Electricity and Gas Transmission (Compensation) Bill

Mike Penning Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate. I was one of the sponsors of the Down Syndrome Act 2022, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), and it was an honour to be part of that groundbreaking piece of legislation. I have learned more about how this Parliament works from him than from many other people here, and I thank him for that. I agree completely with everything that colleagues have said about this, but I have a few comments about development consent orders and how the principles behind the Bill can perhaps be developed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell)—a good friend of mine—made an important point about how the principles may affect construction and other areas. We are talking about development consent orders for nationally significant projects, which generally involve constructions of a certain size— 48,000 square metres, I think. In my constituency, we are seeing a proliferation of 5G masts, and the construction of one, in Greenmount, was proposed for unregistered land. The mast itself would have been in a residential area and would have been bigger than the surrounding houses. If the planning application had been granted, there were no means for local people to claim compensation, or at least no means to challenge the application other than through the planning process.

For significant infrastructure projects—be they those that my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme mentioned, 5G masts or all sorts of other things—we must consider independent mechanisms that allow members of the public a way to claim compensation. Quite clearly, in the context that I am describing, a huge 5G mast suddenly towering over somebody’s house will have a huge impact on them.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

The 5G mast issue my hon. Friend is talking about is happening across our constituencies. They have presumed consent in most cases. Is he bidding to join the Bill Committee and table an amendment to include 5G masts?

[James Daly]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I am open to anything, so I will certainly give that due consideration.

For infrastructure projects that are not related to residential use and have a negative impact on people’s everyday lives, their property and its value, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) has included in his Bill an important general principle that we can look at further. We need to find ways to ensure that constituents who are impacted by the actions of commercial bodies have the means by which to challenge and claim compensation. I wholeheartedly support the Bill, and I am very much open to all suggestions being put forward.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) on his success in the ballot and on bringing his Bill to the House today. He can perhaps now be described as a private Member’s Bill specialist, and the skill in that is to pick issues that allow the House to come to some sort of agreement and for which people want private Members’ Bills. I listened intently to what he had to say and—I will be honest with him—I have some concerns about his Bill, but I can tell him that I have amended my own speech in response to some of his points, so I genuinely listened to the case he put forward.

The right hon. Member gave a detailed account of how these matters have affected his constituents. He was right to say that the proposals are of national significance. That is because the debate comes at a time when this country faces several converging emergencies: the energy bills crisis is impacting deeply on millions of families and businesses across the country, the energy security crisis has been exposed by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and, of course, on the climate crisis, the UN tells us that we are on course for 2.8° C of catastrophic global warming.

Those crises all call for a sprint to renewable and nuclear energy. That is why the Labour party has set out our plans to make Britain a clean-energy superpower by 2030. I think we all agree that that is also the best way to keep energy bills low, tackle the climate emergency and create good jobs for the future. Achieving that mission is not just about building more kit—more nuclear plants, wind turbines or solar panels—but about establishing storage capacity to manage peaks in energy demand, new ways of balancing the grid and, most of all, very comprehensive improvements to our electricity infrastructure to expand the grid to new sources of energy. That is why the Bill is particularly relevant and important.

My understanding from listening to the right hon. Member is that, fundamentally, he wants to create an independent process whereby compensation can be determined for landowners whose land is required for the transmission of electricity or gas. I assume he intends that compensation to involve increasing the price currently paid for the land above the agricultural value that is commonly applied when such land is acquired through a compulsory purchase order. He made an excellent speech, and the way in which he articulated the specific cases of his constituents was very powerful—particularly when he pointed out that local property searches had not revealed the Hinkley infrastructure, which would impose a considerable burden on people.

I cannot say to the right hon. Member that I am fully convinced that what we need is new legislation to do this better. Expanding the transmission of electricity and gas is vital for the future health of our economy, not just as the bedrock of our clean energy future. In my role I have the privilege of meeting representatives of a range of companies every day, and they all tell me that one thing that holds them back from investing in the UK and growing their business is the time that it takes to secure the necessary expansions of the grid network. A few weeks ago, representatives of a company in Newcastle told me that it had been offered a grid connection by 2040.

