Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting)

Marie Tidball Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

As we said in debate on the two amendments, the Government need to be very careful about the interpretive effect and about becoming too prescriptive on anything in the legislation. I am thinking of what might happen were any employer to challenge it in court or any employee to try to bring an action under it. I think that the Government have it right in ensuring that they are creating general duties rather than naming in the legislation specific concerns or challenges, including health challenges, for men or women. We will not oppose clause 26; we just urge the Government to be very careful to ensure that they are not leaving it too open to interpretation, because that could undermine the good intent that sits underneath it.

[Dr Marie Tidball (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I have fought to break down barriers to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination for women and disabled people at every stage of my personal, professional and political life. I know that our Labour Government’s work on our missions for 10 years of national renewal has the purpose of changing lives across our country. This clause will be an important part of achieving that change for women in the workplace, ensuring that no matter what their background or where they live, women can thrive in the workplace. I am standing here because of the difference that world-class public services made to my life chances. This Bill creates a culture for world-class employers to break down barriers for women employees. The requirement to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps that employers will need to take in relation to gender equality will be a significant move forward to improve equality, alongside collecting and publishing figures on the gender pay gap.

In an evidence session for the Bill Committee, Jemima Olchawski from the Fawcett Society said:

“We have a gender pay gap of just under 14%. On average, women take home just over £630 a month less than men. It also has a detrimental impact on our economy, because it is a marker of the ways in which women are not fully participating or contributing to the economy at their full potential. Estimates indicate that that means we are missing out on tens of billions of pounds of GDP.

We strongly support the measures as an important step towards redressing that balance. In particular, we are pleased to see the inclusion of equalities action plans as an important way to get employers to drive forward progress on the gender pay gap.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 81, Q76.]

This is helpful. The clause makes an important contribution to advancing gender equality by including the requirement to develop and publish equality action plans, which address the gender pay gap and support employees going through the menopause. I am pleased to be a member of the Committee seeing this go through today.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Mundell. I draw the Committee’s attention to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unison and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

I associate myself with the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge on the gender pay gap. I particularly welcome the focus on menopause support, which will be provided by the equality action plans proposed in clause 26. The TUC has reported that research from Bupa estimated that 1 million women have been forced out of their jobs because of discrimination and a lack of support for them while experiencing the perimenopause or menopause. I have lost count of the many talented women whom I count as friends and who have left jobs and careers that they loved, simply because they were not given support by their employers to manage their symptoms while at work. I am pleased that we have moved on from an era in which women going through the menopause had to suffer in silence, but we have a long way to go. That is why the mandatory equality plans are so necessary. They will help employers to provide the best workplace experiences.

USDAW research involving women members who are going through the menopause has found that one in five women take time off because of menopause-related symptoms. Given that women between the ages of 45 and 54 make up 11% of all women in employment— 3.5 million women—it is vital that employers consider the needs and experiences of women during this period and ensure that support is in place, that women can keep working and earning, and that their talents are not lost to the workforce.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Smith]

The Opposition have tabled a number of amendments that probe what is introduced by clause 28 and schedule 3, which we will come on to in subsequent debates today. I will reserve the bulk of my remarks for those debates, although, as clause 28 introduces schedule 3, I will preview those debates now by noting our strong opposition to these provisions. There was a very good, solid and rational reason that the former Secretary of State for Education during the coalition years—now editor of His Majesty’s Spectator magazine—abolished SSSNBs, which was to give that flexibility and freedom to the quite right and good, educational standards-raising revolution in education that came through the creation of the academies by the last Labour Government and in particular the creation of free schools by the last Conservative Government, including in the coalition years. Clause 28 and schedule 3, which we will come on to shortly, seek to undo a lot of that. For the reasons I will outline when speaking on those amendments, I think this part of the Bill requires a rethink.

[Dr Tidball]

I draw your attention to my declaration of interests, Mr Mundell. I am a member of the Community union, Unison and GMB.

I found it difficult to hear, in anything the shadow Minister just said, any rationale for getting rid of this body all those years ago. I missed three years of school as a child because of the surgeries I needed. Incredible classroom teaching assistants helped me to build my confidence and learn to mix with other children again when I returned—making education and learning an escape, a way to express myself, to overcome people’s assumptions about my disability and to feel free.

I stood in my constituency because I wanted to use my skills and experiences to give back to the communities that gave me so much. To know that, because of this Bill and the clause before us now, teaching assistants and other school support staff like the ones who made school a less daunting place for me will once again have a collective bargaining system for pay and conditions—which will ensure that those staff are finally valued and recognised for their vital work—is a very great privilege indeed.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body in England, previously scrapped by the coalition Government for reasons that still remain unclear, will be key to providing professional recognition for a group of staff who have been overlooked for far too long. As Unison, of which I am proudly a member, has highlighted, the proposals in this clause

“demonstrate that the Employment Rights Bill isn’t just tackling worker’s rights—it holds the key to tackling long standing public policy failures that have been ignored because they affect workers and service users whose voices are too often neglected by decision makers. Tackling this neglect and allowing trade unions to engage in constructive social partnership and better represent their members is long overdue”.

This clause therefore empowers that group of working people, who have been so long overlooked by the Government, to have a better life at work. It will help trade unions to raise standards and pay across the labour market.

[Laurence Turner]

In addition to the interest to which I drew attention earlier, my partner is a trustee of a multi-academy trust.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body is a hugely welcome measure and long overdue. It is a real shame to hear that there will be cross-party division on this question, because the consequences of the decision to abolish the SSSNB are negative, they are serious and they are now plain to see. We will come on to detailed discussion of the schedule and the amendments, but it is worth reflecting on the rationale that the then Government gave back in 2010 for abolishing the SSSNB. The Secretary of State at the time said—and he never went much beyond this—that the Government had

“concluded that the SSSNB does not fit well with the Government’s priorities for greater deregulation of the pay and conditions arrangement for the school workforce.”

What has been the consequence of that decision? We saw it last year, when the Low Pay Commission, for the first time, reclassified school support staff roles as low-paying occupations. That should be a mark of shame on the Governments that oversaw that unhappy outcome—which, as I said, was a consequence of the decision to abolish that body.