Unpaid Work Experience (Prohibition) (No. 2) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 11th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Cunningham]

The hon. Member is totally correct, but people do not need to work for six months, 12 months or longer to get work experience. Four weeks will be sufficient in the organisation that he once ran to get that experience and build towards a new job.

Every party in this House claims to be the party of social mobility. Today Members have an opportunity to stand up and prove that theirs is the one that believes in that area of activity. If they are advocates for social mobility, I hope they will stand up to organisations that exclude those from poorer backgrounds from opportunities because they cannot afford to live without pay.

But this is not just about exclusive opportunities for those who can afford to take unpaid roles. Having people work for months on end without pay is exploitative, even when they are prepared to work for nothing. I am aware that some Members have argued that banning unpaid work experience would simply mean that organisations would stop offering opportunities altogether. First, for me, organisations not offering unpaid roles at all is preferable to them offering them exclusively to a distinct group of people. Secondly, if there is a real job to be done, organisations will find the money to pay someone to do it. Just because there are plenty of young and eager people, that does not mean that organisations should choose to save money by bringing in someone to do a job unpaid under the guise of work experience. Surely a young person does not need to work for six months or a year to get experience of a workplace or to learn a little of how a particular field operates.

But what does the employer or the organisation get out of it? It is quite clear: they get free labour, expecting a full day’s work without a full day’s pay. They save themselves a salary. They also save themselves national insurance and pension contributions. Surely it would be fairer for everyone if we limited such work experience placements to a month. Even the Exchequer could benefit. Such a move would ensure that living costs do not stack up, putting people further in debt, and would enable those opportunities to be offered to more people. A six-month unpaid placement could instead be offered to six people instead of one.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman recognises the value of short work experience placements, but does he also recognise that sometimes such placements are better structured for both sides, perhaps on a part-time basis or even for one day a week? That means that, although they are probably still rather less than 20 days in total, they can last for significantly longer than four weeks. Is there not a danger of their being caught by his Bill?

[Alex Cunningham]

Maybe my Bill should limit the length to 20 days with one employer—it all amounts to the same thing—but the hon. Member is right: a young person could gain experience over a period of time. If he supports my Bill, perhaps we can amend it to take on exactly that point.

The only way that we will crack down on this practice is by limiting the amount of time that someone can do unpaid work experience for one organisation.

Of course, there are already rules around the definition of a worker, but the Sutton Trust carried out some excellent research that found those rules are not as clear to organisations and those carrying out their work experience placements as we would hope. For example, it found that half of young graduates are unaware that unpaid internships are illegal—yes, they are already illegal—in most circumstances. This is a significant problem as the current system relies on young people to self-report any unpaid internships that they suspect are illegally not paying the minimum wage. That puts those young people in an incredibly difficult position.

Lifting the Lockdown: Workplace Safety

Mike Wood Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

By consulting as many businesses, unions and representative organisations as we can, we have been able to work through the guidelines in our own times. Whereas at the beginning we were having to react to the closure of the economy, this timeline is for us so that we can be well prepared and give as few surprises to businesses as possible so they can plan. That is why we want to have a flexible situation so that they can prepare and operate a safe environment for their employees, but, as I mentioned before, employees can approach the Health and Safety Executive or their local authorities if they feel that they are not operating in a safe workplace.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con) [V]]

[Inaudible.]

[Mr Speaker]

Sorry, but we will have to move on to Sharon Hodgson.

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[Mr Speaker]

We will try to reconnect with Mike Wood down in Dudley. Mike Wood, I hope you are connected.

[Mike Wood [V]]

Second time lucky, Mr Speaker, although some would prefer me on mute, I am sure.

As the Minister will know, many of our workers have been working throughout this outbreak. As well as thanking them for all their efforts, will the Minister assure us that the Government are making sure that employers are aware of their responsibilities and are keeping their workers safe?

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for giving me the opportunity to thank those people who have kept our economy going through this difficult time. We rightly say a massive thank you to our key workers—our emergency workers, and especially those in the NHS, but we must also thank those who have been feeding the country and supplying the shops, the delivery drivers, the construction workers, the warehouse operatives and the retailers who have been out there doing that crucial work. We must make sure, as I said earlier, that we can give employees coming back to the workplace the confidence that they are working in a safe environment. We will certainly be able to do that if we can continue to work with as many businesses, unions and organisations as possible. We need to get this right and get our message right that the economy can be opened and that we can get back to work.

