China

Debate between Justin Madders and Neil Coyle

Wednesday 15th May 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate and on his excellent, wide-ranging opening remarks. He set out the challenges we face as a country, and presented a pretty dystopian vision of the future, if we allow it to happen. I hope that we are able to collectively rise to the challenges he laid out.

The hon. Member raised a number of matters that I will touch on. I start with the refreshed integrated review, published by the Government last year, which stated:

“China…poses an epoch-defining and systemic challenge with implications for almost every area of government policy and the everyday lives of British people.”

I consider that a welcome revision to our approach. It is a pretty serious, broad statement of where we are and what we need to do. We need to recognise China’s size and influence, alongside the risks that it brings. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight made the point very eloquently that our reliance is one of those risks, alongside China’s greater aggression, its human rights record and the strengthening of its partnership with Russia; they are all potential existential threats.

In many respects, the news emerging this week on both sides of the Atlantic is a stark reminder that these challenges are here and now, and that care needs to be taken. I will take one very clear example from my own constituency, which feeds into the wider picture that has been painted today. There is a Stellantis plant in my constituency. It announced yesterday that it will be selling Chinese-made electric vehicles in Europe from the autumn, and in the UK from next year. We have a very proud history of manufacturing in this country, and indeed in Ellesmere Port, at what is commonly known as the Vauxhall motor plant, which is now owned by Stellantis. A lot of work was put in to secure the investment needed to move to electric vehicle production, which is very important for the plant, for the constituency and for the whole UK automotive sector.

I had hoped that we could lead the way in the sale of new electric vehicles, as the plan was always to expand from where we are now—from the production of vans into the domestic car market—so it is a concern that the owners are already turning to cheaper Chinese electric vehicles. It is too soon to understand the impact of that on domestic production, but surely it is not going to help. That is not to say that I want to insulate the UK from competition, but there has to be fair competition, and there has to be one eye on the future.

There is no doubt that the move to an all-electric vehicle country is going to be expensive and we should be looking at how we keep costs down, but if major manufacturers are already concluding that the best way for them to meet that challenge is to turn to Chinese imports, we are never going to have the domestic manufacturing capacity to meet domestic demand, never mind being able to continue to be the proud exporter to the rest of the world that we have always been.

As we have heard, yesterday President Biden announced he was introducing a 100% tariff on electric vehicles made in China, as well as tariffs on lithium batteries, critical minerals and semiconductors. That is a move designed to prevent cheap, subsidised Chinese goods from entering the US market. The decision was taken after a four-year review, and there are similar moves across the EU to assess the impact of Chinese imports. Since October, the EU has been investigating whether local subsidies have been helping Chinese car manufacturers undercut European-made vehicles. The investigation is due to report shortly.

I am not aware of a similar review being undertaken here. It was reported in February that the Government were contemplating commissioning the Trade Remedies Authority to undertake an investigation into subsidies, but three months on we have silence. Is the Minister able to confirm whether the Government are still looking into that and whether they will look at what the EU says if conclusive evidence of subsidies is found? We risk putting ourselves in a very exposed position. Our manufacturing capacity would be reduced, probably permanently, and we would be kidding ourselves about the race to net zero if we were reliant on Chinese imports.

Cars are just one example of our potential exposure; steel, energy, fibre optics, semiconductors, rare elements or any number of parts of our infrastructure are part of this discussion. We cannot allow ourselves to be at the mercy of one country, especially not one like China, which has what I would consider to be a ruthless focus on economic dominance. As we have heard from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, that could lead us into a very dark place indeed.

Clearly, we benefit from Chinese investment in this country. Life sciences is a sector that it is investing in heavily. After what the hon. Member has said, that needs to be looked at very carefully as well. The fact is that I could go down any street in this country and see things that have Chinese ownership: pubs, shops, restaurants, cinemas. That is probably fair enough in a global economy, but what about water companies, energy companies and nuclear power plants? I wonder how we have managed to get to the point at which our critical infrastructure is so open to influence by Chinese investors. How have we got to the point where China is a part owner in Thames Water and has significant debts to at least two Chinese state-owned banks? I think we can all see where that might lead us if international tensions rise.

Away from manufacturing, as the hon. Member mentioned, issues in cyber-security have been well documented. Indeed, there was a debate here yesterday on the dangers of social media. I absolutely agree with what the hon. Member said about the differences between TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin. From a child’s perspective, in China it certainly has a lot more educational content. In 2021 the Chinese Government enacted a law that called for the

“creation and broadcast of online content conducive to the healthy growth of minors”.

