Deirdre Costigan MP: speeches 2025

128 published records · newest first.

Speeches

4 Feb 2025 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source
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10. What steps he is taking to introduce the warm homes plan.
3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source
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On Friday, I visited the assessment centre at the west Ealing jobcentre, where staff told me the assessments focus on proving that disabled people cannot work, rather than identifying what jobs they could do if they had the right support. Many disabled people in my constituency are eager for a good job. What more could jobcentres and the Department do to help disabled people into work, rather than simply writing them off?
3 Feb 2025 · Jobcentres: Economic Growth · Hansard source
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1. What assessment she has made of the impact of jobcentres on economic growth.
29 Jan 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source
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Q6. Children in Ealing Southall will be sleeping on sofas and living room floors tonight because of 14 years of failure by the Conservatives. Ealing council has joined over 100 councils that are trying to remove the barriers and give those kids a decent home to live in—something Conservative Members do not seem to care about. As part of the Government’s plan for change, will the Prime Minister look at the five solutions put forward by those councils, so that we can secure the future of council housing for those children sleeping on the floor tonight?
28 Jan 2025 · Airport Expansion · Hansard source
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Many of my constituents in Ealing Southall work at Heathrow or in its supply chain, and they will welcome the good-quality, well-paid jobs that airport expansion will bring. However, I have other constituents who worry about the environmental impact of any expansion. In taking any decision on this matter, will the Minister ensure that he balances the need for growth and for good-quality local jobs against the need to minimise air pollution and noise pollution?
27 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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I recently visited Beaconsfield primary school in Ealing Southall, where teachers told me they have to fill in up to six forms to get disabled children the help they need. The time that takes is time they do not have, and they often need to choose which child to prioritise for support. How will the Minister reduce unnecessary paperwork and make it easier and more efficient for schools to ensure that every disabled child gets the educational support that they need?
21 Jan 2025 · Environmental Protection · Hansard source
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As chair of the Tidy Britain all-party parliamentary group, I want to thank you for allowing me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. The APPG and Keep Britain Tidy have worked on this issue for years, including under the chairship of my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). It is exciting to finally see change being delivered in today’s regulations, and I congratulate the Minister on her speedy and no-nonsense approach to making this happen. I frequently visit local schools and when I ask the children what they would like to see changed in Ealing Southall, they always say they want less litter on the streets. Adults complain about litter all the time, of course, but I had not realised how much children were disturbed by it. Litter makes places feel unloved and it makes the people who live in those places feel unloved too. It makes it embarrassing to ask friends around to your house, and it is a daily reminder that your street and your family just do not matter. Over the last 14 years, the amount of litter on our streets has gone up by a third: a tsunami of litter created by the previous Conservative Government, who slashed the funding for local councils to the bone. Councils such as my own in Ealing were left having to spend about two thirds of their budget on adult and children’s social care, with very little left for anything else. They had to make impossible decisions: spend money on potholes or libraries; on playgrounds or parking; on street sweepers or youth workers. They were left to rely on local volunteer litter pickers such as LAGER Can in Ealing, who do an amazing job, but they cannot do it alone. It is great that this new Labour Government have increased funding for local councils, and I am confident that the Chancellor’s spending review in the spring will allow councils to plan services better, but let us be honest that picking up litter after people is a total waste of money. That money could be much better spent on more playgrounds or youth clubs. The real solution is to stop the litter in the first place. What if people were rewarded for recycling their litter instead of dropping it on the street? What if they got money back? That is exactly what this Labour Government are doing today. We are making recycling pay. These new rules mean that shops across the country will be fitted out with reverse vending machines that give people money back for their used plastic bottles and cans. I have tried out the machine in the shop beside my mum’s house in Ireland, and it is simple and easy to use. People feed in their empties, and they get a voucher for their money back. Since being introduced in Ireland in February last year, reverse vending machines have already increased recycling and reduced litter on the streets. Right now, bins in streets, parks and beaches across the UK are chock-full of empty plastic bottles and cans. Think what a difference it would make if all those bottles and cans went back to the shop instead. We would end the problem of overflowing bins on the high street forever. In Ealing, a massive 41% of all reported fly-tips are black sack fly-tips containing household waste such as empty plastic bottles and cans, so making recycling pay would also reduce fly-tipping. The previous Government knew that this made sense as long ago as 2017, but they dithered, delayed and fought among themselves. Today, we have seen a total U-turn, with Conservative Members fighting against their own policy. Again, they prove that they are on the side of the vested interests, the polluters and the litter bugs. Two schools in my constituency came to see me this week, and they said that this makes sense and will reduce litter on the streets. Even the children know that this is the right thing to do. Today we are ending the Conservative record of dither and delay, and their deplorable refusal to do anything about so many communities that feel neglected and uncared for. The only way to get rid of litter on our streets is to stop people dropping it in the first place. This new plan to make recycling pay will help clean up our streets and parks, our rivers and beaches, and put money back in people’s pockets.
