Draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Michelle Scrogham Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 General Committees

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I am genuinely delighted to see the hon. Member for Halifax in her place as the Minister; I congratulate her on her achievement. She has been sent here to speak to a straightforward piece of delegated legislation that raises the minimum wage levels but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs outlined, the situation is becoming more complex.

It is worth saying a few words about what we see in the real world. My constituency is Wetherby and Easingwold, and it does what it says on the tin: I represent the two market towns of Wetherby and Easingwold, as well as other towns such as Tadcaster and Boroughbridge, surrounded by lots of villages. There are lots of small businesses in those towns, and although it would be wrong to say that they are not hiring young people, they have stopped hiring as many young people as they used to.

It is all well and good to compliment the changes and say that wages are rising for the poorest paid, but that does not take into account the other tax changes that have taken place, such as the changes to rates and employers’ national insurance contributions. All these things, when added together, have resulted in businesses cutting back on the number of young people who work for them.

I remember my very first job at WHSmith, when I was still at school. I went for a Saturday job, but I ended up getting a job doing the newspapers and magazines before the shop opened every day of the week. I would get up at half-past 5, and leave WHSmith at half-past 8 to go to school. It was a real experience for me as a 17 to 18-year-old to have to have that discipline and to go to work in the real world. As I have often said, I have never had as much disposable income as I had then—the clubs and pubs of Gravesend were very welcome to it.

The experiences that a young person can gain from short-term or Saturday employment, or part-time employment during school holidays, are vital. I fear that looking just at the rises in the minimum wage, and talking about how much people can earn a year, does not take into account the other pressures on business. For all the importance of raising people’s wages, it does not achieve anything if the jobs are not there.

[Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)]

Having run a business on the high street for the last 21 years, I can safely say that we have not had Saturday jobs around for at least the last 10 of them. That is not to do with the national minimum wage; it is due to a lack of support from Government over the last 14 years. Hundreds of ideas came forward, and numerous consultations were never acted on, so does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a bit of a leap to say that it is the minimum wage that is creating the issue?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she illustrates the point I am making. It is not about the minimum wage; it is about the other taxes that have gone alongside the minimum wage and put huge pressure on businesses. Lots of people say that raising the minimum wage is great, because it puts more money in people’s pockets, but it is the other pressures at the same time that are the issue. I could name five businesses in just one town in my constituency that did hire young people to work on a Saturday but have reduced the number of people they hire because of the other costs.

I will move on, because I am sure we were not expecting to be here in the Committee Room for too long. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs mentioned the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne. I raised this issue on Second Reading of the Employment Rights Act. I do not know how many Members on the Government Benches stood for election before 2024, but Labour party manifestos before 2024—it was not in the 2024 one—said the party would ban unpaid internships. I have fought to ban unpaid internships in every single term I have been in this place, and I have never got anywhere. Every Prime Minister came to the Dispatch Box and said, “I don’t see why we are not doing it,” and then it did not happen.

I brought forward an amendment to the Minimum Wage Act 1998 so that it would include unpaid internships. One would have thought that a Government who keep talking about paying young people, getting them on the ladder and doing things for them would have included a simple minimum wage—whether the apprenticeship wage or the minimum wage for the youngest, a minimum wage—in that Act for people who are exploited. Anybody who works for a company for four weeks is adding value to the company, no matter what anybody says. Being asked to go and work, perhaps in London, for a year—having to sort out accommodation and bear all the costs—and not getting paid is exploitation.

I am afraid that, again, I push back on the Government. They parrot that what they are doing for people is great, because they are raising the minimum wage, but that does not take into account the other tax rises that have put pressure on business, and it does not do anything to move things forward for young people who are missing out on opportunity because they do not have the ways and means to work for free. The Government should take a close look at themselves. They have talked about their Employment Rights Act and have come here today to boast about rises in the minimum wage, but they have not ensured that a whole section of young people actually get paid for a day’s work. My party has always believed that work should pay.

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Michelle Scrogham Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald (Stockton North) (Lab)]

In 1976, a group of steelworkers emerged from the Templeborough steelworks following a night shift. At the time, Temple-borough was the largest electric arc steelmaking plant in the world. Those steelworkers had just done something rather spectacular: they had broken a shift record. They were surprised to find a letter from the Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, congratulating them on their contribution to the national effort. After 48 years, it is marvellous that we finally have a Prime Minister who is prioritising the steel industry once again.

I know what it is like to emerge bleary-eyed from a night shift on a steelworks. As much as we are emotionally attached to our steelworks, the past analogies are not entirely helpful here. There is too much of a narrative in this country that steel is a sunset industry, when in fact it is not only essential, but advanced. Perhaps this is the time for me to direct Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as the former chief executive of the UK’s national steel innovation centre.

A lot of that innovation is embedded in our facility in Scunthorpe, from advanced high-speed rail from the rail mill to rods that are drawn down to wire the thickness of a human hair, produced to pharmaceutical levels of precision. The beam mill in Teesside is one of a handful of plants capable of producing large-scale beams that have been used to build buildings from Hong Kong through to the west coast of the USA. The Skinningrove works produces the tines for yellow goods for Caterpillar, which move directly into that factory. I am sure that all Members agree on how vital those plants and facilities are, but they may be unaware that two thirds of the steels we produce today did not exist 15 years ago, such is the level of continuous innovation in the steel industry.

Everything that we have is made either from or with steel. Our steel industry has declined so significantly over the past 14 years that just last week, when I went to the constituency adjacent to mine to visit the Hartlepool pipe mill, which makes the pipes for the carbon capture and storage network in which this Government have invested £4 billion, I saw that stamped on the plates of steel was the word “Voestalpine”. An Austrian steel producer that sits in the foothills of the Alps is able to produce plate steel more competitively than those in the UK, while we have a plate mill in Scotland that is practically idle—the slabs for that plate mill would have been produced in the Scunthorpe steelworks.

I welcome the legislation today as an opportunity for us to take back control of our steel industry and deal with the chaotic fragmentation of the industry that occurred over the past 14 years. I believe that the UK can be just as competitive as steel companies in Austria, Germany, France, Spain or the Netherlands, which are, in fact, the biggest importers of steel to the UK.

[Michelle Scrogham (Barrow and Furness) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris McDonald]

I am sorry; given the shortage of time, I will not.

I also believe that we can be at least as good as the steel industry in Belgium, which is now larger than the steel industry in the UK. Clearly, there was a lack of ambition on the part of the previous Government. They did not believe that our steel industry could be as competitive as Belgium’s.