That can of course be seen as part of the wider attitude to free speech in China, but it is of interest that they obviously see that some of the content on these channels might have a detrimental effect on a child’s development, but they are more than happy for that stuff to be pumped on to our own children’s screens.

[Neil Coyle]

When my hon. Friend says “they”, he is talking about the Chinese Government. Does he welcome the distinction that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) made at the start of the debate between the Government of China and the people? As someone who lived in China for two years, may I make a personal statement?

(The Member continued in Mandarin.)

For those who do not know any Mandarin—I appreciate that mine is rusty—that translates as: “I like the country and I like the people. It is the Government who have caused the concerns that are the focus of the debate today. It is the politicians and the political leadership of China that is the challenge.”

[Justin Madders]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He makes a very important point—the bits of it that I actually understood. He must have seen my speech because I am about to make the very important distinction—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Coyle]

In Mandarin?

[Justin Madders]

Not in Mandarin, no—in English. There is a very important distinction that we would all make between the Chinese people and the CCP. There is no doubt that the CCP is the malign influence in all this.

On the question of social media, there is a concern that there may be an imbalance between what we see in this country and what is seen in China, and there may be deliberate reasons for that. We should certainly look at that and at the dangerous anti-western, conspiracy theory, democracy-undermining stuff that comes out from all around the world, and in particular from China.

I echo the comments made by the director general of MI5 in 2022. He said that it would be wrong for us to cut ourselves off from one fifth of the world’s population, and that we should continue to engage and work with China in a way that is consistent with our national security. But I do not think we have the balance right. As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said, that balance will be consistently and constantly reviewed. We need greater international resilience to international incidents. The analogy with what happened in Russia is very important, because that is a real threat that we could face in the next few years, and we do not want to leave ourselves overexposed.

As has been said, many western countries have begun to understand the risks that we face, have taken action against firms such as Huawei, and have limited the use of such technologies in sensitive and critical infrastructure. In that context, questions must now be raised about our reliance on supply chains that are controlled by China and have such a huge impact on our infrastructure.

It is clear that China holds a dominant position over global supply chains that are critical to the net zero transition. It controls a significant proportion of the rare metals necessary for lithium-ion batteries, wind turbines and solar photovoltaic modules. On the lithium-ion battery chains, China is responsible for 80% of the supply of spherical graphite, refined manganese, anodes and electrolytes, so we clearly need a co-ordinated response to that.

It feels as though we are at a very important point in global politics. We must work across the globe to deal with the many challenges that the planet faces, while at the same time protecting our national security and long-term economic interests. Taking a cautious and proactive approach to risks is central to protecting our country and its citizens. I believe that the way we approach China will be a central feature of our lives for many years to come. On every occasion that we deal with it, the question of security, economic or otherwise, must be the very first thing we ask.

Draft Code of Practice on Reasonable Steps to be taken by a Trade Union (Minimum Service Levels)

Debate between Justin Madders and Neil Coyle

Monday 27th November 2023 General Committees

[Justin Madders]

Yes. We both have some industrial experience of how this works, so we can see what is going to happen. There has been no regulatory impact assessment for the code of practice. If there had been, it would have produced some eye-watering numbers on what it will mean for legal costs not just for trade union members, but in the end for the taxpayer, because a lot of the disputes will involve public sector employers.

During the passage of the Bill, the Minister’s refrain was that it is for the courts to decide, but even after the code of practice is issued, it will still be up to the courts to decide. There are still so many ambiguities and unanswered questions. The fact that we had to vote on such an important piece of legislation without any clarity about what “reasonable steps” meant shows that this debate is taking place 10 months too late. As elected legislators, we really should have known what this all meant before being asked to vote on a Bill that was passed into law. That is no way to go on, and it is by no means the only example of this Government rushing through legislation without an adequate opportunity for scrutiny.

Let us be honest: we were told at the time that there was an urgent need for this legislation, and that it needed to be rushed through a Committee of the whole House in just one day. That was back in January. We are now in November, so in reality we could have had a proper Bill Committee stage and evidence sessions in which these issues were properly debated and voted on. Will the Minister tell us whether the rush at the start of the year was because the Government did not want scrutiny of the Bill? Or was it because they were making it up as they went along?

The provisions before us are at odds with expectations about what the Act was meant to deliver. The code of practice does not alleviate any of our concerns about the workability of the legislation. Actually, it adds more levels of concern, complexity and ambiguity. It contains provisions that go well beyond what was discussed and included in the Act, and it contains language that is at odds with ministerial comments at the Dispatch Box. Many important elements are left undefined, presumably for the court to pass judgment on at some point—not to mention the inconsistencies in the code’s guidance, which I will come on to. Unreasonable expectations are also being placed on unions to police the behaviour of their members, and there are excessive diktats on the language to be used in communications between a trade union and its members.

