Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Dame Maria Miller, and congratulate her on her damehood.

[Dame Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to improve workers’ rights.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

Through unprecedented increases to the national living wage and a range of legislative measures introduced since 2019, we are building a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy that delivers on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work.

[Dame Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for his answer, but a great deal of his really good work could be for naught if we still allow employers to use confidentiality clauses to cover up mismanagement and discrimination in the workplace. Ministers have acknowledged this as a problem, and the Solicitors Regulation Authority’s warning notice, issued four years ago, is not universally understood. When will the Minister act, and put into law measures to outlaw the use of these dreadful clauses?

[Paul Scully]

I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend on being honoured as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire—it is well deserved. The Government consulted on the misuse of confidentiality clauses between workers and their employees back in 2019. In response, we committed to legislating to ensure that employers are not able to intimidate victims into silence. We remain committed to doing so, and I will continue to work with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on ensuring that we introduce this necessary legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.

Fairness at Work and Power in Communities

Maria Miller Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to the future of work in a second. The hon. Gentleman talks about zero-hours contracts, but we cannot just throw that term around as if it described a single exploitative work product. I have talked about how we have a dynamic and flexible labour market. Many, many people who are on zero-hours contracts like to be on them. There is still exploitation and there are still bad bosses out there, which is why I say that where there are bad practices we will act, but it is important that where businesses are playing fairly we salute them and support them in creating jobs and boosting our economy. We will all become poorer if the public lose faith in Britain’s businesses.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I know that he is committed to improvements to the labour market; we have had many conversations about the subject. He talks about acting when bad bosses are not doing the right things. Are the Government still planning to act to outlaw the misuse of non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality agreements, which are too often used to cover up wrongdoing in the workplace? The Government have undertaken to do so.

[Paul Scully]

We have had some really good conversations about this. As I say, where we have said that we will act, we will. My right hon. Friend has talked often in this Chamber and in the Women and Equalities Committee, when she was its Chair, about pregnancy discrimination, which goes back to a point that I responded to earlier about keeping women in the workplace. Women should not have to suffer for taking career breaks. We need to make sure that investment in women in the workplace is not wasted, because frankly it makes no business sense to act badly in that area.

There is no growth without enterprise. The Queen’s Speech sets out exactly how we will continue to boost economic growth across the country to address the cost of living and help to create the conditions for more people to have high-wage, high-skill jobs. The energy security Bill will not only accelerate our transition to more secure, more affordable and cleaner home-grown energy supplies, but encourage the creation of tens of thousands of high-skill jobs across the country. The audit reform Bill will reduce the unfair impact of sudden corporate collapses on workers, pensioners and suppliers, and will help businesses to grow by reinforcing the UK’s reputation as a great place to do business and invest.

The digital markets, competition and consumer Bill will protect consumers’ hard-earned cash from scams and rip-offs and will help them to get better deals, promoting more competition in UK markets so that consumers have confidence in markets and businesses competing on a level playing field. The economic crime and corporate transparency Bill will strengthen the UK’s reputation as a place where legitimate businesses can thrive, while ensuring that dirty money has no place to hide. All these reforms will improve our business environment and increase opportunities for the hard-working people of the UK to find jobs that suit them and their personal circumstances and that treat them fairly.

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[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

This Queen’s Speech is all about driving growth in our economy. Although the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) may have disagreed with that in her speech, that is what is best for working people throughout the United Kingdom, because a strong economy will give us secure jobs, good wages and the most overall certainty for the future. I suggest to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), who spoke for the Scottish National party, that when it comes to wellbeing, certainty is incredibly important as well, and having a strong economy, as the Government are focused on, is at the heart of that.

For too long, the economic powerhouse of the UK has been focused on an extremely small part of our country: the south-east of England and London. The Government’s levelling-up mission directly addresses that problem. Today, we have seen the announcement of faster recovery in the UK compared with the US, Germany and Italy, but we have to make sure that that recovery spreads beyond a very small part of our geography, because the cost of living rises that have been referred to in many speeches today affect everyone. The Government need to make sure that when it comes to solutions, they reach everybody.

I suggest that the Government need to pay great heed to the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), because he is right that one lever they can pull in their response to the challenges that we face is to make changes around inflation. It is very much within the Government’s gift to make those changes to bring inflation more under control. When we look at the different levels of inflation in countries around Europe, we can see how the fiscal responses that Governments make have driven those changes inherently.

The cost of living problems that we are struggling with need to come first and foremost in the eyes of every Minister, regardless of Department. The flagship Bill of the Queen’s Speech, the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, is fundamental to Conservative values. It is all about giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of where they live or the geography they are in. Spreading the prosperity of our country more evenly is crucial to our future.

That is not a new challenge. I gently say to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), that regional policy has a chequered history in this country and we need to ensure that, as the Bill sets out, we have regular monitoring of the effectiveness of levelling up. My constituency of Basingstoke has been named as one of the top 10 most levelled-up boroughs in the country, which is because we have excellent local government in our borough and county councils and we have had significant investment in our local infrastructure. More than £80 million has been invested in our roads, our school places have been expanded and we have high levels of employment.

I want more places in our country to be like my constituency, and I hope the Bill will help that to happen. That comes not just from a positive sense of wanting to support other constituencies around the country, but from self-interest, because we cannot continue to overly focus the growth of our country on such a small geography. Basingstoke built four times as many houses in the last 40 years than other communities across our country, and that cannot continue. We are being asked to build another almost 20,000 houses in our next local plan, because the algorithms punish people who have been successful in building new homes, which cannot be right.

