Towns Fund

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government if he will make a statement on the towns fund.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Robert Jenrick)]

The towns fund is one element of this Government’s mission to spread opportunity and to level up by investing in towns and smaller cities—places to support businesses and communities so that we can help them to thrive.

Last year we announced that 101 places had been invited to develop proposals for a town deal as part of the £3.6 billion towns fund. These towns are spread across the country. Many are birthplaces of industry and centres of commerce. Others are bastions of the maritime economy or the pleasures of the English seaside. Others are great agricultural and market towns. They are all different. But what they do have in common is that they have been underinvested in and undervalued by central Government for too long as too much investment has been centred on our big cities.

Town deals are about reversing that trend. They are about providing investment and confidence at a crucial time for these communities. Through town deals, we are driving economic regeneration and growth, raising living standards and boosting productivity. We are investing in new uses for often derelict and unloved spaces. We are creating new cultural and economic assets that will benefit those communities not just today but for generations to come. We are connecting people through better infrastructure both digital and physical, such as the new walking and cycling routes planned for Torquay and the creation of the new digi-tech factory in Norwich.

We have already made some investments as a rapid response to the effects of covid-19 where towns are particularly vulnerable. Up-front grants of up to £1 million are being spent in places such Burton-on-Trent, on its new main shopping centre to allow greater access for pedestrians and cyclists, or on demolishing and rebuilding unloved buildings in places like Newcastle-under-Lyme. Many towns are repurposing empty shops into vibrant community and business spaces that will help them to bounce back when covid is done.

Each town selected to bid for a town deal is eligible for an investment of up to £25 million. Of course, that is not guaranteed, and all proposals are rigorously assessed by officials in my Department. In exceptional circumstances, such as the nationally significant plans for the great town of Blackpool, we will invest more. I am particularly excited by Blackpool’s plans to make its illuminations even more impressive and attract more visitors when they are back next year.

Town deals are about more than simply investment. They are about the whole town coming together, to create and share a genuine vision for the future of that place. We have just offered Barrow-in-Furness a town deal that will help to address the skills gap, create better housing and support local businesses to grow and employ more people. I am hugely excited by these deals. They offer a chance to turn around the fortunes of many, many places.

This is just the start. The Government are committed to levelling up all parts of the country. We want everyone, wherever they live, to benefit from increased economic growth and prosperity. Town deals are but one way to achieve that. All Members of the House will agree that places such as Blackpool, Barrow and Darlington need and deserve investment, and they will have it under this Government. The work of the towns fund is just beginning.

[Justin Madders]

Thank you for granting the urgent question, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for his response, although many questions remain unanswered. He discussed the Blackpool illuminations, and we certainly need illumination on this side of the House about exactly why particular towns were chosen and not others. Can he tell us what was in his mind when he ignored civil servants’ advice and allocated funding to low-priority towns? Was it really a complete coincidence that all the low-priority towns that he chose happened to be in Tory-held or target seats? We have heard nothing to convince us that it is anything other than a deliberate ploy.

Serious concerns have been expressed, not just by Opposition Members but by the National Audit Office and the cross-party Public Accounts Committee. We are told that we are making the issue party political, but I remind Government Members that we are not the only ones who question this process. This is party political because the Government made it so in the first place by gerrymandering the fund. Can the Secretary of State give us assurances that the whole rationale for these decisions will be published and that any future rounds of the towns fund will be dealt with solely on merit?

I want to know whether Ellesmere Port will get a fair crack of the whip next time round. Before the scheme was announced we were told that we were well placed for the next round of funding. If the funds had been allocated on the scores alone there is no doubt that we would have qualified for support, and we would have put that money to good use, because there are ambitious plans for the town, ready to go, that only need Government support to be realised. When is the next opportunity, and will funding be allocated on a transparent and impartial basis? Does the Secretary of State accept that the pandemic has accelerated the challenges that many towns face and urgent action is needed? There can be no levelling up if one structural bias is replaced by another. There can be no levelling up if the playing field is uneven, and there can be no levelling up if large parts of the country are ignored just because they voted the wrong way.

[Robert Jenrick]

I look forward to receiving a bid from Ellesmere Port in the competitive phase next year. It seems as if the hon. Gentleman wants more of the towns fund, not less, and we can all agree that this is an important investment opportunity for places throughout the country.