20 Jan 2025 · Affordable Housing · Hansard source
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10. What steps she has taken with Cabinet colleagues to increase the supply of affordable housing.
20 Jan 2025 · Affordable Housing · Hansard source
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After 14 years of Conservative Government, Ealing council has thousands of families waiting for a council home and has an affordable housing programme that it does not have the money to deliver. A report from Southwark council released on Sunday found that 71% of councils will have to delay or cancel house building projects. Will the Secretary of State look at ways to finally make local councils’ housing budgets sustainable so that we can build the affordable homes that my constituents in Ealing Southall desperately need?
16 Jan 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source
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On behalf of so many of my constituents in Ealing Southall, may I wholeheartedly welcome this news about a potential ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the hostages? I thank the Foreign Secretary and his ministerial team for all their hard work to get us to this moment of hope, but this is only a beginning. Can the Foreign Secretary tell me how he will use our hard-won experience of brokering a lasting peace in Northern Ireland through the Good Friday agreement to help achieve a two-state solution and long-term peace, security and prosperity for the people of both Palestine and Israel?
15 Jan 2025 · Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill · Hansard source
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Thank you for allowing me to take part in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. Having been a member of the Bill Committee—my first Bill Committee in this place—I appreciate being able to contribute on Report in the Chamber. Southall town centre is well known the world over as a great place to shop for an Asian wedding, with stunning lehengas, saris and sherwani on sale all down the Broadway, King Street and South Road. During the election campaign, I vividly recall seeing two clothes shop workers eating their lunchtime rotis behind the counter. When I commented that business must be good, they both said no. They said that a few years ago, they would never have had time for lunch, and would have worked right up until closing as they were so busy. They told me that they were suffering from being undercut by online retailers because they were paying through the nose for business rates, facing blitz robberies with no police around to respond, and constantly having to chase bigger businesses for payments. It is ironic that the previous Government have suddenly decided they back local businesses after 14 years of ignoring their pleas. In fact, the only businesses they supported were the rail companies that could not run the trains, the water companies that could not keep our water clean, and, of course, the private sector mates they handed out dodgy covid contracts to. Indeed, the former Prime Minister and former Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, Boris Johnson, reportedly used a four-letter word beginning with f when making it clear how little he cared about business. In contrast, this Labour Government are backing local businesses. We are already ensuring that suppliers pay small businesses within 30 days, and we are cracking down on retail crime, too. The Bill will deliver on our promise to ensure a fairer system of business rates that will help brick and mortar shops like those in Southall to compete with online companies. Finally, we will have a permanently rebalanced system that will stop local shops being undercut and stop the slow death of our high streets and town centres. New clauses 1 to 3 and amendment 9 are all things that are already happening. We are already publishing a review of these measures as part of next year’s Budget, and there is already discretion for local authorities to look at the higher multiplier rate. Amendments 1 to 6 would add manufacturing to the Bill, which would, in my belief, dilute its effect. We have already prioritised manufacturing as part of the Budget, investing £3 billion into aerospace, automotive and the life sciences industries. We make no apologies for using this Bill to prioritise town centres. Amendments 7, 8 and 10 all seek to either dilute or delay the changes in the Bill. The Bill already exempts all private schools that are wholly or mainly focused on educating children with special educational needs—that is already in the Bill. We know, however, that 93% of children in this country go to state schools. Politics is about priorities. Just as we are prioritising town centres in the Bill, we are also prioritising those 93% of children. Unless the Conservatives think it is okay to have children in state schools taught maths and science by unqualified teachers, they need to say where they would get the money from otherwise. Although the Bill is about a fairer system of business rates that will help local businesses, many on the Opposition Benches have raised the issue of employer national insurance. Some 93% of businesses in Ealing Southall are microbusinesses. Most of those businesses will either pay less employer national insurance or the same as they currently pay. Some businesses will pay more national insurance, but that is because the previous Government ran up a massive £22 billion credit card bill making rash promises they did not even attempt to keep, while running public services into the ground. When the final demand letters started coming, they hid them in the back of a drawer and pretended everything was fine. Employer national insurance increases for some businesses will help us to pay for the triple lock on pensions, thousands of extra hip and knee operations, and more police on our streets. Again, unless the Conservatives think it is okay to reduce pensions in real terms, let waiting lists go up and up and give our streets over to criminals, they