Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

1. What steps he is taking to help support first-time buyers on to the housing ladder.

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

Since 2010, more than 758,000 households have been helped to purchase a home through Government-backed schemes, including Help to Buy and Right to Buy. In the levelling-up White Paper, we included this mission:

“By 2030, renters will have a secure path to ownership with the number of first-time buyers increasing in all areas”.

[Mr Dhesi]

Conservative choices have created a housing crisis by allowing developers to maximise profit, building housing for investment rather than good-quality, safe, secure, affordable homes. However, building more homes will not in itself solve the housing crisis if those homes are bought off plan by foreign investors before local people such as my constituents can even get a look in. In order to ensure that first-time buyers are not squeezed out by foreign investors and second home owners, will the Government support Labour’s proposal to allow them first dibs on new homes?

[Stuart Andrew]

Let me first make it clear that it is my keen ambition in this role to do everything I can to help more people on to the housing ladder. We have produced a great many schemes that help to achieve that purpose. We already have the First Homes scheme, which provides a 30% discount for local people, for whom those homes remain in perpetuity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am obliged to my hon. Friend. We certainly want to extend and expand the use of neighbourhood plans in constituencies such as his—in Hinckley and Bosworth—and he is right that I have written to the council to encourage it to get on and update its local plan. It is nice to see that there are a couple of Lib Dems on duty here, because they ought to hear that there is nothing liberal or democratic about exposing a local community to speculative development. That is what the people in Hinckley and Bosworth face and I am very keen to make sure that my officials work with Hinckley and Bosworth to get that plan in place.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Under the Conservatives, home insulation rates have plummeted, emissions from homes are higher now than they were in 2015 and UK homes are the least energy-efficient in the whole of Europe. To help struggling families with the spiralling cost of energy bills, will the Minister finally copy and paste Labour’s plan to retrofit every single home with a special scheme to help low-income households?

[Eddie Hughes]

The Government have a number of plans to help with the decarbonisation of homes for people with low incomes. A good example would be our social housing decarbonisation fund, which already has £1 billion committed to it from this year.

Budget Resolutions

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the Budget resolutions debate. Most of the time, debates in the House serve to illuminate a topic and make it clearer. The debate so far has had the opposite effect. What has become increasingly clear is that no one agrees what levelling up actually means. There are fundamental differences on the Government Benches on what levelling up is. The fact is, so much of the Chancellor’s Budget was about not levelling up but repairing damage done by the Government, replacing some—but not all—the money squeezed from public services since 2010.

Take my Slough constituency as an example. I asked the ever-excellent House of Commons Library for the facts about Slough council’s budget since 2010. The Library informed me:

“we can see that Slough’s spending power—broadly speaking, the money that the council had available for making decisions, i.e. excluding ring-fenced funding—decreased by 28.9% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2020-21.

The part of core spending power that came from central Government funding—listed by the National Audit Office as ‘Government-funded spending power’—fell by even more in the same period, with an overall 53.8% real-terms decrease.”

I am going to repeat that because it is staggering—a 53.8% real-terms cut for Slough since the Conservatives came to power.

While issues with Slough Borough Council’s finances undoubtedly extend beyond this, councils have been increasingly forced by the Government to seek more creative ways to bring in income in the face of such cuts. Councils have undertaken governance of complex company groups and investment portfolios to make up for the shortfall and protect frontline services, but they are not geared up to take such risks and operate like property development companies; they are there to provide much-needed public services within communities. In a borough where 30% of children live in poverty, the Government’s callous £20 cut in universal credit will hit those with disabilities and poor families the hardest just when fuel and food prices are soaring, taxes have been increased and winter is coming. That is the reality of the Budget: giving with the hand that has already taken away so much.

