British Steel

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I want to thank the Government for saving British Steel. Our Committee has been clear that it is essential for us to retain the ability to make primary steel in this country, and the steps that were taken a couple of Saturdays ago have helped derisk exactly that. The Government deserve credit for that. However, the Committee has written to the Government to say that a steel strategy needs to come forward as quickly as possible. It must be a clear, long-term vision for the industry, and there must be safeguards against the potential of a floodtide of steel from China. We need to use public procurement much more aggressively to support our local industry, energy costs need to come down, and we need a plan to keep scrap onshore. Will the Minister tell us when she plans to bring forward that steel strategy? Ultimately, what is good for the steel industry is good for Scunthorpe.

[Sarah Jones]

My right hon. Friend is of course right: the steel strategy is all the more important now than when we devised it in opposition and committed £2.5 billion for the steel strategy fund in our manifesto. We are looking at how we use that financial support, and, as he knows, at how we might do primary production. We are investigating future market opportunities and how we can increase demand here in the UK. He speaks of procurement, which of course is incredibly important. I have been talking to the procurement Minister and working on that, along with the Steel Council. We need to consider the availability of suitable sites for future investments.

Scrap is important, as my right hon. Friend says—how can we improve UK capability? Trade and overcapacity is a huge issue, and one that we share with our American colleagues, which is why we do not believe that the tariffs are necessary—we have the same problems and should try to solve them together. Carbon leakage, green steel, research and development, jobs and skills—we will develop a whole package of measures as quickly as we can. We will ensure that the plan, which we will publish in the spring, is one for the whole country and secures steel in the UK.

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

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

Mr Speaker, I wonder whether you will forgive me for returning the debate to the Bill, which is about saving British Steel. That is what the debate should be focused on, and I commend the Secretary of State for bringing forward the powers to achieve that goal. He has acted with decisiveness, speed and certainty, and I thank him for the Bill he has presented today. He has acted in the national interest, and he has acted to safeguard our economic security. I am delighted that he has also acted in line with the Select Committee’s advice, which was tabled with him 10 days ago—as we know, that does not always happen. We urged him to maximise pressure on British Steel’s owners, not to do what was easy, but to do what was right. Today he has returned to the House with a Bill asking for the powers to do exactly that.

This legislation matters not simply because it protects 3,700 jobs in Scunthorpe, not simply because it protects 37,000 jobs in the steel supply chain across our nation and not simply because it safeguards nearly £2 billion of economic output; it matters because it defends our economy, our security and, therefore, our future. At the heart of this debate is a very simple question: can we entrust a critical national asset to a company we do not trust? I say no, we cannot, we must not and we dare not. We are presented with a very simple challenge in British Steel’s owners: we have a company in possession of an asset that we need, yet it is a partner that we do not trust. In a world where threats to our economic security multiply each day, we cannot allow that risk to fester at the heart of our industrial core.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that there is a wider issue at stake: our energy security and national security? We have seen what can go wrong with a Chinese company that we do not trust, and we see Chinese influence increasing in other vital sectors, particularly our energy industry. Should that not underline our concern and act as a warning that we do not want the Chinese to have control of our energy supply?

[Liam Byrne]

We are here in the House to answer a very basic question: if we cannot trust a company, can we entrust to it a capability that we need, when that capability is so vital to our strength? That is one reason why the Select Committee has set up a new Sub-Committee on Economic Security, Arms and Export Controls. We will be reporting back to the House on the state of economic security in our country before the summer recess, and I look forward to the hon. Lady’s comments on that report.

The general point I want to land is this: what we value most cannot be entrusted to those we distrust most. The timing of the Bill is critical; we live in an age of intensifying insecurity. President Putin’s violence is unabated, China’s military build-up is unabated and now President Trump threatens to upend the free trading system. In such a world, to surrender our ability to make primary steel would not be a misfortune—it would be negligence.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the Select Committee has spoken to defence companies about how necessary it is not to rely on imports at a time such as this. Does he agree that national resilience and defence rely on industrial security?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In this debate, we need to remember that 95% of our rail infrastructure is made by British Steel. British Steel also supplies three quarters of every major construction project in this country. Thanks to the Chancellor, we are about to invest £10 billion in the rearmament of this country; much of what we need to put in place will be made by British Steel. How can we afford to let British Steel go out of business today? How can we vote against the Bill? British Steel is not simply a pillar of British industry: it is a cornerstone of our economic security.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me, as a card-carrying advocate of industrial strategy, that this argument applies to some of our other key high-growth sectors, such as fusion, quantum and space? We have to accept that the days of easy globalisation are over and be a bit more strategic about how we support our emerging industries.

[Liam Byrne]

Mr Speaker, you know that I could answer that question all day, but you would rule me out of order, so I will confine my remarks to the Bill. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right, and that is why we have to work harder across the House to build a consensus about the big calls that we need to get right for our future.

British Steel faces significant headwinds, not just from Chinese steelmakers flooding the market, but from the new 25% tariff from the United States, and we have to rise to the challenge of decarbonisation, yet we in this House must keep our eyes on the prize ahead of us. The Chancellor has just committed £100 billion-worth of capital investment, we are building affordable homes at a pace not seen in decades and we are investing £10 billion in defence. There is a market to seize, but only if we have the means to supply it. British Steel cannot profit from Britain’s future if Chinese firms are allowed to kill it today.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I agree with the right hon. Member that we need a steel industry in Britain and that we need to invest in it. Does he not think that we could be going a bit further today and, instead of this temporary measure, taking the whole steel industry into public ownership so it can be what it has always been—the bedrock of manufacturing industry in Britain—and give us security for the future, free from market forces?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

The right hon. Gentleman may well be right, but this is the second key point that I want to land: the truth is that Jingye is a mess. It has failed to publish accounts since 2021. Two auditors have resigned; one cited material concerns about the company’s ability to remain a going concern. Inventories cannot be verified. Cash-flow statements are missing. The company is not acting in good faith, and that is why the Secretary of State is right to take the powers that he is asking for today.