A rigorous and robust procedure was put in place by the Department, before I or any other Minister set foot in the Department. That was then followed; we followed the advice of our excellent civil servants in the Department —it is a pity that the Opposition tried to cast aspersions on them—by selecting the 40 most highly ranked towns and smaller cities that their methodology drew up. It is surprising that the hon. Gentleman has such great enthusiasm for algorithm-based policy making. We have learned in the past year that a degree of judgment and qualitative analysis is also useful. The officials advised just that. They said that in addition to those 40 places we should use our judgment to select other places for inclusion from the list informed by the information and advice that they provided to us, because many of those places were quite finely balanced.

That is entirely consistent, and is set out in the work that the Department has shared with the National Audit Office. I have seen the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee and, in the usual way, the Department will respond. The permanent secretary of my Department has made it clear that Ministers followed a rigorous and robust procedure in full. That is quite right, and that is how we will approach the next round of funding.

All of us on both sides of the House should be able to agree that this fund is important and that these places need investment. We are working very well with Labour councils in these places. The hon. Gentleman says that these are Conservative-voting places. I am afraid that it is not the towns fund that is responsible for the way people have voted in those communities—it is the fact that Labour MPs and successive Labour Governments have let down those communities for too long. More than 60% of the towns and smaller cities that we have invested in have Labour councils, and we are working extremely well with them, whether that is Wolverhampton or St Helens; I am sure we will hear other examples today. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to continue to invest and level up.

Covid-19: Employment Rights

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. A lot of people are self-isolating at the moment; that number could be higher if test and trace worked properly, but we still have hundreds of thousands of people who cannot attend work for two weeks, as the law requires them to isolate. However, they are doing so without any protection from detrimental treatment by their employer, which could be refusal to pay sick pay to which they are entitled, or even dismissal.

I have also heard concerns from constituents that a period of self-isolation could be used to trigger a sickness absence review, or be used as part of a process that is already under way. It is quite possible that if other members of the same household get symptoms or test positive, people might have to self-isolate on multiple occasions. I am sure we can all understand the genuine anxieties people might feel if they have to tell their employer that they are having to self-isolate for a second or third time, so why are there no workplace protections to support them in doing the right thing? The Government could state very clearly, either through guidance or regulation, that a period of self-isolation should be classed as other leave that cannot be called unauthorised leave, sickness absence or annual leave, and cannot be used as part of any disciplinary or capability process. I think that is a very simple ask of the Government.

Fire and rehire is not a new development—it has been around for as long as people have had jobs—but just because it has happened for a long time does not make it acceptable. In fact, it shows that our employment protections are as antiquated as they are inadequate. The current crisis has shone a light on the absolute imbalance of power in the employment relationship, and the way in which so many people feel exposed to the whims of their employer. That powerlessness does not just manifest itself in people losing their jobs: look at everyone on zero-hours contracts, in the gig economy or in agency work. They are literally at the company’s beck and call, so insecurity is baked into the workplace. It is little wonder so many people have a sense of helplessness, but it does not have to be this way. Job security does not have to be an impossible dream, and the first step to understanding that is looking at why rights are so weak, and often illusionary.

That illusion manifests itself in full technicolour with fire and rehire, the very existence of which causes people great concern and bewilderment that they are in this situation. Yes, they are directly employed; yes, they have been there possibly for decades; yes, their terms and conditions have remained constant throughout, and may even have been collectively negotiated by their trade union. Their job has not changed, they have performed well, and the company still makes a profit, so why are they suddenly being asked to come in and do the same job for 20% less? The answer lies in the combination of weak employment laws, opportunistic employers, and an indifferent Government. Together, those factors allow for hard-won benefits to be stripped away through a consultation period that amounts to a box-ticking exercise, followed by the inevitable slide into weakened terms and conditions, which will often make it easier for the employer to do the same thing all over again in a year or two. It is a race to the bottom that has been accelerated by coronavirus, and it is about time that race was stopped.

Oral Answers to Questions

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the Second Reading of his Bill. We are looking to strengthen the powers and sanctions in respect of both heritage and planning enforcement as part of our White Paper reforms of the planning system. I am sure that he will be lobbying us to ensure that that is part of the wider package.

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

When the Secretary of State ignored his own civil servants’ advice on which areas to support with the towns fund, was that on his own initiative or was he receiving instructions from Downing Street?