We need to shift growth. If the Government are really going to achieve levelling up, they cannot allow the south-east to continue to be a hothouse of house building. They must make a change ,and they need to direct planning inspectors to look more closely at the challenges that over-developed areas such as mine face so that we can deal with issues such as community cohesion, which we simply do not have time to tackle when we are building so many houses. The Government must appreciate that levelling up is far more than geography. It is fundamental to Conservative values that we give everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of where they are born, their parents, their gender or their disability.

I gently point out to the Minister that conversations around the employment Bill cannot be dismissed. There are a number of issues that the Government, through their own research, understand to have been areas of important labour market failure in this country, such as maternity discrimination; the misuse of non-disclosure agreements; the importance of flexible working in increasing our productivity; and unpaid carer’s leave, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) has spoken about and is central to our adult social care policies, and parental leave. All those things need to be addressed, and the Government must set out how they will be dealt with in the absence of an employment Bill.

This debate is also about stronger communities. One way to strengthen our communities is by strengthening our education system. I am delighted that there is a Schools Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I welcome the focus on raising standards and on specific things such as home-school children being on a register so that we know that every child in this country is being cared for correctly.

I also suggest that the Government look again at the way in which relationship and sex education is being rolled out. It became everybody’s concern when, a year or so ago, Everyone’s Invited was a front-page news item; we were all concerned about the culture of sexual abuse among school-age children. I found it curious that the Government asked Ofsted, which is responsible for the roll-out of relationship and sex education in our schools, to investigate that problem, because it should have been monitoring that roll-out, which, according to many, has been much slower and less successful than it should have been. Despite the provision of such education having been law for three years, just one in three young people in our country have learned about how to tell whether a relationship is healthy, including online, and just one in three have learned about the harm of pornography. The Minister needs to consider how we review Ofsted’s effectiveness in monitoring the roll-out and whether others should be involved in that, given the current failures in that direction.

I am delighted to see a draft victims Bill in the Queen’s Speech. I particularly hope that recognition will be given to the way that the Online Safety Bill will increase the number of victims in the justice system or just outside it. Given that seismic increase, we need to look for ways to ensure that there is funding, perhaps on a “polluter pays” principle from social media companies, to pay for the additional support that is needed.

I welcome the modern slavery Bill, which addresses a weakness in the current system and proposes to increase the accountability of companies and organisations driving modern slavery out of supply chains. That was a key recommendation of the report that the Government commissioned from me, Lord Frank Field and Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss when we reviewed the Modern Slavery Act 2015 three years ago.

In conclusion, I very much welcome the Queen’s Speech and the Government’s focus on levelling up, but we must ensure that we do not limit our ambitions and that we focus on levelling up around the geography of the United Kingdom. We will level up Britain and Northern Ireland if we treat everyone fairly and give everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their gender, their disability, their parentage or whether they are parents or single people. I welcome the measures in the Queen’s Speech but the Government need to carefully consider how they can deliver on the important changes in the workplace that the Minister and I have spoken about for many months.

Parental Leave and Pay

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Miller. I congratulate the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing this important debate and on her comprehensive introduction. It is clear that she is a passionate advocate for the many people who want to see great improvements in parental leave and pay.

As the hon. Lady and other Members outlined, there are a number of different types of parental leave, but I will focus on shared parental leave. It was originally designed to encourage more fathers to take leave after the birth of their child by allowing new parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of maternity pay in the first year after the child is born. As we have heard in the debate, from our constituents and from leading employment and equality groups, however, shared parental leave just does not do what it says on the tin. The scheme is not working for parents, and take-up rates remain woeful. In February last year, data provided by the Minister in a written answer to a parliamentary question indicated that take-up in 2019-20—the scheme’s fifth year—was just 3.6%, which is far short of the Government’s 25% target. That is simply not good enough.

We now know that things got worse during the pandemic: the use of shared parental leave fell for the first time since the scheme was launched. A study by EMW Law found that just 11,200 couples applied to use the scheme in 2020-21, which was a 17% fall on the previous year, when a record 13,100 couples applied. EMW’s analysis found that 598,000 women took maternity leave in the last year, indicating that just 2% of women who took some form of parental leave actually used shared leave. That is right—just 2%. That is a damning statistic. It is not surprising, therefore, that the UK is ranked only 34th out of 41 OECD countries for its family-friendly policies by UNICEF. It is also not surprising that leading groups such as Maternity Action, the Fawcett Society, the National Childbirth Trust, the Royal College of Midwives, the TUC and the Women’s Budget Group have all called on the Government to urgently rethink the scheme.

The Women’s Budget Group, an independent organisation that monitors the effect of Government policies on men and women, has called the scheme complicated and said that, because leave was shared, the onus on taking parental leave still fell more on women than men, because men tend to earn more and their salary would be harder to sacrifice at a time when families have great costs. Earlier this month, a Royal College of Midwives motion at the TUC women’s conference called for a shake-up in parental leave so that it works better for both parents.

Ros Bragg, the director of Maternity Action, a maternity rights charity, said:

“Shared parental leave was brought in six years ago now and it’s clear that it’s not working—take up is woeful. Our advice lines are full of parents who want to share parental leave, but confusion around the rules means that they are completely baffled. Add that to the low level of pay on offer and the system seems almost designed to put parents off sharing leave, rather than encourage it.”

The organisation is saying the scheme is not working because the shift to more equal parenting that it was supposed to promote is not happening. That does appear to be the case. We just have not seen the transformation in the take-up of parental leave by fathers that we would have hoped for. The scheme certainly needs reconsideration.

