Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Trade (Chris Bryant)]

I thank my hon. Friend for standing up for the business in her constituency, and she is absolutely right. The Trade Remedies Authority is investigating, as she knows, and I urge industry to participate in that, although I cannot comment on the precise details of the investigation because it might eventually come to my desk. Importantly, we need to make sure that dumping is not acceptable, because it makes it impossible for British businesses to prosper. We will do everything in our power to make sure that we use the remedies available to us to protect British businesses.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

T7. Would the Secretary of State care to join me for a pint of Larkins in Kent, where we can discuss the effect of his business rate relief on small businesses? The high streets in Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Borough Green are doing as well as they can, but they are struggling, and one of the reasons why is the hit on hospitality industries. It has already cost The Man of Kent in East Peckham, but perhaps we could meet at another pub and the Secretary of State could hear about the impact from the publican themselves?

[Peter Kyle]

I am always grateful for invitations to drinks with the right hon. Gentleman. I might well ask him to come to Hove, though; I have been to his constituency a number of times over the years and it is about time he visited mine. When he is there, he will see a thriving hospitality sector, but one that does need support to meet its full potential. We accept that, which is why we have introduced so many support packages since we came into office. What the hospitality sector needs is what every other sector in the economy needs: a stable industrial strategy—

Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Blair McDougall]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to posties in Stockport and Greater Manchester. Like posties all across the country, they go the extra mile in incredibly difficult circumstances. As I mentioned, we are bringing together unions and management for talks, to make sure that we get to a resolution and progress the future of the business. We are also pressing Ofcom on the enforcement action that it can take to progress the improvement plan that Royal Mail has committed to producing.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

Just recently, Royal Mail in Tonbridge introduced a new working model that has been, quite frankly, an abject failure. I welcome the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) asking this urgent question, because this is quite clearly a matter for not just one constituency or community, but the whole country. I am grateful to the Minister, who is assiduous in his role, for taking it up. Will he raise with management that while we all recognise that this is about not just privatisation or ownership, but the change in the way that people use the post, and our use of emails and so on, the problems have a very real effect on people’s lives, particularly in communities like mine in Tonbridge? I am not the only one who has missed an appointment because the letter arrived weeks, or even months, after I was supposed to attend.

[Blair McDougall]

I know from my talks with officials that the right hon. Gentleman has been in discussions about the issues in Tonbridge, and that Royal Mail is seized of those. He is absolutely right. Members have mentioned hospital appointments; it is worth mentioning the important post that we hon. Members send to often very vulnerable constituents. That is a reminder that the post is a central part of our national life and economy, and we have to see it improve.

Employment Rights Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kate Dearden]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s comments. We believe that the current compensatory award cap also creates a systemic incentive for unfair dismissal claimants to construct more complex cases, which could take longer for a tribunal to handle. By removing the compensatory award cap for unfair dismissal claims, the incentive may be lessened, potentially making it easier for tribunals to reach a judgment more quickly and decreasing the burdens on the system.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I am not at all surprised that the Minister is having a little bit of a problem with the other place—after all, she is not the first Minister to have been confused as to what was in a manifesto and what was not; the Prime Minister seems to have been confused about the assisted suicide Bill.

May I raise a question about the cap? The problem that many businesses will have is with insurance. Most businesses take some form of insurance for unfair dismissal. Insurance companies work on the basis that they have an understandable level of risk that they are underwriting. If they do not know what that risk is, they will not underwrite it. The challenge here is that by removing the cap, the Minister is changing the level of maximum risk and therefore making it much harder for insurance companies to underwrite it. Has she spoken to insurance companies about the challenges that this poses?

[Kate Dearden]

I listen to the Conservatives again and again as they come to the Chamber—they have done it again today—and talk down what was a clear manifesto commitment of this Bill.

Seasonal Work

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

Members of Parliament may not have to work in business, but I expect every one to come to this House and advocate for business.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend will remember, it was wonderful to see the King and the President of the United States sit down at Windsor recently. What was particularly striking was that, on the British side, only the King had run a business—he ran the Duchy of Cornwall. Nobody else had run a business. On the American side, everybody had run a business. Is that not quite a stark contrast?