Local Government Finance (England)

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will turn now to the specifics for the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency. This settlement will see a 7.1% increase in core spending power, and the additional social care grant for next year will be £12.8 million, which is a very significant increase. For the reasons he has just set out, we decided to apply an equalisation to the social care precept, which will ensure that those areas of the country with the lowest tax base will see more funding flow to them, in a redistribution of funding from those areas elsewhere in the country that, as he rightly says, have higher tax bases. We chose to do that at £150 million, which is more than has been done in previous settlements, precisely to answer the point he makes.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Local authorities in the top quartile of deprivation are seeing increases averaging £12.3 million next year. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this demonstrates that the Government have listened to the concerns of those local authorities that have been most hard-pressed in recent years?

[Robert Jenrick]

That is absolutely right. My hon. Friend’s own local authority will see a 6.6% increase in its core spending power next year, as a result of this settlement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

8. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s support for high streets.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

9. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s support for high streets.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

11. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s support for high streets.

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[Jake Berry]

What an excellent question; I would like to start by welcoming my hon. Friend to her place, and her question is a sign of the expertise that can be brought into this House when we have people with long experience in local government. She will know that local government can currently retain 50% of business rates revenue growth, and councils are able to work with those retained business rates and see what they can do to improve their local areas. I know that as a new and robust Member of this House my hon. Friend will continue her work with Westminster City Council to make sure that that happens.

[Mike Wood]

Towns like Brierley Hill in Dudley South have struggled to compete with nearby retail parks, and also now increasingly with more shopping moving online. Will my right hon. Friend do everything he can to help towns like Brierley Hill adapt to modern economic challenges and also make those town centres places where people want to be?

[Jake Berry]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State visited Brierley Hill, I am sure to celebrate the fact that it is one of the first 100 places under our future high street fund to receive £150,000 revenue funding to work on the exciting plans to ensure our high streets are fit for the future. My hon. Friend, who is, I think, still the chairman of the all-party group on beer, will be working very hard to make sure our pubs are protected, and we can have micropubs up and down the land.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

The hon. Lady is normally quite precise, but I should correct what she said at the start. We consulted not on fracking taking place under permitted development rights, but on exploration in advance of a full application being made for fracking. Those consultations are still under consideration by colleagues, in particular those with whom we work closely at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I will impress upon them the House’s demands this afternoon that a response be forthcoming.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to deliver economic growth through the midlands engine.

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)]

The Government are investing £1.6 billion through the nine midlands local enterprise partnerships and have established the £250 million midlands engine investment fund. Some £217 million of the local growth fund is being invested in the Black Country, and projects such as the Elite Centre for Manufacturing Skills, with Dudley College, will drive economic growth in the area.

[Mike Wood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that response, but businesses and residents in my constituency are frustrated at a lack of connectivity. Does the Secretary of State agree that a priority for the midlands engine and the Government as a whole must be to invest substantially in connecting our region, whether by rail, by road or digitally?

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[James Brokenshire]

We want to get this right in the private rental sector, which is why we have launched the consultation today on section 21 and how we provide that reform. If the hon. Lady wishes to draw the circumstances of this case to my attention, I will be happy to receive the details, because the sense of fairness underpins the action we are taking and is why these reforms are necessary.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

T5. The midlands has economic, cultural and historical ties with countries in every part of the world, but few are stronger than those with India. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on developments for a midlands engine partnership with business in India?

[James Brokenshire]

I am pleased to say to my hon. Friend that some further positive steps have been taken since my visit to India last October to forge those relationships between the midlands and Maharashtra in India. I hope to be able to give him some positive news very shortly on signing a memorandum of understanding to really regularise that and underpin how we ensure we have that shared expertise to create jobs, boost trade and take other steps to cement this and create that positive sense of prosperity that I know he strongly advocates.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Wood Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to tackle unfair practices in the private parking sector.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

21. What steps his Department is taking to tackle unfair practices in the private parking sector.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)]

The Government fully support the Parking (Code of Practice) Bill of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight). It will create an independent code of practice for private parking companies and deliver robust accountability, providing a much better deal for motorists.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work on the Committee and for highlighting his constituents’ problems. I am pleased to tell him that I have already placed a draft outline of the code in the House of Commons Library and as soon as Royal Assent is achieved a full code will be issued for formal statutory consultation.

