Covid-19: Business

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con) [V]]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for all he has done to help to safeguard jobs during the pandemic. May I ask him to look particularly at the problems still facing some pregnant women who have been contacting organisations such as Working Families and Maternity Action? Will he confirm to businesses that all pregnant women are currently classed as vulnerable, and that if they are unable to work as a result they should be suspended on paid leave or furloughed? Will he consider clarifying the guidance, to help those employers who want to do the right thing?

[Alok Sharma]

My right hon. Friend is a champion for the rights of women—indeed, of all individuals—and she raises an important point about pregnant women. The Government guidance is clear that pregnant women can be furloughed, provided that they meet normal eligibility requirements. I would go further and say, as it does in the guidance, that expectant mothers are, as always, entitled to suspension on full pay if a suitable rule cannot be found within the workplace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Andrea Leadsom)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will first talk about my departmental priorities.

As we enter an exciting new decade, we are building a stronger, greener United Kingdom. To achieve that, my Department is focusing on three priorities. First, we are leading the world on tackling climate change, not just because it is the right thing to do but because it will create millions of new jobs and skills right across the UK. Secondly, we are solving the grand challenges facing our society—from life sciences to space, artificial intelligence and robotics—and improving lives across the world. Thirdly, we are quite simply making the UK the best place in the world to work and to grow a business.

Social enterprises are a thriving part of the UK’s economy. When I was a Back-Bench MP, and before I went into politics, I was closely involved in setting up and running a number of charities. She is absolutely right that we need to continue focusing on them as a key part of the economy.

I am always happy to hear lobbying from colleagues on both sides of the House about machinery of government changes, and perhaps we can meet another time to talk about that.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

T4. Employers like the Sovereign Housing Association and our community furniture project are giving young people with learning disabilities in Basingstoke the opportunity to get work experience through the Government-supported internship programme run by the Basingstoke College of Technology in my constituency. Will my right hon. Friend join me in encouraging even more employers to come forward, not only in Basingstoke but across the country, to help more disabled people with learning disabilities to reach their potential at work?

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

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this. The Government encourage businesses to be a force for good in our society. I warmly welcome the commitment from firms in her constituency to offer placements that connect these young people with the world of work, helping to identify their future roles.

Good Work Plan

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I would have thought that the hon. Lady might have congratulated Matthew Taylor, who worked for her party in the past. Along with his panel, he has devoted himself to producing a report that most people conclude is a substantial one. He has made a series of far-reaching recommendations, which we are enacting today. The central basis of his report is to reflect on the fact that we should build on success. He refers to the UK’s successful record in creating jobs, including flexible jobs, that open up work to people with different needs. That is an important step forward that I would have thought the hon. Lady welcomed. When it comes to the condition of employees and workers in this country, Matthew Taylor noted that, far from the Dickensian caricature that she fell into the trap of describing, the average take-home pay for someone in full-time employment in this country, if tax levels and tax credits are taken into account, is higher than in the rest of the G7. We also have higher employment than at any time in our history and lower unemployment than at any time in 40 years, and the hon. Lady should have welcomed that.

The hon. Lady mentioned zero-hours contracts, but what she did not mention—[Interruption.] She mentioned the gig economy, by which I think she was referring to zero-hours contracts. At the moment, 2.4% of workers have flexible zero-hours contracts, and the number is falling. It has fallen from more than 900,000 a year ago. The key thing is that two thirds of those workers do not want an increase in hours. Nearly 20% of them are in full-time education. Matthew Taylor therefore concluded correctly that to ban zero-hours contracts, as the hon. Lady would, would do a disservice to, and go against the interests of, the people who benefit from them.

As for the scale of our response, the last set of measures to change and reform employment rights to this extent came over 20 years ago in the Employment Rights Act 1996 and not, coincidentally, under the previous Labour Administration, reflecting the fact that it is always Conservatives in government who put in protections for workers. The Labour party can criticise, but it did not take the opportunity to make the reforms that the hon. Lady mentioned. The hon. Lady also mentioned the alignment of the test for employment and for taxation. Matthew Taylor was clear in his report that it is a complex matter that will take some time to bring into effect and that we should consult carefully on it, and the Select Committees have endorsed that recommendation. We have said that we are committed to ending the disparity and to bringing the difference to a conclusion, and she should welcome that.