No opportunity was more missed in the Budget than investing in UK railways. I share the Rail Industry Association’s disappointment. There was no guarantee of the long-term day-to-day investment that the railway needs to survive after the pandemic; still nothing on the integrated rail plan for the midlands and the north; continuing uncertainty about the eastern leg of HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the midlands rail hub; no update on the rail network enhancements pipeline two years after it was published; and still no announcement on when the western rail link to Heathrow will finally be built. With COP26 now in session, Ministers could have announced plans for a net zero railway with a huge rolling electrification programme and significant investment in developing battery and hydrogen technology, but no.

The Budget and spending review needed to do two things: give help to the poorest and most vulnerable right now, including in my Slough constituency, with real levelling up for people facing tough times rather than more meaningless slogans; and invest in a green economy, with the railway at its heart. It failed miserably on both counts.

Building Safety Bill

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Since 2018, I have raised the issue of dangerous cladding on at least seven different occasions in the House, but for hundreds across my Slough constituency, I am frustrated by the lack of progress that has been made on ensuring we never have a repeat of the horrors of Grenfell and that our building safety regulations are overhauled. So I welcome the Second Reading of the Building Safety Bill and its return to the House, and its inclusion of steps that regulate and strengthen the quality and safety of building homes.

Sadly, it is what this Bill omits that concerns me most —namely, the lack of concrete protections for leaseholders to ensure that they will not be responsible for fire safety costs. So I stand here today to repeat desperate pleas from residents in Slough and beyond to a Government who do not appear to be listening. On behalf of the occupants of West Central, Rivington Apartments, Lexington Apartments, Nova House, Kingswood House, Foundry Court and Ibex House, I implore the Government to pay attention, because protecting leaseholders is not only the right thing to do—it is what has been repeatedly promised to them. Seventeen times Government Ministers have reassured leaseholders that they should be shielded from fire safety costs, with the Prime Minister just last year noting that

“no leaseholder should have to pay for the unaffordable costs of fixing safety defects that they did not cause and are no fault of their own.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2021; Vol. 688, c. 945.]

So my question to the Minister is: where will these legal protections actually come from? As it currently stands, leaseholders could still be liable for costs after the building owner has

“explored alternative cost recovery routes.”

Characteristically, the Government response is delayed, limited and inept. We need a national cladding taskforce to truly establish the extent of dangerous cladding, supported by a building works agency to certify work as safe so that flats can become sellable and action is taken against those who caused the crisis in the first place. Leaseholders and local councils such as Slough Borough Council should not be responsible for remediation costs; leaseholders did not build their homes or clad them in dangerous materials, and they certainly did not approve them as safe. Their only crime is saving tirelessly in fulfilling their dream of home ownership, and how have they been rewarded? By going to bed at night in fear for their lives, with an ever-growing bill to simply make their homes fire safe, and the looming risk of bankruptcy and the loss of their jobs as a result. So I call upon the Government to act with urgency for the hundreds of thousands still suffering. We need to definitively end this nightmare for those in Slough and beyond in our country.

Oxford-Cambridge Arc

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) on securing today’s debate. I welcome the opportunity to debate the future of the Oxford-Cambridge arc and follow the lucid arguments advanced by the hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), for Henley (John Howell), for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) and for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller).

I have very happy associations with both Oxford and Cambridge, having had the pleasure of living in both cities for a couple of years. I took my MSc in applied statistics at Oxford University and my MPhil in history at Cambridge University. I love both cities and their surrounding areas, and care about their distinctive character, history and future development.

However, the plans for the Oxford-Cambridge arc are already outmoded. Events have overtaken plans drawn up in a markedly different age. Covid-19 has challenged the assumptions that underpinned the Oxford-Cambridge arc back in 2016, which was based on a model of building 1 million new homes, along with a road and rail transport system to take people to places of work at various points across the arc. My first question for the Minister is whether Her Majesty’s Government have properly re-evaluated the assumptions underpinning the scheme, not just on population growth but on changes to patterns of commuting and working, and where people will be working in the future, to ensure that plans meet the needs of residents?