[Robert Jenrick]

It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman makes party political points without understanding the facts, because no Minister in my Department has ignored the advice of their officials. The Department produced a robust process, which was followed by myself and any other Minister in the Department, so he should be careful before making wild and false accusations.

Live Events and Weddings: Covid-19 Support

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray. The emphasis on business grants for those businesses with premises is probably one of the factors that led to many people in the sectors we are debating today being denied financial support; the fact that a lot of them are also freelancers or self-employed is another factor. However, many of the people who were excluded from support the first time around are being excluded once again. Given the speed at which events happened, the Government could perhaps have been given a little latitude the first time for not covering everyone; eight months on and with the benefit of that experience, however, there is absolutely no excuse for anyone being left behind this time.

We need a commitment from the Government that this issue will be looked into urgently, because by the time the current scheme comes to an end, some people will have been trading for nearly two years and will not have been entitled to a penny. How can that be allowed to happen? I hope the Government will listen and offer a roadmap for the wedding and live events industries, with sector-specific support for the intervening period until we get back to some sense of normality. Frankly, telling those people to find another job is a cop-out.

Like other Members, I will talk about weddings because I have been contacted by many constituents who have had to cancel or rearrange their wedding days. The wedding industry has seen numbers restricted and then restricted some more: the limit of 30 at a wedding lasted for just two weeks before it was reduced to 15. That means either that there was a specific piece of evidence that suggested the limit needed to be reduced for weddings but not for the funerals that took place during that fortnight, or that the limit should never have been 30 in the first place. Neither of those alternatives engenders much confidence that the Government are on top of things.

How can a judgment have been formed to change the limit back to 15 in just a fortnight? Given the restrictions to 30 or 15 guests at weddings, many people consider the wedding industry to be closed in all but name. By including outside suppliers in that number, couples have been placed in the invidious position of having to choose whether their photographer or granny attends. I do not think that is right at all.

The wedding industry did not get any benefit over the summer from the “eat out to help out” scheme, despite many venues being able to hold significantly more guests in a covid-secure way than restaurants can. Instead, we saw the sector largely ignored, despite how much it is worth to the economy and how much it benefits people in other, associated industries such as hair, beauty and photography. An important question that I have received from my constituents who have seen their wedding days restricted or cancelled is why they could go and sit in a restaurant with over 100 people socially distanced at separate tables, yet they could have only 15 people attend a wedding venue that can safely hold ten times the amount. I have to agree with them: on the face of it, it seems illogical. Given the massive financial impact that such decisions have had, I hope there is strong evidence behind that distinction being made.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. He will know how vital it is to keep public support for these measures and to ensure that they are evidence-based, logical and clearly explained.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Covid-19: Maternity and Parental Leave

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 5th October 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the impact of covid-19 on maternity and paternity leave. As many hon. Members will know, and as we have heard today, being a new parent is an exciting, scary and, of course, tiring experience—it is rather like being a new Member in this place. Being new parents is a challenge at the best of times, when they have the support of extended family, can attend baby groups and can leave their homes when they please, but having a newborn baby in the middle of a lockdown means that all those challenges are multiplied. That is why Ministers need to recognise the unprecedented experience of those who have become parents during the pandemic.

We have seen various offers and support schemes, but those on parental leave have had no such offers—it is time that we did something about that. As we know, in the time that we have waited to debate the petition—I am very pleased that Westminster Hall debates are back—many of the affected parents have had their maternity or paternity leave pass them by, and they are now grappling with the challenges of childcare during a pandemic. Some of those who have contacted me have had very supportive employers, and that is welcome, but it is not guaranteed. I have heard from other constituents who have not been able to access childcare and who have to consider whether they can return to their jobs at all. Others have had no choice but to take unpaid leave. The Government have previously suggested furlough as an option for people who cannot secure childcare. Personally, I do not think that is the right answer at all. When the Prime Minister said that he would expect employers to be reasonable in such circumstances and that that would be sufficient, it betrayed his lack of understanding about the reality of workplace discrimination.