It is clear that the escalating trade war between China and the United States created the imperative to act today. It is clear that Jingye was about to move primary steelmaking capability from Scunthorpe back to China and merely use the downstream mills in Scunthorpe. That may have been good for China’s economic security, but it is not good for Britain’s national security, and that is why we need to give the Secretary of State the powers that he is asking for.

The options on the table are very simple. The Secretary of State could do nothing and watch the furnaces close; he could hope, but hope is not a strategy; or he could act, as he has done today. He has acted with strength and made a decision in the long-term interests of our country, and the House should give him its full and unabated support.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Davis]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not, because lots of people want to speak. I will refer to something she said in a minute, so if she really needs to intervene, I will let her come in then. We are trying to manage a disaster—a disaster for Scunthorpe, which is local to me, as members of my community work at Scunthorpe. The knock-on economic effects will be felt much more widely than in one town; this will affect thousands and thousands of people all round.

This is also a disaster for our last primary steelmaker, and steelmaking has suddenly become more important. It was always an important part of national strategy, but Mr Trump has made it a vital, unavoidable piece of national strategy. We have to create a circumstance that allows the Secretary of State and the Government to manoeuvre us through that. As Members have said, that means having an energy policy that makes the plant viable—not just viable when it is owned by the state, but commercially viable. It means having an energy policy under which we do not have the highest energy costs of our competitors, which we do now. It also means that we have to think very hard about carbon supply. At the moment, the technology does not exist that allows us to make primary steel without carbon supply, so we have to think about that. Primary steel is a strategic supply, so we cannot rely on another country for it.

I want to see this Bill used in a way that gives the Secretary of State the time to deliver those things, but it must also give this House the right to see what he is doing and how the strategies are turning out. Nobody has got this right. If those on the Government Benches want me to, I can go back to 1997 and park blame, but I do not want to do that today. I want to make this viable. We have to get our energy, environmental and industrial policies all in line to make this work.

To put this in context, last year British Steel lost about £408 million—that was the September number. This year it is about £250 million. Neither of those are small amounts of money. The Treasury would shut down an operation if we just left something like that running inside the Government for very long. We need a new strategy that cuts our carbon emissions without exporting our industry to the rest of the world. I am afraid that most of our successes in carbon reduction over the last decade or two—or three—have been by dint of exporting industries to other countries, often with much worse records than us. In this case it would be China. China has 50% of the world market already. It has massive excess in steel capacity, and its steel capacity is the most carbon inefficient there is, so we would actually be worsening the circumstances.

[Liam Byrne]

The Business and Trade Committee has taken clear evidence that we need a carbon border adjustment mechanism, so that carbon-rich steel, such as that from China, is taxed much more heavily. Crucially, what is needed on the table are the steel safeguards from the Trade Remedies Authority to guard our markets from a flood tide of Chinese steel right now.

[David Davis]

I am afraid the right hon. Member is right. The difficulty is that we are in a new world. The terrible thing is—the House will only ever hear me say this once—that Trump has a small point in some respects, and we have to deal with the world as it is.

Moving on to the sunset clause, I can imagine that the instinct is not to put a sunset clause in the Bill, because we are dealing with a difficult negotiator, and putting in a sunset clause would be putting in a backstop. When we put a backstop on ourselves, we give the other side a negotiating advantage. In his speech, the Secretary of State mentioned that the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 would be a route. For those who have not read that legislation, we spent a year putting it in place under the Blair Government, and it has recourse to Parliament at every turn: Ministers are properly controlled, it must be transparent, and so on. I suggest to him that at some point he might organise a transition to that, so that the House has greater control. The Coronavirus Act 2020 did not have that—it missed all those defences—and look what happened to the policy as a result.

This is what I would like to see: recourse to Parliament over the actions the Secretary of State takes to manage the survival of Scunthorpe and the policies to ensure its viability and, in the post-Putin and Trump era, the security of supply. We want to see all those things, and we can organise legislation to permit them. I ask the Secretary of State to take the House into his confidence and do this properly.

Scunthorpe Steelworks

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

May I welcome the Minister’s explicit ambition to retain primary steelmaking capability on these islands? I hope the whole House will row in with that. I also welcome the £2.5 billion that the Government have earmarked for investment in the sector. Will she, however, put a rocket up the Trade Remedies Authority? We have heard very clearly from steelmakers that they need the same safeguards against diverted Chinese steel flooding into our market that will click into place in Europe in April. It is not acceptable that we have to wait until the summer for our markets to be safeguarded in the same way. The TRA needs to act, and it needs to act now.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and his contribution through the Select Committee session we had yesterday. The TRA announced yesterday that it will widen its review of UK steel defences. It has accepted the challenge from UK Steel to do just that and is acting. The Secretary of State and others will be looking to make sure our steel defences are as strong as they need to be. Today’s news about Scunthorpe sits alongside the wider issues about tariffs and the global trade of steel. We need to make sure we are helping in that space too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Liam Byrne.