[Sir Mike Penning]

It is generous of the shadow Minister to give way again. I have been sitting here quietly listening to the debate, and I share some of his concerns about more regulation delaying the infrastructure projects, but I think that this proposal could actually speed them up, because in many cases it would remove the need for stuff to go to a tribunal. I do not think that the Bill is designed to delay—far from it—although I am sure that if I am speaking out of turn, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) will tell me so. I think that this could be the fairer mechanism to speed these projects up, rather their being subjected to a long tribunal process with the massive delays that all of us, as constituency Members, have experienced.

While I accept the point that the shadow Minister is making about his scepticism—a point from which I started—I fully support the Bill, and I think that, in the end, he will support it as well.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because if it were clear that this was the way in which to resolve issues and speed the process up, that, for me, would be the deal-breaker. In the 12 years for which I have been in Parliament— I think the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying this—I have often heard Conservative colleagues express strong opposition to housing developments, energy infrastructure, HS2 and other rail projects. It is important for us to get to the crux of the matter, which is whether this is about resolving things more quickly for people or whether it would delay the system further. If we are to meet the ambitions that Members on both sides of the House have held dear, we will all have to recognise the problems that are involved.

Fertility Treatment (Employment Rights) Bill

Mike Penning Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) said, fertility treatment does not affect everybody across our constituencies, but that does not matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) knows—I have been in contact with her about it—the issue affects some of my constituents, and if something is wrong for one, 1,000 or 10,000 constituents, we in this place should put it right.

[Nickie Aiken]

My right hon. Friend is right. I have been in contact with his constituent, who contacted me via his office, which I thank for its support with the Bill too.

The organisations with which I have been working include Fertility Matters at Work, whose recent research shows that a third of people going through IVF treatment have considered leaving their job rather than face possible workplace discrimination. Its findings also indicate that many people do not feel comfortable even discussing IVF treatment openly with their employer or their colleagues at work, so they struggle through the journey largely unsupported.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nickie Aiken]

I thank the Minister for her warm words. I also thank the Minister responsible for employment law, who has been extremely supportive and has met me to discuss the issue.

My constituent, who ended up having to sign a non-disclosure agreement and is not allowed to speak about her experience, feels that the situation has to be righted for the next generation of women. I am delighted to be working with her, with Fertility Matters at Work and with Fertility Network UK, who have all been so supportive.

As well as trying to get this private Member’s Bill through Parliament, I have launched a voluntary scheme called the fertility workplace pledge, as the Minister says. Hon. Members may have heard of it; I have invited many of them to take part. It is about encouraging employers not to wait for the law to change, but to do the right thing now: train line managers to understand what fertility treatment means, support people going through it, have a fertility ambassador and fertility policies, and work with employees undergoing treatment to give them the flexibility they need in the workplace. I am delighted that the House of Commons has signed up to my workplace pledge, as well as NatWest, the Co-op—

[Sir Mike Penning]

Other banks are available.

[Nickie Aiken]

Other banks are available. Others include Channel 4 and many different law firms, such as Burgess Mee Family Law; Natalie Sutherland has been an amazing advocate for fertility policies in the workplace. I pay tribute to all those amazing organisations. If hon. Members would like to persuade employers in their constituencies to sign up to the workplace pledge, they should talk to me, because I have plenty of information—

British Steel: EU Emissions Trading Compliance

Mike Penning Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to be vigorous in our trade defence mechanisms. Steel is a sector that all Members know is subject, and has been over the years, to dumping by global competitors. Through the G20 forum in particular, at which I have represented our country, we have been vigorous in pressing for the strongest measures against anti-competitive practices such as that, and we will continue to do so in the future.

[Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)]

I apologise for not bobbing, Mr Speaker; my back is showing my age and its abuse on the rugby field over the years, so I waited until the very last moment.

I think the Secretary of State has handled this brilliantly well. There was a danger that we stepped in really early on, as suggested by Opposition Members. The market needs to sort this—companies have obligations—and only as a last resort should taxpayers’ money be brought into the equation.

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. He is absolutely right, and I do not want to say from the Dispatch Box that I have engaged again in this type of transaction. The obligations are with the company, and it would obviously have been much better had it been able to discharge them itself. However, sometimes we have to take decisions in office based on the evidence of the consequences. I felt, and was supported by advice that I received, that the responsible action in this case was to make this facility available, with the security that we have obtained, and to do so in time to allow the company to meet its obligations by the deadline.

Employment Tribunals

Mike Penning 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.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) on securing today’s important debate, and I extend my heartfelt condolences to Mrs Hardie for the loss of her husband.

I am aware of the Law Society Gazette article on my hon. Friend’s constituency case relating to unfair dismissal and how the judge treated the matter of discretion. Although I cannot comment on the detail, I am very sympathetic to the position in which Mrs Hardie finds herself, and, of course, I am very happy to meet her with my hon. Friend.

I can confirm that the “just and equitable” test is wider than the “reasonably practicable” test. A tribunal can extend time for bringing a discrimination claim forward where it considers it just and equitable to do so. For unfair dismissal cases, the claimant must demonstrate that it was not reasonably practicable to bring the claim within three months for the tribunals to extend the time and to allow the claim to proceed. Case law has established that demonstrating that it was not reasonably practicable is a more demanding test than establishing that it is just and equitable for the claim to proceed. This is what Parliament has set out in legislation. The time limit in both cases is stipulated in the relevant Act. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this issue to my attention, because I was not aware of the impact that the difference in wording can have in cases such as that of his constituent.

[Mike Penning]

One of things that was so distressing to Anna was that she was cross-examined about whether she had had conversations with her husband and asked where was the proof. There is no proof that I proposed to my wife. It was a very personal thing between me and her—there is no written evidence about the proposal. To say in a cross-examination that she had no proof that her husband wanted to do this, even though Anna had clearly discussed it with him, is abhorrent. She was cross-examined at a time that was enormously distressing for her.

[Margot James]

Although I said I could not comment on the details of the case, I must say, given what my hon. Friend says, that there are situations in which the law itself is insufficient to guide the behaviour of barristers in their work. I find myself very sympathetic to the concern and horror expressed by my hon. Friend.

[Mike Penning]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Margot James]

Yes, I would be delighted. I wanted to refer to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), but before I do so I will give way to my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Penning]

Can I just say that I have had the honour of kissing the Queen, so I am a right hon. Member? That might give the Minister a bit of time to find the right page. It is sometimes hard to do that; it has happened to me on more than one occasion. It was a great pleasure to have kissed the Queen’s hand.

[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.

[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—

[Mike Penning]

rose—

[Margot James]

Was that a request for another intervention? Of course I will give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Mike Penning]

I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet my constituent. She has opened a Pandora’s box, because she has quite rightly said that she wants to see other evidence to show that this is not a one-off. I took advice, as she probably saw from the article in the Law Society Gazette, from eminent lawyers, including Kerry Underwood from Underwoods Solicitors, who is a specialist in this area. She will find that not one, not two, but lots and lots of cases like this have been time-barred, when common sense and natural justice might have suggested that they should be allowed to go through.

[Margot James]

In the case that there turns out to be a substantial body of evidence, as my right hon. Friend has indicated, I am sure that it will be very persuasive. I suggest that he invites the relevant Minister from the Ministry of Justice to join our meeting, because responsibility for this matter is shared across two Departments. With that, I conclude my remarks and thank my right hon. Friend again for bringing this matter to the attention of the House.

Question put and agreed to.