I will give the Minister and the Government a compliment—something that is rare for me—because they have spent millions of pounds on promoting the scheme. However, I am afraid that what we have heard is that it is too complicated and it is poorly understood by both employers and parents. The low rates of pay are a disincentive and workers do not qualify—for example those in agency work, on zero-hours contracts and, of course, the self-employed. We should be very clear that all those groups of workers deserve the same parental rights as everybody else.

When faced with all this evidence, it is hard to conclude that the Government are serious about employment rights and protections. They are not doing enough to address the real barriers in the way of shared parental leave. There was a Government consultation on high-level options for reforming family-related leave and pay, including a right to neonatal leave, pay for parents of premature or sick babies, and proposals to encourage transparency around flexible working and parental leave policies. That was launched back in July 2019, nearly three years ago, and we still have not seen the Government’s full response to it. They have only published a response to the proposals on neonatal leave and pay. The rest—we are told—will be reported on in due course.

As we have heard, the greatly heralded employment Bill is still to materialise. I am sure the Minister will tell us once again that it will appear when parliamentary time allows, which is a frustration to many. It is clear that the policies we need to support families are not good enough. They are not available to all workers, and they are not working sufficiently for those who are able to access the schemes. Parents and families deserve better, frankly. If the Government are keen to see the societal shift to equal parenting that we want to see, and if they want to tackle the gender pay gap, I urge them and the Minister to look at Labour’s Green Paper on a new deal for working people.

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, I should clarify that we are due to finish this session at 7.7 pm. I am sure the Minister will want to give the mover of the motion a couple of minutes at the end, if he is going to fill all that time.

Paid Miscarriage Leave

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered paid miscarriage leave.

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and I am grateful to the Speaker for allowing this debate to take place on International Women’s Day. It seems appropriate that we have a woman in the Chair, and I hope we have many more. I am grateful to the Members in attendance, and to those who have pledged their support for a Backbench business debate in coming weeks.

I thank Ruth Bender-Atik from the Miscarriage Association, as well as the organisations Sands, Tommy’s, Mumsnet and the civil service working group, as well as the many organisations that have provided briefings and endless advice. I also thank colleagues who have supported my many applications for debates on the matter, my early-day motions and my private Member’s Bill on miscarriage leave. I thank the 39,000 members of the public who have signed the paid miscarriage leave petition on 38 Degrees, and who have been in touch with their MP and bravely shared their personal story.

One pregnancy in four ends in miscarriage. That is not to say that one woman in four will have a miscarriage; one pregnancy in four will result in baby loss. Miscarriage it is often used as an umbrella term for a number of conditions. Miscarriage is the most common type of pregnancy loss, which is when a baby dies in utero during pregnancy. In the UK, miscarriage is defined as baby loss that occurs up to 23 weeks and six days into the pregnancy. The main causes of miscarriage are thought to be genetic, hormonal, infection, blood clotting problems and anatomical reasons, but it is important to say that there is never any logical reason for a miscarriage to occur. On most occasions, it is the most heartbreaking thing that can happen to a person, and no amount of rational reasoning will compensate for the loss that the person experiences.

The Miscarriage Association has highlighted that we should also consider ectopic and molar pregnancies, and it is important that they be included in this debate and considered when any policy changes are made on this issue. An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy that develops outside the womb, usually in one of the Fallopian tubes; it is one pregnancy in 80. It causes a dangerous situation whereby tubes may rupture, and it often requires immediate surgery.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member and to the way in which she is championing the issue, as well as to the passion with which she speaks. She talks about the number of pregnancies lost, which is a tragedy. For black and minority ethnic women, there is a 60% higher likelihood of losing a birth. Is that the same with miscarriage? The data does not seem quite as clear for BME women as it is on broader loss through stillbirth.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I congratulate the hon. Member and her partner on their fantastic news. It was a pleasure to meet her to discuss her private Member’s Bill on the subject that she has raised. We recognise that losing a baby at any stage is incredibly difficult, and we encourage employers to be compassionate. There is no statutory entitlement to leave for women who lose a baby before 24 completed weeks of pregnancy, but those who are unable to return to work may be entitled to statutory sick pay, and women are protected against workplace discrimination due to any pregnancy-related illness, including illness caused by miscarriage. That protection extends to two weeks after the end of the pregnancy.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Government have already taken important steps to stop the abuse of non-disclosure agreements in universities. Will my hon. Friend look at how he can take this forward in his Employment Bill by talking to organisations such as Can’t Buy My Silence, which are doing important work on ensuring that non-disclosure agreements are not misused in the workplace to cover up criminal allegations?

[Paul Scully]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her work in this and many other areas. I would happily meet her and that organisation to continue our conversation on NDAs.

Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this really important debate. As he said, it is important because this report was published back in 2017, because we must keep scrutiny strong on progress with employment and because there can be nothing more important to our country at the moment than having a strong economy. The role of workers within that is crucial.

The hon. Gentleman could perhaps forgive me for thinking that the Government have been quite busy since he was elected in 2017. I have the privilege of having been elected a number of years before that. The pandemic and leaving the EU have been quite time-consuming issues. Not only that, but they have changed the very nature of our employment market and economy. It is a strength that we are coming to this afresh, as the economy is recovering very fast from the pandemic, and that we should take a long, hard look at how we can not only bounce back to pre-pandemic levels of work and growth, but also—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman would like to intervene, I am happy to give way.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I am very happy to intervene. I am interested to hear the right hon. Member describe the Government as being “busy”. There is nothing more important than workers’ rights, and to think for one minute that they should somehow be relegated is quite frankly a staggering admission from her. Perhaps she would like to reflect upon it.