[Mike Wood]

What assessment has the Minister made of the Bill of our right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire and its likely impact, and does he believe that more is needed to help to protect our constituents from cowboy parking enforcers?

Holocaust Memorial Day

Mike Wood Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who spoke with great passion, and shared with the House his personal experience of the modern manifestations of antisemitism.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) on the way in which he opened the debate, the tone that he set for it, and the fact that so many Members on both sides of the House are gathered here today. That is also a great testament to the valuable work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

I think it important to reflect on what Holocaust Memorial Day actually is. Why do we commemorate it on 27 January? The answer is that it marks the date on which the Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. That was the site where nearly a million people were murdered, but, as we know, it was just one of the many terrible death camps across Europe.

I reflect on my own family experience. On my mother’s side alone, we know that more than 100 members of her family, aged between four and 83, were sent by the Nazis to their deaths in the gas chambers of not just Auschwitz but Treblinka, Sobibór, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen, for no other reason than that they were Jewish.

It is beyond our comprehension that humans are capable of inflicting such horrors on other humans. It questions the very nature of humanity, and leads us to the contemplation of evil. Yet we have continued to witness horrors in our own times, in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, and the House recently debated the plight of the Rohingya in Burma, driven from their homes, their villages in flames.

Humanity never seems to fully learn the lessons of history. That is why Holocaust Memorial Day is so vital and continuing holocaust education is so critical—so that we can do everything possible to ensure that it really does not ever happen again. It is why we celebrate the lives of survivors who are now in their 80s and 90s, such as Susan Pollack MBE, with whom I had the privilege to share a platform a few months ago at the Labour party conference in Liverpool. Susan was in Belsen when the British liberated it, and still visits schools to talk about her experiences. It is why we mourn the passing of so many holocaust survivors, particularly in the past year, such as Mireille Knoll, who lived through the occupation of Paris but was murdered this year at the age of 85 in a hate crime, and Gena Turgel, who survived four concentration camps. She tended to the dying Anne Frank in Belsen, and married a British soldier just six weeks after liberation. The testimony of every single survivor aids our understanding, adds to our history, and helps to educate the next generation.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way during such a moving and powerful speech. Like her, I was extremely moved by Ms Pollack’s testimony, although that was at a Conservative party conference. Does she agree that the declining number of holocaust survivors is another reason why it is so important for their recorded testimony to have a central role in the new learning centre?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention. I have seen the testimonies that are housed at Yad Vashem. That project, which is funded in part by Steven Spielberg, has done so much to capture the stories and the background. For every single person who perished, there is a whole history and a family who have been affected up to the modern day. It is critical for those testimonies to be at the centre of every holocaust memorial, however it may be presented—in particular, the new national memorial that we are due to have—in order to have an impact on the next generation.

It is important to recognise that the holocaust did not start with gas chambers. It started with ideas, with books, with newspapers, with films, with torchlight processions, with speeches. It culminated in crematoria, but it began with words. It had its roots in the warped racial theories of the 1890s, and in conspiracy theories such as those in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Nazis did not invent antisemitism, but they modernised it, made it the state religion, and turned an industrial state into a machine for killing every Jew in Europe.

We should ask how that happened. How was such a thing possible in a civilised European country? One answer lies in the compliance of the civilian population. In the past year we also lost the writer Primo Levi, who was in Auschwitz. He wrote:

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”

That is the aspect of the holocaust from which we need to learn the most: not the SS, who enjoyed the torture and killings, but the thousands of people in the civilian police, the railways and the civil service who never challenged what they knew to be happening, who never questioned the plans that they were helping to implement, who looked the other way. They saw those trains heading east, but they never wondered why no one ever came back, even for a day. At what point could it have been stopped? Surely the lesson for us today is that unless we challenge the words, it is much harder to challenge the deeds. We cannot be bystanders. We cannot walk by on the other side.