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

President Trump’s new tariffs are double trouble for Britain’s steel and aluminium suppliers. They will dent £350 million of sales, but they also risk swamping the UK with over-subsidised Chinese steel diverted from America. What is the Secretary of State’s game plan now to redouble defences for our UK metal makers?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am incredibly grateful to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee for that question. He is right to say that the challenge here is not just the direct trade we have with the US, but the impact of trade diversion. He knows we already have 16 anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures in place against 14 separate product categories. Once the annual tariff-free quota is hit, a 25% tariff applies to those. I can tell him and the House today, though, that I will support UK Steel’s application to the Trade Remedies Authority for a review of the steel safeguards—we do have to think about what will be coming—and a new one for the aluminium sectors.

Employment Rights Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare my membership and financial interests in trade unions, as I have done throughout the passage of the Bill.

I thank Members from both sides of the House for their contributions to yesterday’s debate. I look forward to another good debate today as we work together to ensure that the Bill works in practice for workers and businesses of all sizes across the whole country. Similarly to yesterday, I will use my opening remarks to explain to the House the amendments put forward by the Government in parts 4 and 5 of the Bill.

The Government are moving a number of amendments that represent a significant step forward in modernising our industrial framework. Amendments to clause 50 will strengthen the provisions of trade union access rights. They will ensure that the framework functions effectively and delivers on our commitment to modernise working practices. They will streamline access provisions by allowing a single Central Arbitration Committee member to make a fast-track decision on whether access should take place. In making a decision about whether it is a single person or a panel that will consider the application, the CAC will be required to have regard to the complexity of the case, as well as whether the proposed terms of the agreement are model terms. Various criteria will be prescribed in secondary legislation following consultation.

The amendments will also clarify that supporting a worker is a legitimate purpose for access, and they will provide a power to bring forward secondary legislation to make further provision as to how the CAC is to determine the level of penalty fines for non-compliance with access agreements. They will expand access rights, enabling access agreements to cover communicating with workers in ways that do not involve entering premises—for example, connecting digitally using technology—therefore modernising our antiquated industrial relations framework.

New clause 39, new schedule 2 and associated amendments insert new provisions into the Bill, replacing clause 51, and will address unfair practices and access arrangements in the recognition and derecognition process. The amendments will extend the application of unfair practice protections to the point at which the CAC accepts an application for recognition or derecognition, and will ensure that employers cannot increase the size of the bargaining unit for the purposes of the recognition application after the application is made. That will end the deliberate gaming of the system that we have seen in recent years.

The amendments will also delete the second test for determining an unfair practice complaint, which currently requires the CAC to consider how an alleged unfair practice may have affected workers’ votes in the recognition, or derecognition, ballots. They will extend the time limit in which unfair practices can be reported after the ballot closes to five working days. They will ensure that an employer cannot recognise a non-independent trade union after receiving a request for voluntary recognition from an independent trade union as a means of thwarting the independent trade union’s subsequent application to the CAC for statutory recognition.

We will bring forward and formalise the process for agreeing access arrangements between the employer and the union during the recognition and derecognition process. These amendments will streamline the recognition process, reduce opportunities for unfair practices to occur, and ensure that unions that seek recognition have a fair and transparent statutory route to enable them to do so.

Today’s amendments on industrial action rules will reduce the costly, complex and bureaucratic requirements on unions in relation to industrial action and ballot notices, while ensuring that employers have the necessary notice and information to prepare for industrial action. New clause 42 will simplify notice to employers of industrial action ballots and industrial action, reducing the chance of spurious challenge and making the information required more proportionate. New clause 43 will extend industrial action mandates from six to 12 months, reducing the need for repeated ballots. Amendments to clause 61 will mean that the notice period for industrial action will be set at 10 days, giving businesses time to prepare and safeguarding workers’ rights. Amendments to clause 58 will mean that the 50% ballot turnout threshold repeal will be subject to commencement on a date to be set in secondary legislation.

Turning to political fund ballots, new clause 40 and associated amendments remove the requirement for unions to hold a ballot every 10 years on maintaining a political fund. Instead, unions will provide reminders about members’ right to opt out every 10 years, ensuring transparency without imposing costly and time-consuming ballots.

The Bill will bring together the various agencies and enforcement bodies that enforce employment rights in the new Fair Work Agency, so that where employers are not doing what is right, a simplified and strengthened enforcement system will protect workers and ensure justice in the workplace. The Fair Work Agency needs the right tools to do the job. A series of amendments form a package that will give the Fair Work Agency the tools that it needs to hold all employers to account more effectively. That is fair for workers and businesses.

The Government are moving amendments to introduce new powers that are key to the Fair Work Agency’s core enforcement role. New clauses 44 to 56 create a civil penalty regime. Under the regime, enforcement officers will be able to issue notices of underpayment, and impose a penalty on employers who have underpaid individuals, in breach of statutory pay rights that are within the remit of the Fair Work Agency. As a result, the agency may be able to help workers get the money they are owed more quickly than if they had to go through an employment tribunal. Where proceedings before the tribunal are necessary, we want the Fair Work Agency to be able to support individuals and ensure that the tribunal’s time is used as effectively as possible. New clause 57 does that by enabling the agency to bring proceedings before the employment tribunal if individuals are unwilling or unable to. Under clause 58, the agency can also offer advice and assistance to individuals bringing employment-related cases before the courts or tribunals.

The Government are also moving amendments to upgrade the powers that the Fair Work Agency will need to tackle labour abuse effectively. The Bill Committee heard from stakeholders, including Eleanor Lyons, the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, about bad practices in the social care sector. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority is prevented from investigating many cases because they do not meet the modern slavery threshold. The Fraud Act 2006 covers situations that amount to labour abuse but fall short of being modern slavery. Today we are bringing forward two amendments that will deliver the Government’s commitment to give the Fair Work Agency the strong powers that it needs to tackle labour exploitation. We will enable Fair Work Agency enforcement officers to use their powers to investigate such cases, helping the agency to protect the most vulnerable in the workforce. We will also give enforcement officers the ability to issue special warnings following arrests. In practice, that means telling suspects that if they refuse to answer questions about certain items or their whereabouts, that could be used against them in court.