need to say where they would get the money from. Before Christmas, I met the brewer Heineken at its pub the Star and Scorpion in west Ealing. Labour has already taken a penny off a pint in the Budget and our decision in the Bill to permanently lower business rates for retail and hospitality businesses will help to further protect local pubs like the Star and Scorpion. Without the Bill, the bars and restaurants of west Ealing and Hanwell would be facing a cliff edge in April, with big increases in their business rates as the sticking-plaster solution that the previous Government came up with ends. The Bill both extends temporary reductions in business rates for high street businesses and introduces a new permanent scheme that will level the playing field between the high street and the internet. The one tax that the Opposition do not mention is the 10p crime tax: 10p added to every shopping basket due to the impact of shoplifting. The Tories did absolutely nothing about that, but this is a Tory tax that Labour is getting rid of. We are investing in neighbourhood policing, scrapping the Tory shoplifter charter that allowed thefts under £200 not to be investigated, and bringing in a new offence of assaulting a shopworker. The Conservatives had 14 years to help out local businesses like those in Ealing Southall. Instead, they trashed our economy, destroyed public services and stifled business growth. The Labour Government are clearing up their mess. Through this Bill, we are ensuring fairer business rates for shops, restaurants and bars on Ealing Southall’s high streets.
15 Jan 2025 · Health and Social Care: Winter Update · Hansard source
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I was shocked when a young man came to my last constituency surgery to ask me as his MP to help him get a GP appointment. Morning after morning, he had spent hours queuing on the phone, and he was desperate. If my constituents cannot see a GP, they end up in A&E instead. How is the Secretary of State continuing to work to undo the Conservatives’ abject failure to fix the GP crisis, which is fuelling winter pressure on hospitals?
14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source
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A third of people in my constituency live in private rented accommodation. That is already pretty high, and well above the national average of 19%, but in some wards, such as Southall Green, it rises to almost 50% of people living in rented homes. Ealing borough is what is known as super-diverse, with people from all over the world having made it their home. For many of my constituents in Southall, English is a second, third or even fourth language that they sometimes struggle with. That leaves them wide open to abuse by rogue landlords, and under the previous Government there was nothing they could do about it. The Conservatives made promise after promise to renters but never delivered. In hock to vested interests, they reneged on every pledge they made to renters, and some of the amendments tabled by the Opposition today continue to prioritise the needs of bad landlords over those of renters. In 2023, Generation Rent produced a report into renting by the British-Indian community, using data from renters in Southall. The report found that over a third had not received any of the six important documents they were entitled to from their landlord. A third stated that their landlord had threatened them with an unaffordable rent increase. Over half said that their rent had increased in the previous six months, with the average increase being £200 per month, and many were living in damp, overcrowded conditions. The Renters’ Rights Bill will ensure that vulnerable tenants such as those in Ealing Southall are able to go to the housing ombudsman for help. They will also be able to challenge arbitrary evictions and unfair rent rises. I welcome the Government’s amendments today, which strengthen the Bill even further, particularly new clause 13, which will end the astronomical deposits often demanded from tenants in advance. That is a very important change, particularly in Ealing Southall, because where people face low pay and massive rent costs, it will reduce a barrier to them getting into good-quality, safe housing and ensure that we do not continue to see people sleeping on the streets. The previous Government sat back while renters in my constituency were condemned to mouldy flats, huge rent rises and the threat of no-fault evictions, but Ealing’s Labour council took action. It introduced a new selective licensing scheme for private landlords, and these schemes were discussed in Committee. Selective landlord licensing schemes require private landlords to have a licence to rent out properties in designated areas of high deprivation or poor housing conditions. They have to meet certain conditions to obtain the licence, such as providing safe and suitable accommodation, complying with fire safety regulations and managing their properties in a responsible manner. In the absence of action from the previous Government, these schemes have allowed councils such as Ealing to enforce higher standards for renters, as the licensing fees and any fines raised from irresponsible landlords are ringfenced for enforcing standards. In Ealing it has also increased awareness for vulnerable tenants of the minimum standards to be expected in rented accommodation. The previous Government were not big supporters of licensing landlords in this way. They preferred standing up for landlords, rather than standing up for renters. In fact, they changed the law to give the Secretary of State a veto on selective licensing schemes that covered more than 20% of a council area. It looks like the Conservatives still are not big supporters of these schemes, as one of the amendments they tabled in Committee would have removed selective landlord licensing altogether. That would be a massive backwards move, and I am glad the Minister agrees with me. In fact, before Christmas the Minister announced that he would be removing the Conservatives’ veto, and councils will now be able to expand schemes such as the one in Ealing to the whole borough if they want to. I am delighted that the Government have taken fast action on this without waiting for the Bill to pass, and I look forward to more councils with poor housing and high deprivation levels being able to bring in successful licensing schemes such as the one in Ealing. I also welcome the Government amendments, which will give more power to local authorities to enforce renters’ rights and to pay for enforcement and investigation. The Conservatives have proved today that they do not care about renters, and most of the points that they have raised are about protecting bad landlords—although so few of the party’s Members have turned up that I wonder whether they care about anything. By contrast, Labour believes that it is time we rebalanced the power relationship between landlords and tenants so that constituents such as mine know their rights and can enforce them, including the rights to fair rent, to safe homes and to secure tenancies. I welcome the real difference that this Bill and the Government amendments will make to the lives of families in Ealing Southall.
14 Jan 2025 · UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue · Hansard source
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Will the Chancellor confirm that, for her, growth must always go hand in hand with economic security? That is a lesson that the previous Conservative Government refused to learn when they left 85% of us dependent on expensive foreign gas to heat our homes this winter.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member for her intervention; I will come to that point later in my speech. I know that the Government are giving this much consideration.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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We do not have solar panels feeding into our energy system to that much greater degree because of the last Government; it is as simple as that. I will continue with the changes that I would like the Minister to consider. Lastly, I would like her to think about heat pumps and heat batteries and the way they both currently use electricity. Electricity can make them more expensive than gas boilers, which is one of the big barriers to consumers. It sounds strange, but because of the way the market works, the price of electricity depends on the price of gas. It is surely unfair that a levy is paid on the electricity used by heat batteries, but those levies are not paid back when and if they feed back into the grid. We need to look at the electricity market to see if there are ways of splitting off the price of cheaper renewable energy from the price of gas to reflect the true value of energy storage. I hope to hear more from the Minister on that point, as part of the review on the electricity market that she has committed to undertake. Every family and business in the country has paid the price of Britain’s dependence on foreign gas markets. Retrofitting homes with the help of heat batteries is just one of the range of actions we need to take to bring down bills and keep Britain’s leaky homes warm. In just six months, the Government have already made huge advances in increasing our energy security, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on her plans to harness new technologies to protect the cost of heating our homes from decisions made in other countries.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I thank the hon. Member for his support for Backbench Business in this place, which is very much appreciated by all Members. I certainly agree on the need for financial support; I will touch on that point later. I expect the Minister will too, as there has been a significant move forward over the past six months. As I have explained, we have become addicted to gas over a number of years, which is why my constituents in Ealing Southall are consistently paying higher energy prices and struggling to heat their homes. We should have started work years ago on breaking our addiction to gas by investing in our own renewable energy and upgrading our homes to use that energy, but the previous Government never had the bravery to take action at the scale that is needed. Instead, they stopped us producing cheap British-made energy by blocking the building of onshore wind farms and by cutting funding for solar panels. The previous Government also stopped us upgrading our homes to protect them from the rising cost of gas. They slashed grants for loft and cavity wall insulation and scrapped the zero-carbon homes standard for new homes. As a result, more than 1 million new homes have been built with lower energy efficiency standards, and people are paying higher bills than they should. We continue to have the leakiest homes in Europe, with just 12,000 homes insulated last year, compared with up to 2.5 million a year under the last Labour Government. The Carbon Trust estimates that those decisions by the Conservative Government have added at least £3 billion to UK gas bills. That is why my constituents are paying through the nose to keep warm today. What can we do about that? Thankfully, the new Government are already taking action to wean us off gas. We have set up Great British Energy, ended the block on onshore wind farms and kick-started plans to become a world leader in floating offshore wind. These are the brave steps needed to ensure that by 2030 we become fully energy self-sufficient and that 95% of the power we generate is clean energy, ending our reliance on gas and on decisions taken in Moscow. When it comes to weaning our home heating systems off gas, the recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step towards the new Government’s warm homes plan. As a start, 300,000 homes will benefit from upgrades next year, with grants for heat pumps and support for renters and low-income households.