Finally, the hon. Lady mentioned the European Union, referring to the fact that we will be able to set our own employment policies once we leave the European Union. The Prime Minister has been clear that not only will we not reduce the protections that workers enjoy, but we will increase them, and today shows that. We are laying legislation this very day that goes far beyond the rights that are currently available in the European Union. The hon. Lady should have confidence in the ability of this House and this country to lead the world in employment rights, and I am proud that our Government are doing it.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement on how he and the Government plan to take forward the Taylor review. He is right that too much risk has been transferred to the individual in many circumstances, but I am a little puzzled as to why there is still so little action to strengthen protections for pregnant women. That action was promised around two years ago following a Women and Equalities Committee inquiry into maternity discrimination, which highlighted the fact that more than 50,000 women a year leave their jobs because they are pregnant. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on what is being done to enhance such protections and to ensure that more women who are contributing so much to our economy are able to stay in work even when they are pregnant and afterwards?

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend, who is Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, will be pleased to note that the package announced today is not the first or the only set of powers that will strengthen workers’ protections. The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), will respond shortly and enthusiastically to the recommendations made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and I hope that she will welcome the further extension of protections for pregnant women.

Office for Students: Appointment

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Prime Minister’s remarks yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show.” The Prime Minister was absolutely explicit that she expects no repetition of any of the remarks, comments or utterances that have been the subject of considerable attention over the past week. Any member of the board of the Office for Students who says such things will no longer carry on in that position, and that will be the position going forward.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

What account did the independent appointment process take of the public views of candidates, particularly when those views might be so clearly at odds with the equality principles that the Government clearly support?

[Joseph Johnson]

Of course, the Office for Students is there to represent all interests in our higher education system. The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 puts an obligation on the Secretary of State to have regard to a wide range of factors in making such appointments, including that board members must reflect the broad range of higher education providers, those who experience higher education—the students—and those, such as taxpayers and businesses, who either pay for higher education or are on the receiving end of its product in the flow of graduates into the workforce. The Government are, of course, attentive to reactions to appointments to the board, and we want the board to be highly effective in delivering on the core duties of the Office for Students.

Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

That will be something that we consult on as we consult on the vast majority of the other proposals in the Taylor review. Taylor acknowledges the excellent track record of employment in terms of new jobs, but as the right hon. Gentleman rightly points out—and the TUC endorses this—there is an issue with insecure work and far too much risk being transferred to the employee.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

The Taylor review says that the same basic principles should apply to all forms of employment in the UK. Does my hon. Friend see paid time off for women attending antenatal appointments as a basic principle, and does she agree that, for health reasons, the law needs to clearly extend that principle to all female workers?

[Margot James]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her excellent question. We will review the matter that she raises in tandem with the rest of the review of Taylor’s recommendations, but she makes a very good point indeed.

Employment Tribunals

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I will raise the case of a constituent that has far-reaching concerns for those across the House. I have been joined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who will probably intervene. The subject of the debate is an unfair dismissal tribunal.

My constituent Anna Hardie came to see me at my surgery. Her husband had been ill for some time. She was very worried because he was really stressed at work—I will not, in any way during this short debate, say who would have been right and who would have been wrong should the case have got to a tribunal for unfair dismissal—so they eventually decided as a family that he would leave that employment.

The family had financial commitments so Anna’s husband, Gordon, first wanted to get back into work. Then, Anna told me, they wanted to claim for unfair dismissal. Anna believed that they had actually submitted a case for unfair dismissal. It was a difficult time as her husband was very stressed and unwell when he came home from work, but she thought that that had happened. Gordon was 40 years of age. In January, he died of a heart condition, which Anna and some of the specialists feel was exacerbated by the stress.

Anna has a family and, as I am sure the Minister can imagine, it must have been an enormously stressful time for them. First they were worried about their finances and Gordon finding a new job, although he then found a new job. But they were still also worried about the tribunal. Then, of course, came the terrible situation of Gordon passing away at 40, which must have been absolutely appalling for the family. The autopsy clearly showed that he had an underlying condition, which is why he had been so tired and stressed when he came home from work.

Once Anna got her affairs together, she wanted to proceed with a constructive dismissal claim on behalf of her deceased husband. But when she went to the preliminary hearings, not only was she cross-examined by the company’s legal team—asking why she did not come forward earlier, whether her husband had really wanted to go for constructive dismissal and so on—at a time when she was still mourning and under a great deal of stress, but the judge also ruled that she was out of time. The time-barred rule had come in because the three-month limit had passed.