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

Only 21 employers have been prosecuted for national minimum wage violations since 2007. The measures that the Minister is bringing forward will improve enforcement. He touched on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but he did not address the points made in the debate yesterday. Will he use this opportunity to say more about the Government’s intention to update the Modern Slavery Act?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will start with my declaration of interests, as a former member of the Confederation of British Industry and a current member of the trade union Unison.

I will try to introduce a few points of consensus to the debate. I am old enough to remember when Conservative Members such as the former Member for Harlow were writing pamphlets for think-tanks such as Demos with titles like “Stop the union-bashing; why conservatives should embrace the trade union movement”. Of course, that was an echo of something that Harold Macmillan famously used to say in the 1950s: “We used to think that we could not have a modern industrial society without trade unions. I still think that.”

I think we would all benefit from a little acknowledgment that industrial relations in this country have not been in a good place. In 2023 more days were lost to strikes than at any point in the past 30 years, and the Office for National Statistics calculated at the back end of 2022 that 2.5 million days had been lost to strike action. That is not a record that any one of us in this House should be proud of. It is incumbent on all of us to modernise industrial relations in this country, so that we are not divided in the workplace in this way.

As such, I welcome the measures in this Bill. I hope that the Minister will seize the moment—not only the fact that we have the Bill, but the advent of an industrial strategy that will introduce governance arrangements that get businesses and unions around the table to talk about economic growth in our country. That is a big opportunity; it is a big moment in which we can bring our country together around a modern industrial strategy. I hope that once the Minister has got this Bill done and has had a little bit of a rest—maybe gone on holiday for a bit—he will think about how the Government will then publish a modern industrial strategy for the future, backed by the restoration of some of the data that we used to have in this country, such as the workplace employee survey. We had that until about 2012, when it was stopped. We need to be more thoughtful about harmony in the workplace, because that is in the interests of the constituents we serve.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

The right hon. Member used the term “modernising industrial relations”, which sounds a little like a euphemism. Taking him at his word, however, is he not therefore surprised that the pay rises that have been given to doctors, train drivers and a number of other unions since this Government came in have not been accompanied by any requirement for increased productivity? If we are to have modernised industrial relations, surely the increased pay that unions want should be combined with the productivity gains that this country needs.

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Member will no doubt have heard the remarks made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the weekend. I suspect that the hon. Member, like every Member of this House, will see some pretty radical steps taken in the comprehensive spending review to improve the efficiency of the civil service. Of course, the civil service grew very significantly in the years after covid, and now it has to be reinvented for new times. I am confident that those productivity gains will come.

My second point was to draw the House’s attention to some of the evidence taken by our Select Committee. That evidence is contained in our report, which I commend to all hon. Members. What struck me about the evidence we heard from the most productive firms in the country, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, was that those are world-beating companies—some of the most productive companies in our country—and what characterises the workplace arrangements of all of those companies is that they have very long-standing, robust and deep partnerships with good trade unions. Those trade unions help make decisions, help de-conflict things and help businesses thrive and succeed. That is why stronger collective rights are important.

We also took evidence from companies where, I am afraid to say, there was not that harmony, such as Amazon. It has had to call ambulances to its warehouses 1,400 times in just five years. We on the Committee received whistleblower evidence from workers who were literally having to urinate into bottles because they did not dare take time out from their tasks to go to the bathroom and back. We heard all kinds of whistleblower complaints about injuries being sustained, and pay is rising much more slowly than sales.

When we had executives from that company in front of us, they could not—or would not—tell the Committee why strike action had been taken by workers in their firm. If a company executive cannot explain to a Select Committee of this House why so many of their workers are on strike, that is not a story of harmony or a recipe for success. That is why the measures that the Minister has brought forward in this Bill to improve the opportunities for trade unions to organise—in a way that was recommended by the former Member for Harlow, actually—are a good thing.

The Minister has gone some way in recognising recommendations made by our Committee, such as improving the window in which complaints can be heard beyond 24 hours, bringing in template access agreements and strengthening the role of the Central Arbitration Committee in dispute resolution. There is just one further step that I suggest, which is the subject of amendment 282. We suggest that access rights for trade unions should include digital access rights, because in the modern workplace, of which Amazon is a case in point, there simply is not an opportunity for workers to get information about the opportunities to join a trade union and make a fair choice one way or the other in the way that there could be in the modern economy.

My final point is about enforcement. The first factory Act passed by this House was the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802. It was celebrated in parliamentary history as an Act that failed because there was no enforcement attached to it. Enforcement of this Bill is essential if it is to succeed, but labour market enforcement today is much too weak. Just 21 employers have been prosecuted for minimum wage enforcement since 2007, despite the fact that we all know that abuses of this sort are taking place in our constituencies.

Spending on labour market enforcement has been flat since 2014, and we are well off the International Labour Organisation target of one labour market inspector for every 10,000 workers. New clause 82 in my name would require the Secretary of State to set out a road map for reaching that ILO target, for ensuring there is greater use of penalties where appropriate, and for much stronger partnerships between the Home Office, the police and the Fair Work Agency. We cannot have a situation in this country where the best of British firms are being undercut by the worst labour market practice.