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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As I have laid out, the Government have already taken steps to increase the funding to transition to heat pumps. I am sure the Minister will have more to say on rural communities and the particular barriers they face. Although heat pumps are extremely important in the move to wean us off gas, they do not work for every home. An estimated 20% of homes are unsuitable for heat pumps. We need to do more to break down the reasons why people can be reluctant to choose them. Air source heat pumps need outdoor space. Many of my Ealing Southall constituents live in small terraced homes or flats and do not have much outdoor space, so a heat pump is not a viable or attractive option. Many people have repurposed the space that used to house their hot water tank. That is where innovative British firms such as Kensa in Cornwall and Tepeo in Reading come in. Both companies use heat batteries, using the same science that is behind hand-warmer packs, to store thermal energy until it is needed. Tepeo’s zero emission boiler, ZEB, uses a heat battery that automatically buys energy at cheaper times of day and releases it when required, reducing energy bills. Users do not need an outside pump; they just need a box about the size of a gas boiler. Because of their small size and their ability to plug and play without needing to do replumbing, heat batteries are a good solution for heating homes in built-up urban environments like London, including parts of Ealing Southall. Kensa uses shared ground source heat loops that are connected to whole streets or blocks of flats. The energy is connected from the ground, is produced in networked heat pumps in each of the linked houses or flats and is then stored in Kensa’s Sunamp heat batteries. No outdoor space is needed, and it replaces the need for a hot water tank.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I am sure that the Minister will have more to say on that when she responds. Heat batteries in the UK currently face a significant disadvantage compared with heat pumps as they are not eligible for a grant under the boiler upgrade scheme. I know the Minister is continuing to look at how she can maximise the benefits of the scheme and I hope she will also look at whether new technologies such as heat batteries can also be supported. Unlike heat pumps, heat batteries are not on the list of energy-saving materials that qualify for VAT reductions, so extending VAT relief to heat batteries would help to heat the 20% of homes currently missing out. I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ask him to consider reducing VAT for heat batteries, and I hope the Minister might work with him on that. There are barriers to installing networked ground source heat pumps that use heat batteries, including planning considerations and the need to adopt a street-by-street approach that can upgrade hundreds of homes in one go. The Minister has already committed to changing planning rules for air source heat pumps. I hope that she will consider whether changes also need to be made for networked ground source pumps and that she will include networked heat pumps allied with heat batteries in the forthcoming low-carbon flexibility road map she is working on. To give certainty to British businesses investing in innovative technologies such as heat batteries, we need to ensure that there are consistent heating requirements for new homes being built. The Minister will shortly be bringing forward the new future homes standard to end the scandal of gas boilers still being installed in new homes. I hope the standard will include heat batteries and other emerging technologies.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware of the company he mentions and will talk about it later in my remarks. It is a great example to build on. We need to wean our home heating systems off gas, in the same way that we need to wean the country off gas when it comes to renewable energy. The recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step in the warm homes plan. Heat pumps, which will benefit from some of that money, are a great way to wean us off gas. They use electricity rather than gas, so they can be fed from home-grown energy from our wind and solar farms. Just 1% of UK homes use a heat pump, compared with 60% in Norway. That is a real indictment of the previous Government’s inaction. It is fantastic that this Government are systematically removing barriers to heat pumps. We have increased funding for the boiler upgrade scheme by £30 million this year and will be doubling it from April. We are removing the need for other home upgrades before households can get that funding, and we are changing planning requirements and the 1 metre rule so that heat pumps are easier to install.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I beg to move, That this House has considered decarbonising homes and heat batteries. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. My constituents in Ealing Southall regularly speak to me about the cost of heating their homes. Gas bills have risen astronomically over the past few years, and in freezing weather like this, people are often afraid to turn up their heating in case they are hit with a massive bill. Indeed, research by the House of Commons Library confirms that the annual increase in gas bills in October 2022 was the largest ever recorded, based on records going back to 1970. How did this happen, and what can we do to reduce people’s bills? There is one reason why bills have increased to such a degree: we have become almost completely dependent on Russian gas—on gas internationally, in fact. When Russia, a huge gas supplier, invaded Ukraine, it disrupted global gas supplies. Prices shot up across the world. As a country, we have put all our eggs in one basket. Some 23 million homes have gas boilers, and 85% of us depend on gas to heat our homes, so we had no option but to pay higher prices. It is a basic mistake that anyone can see if they think about it. For years we lived off cheap gas, until we were addicted to it. Then, when supplies were disrupted, we were left at the mercy of higher prices.
