Antonia Bance MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2026 · Steel Tariffs · Hansard source

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  We all support greater production here in the UK, but the details of these tariffs need more work. Black Country MPs, such as me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), have heard huge worries from our downstream industries, including stockholders such as Amari, fabricators such as Angle Ring, and trade associations such as the British Constructional Steelwork Association and the Cast Metals Federation. Will the Minister go away and review the details? We need protections for fabricated steel, like those Canada and the US have in place. Once again, we are seeing projects in receipt of massive public funding importing fabricated steel. We need a detailed look again at the categories and the quotas. We need proper consultation with UK Metals Council members, and we need to look at the detail again to ensure that it is right and that it supports a great future for manufacturing in the Black Country and elsewhere.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. We now know what was going on in the economy before the attack on Iran. Growth was up. Unemployment was down. Borrowing was lower than forecast. The Chancellor took the right decisions and it was working. Does my right hon. Friend agree that families and businesses should know that, when times are tough, it is Trumpflation that is to blame?

• 15 Apr 2026 · Single Status of Worker · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend and fellow member of the Business and Trade Committee for giving way. We have sat in a number of hearings where different industries have expressed to us the competitive disadvantage that they experience because people in the industry use the gig economy or platform work to avoid responsibilities. We heard evidence from Royal Mail about the disadvantage in the parcel delivery network, and from the British Hairdressing Association about the end of direct employment in hairdressing. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to think about the competitive disadvantage for employers who do the right thing in considering these issues?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Youth Unemployment · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for this announcement, which will make a big difference to so many young people in our area of the Black Country who are looking for work or training but unable to find the opportunities they need. I recently visited Asda in Great Bridge, where I saw the supported internship scheme that is being run in partnership by Asda, Project SEARCH and Sandwell college. The scheme’s employment rate for learning-disabled young people is 60%, compared with 4% nationally. Would the Minister join me in congratulating Asda, Project SEARCH, Sandwell college, Rose, Manvir, Oliver, Trish and Romeo on the work that they are doing together to ensure that learning-disabled people can get into good jobs?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Given the global situation, what discussions has the Chancellor had with Cabinet colleagues on helping to keep industrial energy costs manageable? Will she work with colleagues to bring in the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which would cut manufacturing energy costs by 25%, as soon as possible?

• 4 Mar 2026 · Department for Business and Trade · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), on securing this important debate. I wish to align myself with the remarks he made about the need for a steel strategy to be published soon for clarity on how we will continue to support the steel industry of this country, given the difficult news coming out of the European Union and the difficult circumstances that the industry faces. As a proud metals MP from the Black Country, it could not be more important that we have a thriving British steel industry. I know the steel strategy will take this forward, and I look forward to hearing when it will be published. As a manufacturing MP and manufacturing champion from the heart of the industrial revolution—indeed, where it started—I stand here to champion our industrial strategy, and particularly the work that the Department has done, as evidenced in these estimates, to support our automotive industry: the £2.5 billion to support DRIVE35 and the transition fund, the consumer subsidies for electric vehicles, and the investment in our charging infrastructure. Most importantly, as a west midlands MP from the heart of the automotive industry, the trade deal with the United States keeps our exports flowing and keeps 200,000 jobs live and thriving in the west midlands. We must continue paying attention to the automotive industry more broadly. The Department needs to take a lead and ensure that the volume crisis that we are experiencing—production is down from nearly 1 million vehicles in 2016 to just under 800,000 last year—does not become an existential crisis for our automotive industry. In the past couple of weeks, Adient has announced that it will lay off 100 workers in my constituency. We are getting to the point where the UK supply chain will no longer exist for the parts of the automotive industry that we need. I urge my friends in the Department for Business and Trade to consider—in conversation with colleagues in the Treasury and the Department for Transport—what more we can do to guarantee the future of the automotive industry. I urge the Government to bring forward the review of the zero emission vehicle mandate from 2027 to 2026, and to consider whether we ought to do something similar to the European Union, which has offered itself the flexibility to ensure that its automotive industries can thrive in the face of global headwinds. That may or may not be an issue for the Department of Business and Trade, but I know that the Minister is a champion for the industry and will continue to make the case for vehicle and automotive manufacturing. On that point, I align myself with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) about energy costs. It is wonderful to go out to my local businesses, to put the consultation on the British industrial competitiveness scheme in front of them, and to show them the standard industrial classification codes and that help is coming. The estimates must set out how that is funded, because we are not yet sure, and it must come sooner if at all possible. The crisis is now. My businesses and manufacturing industry cannot wait much longer for the help they so desperately need with industrial energy costs. That help is coming; let us get it to those industries and manufacturing businesses, to ensure that manufacturing in this country continues to thrive. I know that is the expectation and the hope of this Government.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that the work being done on the draft local government settlement to get us to this final local government settlement has actively put the principles of fairer funding into place? My local authority in Sandwell—the fifth most deprived local authority in the country—is getting an extra £28 million as a result of the continuation and increase of the recovery grant. That money will go on crucial services that we were deprived of in my area during 14 years of Conservative austerity. I know my hon. Friend will want to join me in welcoming the work being done by the Local Government Minister and our friends in the Treasury to make sure that the principles of fairer funding are put into place.

