Greg Smith MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 12 Dec 2024 · Business Confidence · Hansard source

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  There is no clearer pointer on business confidence than the Bank of England’s recent survey on employers’ responses to the Budget. Some 59% expect lower profit margins; 54% expect to raise prices; 54% expect lower employment; and 38% expect to pay lower wages than they otherwise would have. Now City AM reports that Labour has carelessly lost all its business backers. Will the Secretary of State show any contrition, admit that business confidence is through the floor, and start standing up for business, rather than the Treasury?

• 12 Dec 2024 · Business Confidence · Hansard source

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  Sorry seems to be the hardest word. [ Interruption. ] I am talking about the Government’s Budget. Further proof of how low business confidence is getting under this Government was given in evidence to the Employment Rights Bill Committee. Jane Gratton of the British Chamber of Commerce predicted “a reduced hiring appetite were this legislation to come in, and that” their members “would be less likely to recruit new employees due to the risk and difficulty, particularly under the day one rights”. –– [ Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 8, Q2.] If business confidence is low, employment goes down. We already know that every Labour Government leave unemployment higher than when they took office, but is it not a bit extreme for this Labour Government to legislate for that outcome?

• 11 Dec 2024 · Draft Road Transport (International Passenger Services) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. As the Minister has stressed, the Interbus agreement is a long-standing agreement that ensures access for bus providers. Rightly, it has always been the policy of the Department for Transport to maintain that access throughout our evolving relationship with the European Union, and it is appropriate to preserve it at this time. We appreciate that without ratification, UK bus and coach operators would lose the right to run services to the EU nations. It is therefore necessary to introduce legislation adopting measures such as the protocol, which benefits providers across the United Kingdom. It is welcome that these matters can now be decided in this place. When we disagree with policy, Parliament can exercise our sovereignty to reject such measures. I am sure it will be a relief to the Committee to know that today is not one of those days: in this case, we welcome the Government’s assurances that the regulations will level the playing field for UK operators with respect to cabotage. It is appropriate that the EU and British operators share the same cabotage rights. Moving forward, the Opposition encourage the Government to ensure that the rights of British transport operators are safeguarded in discussions with the European Union. It is particularly vital that we remain up to date with our international obligations. Will the Minister therefore outline her position on updating technical specifications covered by the agreement? Will she commit to ensuring that future agreements, when discussed in the Joint Committee, align regulations with the needs of UK coach operators? I note that in Grand Committee in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Moylan raised the issue of enforcement. I understand that in 2023 the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency confirmed that it had issued 32 on-the-spot fines to non-GB passenger service operators, including EU operators. Will the Minister provide assurances that those responsible for enforcing the changes to rules will be effectively deployed, for instance at UK entry points?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not disagree with a word that the hon. Lady says. The NHS, like every employer, is right to take a zero-tolerance attitude to any form of harassment against its employees, customers, patients or whoever else happens to be on its premises at any time. I accept the hon. Lady’s point about innocence. My A&E example was not so much about sexual harassment or worse criminality; it is all horrendous criminality, in my view, but there are other criminal laws that can and should be used to bring perpetrators to justice in that space. My example was more about abusive behaviour in the form of verbal harassment from a patient who is drunk or high on drugs. It is still horrible, it is still wrong and it still needs action, but what happens? The zero-tolerance policy, all of a sudden, becomes a poster on the wall rather than real, live action there and then, as that drunk patient makes unacceptable remarks of whatever nature to the nurse or doctor. The test is whether the words in the Bill before us—as opposed to other, potentially even more stringent or stronger legislation that is already on the statute book or that may yet need to be passed—will have a better effect.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Mr Mundell. The Minister mentioned that the clause builds on private Member’s legislation passed in the last Parliament, and it would be remiss of me not to put on record that the transformation in some employers’ attitudes to their employees and to the retention and fair distribution of tips was in large part down to the former Conservative Member for Watford, Dean Russell, who piloted the original legislation through the House. There were one or two little bumps along the road as he came into ministerial office and then out again in—what was the number?