[Mrs Miller]

I am very glad to have had that intervention because many workers listening to this debate will remember how the Government furloughed many, many thousands of people—not just because it was the right thing to do to protect their jobs, but because it also protected their pay packets. Far from doing nothing, this Government have done more than any other Government in peacetime history to support the workers of this country.

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[Ian Lavery]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Miller]

I am looking at the Chair; I might give way one more time. I will give way to the hon. Lady, because the hon. Gentleman seemed to have a few—

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Mrs Miller]

Sorry; I said “the hon. Lady”. The hon. Gentleman should open his ears.

[Apsana Begum]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. She said that the Government have done so much more than any other in peacetime history. However, in 2019 the Government promised that after exiting the European Union they would come up with an employment Bill, but they have not yet done so. Does she agree that there were promises about what would happen once we had exited the European Union and that since then we have seen at least three EU directives—one on zero-hours contracts, another on minimum wage and another on platforming workers—while we fall behind? Yes, we have been in a pandemic, but we are not levelling up. In fact, we cannot keep up with what is happening across Europe on workers’ rights.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I share her frustration about not seeing an employment Bill, but given the restrictions that there have been on this place, in terms of debate and people being able to be here, I can sort of understand why. Also, there are the changes that we have seen in the economy, which, as I said, are a result of the pandemic and of leaving the EU.

I can give the Minister the benefit of the doubt as to why the Bill has been delayed, but I want to hear from him today that that delay will not be a moment longer than it has to be; the hon. Member for Slough is right that there are some really important issues that people want to be addressed in an employment Bill. However, before I get dragged down that rabbit-hole, I will gently get back to the topic that we are discussing today, which is, of course, the Taylor review—it is important in itself.

I want to make the context of this debate very clear. When we go back to the documents that the Government produced before the pandemic, it really is quite startling to see what is in them. We have the opening to the Good Work plan, putting forward the consultation on the single enforcement body. The introduction to that document, which of course became available only months or even weeks before we saw a significant lockdown of our economy, referred to the record levels of employment in the UK and wages

“growing at their fastest pace in almost a decade”.

It said that the UK labour market was thriving, which it was. However, we cannot ignore the impact of the pandemic, and we have to put that into the mix today as we consider this really important debate.

The way out of this pandemic is not just about vaccination and boosters, as important as they might be; it is also about getting our economy growing as it was prior to the pandemic, so that we can not only pay for the cost of the pandemic but get back on to the sort of track that the people of this country had become used to under this Government.

The skills of the Great British people are crucial to that economic growth. One of the great successes of this Government has been the ability to bounce back since the pandemic hit its height, but we need to be able to use the skills of the British people to get back once again to the levels of growth that I have referred to.

The Taylor review was all about tackling imperfections in the labour market, which is important not only in its own right but in terms of getting back to those levels of economic growth. Many of the sorts of imperfections that Taylor referred to in his review are, in many ways, being tackled already. I saw that for myself when I visited my local Jobcentre Plus office in Basingstoke. We are not known for high levels of unemployment in Basingstoke, but through the pandemic we saw our unemployment rate double, despite the very significant levels of furloughing that the Government had enabled.

I am delighted to say that as a result of the work of Jobcentre Plus, and the tenacity of the entrepreneurs who live in my constituency, those unemployment levels have halved. The work of organisations such as the M3 Job Club is helping to ensure that people in longer-term unemployment also have opportunities.

[Ian Lavery]

On that point, will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mrs Miller]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I think the Chair wants to make sure I do not use too much time.

Organisations such as the M3 Job Club can ensure that the long-term unemployed get back into work as quickly as possible, again dealing with some of the imperfections in the labour market. Of course, the Government have set up such schemes around apprenticeships, and on Friday I saw a number of apprentices at my local technical college—Basingstoke College of Technology—who are studying apprenticeships in anything from engineering in F1 motorsport to supply chains in the airline industry. It is extraordinary that the college has got back on track as quickly as it has.

So there are already successful plans in place to deal with some of the imperfections we see around training, age discrimination and worklessness, but we need to ensure we work better, and that is what the Taylor review was all about. The review referred to a number of areas of concern, and in the time available today it is impossible to go into all of them. The ones I will highlight, over and above the ones that the hon. Member for Slough referred to, are maternity discrimination and age discrimination.

The Minister will know my long-term interest in issues around maternity discrimination. The Taylor review rightly pointed out that three quarters of mothers have been subject to negative or discriminatory actions in the workplace. On age discrimination, far too many people, particularly over the age of 50, are not in work. Those issues were not tackled in the Taylor review; they need to be tackled in the Government’s response.

Another area that the Taylor review did not tackle was family-related leave and pay. We know that the inability of fathers in the workplace to take parental leave can directly affect the way women can participate at work. Another area that was not referred to was the use of non-disclosure agreements to cover up wrongdoing in the workplace. Will the Minister be tackling those issues in an employment Bill, over and above anything that he wants to tackle from the Taylor review?

Before I close, I want to talk about the single enforcement body, on which the Government issued a consultation back in December 2019. The single enforcement body was at the heart of the Government’s response to the Taylor review. It has an important role in tackling the issues I have just outlined, which were not tackled in the way I feel they should have been in the Taylor review. In his response, will the Minister clarify the status of the single enforcement body? Does it remain at the core of the Government’s response? When will he look at extending the role of the single enforcement body to cover enforcement of the law that already exists, as well as new laws that might be required around NDAs?

I know that the Minister listens well—he has listened to me talk about these issues on many occasions—and I hope he finds this debate useful in refocusing the Government on what I agree with the hon. Members for Slough and for Poplar and Limehouse is an important issue that we need to tackle here and now.

