Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Steve Witherden Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I refer back to the point made by Munira Wilson about the corrected online version of her amendment 1, for the benefit of Members who are in the Chamber. In case there is any confusion, the correct version should begin:

“Clause 24, page 44, leave out lines 34 to line 4 on page 45 and insert”.

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate and express my support for the Bill. For far too long, school children have borne the brunt of academisation. Fortunately, the Labour Government in Wales rejected this model, but, having been a teacher on the border for most of my working life and a national executive member of the NASUWT, I have seen at first hand the negative impact of academies becoming the default model, while local authorities have been sidelined.

Since the introduction of the Academies Act 2010, the freedom for academies and free schools to set their own pay, terms and conditions has led to the exploitation of teachers. For example, teachers at Ark schools are expected to work 1,657 hours more annually than a maintained school teacher, while earning £7 less per hour. The lack of national consistency not only allows these schools to undervalue and overwork staff but undermines basic rights such as pension schemes, maternity and sick pay. Our Bill will tackle those disparities by extending the statutory pay and conditions framework to all teachers in academies, ensuring greater consistency and fairness between academies and maintained schools.

There is also the issue of admission policies. Too many schools misuse their control over admissions to break with inclusive local authority policies, selecting what they consider to be a more favourable intake of students. The Bill’s extension of the power to direct admissions to academies will ensure that local authorities can secure places for hard-to-place and vulnerable students, rather than allowing academies to exercise shameful selective admissions. Furthermore, by ending academy presumption, the Bill takes a significant step towards increasing academy accountability, empowering local authorities to better serve the needs of their communities, particularly helping SEND students and reducing reliance on unaffordable independent providers.

I hope to see the severe disparity between teachers’ pay and the high salaries of academy CEOs reviewed and addressed in future education legislation. We must ensure that funding is directed where it is most needed: to teaching and learning. This Bill marks an historic first step towards creating an accountable and fair education system that will benefit all our children.

[Graham Stuart]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden), who has done us and the nation a great service with the clarity of his speech. The Labour party is often accused of working to serve the producer interest rather than the consumer interest, looking after the needs of the trade unions and not those of the ordinary citizen or, in this case, the child. But rarely does any Labour Member make it quite so explicit as the hon. Gentleman just did, with a total betrayal of the child and a total focus on the needs of the professional, their interests, their pay, their disparities and their conditions. There was nothing about the child, nothing about the standards of education. Never have I seen a Labour Member speak up so honestly about what this Bill is really about. We should be enormously grateful to him for doing that, and for doing it so clearly—and in not many words.

This Bill contains 38 policy proposals all linked by a troubling theme: the misguided notion that the bureaucrat knows best. In advocating for new schools to be opened and controlled by local authorities, the Government choose to ignore the evidence that competition and innovation are what drive up standards, and instead they consolidate power in the hands of bureaucrats.

Certificate of Common Sponsorship

Steve Witherden Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) on securing this crucial debate. Migrant workers are vital to the UK’s economy and society. They make up over a fifth of our workforce and support essential industries such as hospitality and social care. Just last week, I had the privilege of meeting representatives from Focus on Labour Exploitation, the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, the Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association and the Refugee Workers Cultural Association. They voiced serious concerns about the current visa rules that tie many migrant workers to a single employer, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

The existing legislation not only creates grey areas that allow employers to pay unliveable wages, deny sick pay and encourage abuse in the workplace, but it also strips employees of the agency to challenge those conditions. Many are trapped in a vicious cycle; they are scared to speak out due to fear of arrest, immigration detention or deportation, with no means to move to a safer employer. I fully support our Government’s commitment to reducing visa and immigration abuse, and empowering workers to report exploitation safely plays a crucial role in that.

The introduction of a certificate of common sponsorship would enable migrant workers to change employers freely without facing the burden of additional immigration fees, the risk of being unemployed within the 60-day period or jeopardising their visa status. That would empower workers, increase accountability and raise standards for migrant workers, as employers would risk losing their workforce if they failed to treat workers fairly. Such measures will redress the power imbalance between workers and sponsors, giving workers the flexibility to escape exploitative situations and access their rights without fear.

What conversations have Home Office officials had with those at the Department for Work and Pensions on the effects of data sharing and protections against employers using workers’ insecure immigration status to threaten and silence them in exploitative situations? The UK’s reliance on migrant workers cannot be overstated and all workers’ contributions must be valued and protected.

Workplace Pay Gaps

Steve Witherden Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) on securing this important debate.

Research in 2023 revealed that mothers in the UK earned, on average, 31% less than fathers—a gap worse than the one 40 years before. The motherhood pay penalty has been overlooked by previous Governments for far too long, significantly contributing to gender pay gaps. The undervaluation of care work, combined with the fact that caregiving responsibilities fall disproportionately on women, means that women are often the ones who take career breaks or reduce their working hours when raising children. This leads to limited work experience and stunted career progression.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that while men’s earnings remain largely unaffected by parenthood, women’s earnings drop significantly after having children. In fact, seven years post childbirth, women earn less than half of what men earn. The penalty is even more severe for black and ethnic minority women, who face additional barriers as the impact of motherhood is compounded by existing ethnic pay gaps and gender and race-based inequalities at work.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving parents’ rights in the workplace through the Employment Rights Bill. The Bill’s increased protections against dismissal for pregnant women, for those on maternity leave and for those returning within six months build on existing safeguards against redundancy for mothers, taking us a crucial step forward in addressing the penalty. Furthermore, the Bill’s removal of restrictions on paternity leave and pay will provide more flexibility and encourage a fairer division of parenting responsibilities between partners.

What plans do the Government have to directly tackle the gap between the earnings of mothers and fathers? What specific measures are being considered for single parents, who will not necessarily benefit from changes to paternity leave and who often bear the responsibility for caregiving? Diolch yn fawr.