businesses want a better return on investment. For that, they need energy costs and business rates to come down, and they need the skills system to be far more flexible and available. Critically, they need much better access to finance so that we can mobilise capital on a different scale. Trade deals need to become a gateway to increasing exports. Finally, they are asking for a lot more coherence in regulation. Right now people are being smothered in red tape, often because one Department is not talking to another.

As we look at those priorities and at the estimates in front of us, we see that certainty has improved. The spring statement was a step forward, and the Chancellor has increased her headroom significantly. That definitely takes risk out of the investment environment. But there is nothing in these supplementary estimates about driving down energy costs. There is nothing about driving down business rates. There is nothing about making the skills system better financed and more available, in particular to small business.

Where there is progress is in the extra £200 million for the British Business Bank and the £50 million for the growth guarantee scheme. That is significant, but it is probably not quite enough. Indeed, the evidence we have received suggests that the market for loan guarantees is probably about £2 billion bigger than the Government have provided for. If we want small and big business to have access to scale-up finance in particular, we need to make sure that the British Business Bank has a much bigger loan guarantee scheme available.

Finally, there was nothing in the estimates to roll back the very deep cuts to export support. At a time when we have basically finished signing the free trade agreements that are available to us as a country, it is surprising to the Committee that export support staff are being cut so aggressively. If we want to make the most of these new opportunities and new free trade deals, we would have thought that increasing export support would be a Government priority.

My final point is about the emergency facing small business. Right now, as I said in my introductory remarks, small business tells us that it is facing pandemic levels of pressure without a pandemic-style support package. Labour costs have gone up. As we know, the national minimum wage has gone up, which in my view is a good thing, and the Employment Rights Act 2025, which will improve rights, is coming through. That is also a good thing. But when we add on the national insurance contributions, we must accept that labour costs will rise. That means that labour has got to become more productive, and that the skills system has got to become better available to small businesses. But when we add to that rising energy costs—so much higher; perhaps 50% bigger than before the covid crisis—the lack of regulation in third-party intermediaries, the increases in business rates, the costs from crime, the organised crime takeover of the high street, late payments and a lack of access to procurement, we see the crisis that small business now confronts.

Those are the priorities where we would have liked to have seen more action in the supplementary estimate. They will certainly be a focus of the Committee’s scrutiny work over the course of the next year.

Sale of Fireworks

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) on his breakneck introduction, in which he took so many interventions on this massive issue. He was right, as many other Members have been, to observe that we have had these debates year on year. I remember being sat across the Chamber while we were in opposition, I remember being sat in the Minister’s seat a year ago, and now I am here again. Every year, we get more and more Members attending, and more and more members of the public demanding change. I think the case has been made that it is now time to act.

It is interesting to note that despite an increased awareness campaign in the last year, there were 550 child admissions to A&E on bonfire night for burns alone. That shows us that education and information can only get us so far. As we have heard, there are adverse impacts from using fireworks responsibly as well. People are impacted by the noise. For some, fireworks are a nuisance and can interrupt sleep or leisure; for others, particularly those with sensory challenges or conditions such as PTSD, bangs can be harmful. With that in mind, I understand why some want greater restrictions on who can put on displays and on the days on which they can do so.

In my time as the Minister responsible for product regulation, I engaged with businesses, consumer groups and charities to gather evidence on the issues with and impacts of fireworks. I also met with a number of MPs, some of whom are here today, to hear about the impact that fireworks were having in their communities. Of course, there was a wide range of views about what could be done, but my view, when I embarked on those discussions, was that, as a minimum, a relatively straightforward change that we could make would be to reduce the decibel level from 120 dB. Nothing I heard during those discussions, and nothing I have heard during the debate today, changed my view that we should take that straightforward step. The precise level should be determined by consultation, but we have heard strong cases this evening for what that level should be. That would reduce the noise, and the impact on people and animals, without harming manufacturers or impacting the quality of displays.

