Business of the House

Peter Grant Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue of sharia-compliant loans on behalf of pupils at Sheffield Park Academy. Within the Treasury, that comes under the responsibilities of the Economic Secretary. As the hon. Gentleman has suggested, the Department for Education also has important input on it. If he would like to contact me, I would be happy to make sure I facilitate appropriate contacts with the Treasury—if that is appropriate—and certainly with the DFE.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

May I say that an ability to make glory out of a football defeat qualifies you for honorary membership of the tartan army, Mr Speaker.

On 1 May, a constituent of mine and his colleagues received an email from the subcontracting firm they worked for telling them that the company was being placed into administration, leaving them out of pocket by £1,000 each. They were successfully taken on by the main contractor, but in the five weeks since then the employer has refused all attempts to communicate with him. He has failed to give his employees notification of who the administrator is—if indeed an administrator has been appointed. The Gazette has no notice of liquidation, and Companies House records, as of this morning, do not record the fact that the company is in the process of closing down. So may we have a debate, in Government time, on not only the protection of workers’ rights when a company genuinely does go into administration, but what protections there might be where a company claims to be in administration incorrectly in order to avoid paying its workers their due wages?

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman raises a specific point about the experience that one of his constituents is having with a particular business, and on that aspect of his question I would be happy to facilitate contact, perhaps with an appropriate Minister at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, to see what possibilities there are. On the more general point he makes on policy on administration, we have BEIS questions on Tuesday coming and he may wish to raise the issue then. Equally, he may wish to consider it for a Westminster Hall debate, perhaps when BEIS is the Department due to answer those debates.