The judge did have a degree of ability to decide that the case could be heard and moved on to a tribunal because of the exceptional circumstances. However, I have learned that one of the problems is that there are different rules on exceptional circumstances rulings for judges at different tribunals, even those under the same Department. I would argue that, in natural justice—or just in humanity—someone who had been through such a traumatic time and lost their husband at such a young age would surely fit the criteria. But the judge ruled that Anna could not bring a claim, and the case was dismissed—without the judge hearing any evidence about what could have brought on some of the problems that led to Anna’s situation.

I am not going to say whether Anna would have won or lost if she had got to the tribunal—that is not for us to decide in this House. What we are looking for for our constituents is natural justice, and what Anna wants is not just natural justice for her, although we would like to meet the Minister to see whether there is an opportunity to take her claim forward. She can appeal the decision, but if the appeal is based on the same criteria, and possibly in front of the same judge she was in front of in the first place, the logic is that she will not be successful.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for his constituent about the importance of access to justice. However, the case he makes about the time limit on accessing justice involves other groups of people as well, and particularly women who may be subject to discrimination at work and who may need to seek redress through a tribunal, but who have only three months to do that, when they may well be pregnant or have very small children. Does he agree that reviewing the three-month period could be an important thing for the Government to do?

[Mike Penning]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend touches on exactly what I am coming to.

Because the different tribunals have different rules, it is really difficult to find out whether someone’s exceptional circumstances will be accepted. One thing Anna and I discussed in my surgery is what would happen if someone had had a nervous breakdown, had been sectioned or had been in a road traffic accident and was not well enough to make a claim in time. Would the judge rule that those were exceptional circumstances, or would the person be time-barred?

One thing the Minister should look at is simplifying the process—I had a preliminary conversation with her earlier, and she was very generous with her time with me. We should ask why there are so many different rules on this. I was lucky enough to be a Minister in the Justice Department and the Department for Work and Pensions—I have been a Minister in lots of Departments, although not now—and there are different tribunals in each of them. I thought this was an issue for the Justice Department when I discussed it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, but it has ended up with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, because that is the right place for it to be.

However, if we are going to have tribunals and natural justice, and if we are going to get this right, we should move from three months to six months so that people have time to mourn or to get well before they have to bring a claim. Then we should give the judges proper, simple guidance about what the exceptional circumstances would be if someone needed to appeal outside that time.

Six months would limit things quite a bit. I know there are arguments that people might forget what went on or that the company would be left in abeyance, but that is not going to happen a huge amount of times. What we are looking for is fairness and natural justice, and our constituents have the right to feel that justice has fitted them. I am not saying that Anna would have won or lost, but she never had the opportunity to stand up for her husband, and now she wants to stand up for others. I hope the Minister will spend some more time with me after the debate so that I can introduce her to Anna.

More importantly, I hope the Minister can try to change the system. I know how difficult it is to change the system. I have been a Minister—my right hon. Friend was a Secretary of State—and I know how many brick walls will come up. The Chinese walls and everything will come up, and there will be a million and one reasons why we cannot resolve this, but there is one reason why we should—and that is Gordon Hardie, Anna’s husband.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margot James]

I do apologise to my right hon. Friend—and indeed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke. Towards the end of the day, one forgets these terms, but they are important.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke raised the issue of pregnant women or women who have just given birth and the time limit in respect of bringing cases to employment tribunals. She and I have discussed this in the past, and I am aware of the recommendations of her Select Committee, the Women and Equalities Committee, on this point. I can confirm that we are reviewing whether we need stronger protection against redundancy for pregnant women and women returning from maternity leave. We will consult on options in due course, and we would very much welcome her views during that process.

[Mrs Miller]

I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s announcement, which will draw very positive comments from well beyond these walls. Could that review perhaps be extended to cover the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who has made a most compelling case for people who are in the particular circumstances that his constituent found herself?

[Margot James]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who makes a sensible proposal. I hesitate to make too much of a commitment based on one case, no matter how harrowing it is. I think I must first meet Anna, if I may call her by her first name, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead. However, I will certainly take the suggestion by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke into consideration, as we are indeed reviewing the position with regard to pregnant women and women returning from maternity leave.