• 11 Feb 2026 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I say to those on the Opposition Benches who are telling people already in work to go out and get a job: what are those people supposed to do? Are they supposed to send their five-year-olds out on a paper round to make the money add up when it does not? Do not talk to me about how families should plan better—you will never meet a better planner than a single mum in Princes End making the money stretch. Do not cry crocodile tears for kids whose dad died but when his widow needed help, we said, “Nah. You shouldn’t have had so many kids.” Do not tell me that a dad who lost his job does not deserve help for his kids because he did not predict years in advance, when planning his family, that his factory would close and he would be dumped out of work. Be honest about what supporting the two-child limit means. If you support it, you think that some kids should be hungry tonight—well, we don’t. I have no words for the idea of the charlatans of the Reform party, who would reimpose the two-child limit, plunge thousands of children into poverty and take hundreds of pounds from families each month in order to make it cheaper to have a pint. The hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) was too frit to give way to me, so I will say this to her this now. Her policy would affect Sikh children living in my constituency who have a mum or dad born in the Punjab, or children in my constituency with a mum or dad who was born in Bangladesh, Poland or Pakistan. These are British people. They are our neighbours and our friends—people who work and play by the rules. They are British citizens, but they are second-class citizens for Reform. I was glad to see that the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) called out Reform. I would like to see more calling out of that frankly disgusting point of view: the differentiation between different types of British citizen based on nationality and the colour of their skin that we see going on in our national political dialogue and in the Reform party. I hope that people across the country, in Scotland, in Wales and in my borough of Sandwell, will reject that division when the time comes in May—and that those in Gorton and Denton will do so as well. I say this to my constituents who are working hard to make ends meet: I will not apologise for prioritising our kids. Every child deserves a fair start in life. As one of our greatest Prime Ministers said when launching his own child poverty mission: “Poverty should not be a birthright. Being poor should not be a life sentence”. We want every child to have the freedom to learn, to play sport, to sing, to dance and to get on in life, free from want and fear—the freedom to be kids. This is what a Labour Government will deliver: half a million of children out of poverty. I will be voting for the Bill tonight, and I hope other Members will too.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  I stand here as a proud representative of the Black Country and the trade union movement. Black Country people work hard. We are proud and we are resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 years of Tory austerity mean that wages are low, poverty is high, unemployment is high, economic inactivity is high, and many families have to rely on universal credit to make sure there is enough money to get to the end of the month. I resent the implication that areas like mine, where universal credit payments are high, are somehow “Benefits Street”.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will get to the right hon. Member. It was the Conservative party that changed the benefits system to give us one benefit for all circumstances, in and out of work. For the Conservatives to now attempt to invent a deserving and undeserving poor dichotomy, when they made that change to one unified system—which was the correct one—is a little bit galling.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member will note that I was making a point about the comparative rates in different areas of the country, including my own, and the impacts of deindustrialisation over the last 50 years, rather than about national rates. On the Labour Benches, we deal with the world as it is—human lives in all their messy complexity—because everyone is deserving of dignity, opportunity and hope, and every child deserves a decent start. That is why I am so proud today to say this: if you get ill or lose your job, if—heaven forbid—your partner dies, or if your husband beats you up and you have to grab your kids and run, the safety net of our welfare state will once again catch you and every single one of your kids. Since the day I came to this place and long before, I have argued for this change—I have argued that no child is responsible for the actions of their parents, that the happy event of a little one being born should not tip a family into poverty, and that whether a six-year-old eats tonight should not depend on how many sisters or brothers they have. This day has come because we have a Labour Government, and for that reason alone. I invite everyone sitting on the Opposition Benches who thinks they had something to do with this day to retract their comments and remember who those children have to thank. Ending the two-child limit helps 5,540 children in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. Whenever I go on a school visit in my area—where child poverty levels are at 50%, but not for long—I say to that assembly, to those children, “If you have more than two sisters or brothers, please raise your hand.” And I look and the teachers look at the forest of raised hands of children in larger families, and we know what that means. It means that in April, those families will open their universal credit journal or their banking app, and they will see an amount of money that is adequate to meet their family’s needs—not luxury, not extras, but adequate at last. Some 1.6 million children nationally will be helped by the policy that we will pass tonight—one kid in every nine of our kids helped. Most of the families that will be helped—six in 10 of them—are in work. Loads of them—four in 10—have a disabled family member. Some of those families have kids so young that the parents cannot work. Not a single one of them deserves to live in poverty. To the mums with three or more kids, using universal credit to top up low wages and high rents: this is for you. Know that far away in Westminster, a bunch of people you elected to stand up for hard-working, low-income families thought of you and your kids, and took out a gross, punitive law that kept you and your kids poor.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  I say to the people in my constituency and elsewhere who have raised questions with me about this policy that in order to will the ends, you have to will the means. Save the Children published this morning some polling showing that 78% of the country want to see child poverty cut. The fastest and most effective way to cut child poverty is to get rid of this punitive, gross policy that artificially inflates the number of children in poverty and creates an escalator to get more into poverty every day, with every child born. To the Opposition parties, I would say this. I hear you say to these families, “Go out and get a job.” Most of them are already in work. Are you telling those five and six-year-olds—