There have been plenty of other suggestions. One of the petitions calls for a limit on sales to local authority-approved events only. Other suggestions include limiting locations, days and times at which fireworks can be released. However, it is clear to me that those kinds of measures do not work unless we get enforcement properly resourced. The experience in Scotland was instructive: we can tighten the rules, but it does not necessarily deliver change. The reality is that trading standards is overstretched and underfunded, meaning that any form of close monitoring of fireworks sales will be very difficult. I do not think that there is a consensus on how best to move forward on that. There is also a concern that that would simply move sales into the black market.

Reducing decibel levels, as New Zealand has done, is a straightforward, simple step that we can take. I will be candid: I think that some in the Government hold the view that taking action on this is seen as nanny-statism. I think that view is wrong. When I hear today that we are looking to consult on banning social media for under-16s, I do not think that the nanny-statism argument can be consistently held any longer, so I will continue to advocate for a reduction in decibel levels. Sadly, I was not able to do that when I was in office, but I am convinced that taking this step would affect those most impacted by noise—those with certain mental health conditions, those who are neurodiverse and those who care about the welfare of animals—and could be done without taking anything away from the people who enjoy fireworks.

I wish the Minister well in trying to navigate the competing views and administrative blockages that she will face, but I hope that she will come to the same conclusion that I did: that the easiest and best way to address this issue is through a reduction in decibel levels. As we have seen from the consensus across Westminster Hall today, and the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), this will happen through Parliament, whether via Government or Back-Bench action, so I urge the Minister to act now.

Points of Order

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a slightly unusual point of order, but one that it is important to deal with now as it may become more of an issue going forward. Last week, it was claimed I had participated in a Westminster Hall debate on digital ID, where I allegedly not only spoke but voted in favour of digital ID. Of course, as we know, we do not usually hold votes in Westminster Hall; I was also actually in the Chamber at the time, speaking on the Employment Rights Bill. On further inquiry, it transpired that Google AI had claimed that I was in Westminster Hall at the time, speaking in favour of digital ID. As I know many more constituents will seek to use these devices to understand our positions on various matters, I wonder whether there is any way that I could correct the record, and in fact whether the House could give some advice to these tech companies on using Hansard as the authoritative source for positions on various subjects.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for advance notice of his point of order. As he acknowledges, external AI services are not a matter for the Chair. However, he has certainly put his accurate position—and his presence in this Chamber, and not in Westminster Hall—on the record.

Employment Rights Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Members will be aware that the debate has to conclude by 8.24 pm, so there will be an immediate five-minute time limit. Of course, if Members did not feel obliged to use all five minutes, that would help their colleagues.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

May I first declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and donations from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers trade union, as well as my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions? I am not sure if we are on a ping or a pong now, but there is a whiff of stubbornness about the fact that we are back here again.

Last week, I called for the Government to make this place sit every day until Christmas to ensure we got the Bill through—it is a shame that the other place took that as an invitation rather than the contingency plan it was intended to be, but, if that is what it takes, that is what we should do. We are ready. It is wrong that an unelected house, where jobs are given for life, can dig in and push back on something that will give millions of workers rights that we promised long ahead of an election, and for which we have a decisive mandate.

I commend the Government and the Minister for not backing down. A deal was reached with the relevant stakeholders. It is a pragmatic compromise, and a deal they are publicly saying needs to go through. That is how mature, effective industrial relations are supposed to work.

I do not think that the Lords’ arguments are particularly substantial; they are certainly not reasons to delay the Bill again. Their point that we should not agree with the lifting of the cap because it fell outside the scope of manifesto commitments in this area does not really take us very far, given that the original concession made on qualifying periods was also outside the scope of the manifesto, and of course, that is all part of the same package. It feels to me that this is more about the Lords wanting to have the final word rather than having to deal with the substance.

[Graham Stuart]

We did not hear it from the Minister, so could the hon. Member please explain the case for removing the cap?

