Oral Answers to Questions
Steve Witherden Excerpts(4 days, 22 hours ago)
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Sarah Jones
I will not take any lectures from the Opposition, who said “eff business”. Conservative Members have some cheek to come at us when we are clearing up the £22 billion black hole that we inherited, and setting in train stability. I spent quite a lot of yesterday, as the hon. Gentleman would expect, talking to and having meetings with businesses about the Budget and its implications. We talked about the potential for growth, long-term stability, and changes that this Labour Government are making.
Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we need to get more people back into work, and need to support them to return. In the Employment Rights Bill, we are looking to increase the scope of sick pay to include people below the lower earnings limit, and to introduce payments from day one. We have no plans to increase the rate of statutory sick pay, but when we get the reforms through, we will no doubt look at how we can reform it for the better. My Department for Work and Pensions colleagues will consider that in due course.
Port Talbot Transition Project
Steve Witherden Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds
The levels of ambition and resource that we have as a new Government are actually greater than the figures that the hon. Lady has just given. To do the work that she describes requires a private sector partner. The Government cannot alone meet the capital expenditure needs. Indeed, to be successful it is better to work with a private sector partner to deliver that. Having a partner to retain virgin steel production is part of what the strategy will be able to address. If I had a partner willing to keep blast furnaces open, I would be very interested in that. However, I do not want to spend this very large sum of money in our clean steel fund on subsidising operating losses for one or two years, which would eat up most of that £3 billion and leave us with nothing at the end of it. I want to co-invest with the private sector for good, secure, long-term jobs, which are much in demand. She is right to say that other European countries have been way ahead of the UK in the past few years, but the level of ambition from this Government not only matches that among some of those European competitors but exceeds it.
Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)
What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the workforce and their unions about this improved deal?
Jonathan Reynolds
The answer is a great many, as my hon. Friend will understand. I have always been conscious not just of the specific impact on the workforce at Port Talbot, but of the fact that some of the big industrial transitions of the past in the United Kingdom, in the north-east of England where I grew up, were not handled well. I think people recognise that. I thought that the previous Government’s levelling-up strategy was a recognition of the long-term damage that was done in the late ’80s and early ’90s by that transition. Getting that right, and showing the workforce that this is a Government who care, have always been paramount. I have been to Port Talbot several times. I last met the community reps a week ago, and was able to have frank conversations with them. In everything that I have said, and will continue to say, I recognise that we wish that we were in a position to do more, but within the parameters of what we had and where we almost were, in terms of the entire loss of the site, I am confident that this is the biggest improvement that was possible in two months. We will always work with them to ensure that we are getting everything that we can for the site.