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) has secured a really timely debate. I want to try and bring a human context to this, in the short time that I have to speak today. We are talking about human beings in the workplace; we are talking about people who go to work and rely on decent wages and terms and conditions in order to feed their families and support their communities. Everybody deserves the right to have decent working terms and conditions. They deserve the right to go out to work and come home safe, as well. They deserve the right to have decent wages that put food on the table and clothe their kids. We are not asking for anything revolutionary here—we are really not. We are just saying what should happen in a decent society, for heaven’s sake. Anyone would think we were trying to pull the back teeth out of Government with this! Where is the promised employment Bill? With the greatest respect to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), we cannot keep blaming the pandemic as the reason we are not addressing issues in the workplace for people who are suffering greatly.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman might reflect on the fact that the furlough scheme will have saved many thousands of jobs. That is a very real support, in a real-time crisis.

[Ian Lavery]

We should not try and rewrite history. I recall at the very beginning of the pandemic we had to pull the Government, kicking and screaming, to accept a furlough scheme. It was the TUC and the trade unions that put the pressure on the Government to come up with a decent scheme for furlough. I want to mention the sick pay scheme: it is £96 per week—that is for those who qualify, by the way. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country do not even qualify for £96 per week. For those who do, it is supposed to be fantastic. “You’ve got statutory sick pay. What are you crying about?” If someone lives on their own, what can they get for £96 per week. That needs to be addressed in an employment Bill.

We have a situation, with fire and rehire, where companies are firing individuals unless they accept, on occasion, up to a £10,000 reduction in wages and worse terms and conditions. That has got to be banned, it really has. I say to the Minister that it has to be banned. I give all credit to the zero hours justice campaign for highlighting that at every opportunity. In those zero-hour contracts, we have people sitting there on a Monday morning waiting for a text to say whether they are working that day—that is still happening. If they miss the text, they might not be able to go into work. Here is another statistic: GMB did a survey, prior to the Taylor review, in which 61% of employees went to work while unwell for fear of not being paid, losing their job or missing out on hours.

We have to put this in a more human context. The Taylor review was very weak, but better than nothing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Slough has said, the Government accepted 51 of the 53 recommendations, but they have only implemented seven of those recommendations to date. That is just not good enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned a new deal for working people and the employment rights green paper. He has put a lot of work into the green paper—and it is the answer. It actually addresses everything we need it to. I am sure the Minister has read it and taken some great hints from it, but this is what we need to be introducing: fairness in the work place. It mentions raising pay for all, ending in-work poverty, enabling secure and safe working and tackling discrimination and workplace inequalities. We are all in this place to try to help people in our communities. There is not any better way to do that than to increase protection for those in the workplace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his reference to that aptly named nightclub in Brighton. Clearly, opening nightclubs is a big challenge because of ventilation, but they are eligible for discretionary grants: councils have £100 million for discretionary grants to support them.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The café and restaurant owners I met in Basingstoke before Christmas saw their bookings plummet in the key pre-Christmas weeks, so they will really welcome the extra support that the Minister speaks about. The newly recognised personal care sector—hair and beauty—was similarly hit. Will he support that sector as well: the hairdressers, barbers and beauty businesses that make up our high streets?

[Paul Scully]

I support the personal care sector, which I have engaged with regularly over the past few weeks. My right hon. Friend refers to the hospitality sector, cafés and the like. The grants that we are now offering equate to the levels we were offering when those businesses were closed, in recognition of the chilling factor affecting the number of events booked in the lead-up to Christmas—that is the rationale behind it. The care sector can also get discretionary grants from the local authority.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to tackle the misuse of non-disclosure agreements.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

The Government have committed to changing the law to ensure that individuals signing non-disclosure agreements are able to make disclosures to the police and regulated health and legal professionals. We will also ensure that the limitations of each non-disclosure agreement are clear.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the Minister for all the work that he is doing on this issue. Will he be bringing forward legislation to ensure that it is clear to all employers that non-disclosure agreements should never be used to buy the silence of victims, because that has no place in British society?

[Paul Scully]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the campaign that she is running alongside Zelda Perkins and others. She rightly highlights the Government’s commitment to the issue, as well as the previous Women and Equalities Committee’s excellent work in this area. The Government are committed to implementing legislation when parliamentary time allows, but I reassure her that we will crack down on the use of non-disclosure agreements.

Carbon Capture and Storage

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with the current guidance, and also to give people space when moving in and out of the room.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered carbon capture and storage.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. Two decades ago, when I was environment editor of The Times, a report came across my desk of a new-fangled concept called carbon capture and storage—CCS. I phoned an environment group, whose blushes I will spare, and asked them what they thought. They took a big pause, and then said, “We don’t like it.” I asked them why they did not like it. They said, “Not sure.” A few months later I wrote another article on carbon capture and storage; I phoned the same environment group and asked what they thought. They said, “We’ve worked out why we don’t like it now.”

Carbon capture and storage, more trendily and officially now known as carbon capture, usage and storage, is often seen as a surreal, “Dr Strangelove” type of technology that mad scientists and big businesses have concocted. However, the truth is that carbon capture and storage is natural; it is what nature has been doing for 3.5 billion years. When life on Earth started, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 4,000 parts per million. First bacteria, then multicellular organisms and then plants started sucking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and burying it. Life sucked trillions of tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere and stuck it under ground as coal, as natural gas, as oil, and as carboniferous rocks such as limestone and chalk—the Grand Canyon and the white cliffs of Dover are made of rocks created by life out of the carbon in the atmosphere and then buried underground. Nature has continuously captured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stores it temporarily in the biosphere as plant and animal matter, and stores it permanently in the geosphere. [Interruption.]

