Rail Performance

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Ruth Cadbury

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Transport Committee.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The Transport Secretary’s statement is hugely welcome. Bringing privately owned train operating companies into public ownership as well as setting up GBR will inevitably add to her Department’s workload, so what preparations is she making to manage that additional workload?

[Louise Haigh]

I am grateful that my hon. Friend is concerned about my work-life balance—so am I. We are staffing up the operator of last resort, as it is currently known—we will shortly change its name, as it will no longer be the operator of last resort—and the Department has significantly increased its capability. Under the previous Administration, no one in government took responsibility for the running of the railways. We are taking a very deliberately different approach and, as passengers-in-chief, we will ensure that both the operator of last resort and the Department are sufficiently staffed up to manage the quick and successful transition of franchises into public ownership.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Nusrat Ghani and Ruth Cadbury

2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my membership of the GMB. I support this landmark employment Bill, the biggest expansion of workers’ rights for a generation. Today we see the difference that a Labour Government can make for people up and down the country.

Although I support all aspects of the Bill, I will focus specifically on the transport sector. During and following the covid pandemic, transport workers faced the short end of the stick of poor employment practice. I welcome the end of fire and rehire. That unfair practice was used as a sledgehammer against workers, particularly during the pandemic, by companies such as British Airways, which tried it on more than 35,000 staff members, including many of my constituents in Hounslow. BA staff who had worked for decades faced the prospect of being sacked and rehired on poorer pay and weaker terms and conditions.

After huge pressure from trade unions, Labour MPs and the Transport Committee, BA dropped its plans, but other firms such as P&O have also exploited the weakness in UK employment law that the Bill is intended to address. Those practices are still happening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) highlighted in his intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister. When workers were facing fire and rehire, Labour was clear that a Labour Government would ban that practice, and I am pleased the Government are doing that. I welcome clause 22.

On minimum service levels, the Bill will also repeal and scrap the previous Government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023—a farcical bit of legislation designed to limit strike action. In Committee, when I pushed the rail operators on the proposed legislation, it was clear that they had not sought it and they appeared to have no plans to use it. The fact that so few rail operators chose to use the powers once they were enacted showed that the companies themselves doubted their value and use.

This Bill also brings in much-needed modernisation of our maritime laws. In the last Parliament, the then Chairs of the Transport Committee and the Business and Trade Committee—one Conservative, one Labour—jointly wrote to the then Government about the need to update our laws to protect maritime workers. I welcome the Bill’s closure of the loophole whereby ships registered overseas previously did not have to inform the UK Government of collective redundancies, and the fact that this Government have committed to further strengthen workers’ rights at sea.

In conclusion—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I call Shivani Raja to make her maiden speech.