In conclusion, I welcome this Bill. Some of the amendments that have been tabled would improve it, but ultimately we have to remember that if we want to create a genuinely pro-business, pro-worker economy, the measures in this Bill are long overdue.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

“Chapter 4A

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

The answer is in the Department’s press release, which cites Simon Deakin, professor of law at the University of Cambridge, no less. He has said:

“The consensus on the economic impacts of labour laws is that, far from being harmful to growth, they contribute positively to productivity. Labour laws also help ensure that growth is more inclusive and that gains are distributed more widely across society.”

I am sure that the right hon. Member wants to see that happen.

Amendments in relation to the rights in clauses 2 and 3 to reasonable notice of shifts and payment for short-notice cancellation, curtailment and movement of shifts will ensure that the rights work appropriately for workers whose contracts specify the timing of at least some of their shifts; provide that a worker is entitled to a payment from their employer only for a shift cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice if they reasonably believed they would be needed to work the shift; and allow employers to disclose personal information about a worker in notices of exceptions, where appropriate and in accordance with data protection law, and ensure that the usual burden of proof applies where it is alleged that such a notice is untrue.

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

The Minister will have seen the appalling evidence that the Business and Trade Committee took from McDonald’s, where the BBC investigation exposed allegations from hundreds of young workers who were suffering harassment, and even allegations from one worker of managers soliciting them for sex in return for scheduling shifts. The tightening up that he proposes is very welcome. When does he think he will set out the detail—[Interruption.] When will he set out the detail of, for example, the period of time that someone must work before being offered a zero-hours contract?

[Justin Madders]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for his question. We are aiming to work on this once the Bill has passed this stage, and consultation will take place in due course. I have to say that the chuntering from those on the Conservative Benches really shows how they fail to appreciate the power imbalance that there is in some workplaces and the exploitation and harassment that arise from that.

Our measures on guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts, and payment for short-notice cancellations seek to ensure that workers, often in fragmented sectors with little voice of their own, do not bear all the risk of uncertain demand. However, we recognise that there are cases where unions and employers, working together, may want to agree more tailored rights than the provisions allow, which would benefit both the workers and the employer given the unique context of that particular sector. Unions, businesses and trade associations have made a case for that flexibility in their meetings with us. We want to allow for that, while also providing a baseline for sectors where unionisation is uncommon or agreement cannot be reached. New clause 33 and associated amendments will allow employers and unions to collectively agree to modify or opt out of the zero-hours contract measures.

Like the other workers covered by this part of the Bill, agency workers deserve a baseline of security and access to a contract that reflects their regular hours. Many agency workers have a preference for guaranteed hours, according to survey evidence. We know that 55% of agency workers requested a permanent contract with their hirer between January 2019 and September 2020, according to the Department for Business and Trade’s agency worker survey. We are keen not to see a wholesale shift from directly engaged workers to agency workers as a way for employers to avoid the zero-hours provisions in the Bill.

New clause 32, new schedule 1 and associated amendments will narrow the broad power currently in the Bill and instead include provisions for similar rights to be extended to agency workers. Hirers, agencies and agency workers can then be clear where responsibilities will rest in relation to the new rights. These amendments reflect the call for clarity from stakeholders in their response to the Government’s public consultation on this issue. Given the important role that agency work plays in businesses and public services, we recognise the need to work with the recruitment sector, employers and trade unions to design detailed provisions for regulations that work—that is, regulations that achieve the policy objective of extending rights to agency workers without unintended consequences for employment agencies and hirers—and we will work on that in due course.

The Government have also tabled amendments in relation to dismissal and redundancy practices. This Bill will help employers to raise standards in relation to these practices, so that the vast majority of businesses that do the right thing by their workers will no longer be undercut by those with low standards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. Before I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee, I want to make clear that I will then call Steve Darling, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson. Immediately after Mr Darling, there will be a six-minute time limit. I call Liam Byrne.

[Liam Byrne]

Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to be very brief—I will just make three quick points—and will do my best to salvage a degree of consensus from the conflict that has characterised this debate at its outset.

If there are a couple of things that unite us across this House, it is that we all believe in fair play, and we all believe in an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. However, the reality is that millions of workers in this country are simply not earning their fair share of the wealth that we produce together. If labour income were the same share of national income as it was back in the 1950s, something like £12,000 a year would go into the pay packets of every single one of the 33.8 million workers in this country. As such, following a decade that has seen 4 million people trapped in low pay and during which we have had a living standards crisis, it behoves each and every one of us to think more creatively and constructively about how we support workers in this economy to earn a good life for them and their family.

We on the Business and Trade Committee have the privilege of hearing from some of the best employers in the country, but we also have the duty of interrogating many firms that, frankly, have been letting down our country. I will highlight three examples, in order to illustrate some of the amendments that have been tabled in my name and in the names of other right hon. and hon. Members. They are not amendments that I wish to press to a Division; they are probing amendments, on which I think the Minister needs to provide the House with some answers.

I will start with McDonald’s, which I referenced in an earlier intervention. It is one of the most significant employers in our country, employing over 200,000 people. Some 90% of McDonald’s workers are on zero-hours contracts. On the day of our hearing, a BBC investigation by Zoe Conway, its employment correspondent, exposed the reality that hundreds of McDonald’s employees were contacting the BBC and the EHRC with allegations of the most appalling harassment. We heard about the case of a 17-year-old McDonald’s worker who alleged that she was being asked for sex in return for a manager giving her the shifts that she wanted—how on earth can that be acceptable in today’s economy? Yet when we put that point to the chief executive of McDonald’s and asked, “Do you think that the imbalance of power that has flourished in McDonald’s because 90% of your workers are on zero-hours contracts has anything to do with this litany of abuse, or with 700 workers contacting their solicitors to bring a case against McDonald’s?”, the answer was no. It was an absolutely extraordinary denial of reality.