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. The Division bell has rung. I understand there might be up to five Divisions. If we can reconvene here as quickly as possible after the final Division, I will start the debate again when we are quorate. I urge Mr Browne to be in his seat quickly after the final Division. It will probably be about an hour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

I will resume where I finished, if I remember rightly. I was saying that nature has continuously captured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stored it temporarily in the biosphere and permanently in the geosphere. The process has continued for billions of years, and the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide fell steadily to 200 parts per million about 20,000 years ago, which was a staggering 95% drop. However, atmospheric carbon dioxide started rising again. By the start of the industrial revolution, it had crept up to 280 parts per million, but in the last century we have reversed natural carbon capture and storage at an astonishing rate as we have dug up the fossil fuels and cut down the trees and stuck the carbon within them back into the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at about 420 parts per million—a jump of about 50% in a geological blink of the eye.

The last 10,000 years—the Holocene period in which we live—has been remarkably benign from a climate point of view. Steady, moderate temperatures have allowed human civilisation to flourish, but we are now undoing that. The whole point of the net zero mission is to stop carbon dioxide levels rising further so that we can keep our benign environment.

We can and should promote natural carbon capture and storage. We should plant more trees, restore peatlands and increase the carbon-rich organic content in soil. However, there is only so much land that we can plant with trees, so that can only ever be a small part of the solution. What we are talking about today is therefore industrial carbon capture and storage.

Many people in the environment movement are worried about industrial carbon capture and storage, and some are outright opposed. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, I think that those fears need to be taken seriously. We can all agree that we should do CCS only if it is robust and locks away carbon away permanently. Otherwise, there is literally no point. The overriding fear is that CCS will create a moral hazard that means we will give up on other ways to get to net zero, but the UK and other Governments are totally committed to getting to net zero by the middle of the century and there is no scenario in which CCS can get us to net zero on its own. Whatever we do with CCS, we must increase renewable energy production, move to electric vehicles and phase out coal power and gas boilers. That is already happening, as we have seen with the announcements this week.

What CCS can do is enable us to transition to net zero more quickly and at far lower economic cost. Do not just take my word for it: the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee both see carbon capture and storage as essential for reaching net zero. The CCC’s sixth climate budget declared that CCS was a necessity, not an option, and that the UK needs to capture between 75 million and 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2050, starting off with 22 million tonnes by early 2030, which is just nine years away.

CCS is currently the only technology we know of that can significantly decarbonise industries such as steel, cement, glass and chemicals. Unless we go back to the middle ages, we will still need those industries, and only CCS can ensure that we get to net zero without forcing those industries overseas, which would just export our pollution and lose us jobs. CCS can help produce low-carbon hydrogen that can power carbon-neutral boats, trucks and trains, and other industrial processes. CCS can also cut the cost of getting to net zero, which is an issue of rising political concern. The International Energy Agency has estimated that the cost of tackling climate change will be 70% higher without CCS.

There are various offshoots of CCS. The normal CCS will not reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; it will just dramatically slow down the increase. But there are technologies that will reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: greenhouse gas removal. Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage—BECCS—is one being piloted by Drax, and direct air capture is another. Greenhouse gas removal could help mop up residual emissions that are otherwise impossible to eliminate, but BECCS has become controversial in the environment movement partly because of concerns about how sustainable it is to grow the biomass. That must be addressed. There is also concern about the carbon accounting from BECCS: when we import biomass from other countries, we are taking credit for carbon captured in another country. That is a valid criticism, but it is an argument about adjusting our carbon figures rather than giving up on BECCS.

Last year, I hosted virtually the global launch of the Coalition for Negative Emissions, bringing together stakeholders from around the world who are interested in removing greenhouse gases. The potential impact is enormous, particularly if economies of scale mean that the costs of removing a tonne of carbon dioxide come down. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement yesterday, in the net zero strategy, that they will target greenhouse gas removal of 10 million tonnes a year by 2030, and that they will amend the Climate Change Act 2008 to include engineered CO₂ removals. That might be controversial among some environmental groups, but it is simply irrational and unscientific to include CO₂ molecules removed from the atmosphere by a tree but not those removed by humans.

I have participated in many debates on CCS, and normally at this stage someone says that we should not support it because it is an unproven technology, but that is not true. The science is actually quite straightforward: it is stripping carbon dioxide out of the emissions from power plants and factories, liquifying it, transporting it by pipeline or boat, and then storing it. Most aspects of this are already done. For example, there are already 8,000 km of pipeline carrying CO₂ around the US for industrial use.

The storage point is more complex. It needs to be stored permanently, and the preferred place to do that is in geological formations, up to 3 km below the surface of the earth. One such perfect place to do that is under the North sea, where natural gas and oil have been stored by nature safely for millions of years without leaking out. Again, this is not untried technology. The first commercial CCS site in the world was opened in 1996, some 25 years ago, at the Sleipner gas field between Norway and Scotland. Since then, it has been taking 1 million tonnes of CO₂ out of emissions every year and sticking it a kilometre underground. That single CCS plant has reduced Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions by 3%, compared to what they would otherwise have been. That site is monitored closely and there has been no leakage. The Global CCS Institute, a US think-tank, now reports there are 26 operating CCS facilities worldwide in the US, China, Australia, the middle east, Canada and Europe.

However, it is true that CCS is untried and untested technology in the UK. We do not have CCS yet— we have fallen behind. That is why I welcome the announcement yesterday that the Government are pushing ahead with two new CCS clusters at HyNet North West and the east coast cluster. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister and colleagues about that.

