Alison Hume MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 7 Jan 2025 · Employment Rights Bill (Fifteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and to my membership of Unison and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. I am pleased that the Bill will take significant steps to simplify the union recognition process by removing unnecessary barriers that unions currently face. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield mentioned, recent events at Amazon’s Coventry distribution site, where the unionisation effort was defeated by 28 votes, serve as a reminder of the challenges that workers encounter. I particularly welcome the flexibility in the Bill to lower the membership threshold required to begin the recognition process from the current 10% to potentially as low as 2%. That will give workers the opportunity to organise effectively from the outset. Ensuring that unions need only a simple majority in favour of recognition will mean that the will of the workers is fairly and clearly reflected without being stifled by unnecessary procedural hurdles.