[Justin Madders]

I am glad that there are some Conservative Back Benchers here. Last week they were all somewhere else, but now we are hearing some contributions. I was not in the room when the negotiations took place, but I understand that that was the deal. I am afraid that there have been some wilful misunderstandings on the Conservative Benches about what lifting the compensation cap actually means. Compensation for unfair dismissal is calculated by defined heads of loss under the law, so lifting the cap will not change that one bit. If the claims are still necessary, they will be there. It just means that some workers—particularly older workers who might not be able to get another job and who may have substantial pension losses—will benefit, not the fat-cat bosses that have been talked about. It is important that we stress that point.

Also, I do not remember the Conservatives’ manifesto in 2010 promising to double the period for qualification on unfair dismissal. Neither do I remember a pledge in either the Tory or the Liberal Democrat manifesto to put a cap on compensation. None the less, the coalition Government pushed both those policies through. Those who claim that the lifting of the cap will see an avalanche of claims ignore the fact that the rationale used for introducing the cap in the first place was to deal with perceptions about levels of compensation people might recover—in other words, legislating on perceptions rather than on facts—and I have to say, we have heard plenty of those perceptions repeated again tonight.

The Opposition can complain about a two-year wait for tribunal claims, but I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for recognising his party’s culpability in that. It is important that this Government are working with the trade unions, businesses, the judiciary and ACAS to find ways of improving our system, so that we get justice more quickly, instead of just ignoring it as the previous Government did. This Government have shown flexibility and strength to negotiate a change in order to get a deal over the line. Workers in this country should not be made to wait any longer for these important rights.

It is worth reminding the House that the road map we agreed earlier this year shows that the following laws should be in place by April 2026: doubling the maximum period of the protective award; day one paternity leave and unpaid parental leave; whistleblowing protections; establishing the Fair Work Agency; day one statutory sick pay and entitlements for the first time for millions of people who have been denied them to date; and simplifying the trade union recognition process. These are not minor or trivial measures. They are substantial changes that will improve the working lives of millions of people. We should be proud that it is a Labour Government who are delivering them, and we should be determined to deliver them by April 2026.

Of course, that is just the beginning. Genuine flexible working, ending zero-hours contracts, banning fire and rehire—there is much more in this Bill that really matters to working people. And there is much more beyond the Bill: the reform of TUPE and parental leave and dealing with the epidemic of bogus self-employment are of huge importance. These are the sorts of things that a radical, reforming Labour Government need to tackle, because the world of work is changing. It is changing far faster than we can legislate for, but we can insulate our constituents against the worst excesses and unintended consequences of the tech revolution by putting security and fairness at the heart of every employment relationship, and we need to do that now. If we do not, we will have failed not only to deliver on the promises we made but to stand up for the very people we were elected to represent, so I call on the other place to agree with the will of the democratically elected Chamber and to deliver finally on our promise to make work pay.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kate Dearden]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for highlighting Halifax and the brilliant pubs in my constituency that I have been delighted to work with since I was elected last year. I will continue to work with and listen to them. He highlights the difference in the agenda and priorities of our parties: we can provide businesses in our brilliant hospitality sector, especially our pubs, with support. He has heard from the Dispatch Box about my determination and commitment to work closely with the hospitality sector on the transitional rate relief and to provide the support that they need.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

T7. I am sure the Department will be aware of the coverage this week of some harrowing stories about the treatment of Vodafone franchisees. Without asking Ministers to comment on specific cases, they will no doubt recognise the power imbalance in that relationship. Will they consider looking at measures to redress that imbalance, perhaps through a statutory code of practice or a national arbitration system?

[Chris Bryant]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in the Department; he is much missed, particularly by many of the civil servants and those who worked with him. I am happy to sit down with him and discuss whether we can bring forward specific proposals that would redress that imbalance.

