Fairness at Work and Power in Communities

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I am sure that the hon. Lady has read the report on the challenges in relation to this. We have seen how gender pay gaps have changed. There are complexities about ethnic pay gap reporting, but it is clearly an important issue. We will continue to work through that and encourage businesses to make sure that they pay a fair wage, and that starts with the lowest paid in the workforce.

The 2022 national living wage is now 42% higher than the minimum wage was in 2015. It is 60% higher than the minimum wage was in 2010. The Government have a commitment for the national living wage to equal two thirds of median earnings by 2024, providing economic conditions allow that. Additionally, we are putting power into the hands of individuals and businesses to find and create work that suits their personal circumstances. On Monday, we confirmed our intention to widen the ban on exclusivity clauses, ensuring that the lowest-paid workers have the freedom to boost their income through extra work if they wish.

We also continue to level the playing field, holding unscrupulous businesses to account and creating an environment in which businesses can compete fairly. The Government are tackling appalling business practices, such as—as I said—the disgraceful behaviour of P&O Ferries in firing their employees without consultation.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am very interested in what the Minister said about exclusivity clauses. How will he ensure that that does not simply encourage employers to keep wages low, knowing that, in fact, workers will then take on more and more low hours and low-paid jobs, effectively multiplying their exploitation?

[Paul Scully]

That is the careful balance that we in this place rightly have to achieve in our legislation. The entire philosophy behind removing exclusivity clauses is that it is for people on the lowest wages. They should not be bound to one employer. Clearly, people should not be forced to work in many jobs to earn a living wage. That is not the purpose of our proposals. We want to ensure that we remove discrimination by extending the protection against exclusivity clauses.

To come back to P&O, on 1 April, following a request from the Business Secretary, the Insolvency Service confirmed that, following its inquiries, it has commenced formal criminal and civil investigations into the circumstances surrounding the recent redundancies made by P&O Ferries. The Harbours (Seafarers’ Remuneration) Bill that was announced in the Queen’s Speech will protect seafarers working aboard vessels visiting UK ports by ensuring that the ports have powers ultimately to refuse access to ferry services that do not pay an equivalent to the national minimum wage to seafarers while in UK waters. That means that all ferry staff will receive a fair wage while in UK waters when operating regularly to or from UK ports, helping to avoid a legal loophole between UK and international maritime law that P&O Ferries ruthlessly exploited.

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[Paul Scully]

What we are trying to do with the harbours Bill is resolve an anomaly between UK law and international maritime law. However, the hon. Gentleman has raised an interesting point, which will no doubt be explored during the progress of that Bill.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The economic crime Bill gives us an opportunity to address the misuse of compulsory strike-off. I should be grateful if the Minister would make time to meet me, and some of the insolvency practitioner organisations, to discuss this phenomenon, which allows unscrupulous directors to use the practice to have their companies struck off without meeting debt and other obligations.

[Paul Scully]

I think I missed the first part of the hon. Lady’s intervention, but I will happily meet her, or one of my colleagues will. The Minister responsible for corporate governance matters is in the House of Lords, but I will ensure that whatever meeting takes place is the most appropriate one for the hon. Lady. We do want to secure the confidence in our corporate governance to which she has rightly referred.

The Queen’s Speech contains a packed and ambitious legislative programme, including a comprehensive set of Bills which will enable us to deliver on priorities such as growing the economy, which will in turn help to address rising living costs and get people into good jobs. We remain committed to introducing legislation to deliver on these manifesto commitments as soon as parliamentary time allows. Today the Prime Minister has asked my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) to conduct a review on the future of work. The review will build on existing Government commitments, mentioned by Members today, to identify and assess the key questions to address on that subject are as we seek to grow the economy after the pandemic.

Let me take this opportunity to remind Members that we have produced a raft of secondary legislation in recent years. We brought into force a world first in introducing a legal right to two weeks’ paid bereavement leave for parents who suffer the devastating loss of a child, irrespective of how long they have worked for their employer. Furthermore, at every stage of the pandemic our priority has been to protect jobs and livelihoods, and to provide a fair deal for the hard-working individuals of the United Kingdom. We continued to take action, swiftly and decisively, when it was needed during the pandemic.

I have spoken today about how reforms in the Queen’s Speech, and additional Government actions, will continue to improve our business environment and increase the opportunities for those hard-working people of the UK to find jobs that suit them and their personal circumstances and treat them fairly. Let me also make it clear that those opportunities will be spread across the country, driving local growth and regeneration. We are giving powers back to local leaders by devolving powers to Mayors and local government. We are giving local communities more tools to bring about regeneration, including a planning system that places beauty, infrastructure, democracy, the environment and neighbourhoods at its heart. The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will enshrine in law the Government’s commitment to the 12 levelling-up missions giving power and opportunity back to those communities, and we are pressing ahead with our plans for the implementation of the White Paper “Levelling Up the United Kingdom”.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) in her first Queen’s Speech debate.

There is a gaping hole at the heart of Tuesday’s Queen’s Speech, as it fails to address the desperate circumstances of families who are, frankly, facing destitution. Yesterday’s report by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research shows the devastating effect of soaring bills and real-terms benefit cuts, and it should be a wake-up call for the Government. I implore Ministers, and especially the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to take the emergency action that is needed now to protect those families from poverty.

