Employment Rights Bill

Laurence Turner Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

This change means that the law will finally catch up with society’s views on pregnancy loss. It is a giant leap forward in the recognition that miscarrying is a bereavement, not an illness, and workers will legally have the right to grieve.

[Laurence Turner]

It is a particular pleasure to follow a former colleague of mine, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen). What she has said will have a special resonance with the many people who are following this debate in this Chamber and beyond. She has done a valuable public service, and we thank her for it.

As is customary, I draw attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions.

Because time is limited, I will restrict my comments to Opposition amendment 290 on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body. This amendment seeks to disapply the SSSNB’s statutory remit from both academies and local authority maintained schools, which makes it substantially different from and more damaging than the similar amendment brought forward in Committee. If it was carried, it would reduce protection for many school support staff workers in employment.

The vast majority of school support staff are already covered by collective bargaining, almost 80% directly and the rest indirectly. However, the existing agreement, through the National Joint Council, does not serve support staff or employers well. Last year, teaching assistants were paid just £17,400 on average, and 90% of those workers are women. I have spoken to some who have relied on food banks and payday loans to make ends meet. There are 1,800 school support staff workers in my constituency of Birmingham Northfield, and they deserve better. Most schools struggle to recruit for those roles, according to research by the National Foundation for Educational Research, and at one point during the pandemic the role of teaching assistants was the second hardest to recruit for after that of HGV drivers.

This is not just about pay. As the Harpur v. Brazel case showed, substantial liabilities also exist for employers because of unclear and outdated terms and conditions. As the Confederation of School Trusts, representing academy employers, has said, the time has come to move school support staff out from under the local government negotiating umbrella. Indeed, the request from school employers was for the Bill to establish a floor, not a ceiling.

That point was addressed in Committee, so we might ask why this amendment has been brought forward. It is in contradiction to the amendment that the Opposition tabled in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee. After all, it was the Conservatives who put the School Teachers Review Body on a statutory footing back in the early 1990s, so why will they not support the same step for school support staff? Similarly, they are not seeking to amend the Bill in respect of the adult social care negotiating body, despite the similarities between the two occupations.

I fear that the answer is that school support staff—the majority of people who work in schools—are suffering from the soft prejudice of unequal knowledge and interests that divide the workforce into professionals and ancillaries. This outdated attitude should be confined to the dustbin of history, where it belongs. It was rejected in this place almost 20 years ago, when the process that led to the SSSNB began. This is not a measure whose time has come; it is long overdue.

I wish to say a little about the importance of the measure for special educational needs and disabilities. Classroom-based support staff spend the majority of their time supporting SEND learners. They are essential to schools’ models of inclusion.

[Chris Vince]

My hon. Friend is giving an excellent speech and referring to a really important group of people. As a former teacher—I mention it quite often— I recognise the huge importance of what school support staff provide to the classroom. Does he agree that they support not just learners but teachers too, and have a wider influence on the school community?

[Laurence Turner]

I agree. My hon. Friend makes a very important point. When we look back at the national agreement in the early 2000s which led to the expansion of school support staff roles, the justification was that they would alleviate pressure on teachers and add to the quality of teaching in classrooms. That is exactly what school support staff workers in my constituency and his do every day.

School support staff roles are essential for SEND support, but the contracts those staff are employed under are so squeezed that no paid time is available for professional development or training. In other words, we cannot resolve the SEND crisis without contract reform, and we cannot achieve that contract reform if the drift and delay, which is the legacy of the 2010 decision to abolish the SSSNB, continues. I urge the Opposition, even now, to think again and not press their amendment to a vote.

In the time remaining, I wish to say a few words about the provisions on hospitality workers and their right not to be subject to third-party harassment. When the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who was formerly in her place, brought forward her private Member’s Bill in the last Parliament, it contained the same provisions that are being advanced now. At the start of the debates in the House of Lords, the extension of the protection to “all reasonable steps” was supported by the Government of the day. Baroness Scott, leading for the Conservative party, said that the measures would not infringe on freedom of speech; in fact, they would strengthen it. The Conservative Front Benchers were right then and they are wrong today.