We then heard from Evri, which, as many people know, is one of the most significant courier firms in the country, employing tens of thousands of people. Mr Hugo Martin came before our Committee to give evidence, and told us that all at Evri was sweetness and light. However, the Committee has now received hundreds upon hundreds of complaints from whistleblowers, alleging that they are being cheated and undercut, most recently through the rate cuts, the packet racket which is still persisting, health and safety abuses at work, intimidation, bullying and harassment. They are being told repeatedly that their shifts will be cut, or that they will be out of the door if they do not work six days a week. Our constituents are experiencing this completely unacceptable behaviour.

I must be careful about scope at this point, Madam Deputy Speaker, but we also heard from the company Shein, which could not even tell us whether the products that it made contained cotton from China. We were simply trying to understand whether workers in our country were being undercut by an abuse of modern slavery practices abroad.

I say to the House that although we may have our differences on the Bill, we must accept the reality that millions of people in this country—millions of the people we are sent here to represent—are being treated in a way that should be unacceptable in a 21st-century economy. What the good employers told the Committee, time and again, was that they supported the spirit of the Bill, although of course they had concerns about the detail, and it is good that the Minister is listening. What they did not want to see persist was the situation that they feared, in which the good firms were being undercut by the bad. We must have a level playing field in this country: that will be a necessity if we are to win a global race to the top.

My amendments 275 to 277 suggest alterations to the zero hours regime that the Minister has set out. I think we should abolish the definition of “low hours” in contracts. I accept the evidence that was given to us by Paddy Lillis, the brilliant general secretary of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, that retaining the definition creates a risk of loopholes that will be exploited by bad employers.

Amendments 278 to 281, which might be termed the McDonald’s amendments, urge the Secretary of State to put on the face of the Bill a definition of “reasonable notice” in relation to the moving of shifts and the compensation that should be entailed in the event of unreasonable shift movements. We need to ensure that our workers, particularly young workers, are never again subjected to the kind of abuse that we have seen unfold at McDonald’s. Those days must be consigned to the past.

New clause 80, which might be described as the Evri amendment, creates an obligation and duty for the Secretary of State to bring to the House, within six months of the Bill’s coming into the force, the final version of a review of the single status of workers. We heard compelling evidence from the director of Labour Market Enforcement, who told us that the Government, Ministers and civil servants could consult

“until the cows come home”.

We could put off the consultation about the different definitions of “worker” for ever and a day, when what we need to do is end the kind of abuse that we see at Evri now. Ensuring that these loopholes are closed so that bogus self-employment is no longer a loophole through which bad employers abuse honest workers: I should like to see the Minister step up to that requirement.

New clause 81, which we might call the Shein amendment, requires the Government to update the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and section 54 in particular, to ensure that the employment rights granted in the Bill are not undermined by companies operating in this country that are abusing this legislation. At the time the Modern Slavery Act was world-leading legislation, but we heard clear evidence from companies such as Tesco that this country risked becoming a “dumping ground” for bad products produced by workers exploited abroad. We cannot allow this country, which led the abolition of slavery, to be a country in which we have second-class protections against modern slavery in the 21st century, and I should therefore welcome a commitment from the Minister on when the Act will be updated.

We welcome some of the Government amendments, particularly the enhanced protection for agency workers and the action on umbrella companies. Both are recommendations in the Committee’s excellent report, which I commend to all Members. I hope that, as a result of this debate, we can salvage some consensus. The Bill will go through today, and this will be the biggest overhaul of employment rights in the country. We must ensure that it lasts for the future, and the more we can do to bring a cross-party consensus around that simple idea that all workers—all constituents—in the country should have the right, the power and the freedom to earn a good life for themselves and their families, and the sooner we can do it, the better.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Department for Business and Trade

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

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

I put on the record my profound thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate, and to the Liaison Committee for some of the arrangements that have made today possible.

The Prime Minister has underlined time and again that growth is the No. 1 priority, so I am grateful that the House has agreed to put the Department for growth, together with its accounts, under the microscope today. In readiness for today’s debate, my Business and Trade Committee has taken the precaution of talking to hundreds and hundreds of businesses up and down the country, to trade unionists and to consumer groups, and has laid in the House a report on what we heard from literally thousands of voices. In a way, that is what these accounts and estimates, and the Minister, should be judged against when we consider this matter today.

Let me make three points quickly to get the debate started. I start with the point that struck me hardest when we were listening to business voices up and down the country: for all that divides us in this House, there is a terrific unity of purpose in the business community in this country—unity not only about the possibility of becoming the fastest-growing economy in the G7, but on what we need to do to hit that target. The overwhelming majority of businesses want Ministers do more to grow the markets into which they sell. They want to see an ambitious reset with the European Union, fast-tracking of the free trade deals with Switzerland, the Gulf Co-operation Council and India, and for us to do absolutely everything possible to avoid the peril of tariffs from the United States. However, they also want to see a complete transformation in the way in which we use public procurement to support businesses in this country. Minister after Minister has said from the Dispatch Box, “We will do more to buy British.” Well, it is time to actually deliver on that promise.

Secondly, businesses want the right workers for the roles that are available. Pretty much everywhere we went, the challenges of getting the right workforce were the No. 1 priority of the people we heard from. It is true that we heard a lot of concern about the rising costs of business. People are worried about the impact of the Employment Rights Bill, the national minimum wage changes and the national insurance increases all coming at the same time. However, I heard businesses say that they could live with that if they saw the rapid development and publication of a growth plan, along with the comprehensive spending review. I regret the fact that that has kind of moved sideways, because given what this extremely hard-working Minister is doing with the Employment Rights Bill, it would have been in his political interests for his colleagues to table that industrial strategy and growth plan sooner rather than later.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I appreciate a fellow Harlowian giving way to me. Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of employment is about skills, and one way the Government can support businesses is by ensuring that young people have the skills to succeed in business and in all workplaces?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is 100% right. We heard businesses say to us loud and clear that they wanted radical and bold changes in the way that the skills levy was organised. The Government have moved to introduce flexibilities, and business want them to go further, faster.