People who have returned to work have experienced a significant portion of their maternity leave during the national lockdown. The possibility of seeing extended family and friends and attending covid-secure baby groups has opened up, but there are no guarantees. As we have already heard, it is very unlikely that those things will be able to continue in the way we would want. With localised lockdowns, inter-house mixing has been prohibited for many people, and we can see how that affects them on a day-to-day basis. A comment that I received from a constituent has really stuck with me. She said:

“Some days are so difficult. I’ve barely slept, the house is a mess and there is a huge pile of washing to be done. All I need is my mum to come round and hold my son whilst I do this.”

Simple and helpful small interactions often make all the difference.

Baby groups and support from family and friends not only benefit new parents; they are vital for the development of new babies, who look to interact and form new bonds. There will be babies who have had contact only with their parents and not with other babies, and they will take time to adapt to new childcare settings. Even the thought of that—never mind actually doing it—is quite a traumatic experience for parents and their babies. As we have discussed, we know the impact that the early years can have on the rest of a child’s development.

Women who have given birth during the pandemic, and those who are pregnant at present, continue to contend with restrictions on attendance at scans and medical appointments and on access to services. I have heard from constituents who felt a void because they could not see their health visitor in person, and who have been left in pain and distress because they have been unable to receive support from breastfeeding services.

Maternity leave should offer new parents the opportunity to recover from birth and time to adapt to the challenges of a newborn. New parents face having to catch up on missed appointments at the same time as returning to work, and that has many practical implications. The discrimination facing women who are on maternity leave, or who are returning from it, is well documented. As we have heard today, those difficulties are exacerbated in the worst of times. We know it is not business as usual at the moment, so why should it be business as usual for maternity and paternity leave? We should have some changes before it is too late.

Rented Homes: End of Evictions Ban

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I have had discussions with many stakeholders, including representatives of landlords, including the National Residential Landlords Association, which tells me that, according to its research, 90% of renters say that they have been able to meet their rent liabilities. Of the 10% remaining, who either have difficulty or fear difficulty, 75% have said that they have had a good response from their landlord in negotiating flexible repayments or other payment holidays. I think that the landlord community understands the challenge that the economy faces and that tenants face, and is working proactively to support them. We will continue to work proactively to support tenants through the measures that I have described.

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

As the shadow Minister pointed out earlier, back in March, the Secretary of State said that no one would lose their home as a result of losing income due to covid. It is quite clear from what the Minister has said today that he cannot guarantee that, can he?

[Christopher Pincher]

We have protected those tenants from eviction through the actions that we have already taken—actions that I believe have been supported across the House. We are now moving into a new stage of this crisis, where we are trying to normalise our economy and society. Of course I cannot guarantee that every tenancy will be retained, but we have taken steps to ensure that tenants are supported. We will continue to take those steps.

Draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2020 Draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 General Committees

[Justin Madders]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair again today, Mr Paisley. I am grateful to the Minister for his introduction. There was a glaring omission from his speech: he failed to mention that it was a Labour Government who introduced the national minimum wage. I am sure the next time he speaks he will acknowledge that it was the Labour party that introduced that groundbreaking policy.

That said, we will not oppose these statutory instruments; we recognise that any increase in people’s income is welcome, especially at this most uncertain time. However, there are areas where we would like more progress to be made. Millions of people are in work and struggling to make ends meet. Having a job is no longer a guarantor of a decent standard of living; indeed, work and poverty often go hand in hand. The current crisis has put a spotlight on certain parts of the economy, and the extremely precarious nature of many working people’s lives is coming to the fore. Millions of people are trapped in low pay or insecure employment, and the above-inflation increase presented still falls short of the promise made by former Chancellor George Osborne that it would reach £9 an hour by 2020. If the Minister wishes to clarify that there will be a further increase later this year to take us up to that level and honour that promise, that would be most welcome, although that would still fall short of Labour’s own plans.

An increase in the minimum wage will provide some help to the lowest paid, but it will not be the transformative change that we need. It will not end the growing levels of in-work poverty faced by millions. As we have discussed in recent weeks, it does not cover everyone in work. With the growing gig economy forcing more and more workers into sham self-employment, it is more important than ever that every worker is paid a decent living wage.

The minimum wage does not cover self-employment. According to the TUC, almost half of self-employed people do not earn the minimum wage. That means that around 2 million self-employed workers are now stuck on poverty pay. Does the Minister think that is acceptable? What is being done to address poverty pay among the self-employed? It may be that later announcements offer some temporary respite for people in this category, but I suspect they will not tackle the chronic low pay many in the gig economy or in self-employment face.

