Ashley Fox MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

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

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  It is good to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I rise to speak in support of Opposition amendments 113 to 115 and new clause 18. These are modest proposals to ameliorate the additional costs and burdens that the Bill is will place on employers and the public sector. It seems extraordinary that the Government want to introduce this new facility time without any thought about what the cost will be. It strikes me that the measures the Government are bringing forward are simply a bung to their trade union friends to provide extra money to employ extra trade union officials to do work that genuinely does not need doing. The law is clear and should be enforced. We do not need the state to impose further burdens by employing trade union officials to effectively double up as Government inspectors. I shall therefore support the amendments and vote against the Government’s new clauses. A pattern is being followed through this Bill, whereby Ministers rise and say that each individual proposal is reasonable and modest, yet each one is an additional burden on the taxpayer and/or employers. The net result is £5 billion in additional costs, which will make this country less competitive, efficient, and effective.

• 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, and I wish you and other colleagues a happy new year. I want to follow on from the comments made by the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire, and emphasise that the clause is completely pointless. Of course all workers have the right to join a trade union and the right not to join a trade union. Will the Minister outline the consequences for a small employer of not complying with the clause? Will there be a penalty? Will the employer be taken to a tribunal that can make a protective award? If there will not be a penalty, surely the clause is only performative, and just more evidence that the Government are doing what their trade union masters are telling them to. Time and again in the Bill, we see measures that are small and inconsequential individually, but in total mount up to £5 billion of additional costs, most of them on small and medium-sized businesses. We see from surveys of business confidence that businesses are reeling under the imposition of additional taxes and of these rights, and the Government’s business-unfriendly stance. While the Minister talks about growth, the actions of his Government point to the very opposite. They believe that somehow they can regulate their way to growth. We start this new year with more regulation from the Government, none of which will contribute to the wealth and prosperity of our citizens.

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

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  Probation period—thank you. It is early in the new year, Mr Mundell. That member of staff might be within their probation period, but if that is not specified in a written contract, that dismissal would be procedurally unfair, according to the Bill. If that same small businessman or woman has not notified the employee of their right to join a trade union, the Minister seems to be saying that the employee will get a protective award of another two to four weeks’ salary on top of that. Can he not see that for microbusinesses, the array of sanctions becomes threatening—many weeks’ wages, for a very short contract that did not work out—and that he threatens to make it very difficult and onerous for them to take on new employees?

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

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  The amendment is designed to give trade union members the right not to contribute to the political funds. Why does the Labour party want to stop them having that right? It is pure self-interest. Labour wants a conscript army of trade union members to contribute to the funds. Furthermore, I dare say that a good proportion of the political funds end up supporting the campaigns of Labour Members, who one by one in Committee have declared their membership of individual trade unions. Earlier, we heard the Minister say that, annually, he wanted employers to remind workers of their right to join a trade union, yet he does not want those same members to have the right to opt out, or to be reminded of their right to opt out, of the political fund. I therefore support the amendment, which will assist trade union members to know that they have the right to opt in or out of the political funds.

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

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  I think this comes together with day one employment rights. Take the example of a very small businessman or woman who takes someone on with no written contract, and within a week or two the employment does not work out and the employee is fired. They might be within a—what is the word for the period of time in the first few weeks of employment?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Support for Veterans · Hansard source

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  Operation Prosper was launched in April 2024 to support veterans into work after they leave the armed forces. Does the Minister expect to continue the funding for Operation Prosper after the conclusion of the spending review?