I have not said much about bringing cases to employment tribunals, but the first step, of course, is for people to refer themselves to the arbitration service ACAS. The Government are committed to encouraging people to resolve their workplace disputes without the stress and cost of an employment tribunal. I reiterate that I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead for bringing this harrowing case to my attention. Although I have had to reserve my position regarding whether to include the situation in which his constituent finds herself—

Taylor Review: Working Practices

Maria Miller Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his critique. The “right to request” has been useful and valuable when it comes to requesting flexible employment. In any case, it is a recommendation that Matthew made, but it certainly warrants careful consideration. The hon. Gentleman mentions enforcement, and we are committed to making sure that workers on zero-hours contracts or the minimum wage get paid what they are legally entitled to be paid. That is why we have doubled the resources available to HMRC in the last two years to ensure enforcement of those important laws.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I welcome Matthew Taylor’s report today and commend the Minister for her statement, especially on tackling maternity and pregnancy discrimination, which the report says has doubled in the last decade and needs more action. Will the Minister outline what provisions in the report address the issues raised by the Women and Equalities Committee about workers’ lack of rights to access antenatal care during the working day, which the Minister—in her response to the Committee’s report—indicated would be addressed through the Taylor report?

[Margot James]

I commend my right hon. Friend for the work that the Committee, which she chaired, has done to tackle the outrageous discrimination against pregnant women, which has no place in the modern workplace. There are provisions in the Taylor report, but work is ongoing across Government to improve the opportunities for pregnant women in the workplace to ensure that we make history of such discrimination.

Points of Order

Maria Miller Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Persist, persist, persist, I say to the hon. Gentleman. That is the advice I give him. His attempted point of order has opened an interesting window into his life, the administrative support he enjoys and the diary commitments—not least around lunchtime last Friday—to which he was subject, for which I am sure the House is immensely grateful, but I do not think we can take the matter any further. He knows that my advice will always be to persist—he himself is nothing if not a dogged terrier.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the past few days, almost 1,000 people have been arrested, beaten or imprisoned in Belarus—a country still under an effective dictatorship here in Europe. How can we show our solidarity with those in Belarus who are fighting for democracy, for freedom of speech, and for the rule of law?

[Mr Speaker]

I struggle immediately to see how the right hon. Lady’s observations constitute a point of order. That said, I recognise and respect the seriousness of her concern, and I acknowledge on the Floor of the House her long-standing track record of support for the Belarus Free Theatre. My initial answer is that I think that, by persistence and the good fortune of the ballot, she has probably secured her own salvation, and possibly an opportunity to press for the salvation of those who need it more intensely and immediately, because she has Question 9, if memory serves, at Foreign Office and Commonwealth questions tomorrow. I cannot anticipate the sequence of events, but it wold be a very unfortunate and unsatisfactory Foreign Office questions if we did not get to Question 9. I think I can say with some confidence that we will, and that the right hon. Lady, speaking on behalf of those people who need her help and will value it, will have her chance. What is more, if she expresses herself with her usual force, clarity and eloquence, she might motivate other right hon. and hon. Members to spring to their feet with supplementary questions following her own. If so, I will be all eyes and all ears.

Maternity Discrimination

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope.

I shall begin by apologising to Members for the fact that I need to leave shortly before the end of the debate, as I have to chair a Select Committee. I hope that they will accept my apologies.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing such an important debate. We have record numbers of women in work in this country, but we still have a workplace that is not sufficiently modernised to deal with those record numbers. The hon. Lady took an intervention from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), who was absolutely right to say that all too often now we have different classes of women in the workplace, who are not being dealt with in the way that all of us, as constituency MPs, would want them to be dealt with.

We need to modernise the workplace and make sure that it can deal fairly with both mothers and fathers who have caring responsibilities. In particular, and in keeping with the subject of this debate, we need to ensure that the critical issues that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West identified, which have also been identified by both the Select Committee report that she referred to and by the Equality and Human Rights Commission in its work on discrimination, are outlawed and stopped. We cannot allow those things to continue.

As the hon. Lady mentioned, the Government’s own research has indicated that around three quarters of the women involved in that research have experienced a negative or potentially discriminatory experience as a result of their pregnancy. We would not expect that in a country that prides itself on introducing the Equality Act 2010 and on the fact that we have record numbers of women in work.

Not for a moment do I question the commitment of my hon. Friend the Minister in this area; as someone who has extensive knowledge of and experience in business, she will know first-hand the importance of supporting women and fathers through the experience of having a new addition to their family. At the moment, however, the law is not working in the way that we intend it to, which is what I want to focus on.