• 3 Feb 2026 · Universal Credit (Removal of Two Child Limit) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that the statistics on below-average-income households are published annually by the Department for Work and Pensions, which is the source of the statistic that he so cleverly deployed in the course of his argument.

• 27 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There are many small and medium-sized enterprises in advanced manufacturing supply chains in my bit of the Black Country. Does the Chancellor agree that successfully implementing our industrial strategy is vital to securing the growth, through small businesses, that we need to get British industry back on track?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Jobcentres: English Courses · Hansard source

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  16. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of jobcentre work coaches in directing people to English for speakers of other languages courses.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Jobcentres: English Courses · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for her answer. I recently visited Tipton Jobcentre Plus, and I pay tribute to the great work of the staff based there in what is a really tough jobs market. They told me that they would value the ability to refer jobseekers to an intensive ESOL course, with the expectation that the jobseeker attends every weekday for a number of months, to tackle the key barrier to sustainable employment for many, which is a lack of English skills for work. Will the Minister consider engaging with our combined authority to pilot an intensive, mandatory ESOL intervention, to get locals into work and raise incomes in my area?

• 14 Jan 2026 · West Midlands Police · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for her words, particularly about the dedicated frontline police officers of West Midlands police who serve my community and hers. It is clearly time for the chief constable to go. It is right that we expect a high standard of community engagement across all our communities from all our senior public servants, which has clearly not been met in this case, as we have explored thoroughly in this statement. More broadly, will the Home Secretary urgently bring forward a community cohesion strategy that tackles extremism and antisemitism and sets out clear expectations for how we live together in this great country of ours?

• 12 Jan 2026 · New Medium Helicopter Contract · Hansard source

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  I support calls by my union, Unite, for a speedy decision on crewed helicopters. I hope soon for good news on that front in the defence investment plan, which we all look forward to so very much. Might the Minister have any news on the manufacture of autonomous helicopters here in the UK, and on the good jobs that will come with them?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Local Government Finance · Hansard source

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  Black Country people are proud and resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 years of Tory austerity have left my borough of Sandwell the fifth most deprived in the country. Does the Minister agree with me that this Government can finally see deprived urban areas—post-industrial areas like mine—and is finally giving us back what we are due?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q6. The west midlands car industry is world famous, and this Government back our automotive sector. We have a United States trade deal, and when criminals shut down production at Jaguar Land Rover we backed the supply chain—brilliant companies such as J.H. Lavender in my constituency. What a contrast with the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who, as usual, is not here. [Interruption.] He said:“I predict Jaguar will now go bust and…They deserve to.” Does the Prime Minister agree that the workers of the west midlands and the entire country need a Labour Government, and cannot afford the economic vandalism of Reform UK?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. The west midlands is a key engine of the UK’s manufacturing base. What work is the Minister doing with our West Midlands Mayor to ensure that west midlands companies, especially our small and medium-sized enterprises, benefit from our increased defence spending and our defence industrial strategy?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sure the Minister is coming on to this in her speech, but it might be worth reiterating, for the benefit of those on the Opposition Benches, that the best way to avoid having to pay compensation for unfair dismissal is to avoid unfairly dismissing someone in the first place.

• 15 Dec 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I wonder if the hon. Gentleman would like to tell the House which of these business groups he disagrees with and that he thinks we should not listen to today, because these are the groups telling us and peers in the other place that we should be voting for the Bill. Does he disagree with the British Chambers of Commerce or the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development? Does he disagree with the Confederation of British Industry, with the Federation of Small Businesses, with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation or with Small Business Britain?

• 10 Dec 2025 · Seasonal Work · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that the way to solve the crisis in apprenticeships in hair and beauty, as well as the crisis of bogus self-employment in hair and beauty, is to strengthen the single worker status?