The Bill is incredibly important. Employment law in the United Kingdom has tended to advance by increments; the Bill measures progress in strides. I am proud to have had some association with it through the Public Bill Committee. I thank the departmental team who were part of the process and the other members of the Committee. I will be proud to vote in favour of the extensions to rights in the Bill when they are brought forward to a vote tonight.

[Andy McDonald]

As a proud trade unionist, I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today marks a truly historic moment: the most significant expansion of employment rights in more than a generation. I extend my congratulations to the Secretary of State and the Deputy Prime Minister for their efforts, and express my enormous gratitude to the employment rights Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), for his time and engagement with me over recent months in discussing the measures in the Bill. I also wish to acknowledge the dedication of Bill Committee members, as well as the countless trade union officers, academics, Labour party members and staffers who have worked tirelessly for decades to bring us to this day. This is a milestone we have long strived for. On a personal note, I extend my sincere thanks to the Prime Minister for entrusting me, while in opposition, with the responsibility of delivering Labour’s Green Paper, “A New Deal for Working People”.

I speak in support of the Government’s amendments and will touch on my own tabled amendments selected for discussion. Specifically, I support Government new clause 32 and Government new schedule 1, which will extend guaranteed hours protections to nearly 1 million agency workers. This is a crucial step, aligning with my own amendment 264, and I am pleased to see the Government taking it forward. The TUC has rightly emphasised that for these rights to be effective, they must apply to all workers. Including agency workers is essential to prevent unscrupulous employers from circumventing new protections by shifting to agency staff. Exploitative tactics employed by a minority of employers, designed to avoid responsibilities and deny workers job security, remain a deep concern, which is precisely why I have consistently advocated for a single employment status.

I tabled new clause 61 because I believe that establishing a single status of worker is a necessary step to ending unfair employment practices. The Government’s “Next Steps to Make Work Pay” document, published alongside the Bill, states their intent to consult on moving towards a single worker status. On Second Reading, I noted that we cannot truly eradicate insecure work until we establish a clear and unified employment status. Since then, the Director of Labour Market Enforcement, Margaret Beels, has told the Business and Trade Committee that

“the whole business of employment status needs to be addressed”,

adding that

“you can probably consult until the cows come home on this issue…it is about time to do something about it”.

The TUC also urged a rapid review of employment status to prevent tactics such as bogus self-employment from proliferating as employers respond to new rights.

I welcome the Business and Trade Committee’s recommendation that the Government must prioritise their review of employment status and address false self-employment

“so that these reforms are rolled out alongside…the Employment Rights Bill.”

I acknowledge the new clause tabled by the Chair of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), which seeks to establish a deadline for this consultation. I urge the Government to accelerate progress on this front, but take reassurance from the fact that this issue is well understood at the highest levels.

I turn to collective redundancy and the unacceptable practice of fire and rehire. ACAS reported in 2021 that the use of fire and rehire tactics by employers was prevalent in the UK and had increased since the pandemic. Nearly a fifth of young people say their employer has tried to rehire them on inferior terms. Many will recall how P&O shamelessly broke the law, choosing to pay compensation rather than comply with its legal obligations because it calculated that replacing its workforce with cheaper labour would ultimately be more profitable.

I welcome the Government’s consultation on collective redundancy and their introduction of new clause 34, which doubles the maximum protective award for unfairly dismissed workers to 180 days’ pay. However, while this may deter some employers, I question whether it is a sufficient deterrent to prevent further abuses. The TUC has raised concerns that merely doubling the cap will still allow well-resourced employers to treat breaching their legal obligations as the cost of doing business. The TUC instead proposes a stronger deterrent: the introduction of interim injunctions to block fire and rehire attempts—an approach I have sought through new clause 62.

Mick Lynch, the outgoing general secretary of the RMT, told the Bill Committee that unions should have the power to seek injunctions against employers like P&O. He rightly pointed out:

“The power is all with the employers,”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 59, Q57]

and that unions currently lack the legal means to stop mass dismissals before they happen. My new clause offers a solution, giving employees immediate redress through an injunction if they can show that their dismissal is likely to be in breach of the new law, ensuring that they remain employed with full pay until a final ruling is made. I encourage the Minister to address this issue in his response and to indicate an openness to considering injunctive powers in this Parliament.