The spatial plan consultation, for example, should cover whether there is a need for genuinely affordable and social environmentally-sound housing; I believe there is. Local authorities should be given proper representation within the arc arrangement. I have discussed these important points with my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), the chair of the Labour party, who, fighting assiduously for her constituents as usual, has already met the Minister and his officials and has written to him. Although she could not attend today’s debate, I hope that her invaluable input will not be ignored, but instead incorporated into Government plans. Local people, businesses and leaders cannot be ignored. Proper consultation must be guaranteed.

We recognise the need for more homes, but have Ministers thought through the implications of 1 million new homes and the impact on existing communities, on the natural environment, on biodiversity and on levels of pollution? If we build 1 million homes, how do we balance the needs of the local environment? What kind of homes? We need homes for young people, just starting out, and homes for nurses, teachers, train drivers, supermarket workers and social carers—in other words, homes for the heroes of the pandemic. Where is the plan for affordable homes for those heroes? In all candour, I tell the Minister that the blue wall will not be happy if he ignores their views, as we have heard eloquently, again and again, from hon. Members today.

Then there is the question of transport. Central to the Government’s version of the Oxford-Cambridge arc will be the expressway, a massive motorway-building project, like something from the 1970s or 1980s. I welcome the Minister’s decision to scrap the expressway and I praise campaigners who fought so hard to make Ministers see sense, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who rightly called it

“a last-century approach to a 21st-century challenge”.

Yet again a Conservative Government is catching up with Labour policy, but dither, delay and retreat on the expressway cannot be replaced by dither and delay on the Oxford-Cambridge rail link. The Government must now give their full-throated support to the completion of phases 2 and 3 of the East West Rail link, linking Oxford, Bicester, Winslow, Bletchley, Bedford, Cambourne and stops along the way to Cambridge.

That investment in the railway is a superb opportunity for world-class station design and facilities for passengers; for full access for people with disabilities; for integrated transport systems linking up walking, cycling and bussing; for affordable spaces for local businesses and traders; for flexible ticketing and sensible pricing; and for environmentally friendly and sustainable use of buildings, energy and land. Most of all, the East West Rail link must be fully electrified. It must be a shining example of post-carbon, safe, clean and affordable public transport. The last point that I invite the Minister to address, therefore, is the full electrification of the East West Rail link. Rather than further prevarication and evasion, today would be a perfect opportunity to announce Government support for full electrification.

Labour supports investment in new homes, in new rail links, in projects that tackle climate change and in community building—in investing in a 21st-century economy—but they must be the right projects, based on the correct assumptions in our post-covid society. At all stages, they must engage every part of the community, not just the loudest and best organised, and never in a dash for growth at the expense of existing communities, never at the expense of people on low incomes, and never at the expense of our climate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. My fundamental point is that the local plans and local authorities remain the building blocks—if he will forgive the pun—for house building and commercial construction in the area. We certainly want to make sure that local authorities work collaboratively with one another to make best use of this space, but it is the local plans that drive the numbers.

To answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey), some authorities may wish to be ambitious and go further than the local housing need number, based on 2014 Office for National Statistics numbers. They may wish to go further. Others may have constraints. They may be green belt constraints, AONB constraints or other constraints. Those also need to be taken into account when local authorities take their plans to the planning inspector. It is for the planning inspector to decide what is a reasonable plan. If local authorities can demonstrate they have a reasonable plan, the numbers in that plan are what they are judged against, not the local housing need number.

I make two further points. The first is that if a plan falls out of date, it is the local housing need number that the planning inspector will look at if speculative planning applications come forward, so all authorities should ensure that they have up-to-date plans. Secondly, it is the case, generally speaking, that when local authorities collaborate with each other constructively, they can find ways of spreading their overall need across a wider space and thereby, using innovative means such as pursuing brownfield regeneration or using the permitted development rights tools that we have given them, ensure that there is less pressure on the all-important green spaces that we all know and enjoy.