I shall discuss three recommendations in the Select Committee report, to which the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West kindly referred to in her speech. First, not all people who are in work are treated the same, and a difference has started to emerge between workers and employees. In particular, the fact that many women are not able to access paid time off work to attend antenatal appointments should be deeply worrying to us all, because there is clear evidence that attending antenatal appointments and receiving regular support through pregnancy is critical to the health of both the unborn child and the mother. If we are not to accrue costs beyond the pregnancy, because of conditions such as postnatal depression or because of issues around the health of children, we need to address this matter, and rapidly.

I do not think that there was ever really any intention for us to get to a position where quite large groups of women were not covered to have paid time off. However, when the Select Committee visited to Portsmouth with my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) to take evidence from individuals in the community as part of our deliberations, we met women who had not had access to paid time off for antenatal appointments, which caused them deep distress and great worry.

The Government need to look at that issue and address it quickly. Perhaps during the Brexit deliberations and the passage of the great repeal Bill, and given the clear commitment from the Prime Minister to protect and, I hope, enhance workers’ rights, this issue can be dealt with swiftly.

[Melanie Onn]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that there is also scope for raising awareness of women’s rights at work, particularly their right to maternity-related pay, leave and other support, such as the antenatal appointments that she referred to?

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady makes a really important point, which I would take one stage further: it is not just about women and mothers; it is about men, too. If we are to tackle the issues around shared parental leave and its low take-up, we need to ensure that the information is there for mums and dads—and, indeed, all individuals involved in new parenthood. The research we did for our Select Committee report uncovered the fact that many dads find it difficult to access information and perhaps even more difficult to ask for information from their employer. A number of the recommendations in our report cover access to information, and I know the Government will have looked at them carefully.

My second point is about how we can learn from other countries—near neighbours and countries that are very like us. Many Members get a little fed up about the fact that we always refer to Scandinavia when we look for models for how we should run our country, so this time let us look at Germany. It has a very strong economy and is well run. It has an interesting way of providing the additional protection for pregnant women that I would like to see in our country. It has protection from redundancy for new and expectant mothers up to six months after the birth of a child. That has worked well and made it clear to employers that redundancy is not an option or way forward.

Anecdotally, I have spoken to constituents and people I know who have been pregnant, and they have been offered redundancy while on maternity leave. My goodness, that is a difficult choice, is it not? New mums are coping with an incredibly stressful and possibly quite vulnerable situation. For their employer to offer them redundancy could well be attractive at that point, and they may well take it up and sign a piece of paper saying that they will not disclose that they have taken that offer. That makes it difficult to see that such things are going on. They then come out on the other side of the pregnancy and maternity leave and find it incredibly difficult to get back into the workplace: that is hard, particularly if, as the research tells us, someone has taken more than six months of maternity leave. It would be useful to look at the German system and perhaps interpret it for our country. I do not think anyone could say that Germany is not a competitive economy. Its productivity levels are far higher than the UK’s, and I urge the Government to consider that measure as part of their work.

The final point that I want to draw everyone’s attention to is the probable underestimation of the scale of the problem. I referred earlier to women who might be on maternity leave who take up the offer of redundancy. That is not recorded. Cases may be happening, and we might simply not be grappling with the scale of the problem. That demonstrates the need to ensure that the enforcement action available in this country has teeth. I welcome the thoughtful work that the Government have already done on tribunal fees. I know they are thinking about how we can make tribunals more accessible for more people.

I welcome that, but another problem for pregnant women is the time limit that precludes their taking action where there has been discrimination; action cannot be taken more than three months after the incident. I cannot recall how old your children are, Mr Chope, but I am sure you can cast your mind back to the position three months after the birth of a child or three months after your wife might have taken maternity leave. It is a hectic time when it is difficult to think about bringing a discrimination case. There are better things to do.

I was therefore slightly disappointed that the Government said that at this point they will not consider extending that time limit for pregnant women to six months. It would be entirely appropriate to do that. I do not think there would be a cost to the Government in doing so, and a great deal of fairness would come into play. I hope that they can do that, as well as encouraging the Equality and Human Rights Commission to demonstrate the strength of the law by bringing more cases more publicly. That would show that there are consequences to the ill-treatment of women who are pregnant or on maternity leave and that this is not something that companies should be treating in an apparently cavalier fashion.

The Minister has looked at the matter in detail, and I give her my personal thanks. The response to my Committee’s report demonstrated her careful attention, and I thank her for that. I also reiterate my thanks to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West for calling this debate, which has given me an opportunity to contribute and underline the report that the Committee wrote. A number of members of the Committee are here today.