Employment Rights Bill

Justin Madders Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The speaking limit is now five minutes.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

May I first declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the donation from USDAW trade union, as well as my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions? I declare an interest as someone who represented working people before I came into this place and as someone who wants to see this Bill come into law. I also declare an interest of someone who wants to see my constituents get some decent protections at work after so long.

This has to be it. This has to be the line in the sand. This Bill was introduced more than a year ago, and the delays have been so long—it was in the Lords for nine months—that even our modest statutory sick pay proposals are at risk of being delayed. The message to the Lords has to be, “This is enough.” This Bill was a clear manifesto commitment, and it pains me that we have had to jettison part of it to get it over the line. I understand why that had to happen, and I commend the Minister for finding a way through, because this legislation matters to my constituents. What she said about employment tribunals is important, too. We need to do an awful lot more work to ensure that people enjoy real justice.

The Lords cannot keep coming back because they do not like what is in this Bill. It is a promise we made to the British people, and we have to deliver on it. We have to let democracy win. If the Lords block the Bill again, let them explain to the 7 million people who still have to go into work when they are ill that they cannot get the day one SSP rights because the Bill has been delayed. Let the Lords explain it to the father whom they have denied day one rights to paternity leave, if he has a child after April, by blocking the Bill again. Let the Lords explain why we cannot have a fair work agency, which is something even the Tories used to promise they needed to deliver. Let us meet every day until Christmas, if the Lords block this Bill again. Let us keep going back. Let us show some steel. Let us show that we will not let this Bill lie in the sand for too much longer. If the Lords complain about having to work extra hours, let us advise them to join a trade union.

[Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this Bill is the foundation for good industrial relations in this country and the best uplift to workers’ rights in a generation? Does he therefore agree that it is surprising that not a single Scottish National party Member is in the Chamber to debate workers’ rights in this country?

[Justin Madders]

We can always have a dig at the SNP, but the real enemies have been the Greens, the Liberal Democrats, the Tories and the Reform Members who have voted against this Bill consistently. They are the ones who have brought us to this point.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Justin Madders]

I will not give way anymore, because we have not got much time. I will pick up on what the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) said about compensation. I accept what the Minister said at the Dispatch Box. I hope that when the Lib Dem spokesperson checks back, she will be able to instruct her Lords that this measure was part of the deal and they should not block the Bill any longer. It is also telling that she has only spoken to businesses, not trade unions, about what was agreed. That shows which side the Liberal Democrats are on.

It has to be pointed out that unfair dismissal compensation limits are not operated that often. Most people’s claims are much lower than that. Most people who have been unfairly dismissed who would benefit from the measure tend to be much older workers who sadly do have not any employability in the job market. They are the ones who will benefit from the uplift in compensation, not bad water bosses, because to qualify people have to be unfairly dismissed. I suspect many water bosses would struggle to show that they had been treated unfairly.

Let us ensure that we get this legislation delivered and maintain vigilance across the whole agenda. That means proper meaningful access, not people being stuck in a shed somewhere far away from where the workers are, and serious fines linked to turnover for those who do not play by the rules. It means no loopholes and proper deterrents on fire and rehire so that companies do not think it is even worth going there. We do not want to see those P&O scenes repeated anywhere. It also means holding firm on some of the nonsense that we are still hearing today about zero-hours contracts. People seem to have a problem with fixed-term contracts and zero-hours contracts being completely different things. There has been a lot of conflation there, I am sad to say.

What comes next is important, because the Make Work Pay agenda is not just about this Bill. Let us get this Bill over the line and delivered, and let us get all the important regulations implemented, but there are so many other important things that we need to tackle in our workplaces in this country, particularly, bogus self-employment. That is going well beyond the gig economy; in fact, it is an epidemic, and it is important that we tackle it. The Bill will level the playing field, allowing good employers to compete fairly, and create more security at work. Employing people with proper terms and conditions may even lead to a greater tax take.