We also heard business say that there is a good environment when it comes to start-up finance, but a terrible environment in this country for scale-up finance—I will return to that in a moment. People want much stronger relationships between universities and businesses, and we in this country still do not have something like the Fraunhofer institutes in Germany, which have as their slogan that they are the research and development departments for the Mittelstand. Where those knowledge transfer partnerships work, they are good, but they need to be far more prevalent. Finally, we heard businesses say loud and clear that the planning system needs a complete overhaul. The infrastructure in this country is terrible, and we must drive down energy prices; right now, many businesses are being priced out of doing business because our energy prices are sky high.

For all our differences, there are important points on which we can agree. We on the Business and Trade Committee will continue to judge Ministers against many of the things that we heard from the business community as we travelled up and down the country, and I will flag up two or three points that we want to zero in on.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My right hon. Friend’s point about energy costs and opening markets chimes with everything that the ceramics industry is telling me about what it is facing. He is right about the need for growth, and as well as being a wonderful Chair of the Committee, he is a doughty campaigner against inequality and inequity. I am sure that he will agree that we need to ensure that the benefits of growth are felt in every community, be it in Birmingham or Stoke-on-Trent, and particularly in those communities that sadly, under the last Government, did not get the benefits they deserved.

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is an extraordinary champion for the city he represents, and for the industry that has made that city great over the centuries. He is absolutely right: when the industrial strategy is published, we must understand whether it is driving growth and better wages, and whether it is transforming people’s ability to earn a good life in every corner of the country. We cannot again have the situation that we had over the past 10 to 15 years, where 70% of the growth and wealth in our country has been concentrated in London and the south-east. We must genuinely level-up this country and pull together a cross-party consensus, to the extent that we can, on the changes that are needed. Why? Because if we can get that cross-party consensus, we can redesign the economic institutions in our country in a way that is sustainable for the long term.

I wish to flag three issues that pose questions to the Minister who is asking us to agree the estimates today. First, there is a real worry in the small business community about whether it will be adequately supported by some of the changes that the Minister is helping to drive through. We all know that what has bedevilled our economy for a long time is a long tail of underproductive, often smaller, firms. If we are to raise wages, raise the rate of economic growth, and become the fastest growing economy in the G7, we must transform the productivity rate of a lot of our small firms. How will new technology be diffused through supply chains? How can we ensure that small and medium-sized businesses have support in deploying new technology that could change their business?

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his chairmanship of the Committee. Given the Prime Minister’s recent announcements, and our increased defence spending, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to support small and medium-sized defence enterprises?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is a brilliant member of the Committee, and she makes a brilliant point. We know that we must come to a strategic culture and defence mindset in this country, so that our industry can innovate as fast as the battlefield changes. We all know that there are defence manufacturers—drone manufacturers in particular—that struggle to get the working capital that they need to fund and grow their businesses, month by month. We will have to change the way that we support smaller businesses, and that means transforming access to finance.

Time and again, the Committee has heard about business leaders being brought in once a firm gets to a particular size, and it being snapped up and shipped out, in particular to the United States, because we do not seem able to supply equity finance or debt finance of between £50 million and £500 million. We have to think anew about how we ensure that the British Business Bank, the National Wealth Fund, the private sector and the proposed changes to pension funds work together to completely revolutionise access to finance for businesses in this market. In the estimates, there looks to be a welcome £414 million increase in funding for the British Business Bank. Although it is hard to decode the accounts, it looks like about £127 million of that is provision for bad debt. Will the Minister clarify that? The Committee will continue to press for us to completely transform access to finance, including through an inquiry that we will launch later in the year.

The final fear that I wanted to flag, which is coming through loud and clear to Committee members, is that the Government just do not work for business in the way that they need to. We have heard over and over again about one Department doing something that completely undermines the work of another, or one regulator doing something that completely undermines what a different Department or regulator is trying to do. We do not yet see anything about how we can knit Government together in a wholly new way in either the Green Paper on industrial strategy, or any of the commentary about the estimates. In the good old days, when I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, what we were beginning to test—

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

There was no money left.

[Liam Byrne]

Well, there was an awful lot more money than there is now. We certainly did not have a debt interest bill of £100 billion a year, which is what the bill has risen to, and why so many difficult choices are having to be taken. At that time, we were beginning genuinely to consider how to create single, pooled funds that came together from different Government Departments. A challenge for us in the House is that we have to reflect on the fact that we reinforce silos in Government, and do not reinforce joined-up Government. This estimates debate is a good example: we are considering the accounts of the Department for Business and Trade, but in an ideal world we would also have here Ministers from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a couple of other Departments, and we would ask those Ministers how they were working together to deliver a joined-up offer to our business community, because businesses have not got time to muck around and deal with all the red tape; they are trying to build a business.

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way—he has given way a few times already. When I speak to businesses in my constituency, I pick up that young people who want to remain in the most rural communities simply cannot get to the jobs that they want to get to, and that businesses in rural settings have real trouble accessing a lot of the help that he refers to. Does he believe that one of the particular sins of the past 14 years is that the business climate has been unfriendly to business, and particularly unfriendly to small rural businesses?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right, but we have to look to the future. We have to understand how Government will connect together and ensure a transformation in regional transport and connectivity. So many parts of our country are bedevilled by a lack of internet connectivity, so they cannot access the kind of applications that might give them access to artificial intelligence, for example, or to international markets. They cannot get access to the internet full stop. We have to think boldly about how we join Government together in a revolutionary way.