If I may, I will address some of the points raised by colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield raised a number of points. She made it very clear that she wants local authorities to define what should be built, and our planning reforms emphasise that very point. We want local authorities to define the homes or the commercial properties that they need to build, the density and the design of them and the quality of them, to ensure that we get the right homes, the homes that we need. She also made the point that in her constituency there are certain challenges with affordability. That is one reason we have introduced the First Homes policy, which will allow the construction, through the planning system and developer contributions, of new homes discounted by at least 30%, which can be defined as for local people or key workers, for example, in order for them to benefit from the opportunity to own their own home.

We have also introduced the affordable homes programme for 2021 to 2026, which provides £12.3 billion of investment in affordable homes across our country. It will provide a significant number of new homes that local people can rent at reduced prices or that they can buy into, in a shared-ownership sense, at reduced increments, so that people can get on the housing ladder more easily.

My hon. Friend also raised the question of biodiversity and the importance of having green spaces that people can enjoy. We certainly recognise that, in the post-covid world, that will be important. She asked what the effect of the covid emergency would be. I think—like Zhou Enlai answering the question “What has been the effect of the French revolution?”—that it is as yet a little too early to say. But we do know that people need better green spaces. That is one reason why, in the national model design code, we have called for tree-lined streets and a better hierarchy of homes versus green space. We have also, in the Environment Bill, made it absolutely plain that when development takes place there must be a biodiversity net gain of 10%. We have also made it plain that local nature recovery strategies, to which she refers, are a fundamental building block of that Bill, which is soon to become an Act, and we shall bake those strategies into our plans for planning reform when we introduce legislation later this year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley made, as ever, a very thoughtful speech. He raised the question of the expressway and how that was handled. I will certainly take his remarks back to the Department for Transport and to Homes England. I simply note that in that particular case the Government listened. Clearly, there was local concern about how the approach was made and the proposals were tabled, and the Government have agreed that another course should be taken.

A number of colleagues have discussed—again, eloquently—the question of the spatial framework. We will begin a consultation on the spatial framework very, very shortly. In building our approach to that, which began in February, we have taken on board the views of local businesses, local councils and local authority leaders, who, across the political divide, have given us useful input. We want to ensure that we carry the public with us as we undertake this spatial framework vision consultation. The questions that we will ask in that consultation over the next several weeks will be high-level ones: “How do you want your space to be used?”; “What sort of environmental considerations do you have and how do you want them baked into planning?”; “What are the transport issues that you face?”; and “What are the job and the skill opportunities that you want to see for yourself and the place where you live?” The answers that people give us to those questions will feed a set of policy prescriptions that we could then take forward into another consultation, again engaging local people and involving local authorities and local leaders.

Fundamentally, we want to ensure that local people really get to have their say and not just the usual suspects, if I can put it that way. That is one of the reasons why we have taken such great pains to use the most modern technological tools, such as apps, to reach as many people as possible, including in diverse communities—those people who are not usually touched by the sorts of dry questions that Government and our agencies sometimes ask, including young people, people from ethnic minorities and people from less advantaged backgrounds—so that we get proper feedback that can then inform the decision-making process. We want to make sure that there is proper consultation, proper feedback and proper engagement at the heart of this.

That is also our approach to the growth board that we want to set up, to ensure that business leaders across the area can provide their full and fundamental feedback as to what policies they want to inform this space, because—again—this process is not simply about housing. Homes are important, but so are jobs and the infrastructure to support those jobs, which is why we want to ensure that the growth board plays a vital role in the arc.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire asked the very important question: “What about the infrastructure that really matters to people?” Not the big roads or the great big railways that impress certain people, perhaps, but the GP surgeries, the clinics, the playgrounds, the schools and the extensions to schools. That is one reason why, in our proposals for planning reform, we are proposing an infrastructure levy to replace the community infrastructure levy and section 106, which I think most people and bodies, including 80% of local authorities, agree is a rather convoluted and opaque process for providing developer contributions. It tends to be loaded in favour of the bigger developers, it tends to be very slow, and it tends to result in the infrastructure that was initially conceived of being negotiated away.