8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source
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I absolutely agree, and I will come on to exactly those points. Kensa’s approach also uses ground source heat technology, aligned with heat batteries—a cheap and efficient way of rolling out heat pumps at scale. My hon. Friend mentions a visit he made; another example is that Kensa has replaced direct electric heaters with shared ground loops alongside heat batteries in more than 270 flats across three tower blocks in Thurrock. Residents’ bills have reduced by more than 60%, which is a huge saving. Both those technologies can wean us off gas. They are examples of the kind of British manufacturing and innovation that we need to support to create good-quality jobs. However, barriers remain, and I hope that the Minister will consider ways of addressing them.
8 Jan 2025 · Playgrounds · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) for securing this important debate. Playgrounds are not just nice things to have. They are vital spaces where children grow, learn and thrive. In densely populated urban constituencies, like Ealing Southall in London, they are often a precious escape from overcrowded homes. But 14 years of Conservative Government have seen playgrounds and public spaces suffer under successive cuts. With councils starved of funding, playgrounds became a luxury that they could barely afford. Budgets for parks were slashed by more than £350 million and the last Labour Government’s multimillion-pound playground programme was cancelled. That led to crumbling playgrounds that were starved of cash, with councils often having to remove equipment that they could not afford to repair, and a 15% drop in the number of adventure playgrounds since 2017. The results have been devastating: there are fewer public playgrounds, and that harms children’s physical and mental health, stifling their potential before it has a chance to bloom.
8 Jan 2025 · Playgrounds · Hansard source
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I absolutely agree that we need fair funding for local councils and for playgrounds. Access to play is a fundamental human right. It is written down in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. There should be no argument about it, so it is heartening that the new Labour Government has immediately shown its commitment to play as a human right that cannot be denied to our children. Our changes—in some ways radical—to the national planning policy framework will, for the first time, insist that playgrounds are a consideration in all new developments. It will force developers to provide them, if we can back this up with legislation. In these changes, the Government have demonstrated a renewed commitment to a child’s right to play and their right to be supported through development. I hope this can be followed by a new national play strategy for England—the first since the last Labour Government. Research shows that many playgrounds fail to meet the needs of girls. In one study, 68% of girls said that there was nothing for them to do in the playground. Developers often tick the box by putting in a climbing frame but many girls prefer playground equipment that is social and collaborative: space to chat to their friends—swings are one example. Our future playgrounds must be inclusive, offering facilities for all children, and I hope that will be included in the Minister’s plans. Despite years of funding cuts, Labour-run councils like Ealing, which covers my constituency of Ealing Southall, are leading the charge to transform playgrounds and put children at the heart of local plans. Ealing council has already committed £2 million to renovate a staggering 22 playgrounds across the borough, including Ravenor Park, Spikes Bridge Park, Southall Park and Lammas Park in west Ealing. Ealing has worked with developers, including the developer of the Green Quarter in Southall, to ensure that developer-built playgrounds are publicly accessible. All new projects in Ealing are being assessed to ensure a minimum of 50% inclusive play, and that refurbishments consider the Make Space for Girls guidance. In my former role as deputy leader of Ealing council, I championed “play on the way”, where play features like stepping stones on the grass build-outs at the corner of a street, and a hopscotch marked on the pavement, can even weave play into a child’s walk home from school. What councils need most is secure funding from central Government, so this year’s 3.5% real-terms increase in council funding—that is £69 billion for councils—is a hugely welcome first step. I know we will hear more on this in the upcoming spending review. We need to ensure that councils like Ealing can sustain and expand playgrounds, especially in urban areas, where green and outdoor spaces are more limited. Playgrounds are not just for children; they are investments in the fabric of our society and in our future generations. To continue to achieve this Labour Government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child, we need to keep pushing forward with our radical plans for play. It is time to reverse the damage of the past and create spaces that truly reflect the vibrant, equitable future that we want for our children.