As the hon. Member for Glasgow South West mentioned, there is a huge discrepancy in the minimum wage for people over 21 and those aged 18 to 20, which is exacerbated by the differential percentage increases presented today. Will the Minister set out why the Government believe that workers aged 18 to 20 should be paid a far lower rate than those aged 21 for exactly the same work, and even less than those under 25?

I declare an interest: I have two sons in the lower age bracket. They previously both worked in the same establishment, and would regularly complain to me that they worked just as hard as their colleagues over 25, did all the same duties and performed just as well, but those colleagues got a much higher pay rate. I have never been able to provide them with a satisfactory answer as to why that is the case. Hopefully, the Minister can make my home life a little easier by giving me a good answer for them. It goes without saying that not everyone under the age of 25 can benefit from staying with their parents. For them, the daily cost of living is no different than it is for those over the age of 25, in terms of rent, council tax, utility bills or whatever.

In representations to the Low Pay Commission, the TUC highlighted some of the areas where it is apparent that further Government action is required. In its submissions, the TUC said that there should be greater use of labour market enforcement orders and undertakings, recognising that those tools form an important bridge between informal action and official prosecutions. It would be good to know how many enforcement orders have been issued so far and how many undertakings have been given by employers. Of the undertakings that have been given, how many have gone on to be breached? Of those occasions where undertakings and orders have not worked, how many prosecutions have followed?

We agree with the TUC that the current fines imposed following prosecutions, which are typically only a few thousand pounds, do not act as a sufficient deterrent, particularly when the employer has been found to have engaged in what would be considered aggravating activities, such as falsifying records. The fines need to be substantially increased. As the TUC suggests, £75,000 would be reasonable. The fact that there have been relatively few prosecutions suggests that the resources, and possibly the appetite, for enforcement are not there.

The TUC submission also raised the routine evasion of the national minimum wage regulations by such devices as false self-employment, work trials and unpaid internships. I touched on false self-employment and the gig economy, but will the Minister enlighten us on how many of the 50-plus recommendations made in the good work plan have been implemented? Although it only scratches the surface of the multiple problems of exploitation and insecurity in the gig economy, the last time I checked, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of recommendations that had been implemented, so I would be grateful for an update on any progress.

Wearing my hat as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on social mobility, we called some time ago for a ban on unpaid internships, recognising that to access certain professions they had become an almost compulsory rite of passage, including for jobs in the media, fashion and drama. Sadly, they are quite often used in politics, even in this place. Some people are expected to work for up to a year free of charge. In some places, of course, there is no guarantee of a job at the end.

I am aware that several private Members’ Bills are floating around that seek to put an end to that shameful practice. If the Minister were to indicate whether the Government intend to support any of those Bills, that would also be welcome. One further minor point from the TUC submission was the difficulty that third parties have in reporting national minimum wage infringements. Such people are often trade union officials who have in-depth knowledge and expertise in certain sectors. It seems sensible to make the most of that knowledge and experience with a workable protocol for referrals.

The Committee will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to go through every TUC recommendation, but one final important point that I wish to draw to the Committee’s attention is the proposal for public sector bodies to make it a requirement of any tendering or work outsourced that those providing the service ensure that all workers are paid at least the minimum wage. That does not require a change in legislation by the Government; it requires leadership. I would be grateful if the Minister advised on what efforts have been undertaken to encourage all those who contract with Government to pay the minimum wage and, for those who work in London, the London living wage?

The second instrument deals mainly with responses to a Government consultation on salaried hours and salary sacrifice. As the Minister explained, they are broadly technical changes to the rules around how minimum wage rates are calculated. The changes broadly afford the employer a greater degree of flexibility when determining the payments to be included within the regulations and the reference periods from which they are to be calculated.

We recognise that the regulations have been introduced as a result of responses made to the consultation by employers, but it is far from clear how significant and widespread the practices are. As the TUC said in its consultation response, there appears to be little evidence of that issue being raised regularly. We will therefore not oppose the regulations, but we urge the Minister to keep a close eye on how they work in practice because we would not want them to be used as a convenient way to game the system. One can envisage payments and reference periods being manipulated to create a certain outcome, which might well be within the letter, but not necessarily the spirit of the regulations,.