There are lots of very powerful reasons why the UK should lead on CCS. The UK has a particular national advantage when it comes to CCS, and CCS could bring particular benefits to the UK. Our oil and gas industry means we already have the skills and infrastructure to develop CCS. As gas and oil extraction declines, CCS can take over. It is estimated that rolling out CCS will save 50,000 jobs in industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, ceramics and glass, and CCS can become a sector in its own right, creating 10,000 more jobs. The ideal locations for these jobs would be in the former industrial heartlands of north-east Scotland, Teesside, Humberside, south Wales and Merseyside. There could be no better example of levelling up.

We have the natural geological features. We have as much carbon storage capacity underground as the rest of the EU combined. Many European countries will not be able to do their own CCS, as they have neither the geology nor the industry, and this creates a huge export opportunity for the UK, capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground on behalf of other countries. The UK is not doing any CCS yet, but we are almost uniquely positioned to be a CCS superpower.

The creation of a CCS industry is not going to happen by itself. We have companies that can develop CCS, but they have no financial incentive to do it. They are not going to invest billions of pounds only to find out there is no possibility of generating revenue. What they need is a predictable, long-term regime that makes CCS commercially viable, and that is the lesson from Sleipner in Norway. That was not built as a loss-making experiment; it was the result of a commercial decision by the Norwegian state oil company, now Equinor, to avoid paying carbon taxes by burying the carbon instead.

In the UK, we know how to set up regimes to nurture the creation of a new industry. We did it with offshore wind power. By setting up the contracts for difference regime, the Government facilitated the creation of a world-leading power industry that has worked better than almost anyone dared to dream. Costs have fallen so much that it has become competitive and wind now produces more electricity than any other source.

The good news is that this Government are committed to CCS, more than any previous Government, and I strongly commend them for it. They underlined their commitments in last year’s 10-point plan for climate change, promising to invest £1 billion a year in the technology. They reinforced that commitment yesterday with the announcement that they are moving ahead with support for the first two CCS clusters. They also raised their ambition, which was a surprise to me, saying they wanted to capture 20 million or 30 million tonnes of CO₂, up from just 10 million tonnes, which was the previous announcement, bringing the amount in line with what the Committee on Climate Change says is needed.

This is all welcome news, but it would not be much of a debate if I just said that the Government are doing everything perfectly. Indeed, I have some asks, although the announcements yesterday address some of them. My first ask is simply this: please keep calm and carry on. In 2007 and 2012, the Government launched competitions for CCS, but in both cases they subsequently cancelled them. That was so damaging to confidence in the industry. Such a stop-start approach risks repeating the mistakes of nuclear. Where once we were a world leader in nuclear power, successive Government wavering over decades meant that we ended up dependent on other countries. On CCS, will the Government please have the courage of their convictions?

My second ask is that the Government support CCS in next week’s spending review. Given yesterday’s announcement, I presume that that is a foregone conclusion. The Carbon Capture and Storage Association states that its members can reach the 10-milion tonne removal target for a maximum cost of £1.2 billion a year—that target has now gone up to 20 million tonnes, so the big question is whether it can still be done for £1.2 billion. That is about one quarter of the peak annual subsidy that launched the wind power industry, so as economies of scale kick in for renewables and as subsidies decline, they can be redirected to CCS.

My third ask is that the Government produce a long-term financial structure for the industry, so that companies can invest with certainty. That is the biggest ask of the industry. The levy control framework was a huge success for offshore wind, largely because it gave companies a 10-year funding horizon, within which they knew the revenues that they could make. That gave companies the confidence to invest at scale.

Yesterday, the Government announced the industrial decarbonisation and hydrogen revenue support or IDHRS scheme. That is very welcome, but I understand that it is only for the current spending review period and that the first two CCS clusters announced yesterday will not be operational within that time. Therefore, I would welcome confirmation of how the Government will ensure that CCS clusters have sustainable revenue once they are operational. If the CCS funding is subject to three-year spending review horizons, rather than a 10-year horizon, businesses will be reluctant to invest in the sector as much as they otherwise would. The Government should give CCS the same long-term certainty that they previously gave wind power.

My fourth ask is that the Government should set out a long-term vision for the development of CCS—we had a taste of that yesterday—for it to become a fully competitive, financially sustainable sector. That is a vision that would go above and beyond the clusters it would initially fund. To reap the full benefits of CCS, practice needs to be embedded across industry and the country. The Government need to establish a fully functioning market for carbon in the UK now that we have left the European emissions trading scheme.

My fifth ask is about the need for independent monitoring of the CCS clusters that go ahead. Environmental groups will rightly be looking like hawks for signs of any leakage of CO₂ out of the ground, or for game-playing by the industry. CCS companies cannot be allowed to mark their own homework. We also need clarity on the Track-2 process as soon as possible, to keep up momentum in the industry. I also urge the Government to look at the 1 GW hydrogen target as a minimum, because industry feels that it could do far more than that, which would be welcome.

Finally, I have a request to make of environmental groups. We all agree that tackling climate change is the most important challenge we face. Yes, they must hold Government and industry to account, but for all our sakes they should please not start campaigning against CCS itself. Let the debate be driven by science, not other motives. Rather, they should work with the Government and industry to ensure that CCS plays the vital role in getting to net zero that the IPCC and CCC expect of it.

The Government are committed to supporting CCS. They must now ensure that the UK is no longer left behind, but can reap all the environmental and economic benefits of becoming a CCS superpower. We did it with wind power and we can do it with CCS. We can deliver another great green success.