7 Jan 2025 · Workplace Pay Gaps · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for securing this important debate. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the Unison group of MPs. We have had gender pay gap reporting since 2017. Although it was a very welcome first step, it has proved to be too weak on its own to fully level the playing field between men and women at work. Women are still being paid significantly less than men on average. Gender pay gap reporting relies on a name-and-shame approach that means that employers can continue to report paying women less, year after year, without having to take any action at all to change this. It is great news that the new Labour Government have already taken decisive action by bringing forward the new Employment Rights Bill. The new law will mean that employers have to publish an action plan setting out how they will take tangible steps to reduce gender pay gaps and discrimination in the workplace. Finally, employers will be held to account to ensure that they pay women fairly. Today, I want to focus on disabled people in particular. Disabled workers are paid an average of over £2 an hour less than non-disabled workers. That is thousands of pounds a year that disabled workers are losing out on. Disabled women experience one of the worst pay gaps as a result of double discrimination: not only do they suffer the gender pay gap, but they experience the disability pay gap, which has barely moved over the past decade. There was no progress at all under the previous Government, and disabled workers are still losing out. I am delighted that the new Labour Government announced straight away in the King’s Speech that we would bring forward a new equality Bill that will ensure a full right to equal pay for both disabled and black and Asian workers. The new law will finally extend pay gap reporting to disabled workers and will mean that employers with more than 250 staff must publicly account for the difference in how much they pay their disabled staff. However, as the gender pay gap has shown, we will still need to do more, and the groundbreaking disability employment charter outlines some of the solutions. The disability employment charter is a list of nine demands of Government that will break down the barriers for disabled people at work. It was put together by organisations such as Scope, Disability Rights UK and Unison. Over 220 employers have already backed the disability employment charter but the previous Government failed to act on any of its recommendations. One of the charter’s key demands is for disability pay gap reporting alongside employment gap reporting, because too many employers just do not employ disabled people in the first place, let alone pay them properly. I hope that the Minister will consider mandatory publication of the level of disabled staff at larger employers so that an employer’s commitment to treating disabled people fairly can be properly assessed. Disabled workers are twice as likely to be unemployed than non-disabled workers. That is caused by discrimination in recruitment, but also by workers being hounded out due to bullying and harassment, or a failure to provide reasonable adjustments. Disabled workers are entitled by law to reasonable adjustments—often small changes that can help them do their job—but research by Unison found that a quarter of disabled workers have waited over a year for adjustments to be put in place and many never hear back from their employers at all. They get ignored and the current law is not strong enough for them to do anything about it. No one can do their job properly if they do not have the tools to do it, so of course those disabled workers lose out on promotion and get stuck on the bottom rung of the pay ladder. That is a key cause of the disability pay gap. Without the right help, many disabled workers are in pain each day at work, or struggle to perform. The next thing they know, they are out of the door: an outcome that could have been avoided with changes to hours, additional breaks, or with, for example, speech-to-text software. That is a massive waste of talent, which has led to a disability employment gap of 30% and nearly 3 million people stuck at home on long-term sick leave when many of them want to work. The disability employment charter calls for a new right to a two-week deadline to get at least a reply to requests for reasonable adjustments. Currently, there is no deadline for a response—unlike, for example, flexible working requests, to which the employer needs to respond in eight weeks. I gave evidence on that point to the Lords Public Services Committee in my previous role with Unison and I welcome the Committee’s recommendation of a four-week deadline for responses to requests for reasonable adjustments. I know the Minister will consider that issue as she works with colleagues, including the Minister for Social Security and Disability, on proposals to help to reduce the disability employment gap and the pay gap. Disabled people are full of talent and creativity. For too long they have been pushed out of jobs that they love because of discrimination, bullying and a simple refusal to give them the basic help that they need to thrive at work. The solutions outlined in the disability employment charter, including mandatory publication of the disability pay gap and the employment gap, and a deadline for responses to requests for reasonable adjustments, will help to finally unleash that talent. I look forward to this transformative Labour Government taking forward this vital work.

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