I would say the same about the reimbursement rules: on the face of it, they could be used as a Trojan horse to find even more matters to undermine the intended effect of the minimum wage. Care also needs to be taken to ensure that reimbursement takes place in a timely fashion. Although it is far from apparent that these changes will have any dramatic impact in one way or another, it is important that there are regular reviews of their implementation.

In conclusion, the Opposition believe it is important that the state sets minimum rates, but they are just part of the solution to low pay. We strongly believe that trade unions, as the collective voice of workers, are in the best place to negotiate with workers and employers about getting good pay and good terms and conditions for every sector in the country. We hope that one day we will see a Government that deliver that.

[Paul Scully]

I thank hon. Members for their valuable contributions to the debate. The national minimum wage and the national living wage make a real difference to the lives of millions of workers in the country. I am glad that there is agreement—notwithstanding some questions, which I will try to answer to the best of my ability—that the lowest paid workers deserve an inflation-busting pay rise, which the regulations will provide.

The regulations mean that, from 1 April, workers on the national living wage will be over £3,700 better off over the year compared with 2015, when the policy was announced. That marks a 21% increase in the national living wage since 2015. Younger workers will also get more money through the increases to the national minimum wage rates. We know that most businesses support increases to the minimum wage rates. Through the regulations, we are reducing burdens on employers in meeting minimum wage obligations while maintaining worker protections.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston mentioned the technical changes to the second set of regulations. He is right to say that we will continue to review the situation. Part of the reason for the changes to the regulations is that there were some unintended consequences when the national minimum wage and national living wage were introduced—for example, the four-weekly cycles and the fortnightly cycles. Regardless of how extensive they are, smoothing out those problems is a sensible measure. Of course, we will continue to see how that works in practice, as we will with all those sorts of things.

In no particular order—I have papers strewn absolutely everywhere—I will try to cover some of the points raised. The hon. Member for Glasgow South West talked about Government contractors paying a real living wage. The national minimum wage is a minimum wage, as is the national living wage. Good employers should always seek to go beyond that. The Department ensures that all contractor staff receive a minimum wage equivalent to the annual survey of hours and earnings median rate for their occupation or to the Living Wage Foundation rate, whichever is higher. It means that from April 2020 contractor staff will receive no less than £10.75 in London, or £9.30 outside London.

The hon. Member for Glasgow South West also asked why the national living wage is not higher. Right from the conception of the national living wage and the national minimum wage, we have been trying to work with businesses to ensure that employers and workers get the right balance. That goes to the question from the hon. Members for Glasgow South West and for Ellesmere Port and Neston about younger people. Again, we hope to rectify the situation so that, by 2024, 21-year-olds will be able to benefit from the higher amount. The Government took the decision to ensure that we get the right balance for younger people in the employment market. Our 16 to 21-year-olds’ unemployment rate is four times higher than that of people aged 25 and over. It is about having a balance between ensuring that they are paid a fair wage and that there are jobs and opportunities for them in the first place.

We are at the forefront on enforcement, and are significantly increasing the amount of money paid to HMRC for that purpose. HMRC will enforce in a proactive way, through education and visits to employers in the sectors that are most at risk. HMRC will have the financial resources to put where it considers best to tackle non-compliance. We have closed 770 investigations into employers between 2016-17 and 2018-19 that were opened with a potential apprenticeship risk. More than half those cases were closed with arrears found for the worker.

Several projects over the last few years have targeted apprentices and the sectors in which non-compliance is most prevalent, such as hairdressing and childcare. HMRC has undertaken many communication campaigns, including webinars and targeted projects, communicating rights and responsibilities to apprentices and their employers, to ensure that people know their rights, so that they can call out non-compliance, and that employers adhere to the rules.

HMRC also send text messages to nearly 350,000 apprentices when the annual rate increase comes into effect. We ensure that we have that communications campaign as soon as the increase is approved because it is so important that those who are the most vulnerable and the lowest paid understand their rights and how to complain. As I said in my opening remarks, HMRC also investigates anonymous complaints.

Clearly, unpaid internships are a concern, in terms of their being a barrier to social mobility. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston is right to identify that they are often used in this place. In terms of tax and worker rights, the term “internship” does not mean anything. If someone is on work experience, just looking and learning, they are not working day to day and adding value to the company. If they are adding value to the company, and doing what could be seen as a worker’s job, the national minimum wage and national living wage legislation applies to them. Employers should look at that, and we will come down heavily on those who fail to adhere to it.