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

For complete clarity, we restarted the debate at 5.29 pm, so the wind-ups will start at about 6.05 pm. My maths says that if Members can speak for under four minutes, we will get everyone in—just as a guide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) on securing this debate and the exemplary way he put forward the case for carbon capture and storage—a case that has many other articulate exponents on both sides of the Chamber as well as him. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) particularly comes to mind. He has championed the cluster, CCS and all that goes with it over many years, and he is, I think, substantially responsible for the moves forward in CCS.

We do not need to spend much time clarifying among ourselves that the case for CCS is overwhelming. We are, after all, moving to a net-zero target. In this context “net” is a very important word. To achieve the net-zero target, we have to concentrate on not only keeping minerals and energy and such in the ground, but putting stuff back into the ground, and we have to think of methods of doing that, because there will be a carbon overhang in 2040, 2050 or whenever. The methods of doing that include growing trees and direct air capture, which has been mentioned, though that has to go in the ground as well. Other methods are CCS and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, which involves attaching CCS to an already relatively low-carbon method of producing power, thereby making it net carbon-negative.

CCS is important across all these fields and the industry as a whole. It is not just a question of the power sector. Most heavy and energy-intensive industries will need CCS if they are to have lower-carbon processes; they have processes besides power production that produce a lot of carbon. It is important across the board. I was indeed pleased to hear in the statement yesterday that the north-east cluster and HyNet had secured strong backing for going ahead with precisely that combination of activity—with providing CCS for industry, or with providing the proper transport for CCS and then sequestration. It is important to recognise that there are a number of different components to CCS.

As the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire said, this is not an experimental technique that we need to do a lot more work on. We know how it works. We know what we have to do and where we have to put CO₂. The North sea, for example, has capacity to take 78 billion tonnes of CO₂—200 years’ worth of the country’s CO₂ emissions. We know where it is going. As I have said, I have seen a full-chain CCS plant in operation at Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. It captures the emissions it transports and sequesters them. What it does with the sequestered CO₂ is a matter for another debate. The system works really well and is complete. We should be aiming to get whole systems working together in those industrial clusters in the north-east and the north-west, so that everything works well for the benefit of industry, hydrogen production and low-carbon heavy industrial activities.

It is perverse that the Acorn Project has been designated as first reserve—whatever that means—in this process. I do not understand how a first reserve is meant to come in if the first two clusters do not work very well, or change their minds and decide that they do not want to do it. It is clear to me that we need to go with three, and that the Acorn Project should be one of them.

I want to emphasise that we are no longer in the chamber of discussion on CCS. We are in the chamber of action, and we need to apply that to as many things as possible, as soon as possible, in this country. In that context, I want to ask the Minister very briefly—

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Very briefly, please.

[Dr Whitehead]

Very briefly indeed, Mrs Miller. What is the status of the various support measures that will be introduced for CCS? I have perused carefully the various updates on the design of the CCS infrastructure fund and the business models, but it seems to me that there is no clear line on the exact support to be offered to the different CCS sectors that I have talked about. There may be a contract for difference, for example, for heavy industry. That will need to be led by a 10-year plan, with a levy control framework or similar, but that is not in place.

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

We need to move on to the Minister’s comments now.

[Dr Whitehead]

There is no CfD in place, either. How is that coming on, and will the Minister guarantee that the arrangements will be in place as soon as possible so that we can roll out CCS as quickly as possible?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

Yes—

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. No, you have just one minute left.

[Anthony Browne]

Basically, there is cross-party agreement that we need to move ahead with carbon capture and storage and the Government are doing a good job on that. This is one area where the House can come together and promote this whole agenda.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered carbon capture and storage.

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Departmental Spending

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has presented a compelling new deal to rebuild Britain following the unprecedented events of the past three months. This Department is at the heart of delivering that, and it has already done so much: the unprecedented support for businesses, large and small, to help protect existing jobs and create new jobs for the future; the unprecedented support for families by helping businesses meet the cost of keeping their employees paid throughout the coronavirus lockdown; and, for those unable to continue their work as usual, an unparalleled furloughing scheme that has supported more than 9 million people.

The events of the last three months have created some of the biggest changes in working practices this country has ever seen. Overnight, businesses and organisations have switched from almost entirely office-based operations to home working. Remarkably, it is estimated that 60% of UK adults were working from home during the coronavirus lockdown. This is a testament to the businesses and the workforce we have.

As the Government plan for the future, we need to think carefully about what getting back to normal looks like. Some of my constituents joined me in a virtual lobby last week to talk about climate change, and one thing was clear: they wanted to see a green recovery for the economy. With CO₂ emissions dropping by a quarter during the lockdown, the number of good quality air days increasing by 22% and nitrogen dioxide levels falling by 40%, these things have changed considerably.

Inevitably, as the economy returns to normal, some of those improvements will diminish, but there is an opportunity to embed some of the behavioural change we have seen for the future, particularly when it comes to commuting into work. Experts in the US estimate that more than one in three jobs could be done entirely from home, and it would be interesting to look at the figures for the UK. If some of those who could work remotely continue to do so, this could make a significant contribution to the Government’s plan to be net zero by 2050 and help alleviate some of the overcrowding on public transport.

Of course, many other issues need to be looked at if those working patterns are to be sustained, but this Government have already delivered so much when it comes to the environment—greenhouse gas has been reduced and, indeed, thousands of new carbon-free buses and a comprehensive network of cycleways have been introduced—so embedding this new trend for home working could well be a positive legacy from lockdown that truly helps produce a truly green recovery following the coronavirus lockdown.