In the 1930s it was Der Stürmer, which ran from 1923 onwards with its unceasing antisemitism. It told its readers week after week that Jews spread disease, and the caption on every front page read “The Jews are our misfortune!”. Today it is social media, with all its manifestations of modern antisemitism: Jews secretly run the banks, organised 9/11, profit from wars, manipulate the media, and have loyalties to foreign powers.

When people deny the holocaust or claim that Jews exploit it, we cannot be bystanders. When people online draw up lists of Jews in the media, we cannot be bystanders. When people use the term “Zio” or “Rothschild” instead of “Jew” to cover their racism, we cannot be bystanders. Whether it is the neo-Nazis or those who think that they belong to the left, we must say no, and call it out as loudly as we can. Every single time, it must be challenged swiftly and without favour, no matter where it rears its very ugly head.

I will end with another quote from Primo Levi:

“It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere.”

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I want to speak, very briefly, about new clause 1 and amendment 6. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on the progress that his Bill has made, and particularly congratulate him on the new clause and amendment, which clarify the possibilities for a truly independent appeals procedure.

Landowners clearly have a right to decide on reasonable and fair terms for the way in which their land is used, but, as we know from our constituency postbags and email inboxes, in too many cases those terms do not seem fair. The processes for contesting unfairly issued parking tickets are expensive and drawn out, and motorists who are willing to contest a ticket through the courts take a disproportionate risk in the form of a dramatic escalation from the original fine as well as, of course, the legal costs. While we would not wish to prejudge the outcome of the parking code, one possibility that should be considered is the handling of appeals by a single independent person, and the measures allowing that person to be appointed and the funds to come from fees collected from the private operators covered by the scheme are therefore sensible.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Will my hon. Friend also give himself credit? It was partly as a result of the representations that he and others made that I decided to table the new clause and amendments.

[Mike Wood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that generous intervention, but I fear that it may be a little too generous. The work that he and his team, and Ministers, have done has been key to the Bill.

I will certainly support both my right hon. Friend’s amendments and the Bill’s Third Reading, but I am afraid that I do not find myself able to support amendment 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). I think that we have a responsibility to ensure as far as possible that the provisions in our legislation are enforceable, and I therefore question the wisdom of legislative provisions requiring best endeavours on the part of the Government, although I have no doubt whatsoever that Ministers will at all times exercise such best endeavours. I am particularly reassured by the undertakings given by my right hon. Friend to harry Ministers if that becomes necessary, and I am in absolutely no doubt that he is perfectly capable of making Ministers’ lives a misery, just as he has promised.

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[Mike Wood]

This Bill is important not only in protecting motorists; it is vital to the vitality of our town centres. People who are afraid of high, arbitrary parking penalties do not come into town centres and so do not support local traders, and our high streets miss out. Parking providers have privileged access to DVLA records in order to enforce these charges. That is a privilege, and where providers are abusing their position through excessive charges and making sure that those escalate as a way of dissuading people from contesting the charges, despite there being insufficient signage, the provider should lose those privileges, even if they go out of business. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), in bringing forward this vital Bill, has earned the thanks of motorists from around the country. He deserves the thanks of the traders in our town centres who rely on this and he deserves the support of all of us in this House today.

Budget Resolutions

Mike Wood Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mhairi Black]

Funnily enough, I could not agree more, and I have to say as a 24-year-old that I would challenge any Member to justify why I should be paid less than anyone else in this place. If the law does not apply to me, why should it apply to anyone else out there?

My third example is the two-child cap. This is the claim that really sticks in my craw. If it were true that the Chancellor is supporting families, he would not make women prove they were raped in order to get benefits for their children. I see that not many Tories are giving me eye contact at the minute. Over 73,000 households are receiving less tax credits than before and the Government’s response was that people on welfare need to make decisions about the number of children they may or may not have. That statement is as barbaric as it is downright stupid; it is nothing more than an ignorant, cruel and deliberate misconception to hide behind.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mhairi Black]

I will not.