HMRC has contacted more than 2,000 employers found to be advertising unpaid internships online to ensure that they are compliant with the law. We have sent 35,690 letters to employers in those sectors that tend to use interns: publishing, media, the arts, marketing and fashion, as the hon. Gentleman said.

[Justin Madders]

I appreciate what the Minister says about how the nature of the work determines whether someone should be paid the minimum wage, but is it not a slightly artificial situation to expect someone at the very bottom of the ladder, in a very precarious situation in an internship, to report their employer to the national minimum wage helpline?

[Paul Scully]

By contacting 2,000 employers, we are reminding them of their legal responsibilities. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern about vulnerability and whistleblowing in those situations, but that is why it is important that we give HMRC the resource that it needs to have proactive oversight, and to go to those companies that are most likely to offer and advertise unpaid internships, so that we can nip it in the bud. To build our understanding, so that HMRC can follow the matter up properly, we have incorporated a question into the Department for Education’s employer skills survey, asking 90,000 UK employers whether they have used unpaid interns. Results are expected in late spring 2020, and we will follow up on that.

On the protection of the low-paid self-employed, we will introduce the Employment Bill, which covers a couple of the questions that were raised. That is a result of the good work plan published by Matthew Taylor and his colleagues. We hope to tackle a number of the issues raised in that report and will publish the Bill as soon as we can to ensure that it gets scrutiny from, and involvement of, all parties in its development. I look forward to introducing the Bill and having debates on it so that we continue to lead on workers’ rights.

Planning for the Future

Justin Madders Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I am very aware of my hon. Friend’s opposition to this plan and that of many of his colleagues—I would say Conservative colleagues, but it is not even exclusively Conservative colleagues. Indeed, I believe the shadow Secretary of State is opposed to Andy Burnham’s plan. It is clearly not proving popular in my hon. Friend’s part of Greater Manchester. We will have to see what happens in the mayoral elections, but I am sure my hon. Friend will campaigning strongly to protect the wishes of local people in his community.

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

The announcement on the new cladding fund is welcome, but it remains to be seen whether it will be sufficient to cover all the issues that have been talked about today. I have a specific question about the detail. Leaseholders are paying an awful lot of money for waking watches at the moment. Will that be reimbursed as part of this fund?

[Robert Jenrick]

The fund will operate like the 18-metre ACM fund, in that it will be available only for the costs of the remediation works themselves, not for any service charge fees that might be incurred in the interim. We want to see this work done as quickly as possible, because I am very conscious of the fact that those waking watches are causing meaningful costs to people. There are cases where people are finding it extremely difficult to meet those costs.

Housing and Planning

Justin Madders Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I will talk about Mostyn House in Parkgate, which was originally a boarding school and is now a listed building. Once the school closed, the site was certainly attractive to developers.

Revised plans to build apartments into the fabric of the old school were submitted halfway through its redevelopment. Despite the many efforts of under-resourced local authority enforcement officers, the developer, PJ Livesey, continually drags its feet, with the result that there is a list of outstanding works as long as your arm. Planning permission was only finally achieved some five years after residents first moved in. Developers have similarly patchy records elsewhere in the country, but because the system lacks the capacity to challenge these people, they continue to get away with it.

I have long spoken about the industrial scale mis-selling that arose as part of the leasehold scandal, and we finally saw official recognition of that last week from the Competition and Markets Authority. The situation at Mostyn House is slightly different but has many similarities. Little specific legal information was provided at the initial stage, particularly regarding planning and the leasehold position, and little documentation was produced in respect of service charges. What was provided was misleading and inaccurate on ongoing costs. There were also financial incentives to use panel solicitors and pressure to exchange contracts within a tight timescale.

Many people buying these apartments were experienced professionals whose concerns about those issues were assuaged at the time by the developer’s sales staff, who confidently stated that the purchase was covered by a Premier Guarantee warranty, which gave the buyers a 10-year guarantee similar to the National House Building Council’s. That sounds good, does it not—a Premier Guarantee warranty? It sounds pretty solid, and something to give certainty. Being compared to the NHBC’s guarantee gives it an air of respectability.