Finally, I wanted to mention the Post Office. When we look at these accounts in the round, we see a 44.8% increase in the amount allocated, taking the figure up to nearly £6 billion a year. That is partly driven by £444 million for the British Business Bank, but it is overwhelmingly driven by about £1.3 billion extra for the Post Office. The good step has been taken of increasing funding for the Post Office compensation scheme, but that money is still not going out the door fast enough. I accept that that has improved, but the Committee will return with some tougher questions for Ministers in the light of their response to our recent report.

My final point, which I urge on both the Minister and his colleagues in the Treasury, is that we cannot transform the Post Office into the organisation it could be by drip-drip-dripping the funding for modernisation through to it. The Post Office needs a proper five-year to 10-year funding plan so that it can genuinely become the organisation that it could be. When these accounts were published by the Department, they were qualified and late. I know that civil servants have to work hard to iron out a number of problems, and we have asked the permanent secretary for monthly updates on how he is doing in bringing the kind of clarity that this House should expect. I thank the civil servants and the Department for the extraordinary work that they do; they are absolutely mission-critical to the hopes of so many of us in this country and to our becoming the fastest-growing economy in the G7.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I will have to put Back-Bench Members on an immediate five-minute time limit, which may well go down in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

This has been an excellent debate. Let me once again say that I am incredibly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that we could spend time together debating the issues at stake. We heard some brilliant speeches from across the House. In a way, my ambitions for the debate were satisfied, because I wanted to ensure, after our report on the priorities of the business community, and having secured this debate, that we actually heard business voices in this Chamber, and in the corridors of power. We do not give enough time, space or attention to business voices, and to hearing about the challenges in boardrooms and on shop floors. If we did that a little bit more, it would surprise us how much consensus there is in this country about the big moves forward.

This is for the economic historians among us. We have to recognise that we are at one of those moments in history that occur every 30 to 40 years. We have a series of geopolitical shocks, and then we have a big, agonising debate about whether the country is in decline, whether it is all going to hell, or whether there is a different way forward, in which the country rallies together and chooses to build a different kind of sovereign capability. Inevitably, that has consequences for the kind of state that emerges. We went through this in the 1980s, the 1940s and after world war one. We have to conduct that argument now at a moment when it is clear that the United States—that great power, that great ally of ours, that built the multilateral system beginning in 1944 in San Francisco and then through to the end of world war two—in the words of Joseph Chamberlain, is a weary titan no longer able to grasp the orb of its fate. We have to recognise that for those of us who support that multilateral rules-based order, we will have to step up. That will be difficult and expensive, but it will bring new opportunities for business growth and, crucially, for our constituents to earn a good living.

Harland & Wolff

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

Congratulations to the Secretary of State. This is excellent news for the people of Appledore and of Northern Ireland and for workers across the Harland & Wolff supply chain. He might want to confirm that the peril of providing a Government guarantee was the possibility of entailing a huge payout to a US-based hedge fund, which was the largest creditor for Harland & Wolff. What is happening to the contract value for the FSS deal? It was priced at about £1.6 billion. Has that contract value now gone up? Crucially, what does the Secretary of State envisage for Harland & Wolff after that enormous contract is safely and soundly delivered?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank the Select Committee Chair for his kind words. I am delighted that we have been able to secure this future for Harland & Wolff. His assessment is right that the largest creditor to Harland & Wolff when we took office was Riverstone, a significant US hedge fund. He is right to say that had we gone ahead with that Government guarantee or loan, there would likely have been no real return to the taxpayer—no guarantee of jobs, shipyards or ships being built. That money would have gone to the creditors. Actually, in the commercial market-based solution that we have been able to broker, all creditors have behaved responsibly, but, understandably, if anyone thinks the Government will come along and give them free money, they will hold out for that option. That was why it was so important to make that decision early on to secure this far better outcome.

On the specific question, and I should have directed my answer to the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), there is no change to the UK-based content of the contract. As I said in the statement, there have been some changes on commercial terms, although they are relatively minor based on the overall value of the contract.

On the future, I can tell the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) that the deal we have brokered guarantees not only all four yards, but the jobs in the Belfast yard for three years and jobs in the three other yards for two years. We therefore have a chance not just for new investment coming into those yards, but for the long-term future to be secured for a pipeline of work and energy and defence contracts, which is a vibrant and successful opportunity for the future.

Post Office Redress and Funding

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I welcome much of the Minister’s statement today. Redress is being paid out faster, but the truth is that 70% of the budget for redress has still not been paid. The Select Committee will be supplying its advice on how we make that faster in a report that we will release on new year’s day. The Minister has set out details for the House about the Capture victims who have been identified. Does he believe that many of those victims were convicted? If they were, would it not be right to have those convictions automatically overturned, in the way that we have done for other victims of this appalling scandal?

Royal Mail Takeover

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I welcome the statement made by this hard-working Minister. I take it from the announcement that Mr Křetínský has cleared the investment screening tests that the Cabinet Office is responsible for. It would be useful to have that confirmed.

Let me press my hon. Friend about the universal service obligation. Is it his intention that beyond the initial five years he will seek six-day delivery and a universal service obligation in place for Royal Mail for as long as His Majesty’s Government retain the golden share?

[Justin Madders]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his comments. The golden share is to deal with tax residency and headquarters being domiciled in the UK. Obviously, there will be discussions about the universal service obligation. We know that this is a fast-moving market, and that will be for determination by Ofcom some time next year.