Further down the line, we must tackle unfair dismissal law, which is half a century old and desperately needs updating, but that is for another day. We have debated the Bill for over a year, and it is about time the Lords accepted the democratic mandate and accepted that we must deliver it. Let us get it over the line, and let us start delivering for working people in this country.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

I wish to draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, my membership of Unite, and the kind support of ASLEF and the GMB for my election campaign.

This Employment Rights Bill is our promise to working people on its way to being fulfilled, thanks in no small part to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders). I am glad to see that Ministers have tabled amendments that reflect the constructive negotiations between themselves, unions—including my former employers at the TUC—and business associations, because that is how we roll in the labour movement. We get round a table, we talk, we come to a deal and we move forward. That is the right way to do things when people do not agree.

To be clear, unions negotiated this deal with the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), and it has my support. Today I will not let the best be the enemy of the good. Cutting the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from two years to six months will benefit 6.35 million workers—disproportionately, young workers, ethnic minority workers, and an astonishing 36% of hospitality workers. New figures based on Government data have been produced today to tell us about the impact that the Bill is going to have. Removing the cap on unfair dismissal compensation means that workers will be able to get what they deserve, and bad bosses cannot price in the cost of ignoring the law.

I was also glad to hear my hon. Friend’s clarity about the timing. Our opinions have not changed, and our opinions on the principle have not changed. What is needed now is practicality to ensure that the Bill moves forward—and as we take it forward, Members should be sure to notice who opposes it. I would expect nothing less of the Tories. I would expect the Lib Dems to remember their total opposition to the Trade Union Act 2016, including their opposition to changes in the political fund rules and their opposition—at that time, but apparently no longer—to the undemocratic ballot thresholds that create a higher bar for trade unions than for anyone else in society. I would gently remind their spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), that the right to request worked so well for flexible working that flexible working does not work—we are having to fix it with this Bill—and yet she proposes to bring in an unworkable right to request, instead of a guaranteed right to a decent hours contract. I will take no lectures from the Greens—what a shame that they are not here—who are letting their peers vote whichever way they want on something as important as this. As for Reform UK, they pretend to be the representatives of working-class people, but vote against their interests at every turn.

I say to those in the other place: it is time to pass this Bill to make work pay and to deliver the rights that were promised in our manifesto and voted for—the rights that millions have waited far too long to see.

Critical Minerals Strategy

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments and for pointing out the importance of Durham—sorry, Devon! Durham is slightly on my mind; it is my home county. I think we may come to Durham later session.

On his prime point about the environmental aspect of mining for these minerals in Devon, I mentioned in my statement that the UK project will be held to the highest environmental standards. I specifically wrote those words into the speech because we need to take into account, when assessing the sources of critical minerals, that great environmental harm is caused in many places in the world by their extraction and processing. The processing in particular presents an economic opportunity for the UK, but there is also an environmental responsibility that we need to face up to. It is incumbent on us to find a way to do this processing economically in the UK so that environmental harms are not caused anywhere else in the world.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Bromborough) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement from the Minister and refer him to the Select Committee’s report issued today on economic security, which touches on some of the issues that he has talked about. It also talks about the much wider threats to the resilience of the UK’s economy. On that point, I want to ask him about stockpiling. The statement refers to the potential for some stockpiling to take place in the defence industry, but having seen the many threats to our national security identified by the Select Committee, will he consider expanding the scope of stockpiling to other critical minerals? There is real potential for industries to be completely crippled if hostile actors wanted to take us down that route.

[Chris McDonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his work as part of the ministerial team in the Department for Business and Trade prior to my appointment. On stockpiling, it is the Government’s view that we will work with the Ministry of Defence and with industry and, while not mandating stockpiling, use procurement to ensure that we can stockpile appropriately. I certainly think that the precise quantity and breadth of the minerals to be stockpiled is something the Ministry of Defence will want to look at much more carefully. I know that my hon. Friend has also been a great champion for Less Common Metals, a great British champion in this space in his constituency. I spoke to the chief executive of that business just last week, and it has been central to forming the strategy.