We want a system that will provide infrastructure up front that is far less negotiable and that means communities get what they want when they expect it, and as they want it. That is one of the reasons why the proposals built into our planning reforms will be so important for community buy-in to the proposals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South said that this process is not just about houses. Well, he is dead right; it is not just about houses. I have been at pains to be clear about that. It is about the economic generation of a very wide area in the centre of our country in the south, and not simply about houses. He also asked us to be collaborative. We will be, because we fully understand that if we are to succeed in this area, we need to engage the public and take them with us.

Sir Edward, I am conscious that I have now gone on for some 10 or so minutes, that there will be a Division soon, and that the Opposition spokesman wants to intervene, so I shall let him do so.

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is most generous to do so. He has not responded to my key point about the east-west rail link. In order to assuage residents’ concerns and ensure that we are moving towards a greener post-carbon society, can he confirm that the east-west rail link will be fully electrified?

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I understand his concern. He will know that this Government are the greenest Government that we have ever had, and the policies that we are pursuing and the commitments that we have made will ensure that that continues. For example, the future homes standard will ensure that homes built after 2025 are at least 75% more carbon-efficient than present homes. He will note that I am not the Transport Minister. DFT is looking at the proposals for east-west rail. We are all committed to it, and I trust that we will get an announcement sooner rather than later.

We are fundamentally committed to the arc and the economic opportunities it presents. We are committed to ensuring that local people are engaged in our plans. We want to ensure that the homes that are built to support the people who want to live and work in the arc are of the right quality, in the right places and are built with the grain of local communities.

We want to ensure that the right infrastructure to support those homes is developed at the get-go and not way down the line. We want to ensure that the jobs and skills in the arc complement those industries that are already there, and provide the jobs for the future. We want to take everyone with us in that enterprise. We believe that the arc can be a tremendous boon to our country and support to the local community. We are determined to see it happen and do it with the support of the local community.

Affordable and Safe Housing for All

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome my hon. Friend to her place. Indeed, this is not just a failure of home ownership. There has been over a decade of Tory failures on housing. We have seen home ownership decrease. We have seen rough sleeping and homelessness increase. We have seen council house waiting lists increase. We have seen the failure to deal with the Grenfell tragedy, and, in the wake of that tragedy, the failure to ensure that all homes are safe, so does my hon. Friend agree that there is a litany of failures, not just on home ownership?

[Lucy Powell]

I very much agree, and when I made some of those points earlier, it was met with silence from Government Members.

In conclusion, the dream of having a secure, safe and affordable home is a powerful one, and rightly so. Housing is much more than an investment or a commodity. Homes are the places we grow up in, the places we grow old in. How safe and secure they are shapes who we are—the opportunities we can take, the freedoms we have, the successes and happiness we share—but for too many in this country after 11 years of a Conservative Government that has become a pipe dream. The Government’s market-driven ethos just will not create the homes we need, and for people trapped in buildings with dangerous cladding that dream has become twisted and has become a waking nightmare. Today we can start to fix that at least, and I hope Members from all parts of the House will join me in supporting our amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

What we needed to hear from the Government was a plan to build our way out of the pandemic. Instead, we have heard a litany of missed opportunities.

On housing, we have a mounting crisis. We need new sustainable homes that working people can afford. We need to tackle the scandal of homelessness and ensure that support services are available. In Slough, because of funding cuts, we had already lost our citizens advice bureau. Now we are losing our local Shelter headquarters, too—lifelines of support for so many. In the wake of the Grenfell tragedy, we urgently need to tackle unsafe cladding. We needed a plan for housing. Where is it?