However, buyers might find that they have more rights if something goes wrong with their kettle. It is at best a dispute resolution service, not a guarantee, and is seriously compromised by virtue of being funded by the developers against whom it is meant to enforce the guarantee. Premier not only provides the warranty on the build of Mostyn House but also acts as the approved inspector in respect of building regulations. Premier is effectively employed as the building control and building regulation compliance body to inspect, approve and guarantee works undertaken by the developer that it is supposed to be insuring against.

After four years of back and forth, Premier’s surveyor recently viewed the development and agreed with the defects raised by residents. However, Premier is not prepared to progress the claims, even though water is pouring into apartments right now from the defective roofs, gutters and walls. Premier said:

“The remit of our service is to attempt to bring the two parties together, investigate the dispute and make recommendations…That being said, the conciliation service will not be suitable for all disputes.”

That is not a guarantee or warranty; it is a cop-out.

It is clear that some works by the developer were non-compliant, as additional fire separation works and modifications have had to be undertaken since occupation took place. How did Premier sign off those works in the first place? It is plainly evident that there has been a general lack of supervision of the development during its construction and a lack of inspections by the approved inspector. If it finds too many faults, it will have to pay out under its own insurance policy, funded by the developer. It is therefore easy to see how the temptation to be less than thorough could arise.

My constituents have been let down. The ombudsman has proven toothless and the Solicitors Regulation Authority ineffective. Indeed, anyone who cares to look at Trustpilot ratings for the ombudsman, the SRA and Premier will see that there is very little customer satisfaction anywhere in the country. There is a wholesale failure of regulation across the board on many issues, including in this case and others we have heard about. It is time that the Minister and the Government listened and sorted out this shambles once and for all.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

We will have to drop the time limit on speeches to three minutes.

Leaseholders and Cladding

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2020 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) on securing the debate, and pay tribute to the work that he has done so far. I want to put on the record my co-chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on leasehold and commonhold reform, and the fact that I am a patron of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, which brings its expertise to the all-party group and to the many people left high and dry as a result of the scandal.

Indeed, I wonder who people would have turned to if the LKP had not been there. It has heard, as we have, from many leaseholders up and down the country who have been placed in an impossible position—unable to pay for remedial work or obtain finance for it, and unable to sell their home until the work is done. They have been left stranded and effectively abandoned.

The debate may be technical and at times slightly legalistic, but at the heart of it are people such as those we have heard about today, who are looking for a bit of leadership and hope. There is clearly a tension between what the Government consider to be the moral case for not passing remediation costs on to leaseholders, and the legal position, by which freeholders may be entitled to recover costs from the leaseholder.

Although the Government’s pledges so far have to a significant extent removed the potential liability for some, there are still costs that can be visited on the leaseholder—and not just in relation to ACM cladding. There is a lack of clarity about other types of cladding and about who is responsible for the many waking watches that have now become necessary. At the moment there are serious doubts about whether the private fund is being utilised properly, or at all. Applications continue to be processed, but we do not know how much, if any, of the fund has been spent. Crucially, we do not know what will happen to those sites where no application has been made at all.

It should be clear that the longer it takes to resolve the issues, the more innocent leaseholders will have to pay out to fund the waking watches. That means thousands of pounds, needlessly spent, that they will probably never get back. Statements from Ministers are not enough. Talk about morality is not enough. Saying that there is a strong expectation on freeholders to put matters right is not enough. There is a lottery at the moment. Depending on the insurance company, the freeholder, the developer, the terms of the lease and the type of cladding involved, any outcome is possible. It seems to me, and probably to most people in the Chamber, that in the absence of someone stepping forward to put matters right, if a property was built in accordance with the regulations at the time, but is now considered unsafe, that must ultimately be the responsibility of the Government.

My all-party parliamentary group co-chair is the Father of the House, the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who unfortunately cannot be with us today. He joins me in that analysis and says:

“We have been grateful for the initiative of the Select Committee and we ask them to hold hearings—leaseholders’ voices must be heard. Government and parliament have imminent work to do. That is the way to justice. See the evil. Do good. Recognise the people speaking through the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.”

We need to hear those leaseholders’ voices. The LKP recently did a survey of 117 different sites where people are affected by the issues, and the findings are stark: 90% of people surveyed said that the Government had provided “No help at all”. That has to change, and very soon.