The Minister says that measure has been produced as a result of consultation, but we know that most of the employers’ organisations, never mind the trade unions, think that this is a complete mess. The reason why it is still before us today shows us everything about where the Conservative party is coming from with this legislation. The document deliberately defines the phrase “reasonable steps” in a way that is designed to infringe on a trade union’s actions to a degree that is not in line with the Act’s stated policy aim, which is to reduce disruption during strikes. Put simply, we believe that the code seeks to further restrict the right to strike and limit the lawful actions of trade unions during a period of industrial action.

Turning to the first recommended step—the “identification of members”—it is clear that the interpretation that the code offers is unduly burdensome on unions. It imposes tight deadlines and has the effect of creating confusion. That is before we look at whether this can be done in a GDPR-compliant manner. The Minister did not really address the concerns that several hon. Members raised about what happens in a workplace where more than one trade union is recognised by the employer. Of course, that is quite commonplace.

Paragraph 19 is the most important part of this section of the code of practice. It states:

“Unions should begin identifying their members who are subject to the work notice as soon as reasonably practical after receiving a work notice”.

That means that with potentially as little as seven days’ notice, a union would have to comb through a list—most likely just a list of names—and pick out its members who could be involved in a particular industrial dispute. But not only that: due to an employer’s right to vary a work notice up to four days prior to strike action, that work could be in vain. I will return to that issue shortly. To me, this responsibility seems particularly onerous. We should remember that the sectors in which work notices can be introduced have vast workforces and can be national in scope. It is quite possible that an industrial dispute could involve hundreds of thousands of workers across the country and potentially impact hundreds of different workplaces.

For example, the RMT has highlighted that during a multi-train company dispute, similar to the one that has taken place over the past 18 months, a number of employers could send more than 10,000 names, comprising 100 different grades working at 100 different locations. To provide unions with a matter of days to sort through such an expansive list and identify which members could be impacted by the strike is an enormous undertaking. I am sure that if such an obligation was placed on a business, Ministers would be jumping up and down about all the extra red tape, but we know that this Government do not judge trade unions by the same standards.

One could even take the view that this expectation is designed to be completely impossible, especially given that there is no guarantee that employers will provide defining characteristics alongside the names. That means that the union may not be able to differentiate between two people with exactly the same name or a similar surname, for example. The guidance addresses that by stating that unions “may wish” to engage with employers ahead of strike action on how work notices can be designed to avoid that. That will depend on employers’ co-operation, although, as we have heard, they will be subject not to a statutory code of practice, but to non-binding guidance, which gives us no guarantee that they will co-operate at all.

What steps will the Minister take to address that? Will action be taken against employers that fail to engage with unions to help them to differentiate workers? How will the Minister ensure that any union conducting strike action in the short term will receive work notices that allow them to differentiate names on the list? Will they be offered dispensation if they are unable to identify any workers within a very tight deadline?

Paragraph 20 of the code offers guidance on employers’ ability to vary work notices at four days’ notice. It is hard to understand how that provision could not be deliberately designed to cause confusion and undermine trade unions. What will happen if an employer varies a notice over a bank holiday weekend, or even at Easter, when there is a bank holiday either side of the weekend? Are trade unions expected to have people perpetually on call during such periods just in case another notice is issued? The code makes no mention of bank holidays and weekends, so might a union be asked to respond to hundreds of varied work notices at two days’ notice—or even one day’s notice—with no leeway given?

[Neil Coyle]

If employers are not compelled to share information, is this dog’s dinner of legislation even remotely workable?

[Justin Madders]

The overwhelming response to the consultation on the measure, and to that on the original Bill, was that the process will be very difficult in practice. That is because it is not about providing minimum service levels, but about trying to stop trade unions from exercising their lawful and democratic right to take industrial action.

The instruction at paragraph 25 of the code of practice that a union should send its compliance notice to its members “by electronic means” is the biggest irony in all this, because the Government have sat on a review on e-balloting for industrial disputes for some five years, yet made no attempt to implement it. Does the Minister finally accept that it might be reasonable to allow trade unions to enter the 21st century, with industrial action communications sent by email? Does he accept that that should include the actual balloting for industrial action? It is inconsistent, to say the least, that the code of practice specifically instructs unions to contact members about industrial action electronically, yet the law specifically prohibits them from balloting their members by email. I know that the Minister has had a lot of practice in e-balloting from his party’s leadership contests, so does he now accept that it should be possible to ballot trade union members on industrial action electronically?

