Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mims Davies]

Long-term unemployment is a devolved matter for the Scottish Government to attend to, but I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has raised this important matter. We at the DWP are organising Hospitality Rocks events to bring people into the industry. It is possible to earn significant sums in a couple of years with the necessary training and support, and people should definitely be taking those jobs in Scarborough and beyond.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The fact that universal credit is an in-work benefit is commonly overlooked. There will be a great many more claimants in west London, where Ocado Zoom is treating its workforce appallingly. It has not taken them in-house as it promised, and they now have much worse terms and conditions. I know that the Government are ruling out fire and rehire legislation generally, but will the Minister—I know she is a reasonable person, and everyone loved her the other day when she met our all-party parliamentary group on single parent families—look into this case, which the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain has been actively pursuing? The chief executive of Ocado Zoom will not even talk to me.

[Mims Davies]

The hon. Lady should raise the issue with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, because employee rights are a matter for that Department. However, she has made an important point. We have an employees’ market, with more than 1 million job vacancies, many of them in London. I hope that her constituents will say to that employer, “We are off somewhere else”. Whether that is in hospitality or elsewhere, they will receive a warm welcome, and so they should. They should be well rewarded for the work that they do, which is why the increase in the national living wage is so important.