On education, a generation of children have had their education disrupted. Children without computers, wi-fi or desks have been held back. University and college students have seen academic life torn to shreds, facing uncertainty about their futures. We needed a plan for education and young people. Where is it?

We needed a plan to rebuild the jobs market to make work pay, to make jobs secure and to recognise the seismic changes to the world of work brought about by technology and the pandemic. We needed to hear the Government’s plan to end fire and rehire. Where is it?

We needed action to support those on universal credit who face a real-terms cut to their income. They will be made destitute by the £20 a week reduction and they need a lifeline. Nothing from Ministers—another missed opportunity.

We needed a plan for the NHS to properly reward NHS workers, not punish them with a pay cut. In fact, health and social care workers missed out on a combined staggering £400 million by earning below the living wage. They deserve much better.

What about transport? We needed a plan for green transport. We need answers on the issues with Hitachi trains. Slough constituents want action on the western rail link to Heathrow, which again seems to have been kicked into the long grass. We must do more to support the aviation industry, which has long supported the livelihoods of so many in my Slough constituency.

And don’t even get me started on the mere nine words the Government could muster on social care! Where is the Prime Minister’s long-promised, oven-ready plan for social care?

In conclusion, the Queen’s Speech presented the perfect opportunity to transform our public services and rebuild our economy to create the jobs and build the homes we so desperately need. Instead, we have a Government Queen’s Speech which lets down the people of Slough and our nation.

Antisemitic Attacks

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

That is an extremely important point. As I have said, there is work to be done online and in our schools, and there is also work we can do through the creation of new museums and educational institutions such as the memorial that we hope will be built. There is also work for all of us just as citizens of this country, to call out antisemitism wherever we find it and see it, and ensure that there is no immunity—there is no safe space for it in the way that I am afraid many people feel there is today.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Antisemitism, and any other form of racism, is utterly abhorrent and must be swiftly dealt with. Many of us are strong advocates for the Palestinian people, to stop them being evicted from their homes and to demand an immediate end to the current bloodshed, but for racists who parade as allies of Palestine to use this tragedy to fuel antisemitism and misogyny is utterly condemnable. Is the Secretary of State concerned about the possibility of far-right organisations using this to stir further community tensions? If so, what steps will the Government take to address it?

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said earlier, when we have seen conflicts arise or intensify in the middle east in the past, that has led to an upsurge in hate crimes against both members of the Jewish community and members of the Muslim community. We saw that in 2014. I hope that we are not witnessing a similar situation today, although I think many would say that we are. We need to take concerted action now. That is why it is important that, with your support, Mr Speaker, we are having this debate; that the police provide the reassurance that they are on the streets of our cities in the places where there are Jewish communities; and that where there are incidents against members of the Jewish community or the Muslim community, action is taken very swiftly and in the strongest possible terms.

Fire and Rehire

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this important debate to ensure that we can all deliberate upon the abhorrent practice of fire and rehire that has, sadly, acutely affected many of my Slough constituents. Our proximity to Heathrow airport and our employment reliance on the aviation sector has meant that the sector’s crash has impacted the jobs of thousands of my constituents. Those devastating job losses have been exacerbated by companies taking advantage, forcing employees into inferior pay and conditions or risk losing their jobs.

Even prior to the covid-19 pandemic, UK employment law was inadequate. The past year has simply strengthened the case for stronger employee rights and protections. Back in 2019, the Government promised an employment Bill to protect and enhance workers’ rights. Even the Minister answering the debate today said in November 2020 that

“using threats about firing and rehiring as a negotiating tactic is unacceptable.”—[Official Report, 10 November 2020; Vol. 683, c. 717.]

Yet nothing has changed since then. These immoral tactics have predominantly affected the hard-working individuals in the aviation industry in Slough, but unfortunately they are not alone in being subject to them.