Paragraph 25 further states that

“if the union is aware that any member will be unlikely to access electronic communications before the…strike”

it should send notice by “first class post” instead. What on earth does that mean? Is a union to require a read receipt from every member to form a view of whether they are likely to access their emails? Does the Minister realise that even four days’ notice would be asking rather a lot of Royal Mail, leaving aside bank holidays and weekends, because the latest stats on the delivery of first-class mail show that it is well below its performance targets?

The most problematic aspect of the code is probably paragraph 20, given its provisions on varying work notices. Anyone tasked with ensuring that all the right members are contacted within the incredibly tight timescale of seven days will experience a logistical nightmare, and that would only be exacerbated by the option of amendment only four days out.

Sadly, the provision leaves the door open to employers to deliberately and purposefully issue erroneous work notices in the first instance, only to vary them closer to the relevant date with a view to undermining industrial action. Members should not forget that “four days before” can start at 11.59 pm on the relevant day, effectively leaving three days. While the motivation might not be malevolent—it could be due to negligence—the practical effect of the requirement will be that a union would be expected to contact an employee to encourage them to attend work on the day of a strike, but then say to them a couple of days later, “Actually, you don’t need to attend,” while telling a whole new set of people that they need to attend. It is not hard to see how that could be abused to create an air of confusion on the part of the worker as to whether they are meant to be on strike or at work. When the consequences for making a mistake are so great, it is understandable that a worker would be likely to err on the side of caution and attend the workplace. Of course, all the energy and time expended on deciding who needs to get a notice and who does not could be spent on trying to resolve the dispute.

All those problems are compounded by a contradiction in the code of practice. Paragraph 19 indicates that, under the duty, a union is expected to take reasonable steps to contact members included in a work notice as soon as is “reasonably practical”.

Homelessness

Debate between Justin Madders and Neil Coyle

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I speak as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ending homelessness, which I got involved with in 2016 because of the very visible rise in homelessness in my community in Southwark. Southwark Council deals with the highest number of homeless applications in London. It has 11,500 households on the waiting list and nearly 2,500 households in temporary accommodation, but despite significant problems and severe cuts to Southwark’s funding since 2010, the council also has the largest council house building programme in the country, with 11,000 new homes in the pipeline. Today, its information line is showing the 172 sites across the borough where those homes will appear. My first ask is that the Government should match Labour’s ambition in the national council house building programme.

On local housing allowance, the main problem is affordability. There are almost no properties in Southwark that are affordable at the current LHA rate or at the rate it will reach in April. The Government must reflect local prices in rates. At the extreme end of homelessness is rough sleeping. The Secretary of State described it as a serious moral failure, but there is no accurate measurement of rough sleeping. The local authority headcount is an insufficient estimate. Ministers say that they will end rough sleeping by the end of 2024, but in 2018 the total reduction in the number of rough sleepers was 74. At that pace, it will take until 2081—57 years behind schedule. It would take the Government six decades to tackle a problem that they have created in one. They must develop a robust measure of the problem.

In 2018, a ministerial taskforce on homelessness and rough sleeping was created, but the Department refuses to reveal when it meets. It claims that that information cannot be disclosed because it involves confidential communications. Only under this Government has tackling homelessness become a state secret. I hope the Minister will agree to be more accessible and transparent about those meetings.

The Office for National Statistics has revealed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) just mentioned, that two homeless people died on our streets every day last year. That is unacceptable, but what is worse is the normalisation of those deaths. None of them is investigated and no one asked whether they could have been prevented. I want the Minister to ensure a safeguarding review of every death of a homeless person. That would help to identify the interventions that could have prevented the homelessness and the premature deaths.

[Justin Madders]

Does my hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to advocate for the people who lose their lives, as he says, to understand what led them to that sad situation in the first place?

[Neil Coyle]

Absolutely. As the Secretary of State mentioned, there is often an overlap with mental health issues, but we are not going to identify the cause if the deaths are not investigated.

My final request today is that we use the Domestic Abuse Bill to help the 2,000 people last year who fled domestic violence and were provided an immediate refuge but did not qualify for long-term accommodation. The A Safe Home campaign aims to break the link between homelessness and domestic abuse. No one should be left facing a choice between returning to a violent, dangerous partner or being made homeless, and the Bill should ensure that everyone fleeing domestic abuse who is homeless is automatically considered in priority need. I hope that the Minister will agree today to meet representatives of that cross-party campaign to see how we can make that happen in the Bill.