[Mr Speaker]

I was there, and I have run a business!

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Huddleston]

The tourism tax is an appalling tax, which we have said will do immense damage to an already overtaxed industry. As my hon. Friend will be aware, a consultation is going on, and we all need to encourage our constituents, particularly those working in these sectors, to participate in that consultation to ensure that Labour does not do the damage we fear it may do to an already hit sector.

Of course, many sectors of the economy rely on seasonal employment during peak times, whether that is food production sectors during peak picking and growing seasons, retailers in the run-up to Christmas, or the hospitality and tourism industry over peak summer season and during school holidays. However, if the Minister and Labour MPs had actually been engaging with and listening to businesses in their constituencies or across the country since they came to power, they would know the frustration that so many of those businesses feel. They want to employ more people, especially young people, and to give learning and skills development opportunities—perhaps providing people with their first job—but they have been unable to do so because Labour’s policies are making it unaffordable for them to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson) pointed out how bizarre is it that the Government announced plans over the weekend—note, Madam Deputy Speaker, over the weekend, not to this House—to help young people with skills building opportunities in hospitality, care and construction through taxpayer-funded Government schemes. Those are the very industries that the Government are undermining with their own tax policies. If the Government did not attack these industries, businesses would be generating such opportunities and jobs of their own volition, not needing Government handouts. Rather than spend £820 million using public money to help create jobs that may not be sustainable, surely it would have made more sense not to have taxed the hospitality, construction or care sectors in the first place. Even hospices were not exempt from the national insurance increases.

[Tom Tugendhat]

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between the Conservative Members and Labour Members. Labour Members seem to believe that the Government create jobs, wealth and everything, but we recognise that individuals get up in the morning to group together into what we call companies, and they come up with ideas, stretch themselves and try different ideas. Some of them succeed and some of them fail, but relieving the pressure on them is not somehow letting them get away with something, but enabling them to express the freedom of the ideas they have.

A second fundamental misunderstanding is that this is not about who has had job experience and who has not; it is who has had an HR department and who has not. The problem is not that those on the Labour side of the House are bad people or good people—as we all know, there are bad and good people on both sides—but that, in reality, someone with experience of a business that has only ever had an HR department, or only ever been large enough to look at different in-year cost savings in such a sense, is not the same as someone trying to pay for one person, two people or three people. Actually, 80% of businesses in this country have fewer than 10 employees, and we are talking about them.

[Nigel Huddleston]

My right hon. Friend again makes some really important points not only with specific examples, but about the fundamental difference in political and economic philosophy between the Conservative side and the Labour side of the Chamber. We believe in personal responsibility, low tax, small Government, living within one’s means and being unapologetically pro-business because we recognise that the private sector generates jobs and the economic activity that pays for our vital public services. Labour Members are agreed on the complete opposite. We recognise that, as the Leader of the Opposition has said many times, we get into difficulty when we stray too far away from these things—we let down the country and the economy when we stray from our principles—but Labour lets down the country and destroys the economy when it sticks to its principles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

Will the Minister give way?

[Blair McDougall]

I will give way one more time, but only because I have deep affection for the right hon. Gentleman.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The Minister is a charming and, no doubt, soon to be very well-haircutted gentleman. The point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) was making—I am afraid this reinforces it—is that such a choice was clearly not in the Government’s plans, either. Otherwise, they would not have brought forward the welfare changes they planned in July, but have since been bounced out of by their own Back Benchers. It clearly was not their plan either, and that is why we are in this position.

[Blair McDougall]

But it is in our plan. We have just passed the Budget, which introduces the relief on business rates.

Let me return to the theme of “A Christmas Carol” and the visit of the ghost of Christmas past. Let us travel back to when the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham gushed about Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, with her unfunded tax giveaway, which he said represented “a new era” and would

“help everybody with the cost-of-living pressures”.

Well, unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, the hon. Gentleman has not repented; he has not seen the error of his ways and the impact of unfunded commitments. Instead, he is at it again, calling for tax cuts without any idea whatsoever of how to pay for them.