One of the most blatant uses of fire and rehire seen by my constituents has been with British Gas and its parent company Centrica. Before negotiations began, Centrica’s chief executive officer Chris O’Shea had put that threat on the table. In evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, he noted that he was forced into that position, but a letter from ACAS later revealed that the company has recognised the impact that fire and rehire has had on the workforce, and has confirmed that, as part of this agreement, they will never use fire and rehire in any shape or form in the future.

British Gas are, devastatingly, not alone in carrying out these unacceptable actions. Dnata, an airline catering company, offered its workers contracts for just 20 hours a week, with reduced terms and pay, in a fire and rehire scenario, forcing many of the employees to accept and plunging them into poverty. A company in the process of taking over airline catering from British Airways, Do & Co, refused to put its workers on the extended coronavirus job retention scheme, leaving hundreds unemployed. These are just a few examples in my constituency. For many, it is already too late. Even after British Airways eventually ended its fire and rehire practices after incredible work from trade unions and employees, many had still fallen victim to them.

While the past year has been undeniably difficult for businesses, fire and rehire tactics are never acceptable, and I commend the excellent work of unions including Unite, Unison and GMB, which have saved and protected thousands of jobs. The Government must do more. Without direct action from the Government, others will continue to follow, thinking it is acceptable to run their businesses in such a dire way.

Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is right. We have the likes of Ian Ashworth across the country offering social value. People will be interested and want to act as postmasters only if they are confident that they have the backing of the Post Office that something like this—as happened to Noel Thomas and Margery Lorraine Williams—can never happen again. We need to get those answers and, through this inquiry, we need to ensure that this can never happen again, as my hon. Friend said.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Once again, the likes of me are here questioning a Government Minister and demanding justice for those devastated by the Post Office Horizon scandal, but the Government have dithered and delayed for years over providing a full statutory inquiry, thereby prolonging the agony of the victims, who are still waiting for an inquiry wherein the judge can compel evidence. Rather than the toothless inquiry set up by the Government, why is the Minister not committing to providing the victims with the proper statutory inquiry that they rightly deserve?

[Paul Scully]

Because the evidence is coming forward. There is no point in compelling something that is already coming forward. Having said that, if that changes, our advice and our thoughts will change, but at the moment, everybody is participating in the inquiry. Sir Wyn Williams is happy and content that he is getting the information and co-operation that he requires to get answers.

Greensill Capital

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

As I said in my opening statement, the bank opened an investigation into Greensill Capital’s compliance with the terms of the scheme in October 2020 and informed the Government of that on 9 October. That is continuing. The obligations as guarantor of the CLBILS scheme are suspended on a precautionary basis, but it would not be appropriate for me to comment on further investigations at this time as it is ongoing.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

As if the billions of pounds of crony covid contracts was not bad enough for hard-working Brits to stomach, we now have a former Tory Prime Minister sending private text messages to the Chancellor and other Treasury Ministers lobbying for Government loans for a firm in which he himself is a shareholder and that is now insolvent; we have him going for a private drink with his financier friend Lex Greensill and the Health Secretary; and we have a Chancellor who messaged back to say that he would “push” his team to find a solution, and now has neither the courtesy nor the courage to come to this House to be held accountable for his actions. Does the Minister agree that this just stinks—downright stinks—not just because we are talking about former and current Tory Ministers all in it together, but because it is not merely the Chancellor’s money that has been put at risk but the British taxpayers’ hard-earned money that is at stake?

[Paul Scully]

May I respectfully suggest to the hon. Gentleman, through the Speaker, that if he wants the Chancellor to come to answer a question, he might ask a question that relates to the Treasury rather than one that comes under the British Business Bank, which is a responsibility of BEIS? As for the Chancellor, as I say, the system has worked. The hon. Gentleman may be touting his Opposition day debate tomorrow about wider things, but the Chancellor asked his officials to push for wider capital flows to be able to go through larger and smaller businesses, as we all wanted, and he rejected Greensill’s ask to try to change the CCFF scheme to involve banks including Greensill. That process worked.