Life does not happen like that. There is no telling how or when an individual’s circumstances will change, and this Government know that. It is children who are paying the price.

I want to mention the very people I am sure the Chancellor would love to forget—those WASPI women who refuse to disappear quietly. I have noticed that any time we on these Benches highlight problems such as WASPI or universal credit, we are told to use our shining new powers in the Scottish Parliament to fix them. Let us take universal credit as an example. The Scottish Government listened to the experts who said that fortnightly payments would be much more flexible for claimants. We used the little influence that we have to at least try to make the system slightly better for people. Actually, few people are aware that the Scottish Government have to pay Westminster for the luxury of trying to protect people from the very worst of these policies. So I am afraid that I will take no lectures from the Conservative and Labour parties, which fought tooth and nail to make sure that Scotland did not get the powers required to fix these problems. We were told that employment law and pensions were too important to be devolved and that we were better together, so do not dare to turn around and say that Scottish people should fork out more money to plug holes in policies they did not vote for in the first place.

Let us be clear that this Budget delivers austerity and simply gives it a different name. If this is “better together”, then the Scotland I want to live in is, and deserves, better than this.

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[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

This Budget is good for communities and families in the west midlands. On top of the £250 million that the county has already received from the transforming cities fund, it will get another £72 million to boost prosperity and spread wealth across the region by increasing productivity. Families will also have extra money in their pockets at the end of every single month thanks to the introduction, a full year ahead of schedule, of the changes to income tax thresholds and personal allowances that were promised in our manifesto last year.

In the limited time available, I want to focus on our pubs, which was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham—[Hon. Members: “Clacton.”] Of course, I mean my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling). Despite mentioning pubs, I have not had a drink so far today; that was purely an end-of-the-week brain melt. For too long, British beer and British pubs were seen purely as part of the problem, whereas there is now an increasing recognition of their economic input. Pubs contribute £26 billion to our economy every year, and pubs across the country employ nearly 1 million people, almost half of whom are under 25. As I am sure the Chancellor will be all too aware, the sector generates £13 billion in tax.

However, the sector has been under enormous pressure. The years after Gordon Brown introduced the hated beer duty escalator saw an even higher than trend rate of pub closures and a reduction in the number of people drinking beer in pubs, rather than buying it in supermarkets.

[Giles Watling]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mike Wood]

I have only a few seconds.

The measures announced on Monday—a freeze in beer duty and a third off business rates—are expected to help up to 19,000 pubs to be between £3,000 and £8,000 a year better off. The British Beer and Pub Association reckons that will safeguard 3,000 jobs in the sector, which in turn means that more people will be earning an income and paying taxes—this will almost certainly cover the costs. This is a good Budget for beer, a good Budget for pubs and a good Budget for Britain.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Mike Wood Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Although the vast majority of privately owned car parks treat their customers with respect, there are still far too many rogue operators. As Members are aware, a common scenario is that people park their car, pay for a ticket and leave without giving it a second thought, but receive a parking ticket in the post some days later demanding an up-front payment within a specified timescale. If they do not pay right away, the fine may double—it is pay now or pay more. The difficulty in such a situation is that the onus is on the owner of the car to prove not only that they have paid to park, but that the ticket was displayed appropriately, when the evidence is all with the person trying to impose the charge. These charges are often accompanied by threatening and aggressive letters that, in their own right, cause a great deal of distress to those receiving them. It is understandable why so many people in receipt of such charges feel pressured into paying them straightaway, partly due to the escalating cost.

The Bill is needed because some firms are not playing by the rules and are not being fair to car park users, and there is sometimes not a clear and fair appeals process. Such companies should simply not have privileged access to public and official databases such as those maintained by the DVLA. The only surprise to most of us is that this is not already the case because it seems so blindingly obvious.

The damage caused by these unfair notices is not just to the people receiving the charges; the wider community also suffers. Unfair parking charges and penalties cause a culture of avoidance. People stay away from those car parks and become more fearful of pay and display car parking. This is having an impact on our town centres, as drivers are concerned that a trip to the town centre could result in an arbitrary penalty. We need this Bill to pass not only for the sake of our constituents, who are directly affected, but for the sake of our local economies.