Of course the Government will say that work is the best route out of poverty, and of course I agree that it should be for those families who can work, but low wages and job insecurity mean that, for many, it is not. That is why the failure to include an employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech is so devastatingly disappointing. It leaves pregnant women, new dads, unpaid carers, those who need to work flexibly, people from minority communities and disabled people without the protection to which they should be entitled. It allows unscrupulous employers to continue with fire and rehire practices that even the Prime Minister claimed he found unacceptable. So what we have is the rhetoric of levelling up but inadequate action to support our local communities. Regenerating local economies is essential to achieving the Government’s levelling up ambitions, enabling these economies to attract and retain successful businesses and creating good jobs for local people. As colleagues have said today, education and skills will be essential to ensuring that people are equipped to take those jobs, so I particularly wish to speak about two Bills that are relevant to that: the Schools Bill; and the higher education Bill.

The Schools Bill paves the way for all schools to become part of multi-academy trusts. Most secondary schools in my constituency and almost all primaries are not in MATs currently, so this implies a lot of structural upheaval. I am all for families of schools supporting one another to raise standards and narrow attainment gaps, but we know that it is the quality of teaching and school leadership, not structures, that drives school improvement. So how will Ministers ensure that we have the local infrastructure in place to support local school leaders? Rightly, the Government’s levelling-up agenda focuses on the importance of locality, and I acknowledge that some large MATs have shown that they can work in partnership with local organisations and communities, but how will Ministers ensure that all national multi-academy chains are responsive to all the local communities in which each of their schools are located? That goes to questions about accountability and transparency. For example, MATs can pool their funding, reallocate it to different schools right across their chain or put it into reserves, so how are we going to secure the accountability to local communities that MATs serve and ensure that funds reach local pupils?

Like other colleagues, I welcome the focus in the Schools Bill on attendance, and I am pleased that colleagues from across the House and in the House of Lords have had their pleas for a much more rigorous approach to children missing from school rolls being responded to. But we can do more than simply act to register children. The Commission on Young Lives has pointed to the need for an “inclusion” approach to supporting all young people to succeed in school, with schools working in partnership with youth and community workers and community organisations; this is about a local, community-led approach to keeping children in school.

Turning to the higher education Bill, let me first put on record my interest as a member of the governing body of Manchester Metropolitan University. Our universities are vital to our global reputation and fundamental to the success of our local economies where they are located, and not just in our traditional university cities. So there will be much interest in local communities in the details of the lifelong loan entitlement, as the devil will lie very much in the detail. It will be particularly important that students can obtain the advice to make the right subject choices at school, to plan their route through their post-18 education and to use their lifelong loan entitlement to access the right courses as their career needs develop. It will also be important that our skills strategies and higher education strategies for those communities are aligned with the way in which students make their lifelong loan entitlement choices. In the meantime, the Government have sought to reassure us that minimum entry requirements, student numbers caps, and the reduction of funding for foundation courses, will not disproportionately affect students from disadvantaged backgrounds and from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, or universities catering predominantly to commuter students. Yet the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and indeed the Department for Education’s own impact assessment, has sounded the alarm that that is exactly what will happen. No one wants students to experience poor-quality teaching or to leave university without the skills they will need to succeed at work or in life, but if students of all backgrounds are to have the opportunity to access and make the most of university education, it will be important that the Government and the Office for Students develop a careful approach to address the concerns that exist about course quality and outcomes. That means understanding in detail what is happening on individual courses and student destinations, protecting the university foundation courses that are an integral first step in the undergraduate journey for some students and recognising the impact that failure of a local higher education institution would have on local students and on the wider economic position of that community.

I echo the comments that have been made today about housing supply and I do so particularly in the context of my borough of Trafford, where we have a desperate shortage of housing for local families, extremely high private rents by the standards of the north of the country, far too many families still living in overcrowded or substandard homes, and too many in unsuitable, poor-quality, temporary accommodation. We desperately needed a holistic strategy to secure the housing supply that we need for today and into the future. Instead, what we get again and again are stop-go approaches—on targets, on planning law and on developer obligations. I hope that the Government will listen carefully to the pleas made by the Chair of the Select Committee this morning and others to secure both the right strategy and the right funding to enable local authorities such as mine to secure the housing we need to meet the needs of local families.

Finally, I wish to say a little about the economic crime Bill. I was glad to have the chance to raise this issue with the Minister during the opening speeches. I am pleased that the Bill will provide Companies House with more effective investigatory and enforcement powers, and that the registrar is to become a more active gatekeeper. That will, of course, also require more resources. Let me particularly emphasise the need to strengthen the approach taken by Companies House to compulsory strike-off, which is too often used by unscrupulous directors to avoid complying with their obligations, by allowing a company to be struck off for non-compliance with information requirements and those same directors then going on to establish new companies again and again to carry on their business. I would very much like to see a much more proactive approach from Companies House where it ought to be aware of numerous and repeated failures by companies with common directors to file the legally required documents. I hope that the economic crime Bill will give us an opportunity to address that.