—43 days, but many Conservative colleagues really pushed for the legislation. It is one of those great unfairnesses that, for years, incredibly hard-working people in the hospitality sector and others had an expectation that they would receive the generosity of their customers’ tips at the end of the meal, the round of drinks or whatever but, for various reasons, did not get their fair share. The legislation the Minister referred to righted that historic wrong, and clause 10, which seeks to strengthen that, is very welcome. Where I gently suggest to the Minister that there needs to be a little more thought and clarity is settings where there is no union to consult. That might be a small business such as a restaurant or pub, where the people who work there are not affiliated with any union or body that could be consulted on their behalf. Will he say something about how those smaller businesses—smaller restaurant or pub settings—will get dialogue going with their employees so that the business has a fair and equitable, and clear and unambiguous policy to ensure that the tips reach those workers?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In many respects it is my job to be worried, to properly kick the tyres and to understand the operability of what the Government are trying to achieve. I certainly take the hon. Gentleman’s point on sexual harassment, and there is very clear criminal law in place that is probably more appropriate to bring perpetrators of such heinous crimes properly to justice. My concerns about the reasonableness test are less about that which can and should be pursued through criminal legislation; they are more about other forms of very subjectively tested harassment, as well as some points that I hope to make about freedom of speech. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman will reflect on and understand those concerns when I get to that point.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister for her explanation of clause 14. It is quite clear on a purely human level that bereavement can strike any family and any individual, often with zero notice or ability to plan, and it is therefore a basic tenet of humanity that we would all expect employers to be sensitive, generous and sympathetic to any employee who finds themselves in that position. For the record, it is certainly my experience that the vast majority of businesses and employers show compassion, sensitivity and generosity to ensure that anybody who is bereaved has the time, space and freedom to be able to grieve, plan for things such as funerals and start the very hard process of not just saying goodbye to that loved one, but putting various affairs in order, such as registering the death. People have to go through a high burden of bureaucracy when they find themselves in that position. The core principle of the proposals is fundamentally a good one, and does not warrant opposition. However, there is an area that I think needs a little more debate and potentially some refinement. The Minister spoke about the need to consult and to get these regulations right, and it is important that we do that. I do not in any way oppose the principle of the proposals, but I gently suggest that perhaps it would have been better to do the consultation first, so that this could have been clearer in the legislation as it goes forward. I repeat, however, that I say that not to distract from the good principle that sits underneath these regulations. I ask the Minister to reflect further on the point from the evidence session about bereavement leave being available to parents who have lost their child after 24 weeks of pregnancy. There are many people who suffer the loss of a pregnancy before 24 weeks. That is one of the most heartbreaking things for mothers, fathers and wider families, and it happens every single day up and down the land. After all the joy, excitement and future planning that go into any mother’s, father’s and family’s life when they find out that they are expecting a child, the often very sudden news that that pregnancy has not made it comes as a huge shock, often with no notice. There are things that a family, a mother, a father, will go through when they find out that that pregnancy has not been viable and has sadly ended under 24 weeks, including being taken to a small room and being asked the direct question—which, I assure the Committee makes the ears prick up and the reality of what has just happened come into sharp focus—about whether you wish to attend the burial of that failed pregnancy. That brings into sharp focus that you are actually being asked to say goodbye to your child. That can happen at any point in a pregnancy; it happened to my wife at about 14 weeks in 2018, and I remember vividly sitting in that room, having to fill out what seemed like the “Yellow Pages”-worth of forms, and reflecting that what should have been our second child was not going to be our second child. That takes some getting over, and it often involves surgery for the mother afterwards. Although we have no formal amendment on this at this stage—I reserve the right to perhaps revisit it on Report—it is worth the Government reflecting on a genuine cross-party basis whether the 24-week period can be substantially reduced to give time to families who are saying goodbye. I do not want to get into the debates about when is a child a child, but it is devastating for families who go through that experience, and if the Government can find a way to ensure that families facing those circumstances can have some breathing space, so that we do not just have the “Back to work tomorrow, please” mentality that persists in this country, it would be a welcome and positive step. That might yet bring the whole House together and ensure that people have, as I say, space and time to reflect on what has just happened—to grieve, come back together again and then hopefully plan for the future.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think I have been clear that every law available should be used—potentially, more could be passed—to properly prosecute, challenge, shut down and stop anyone inciting hatred on the basis of race, religion, sexuality or whatever it might be. I cannot find any better set of words to make my revulsion at those crimes clearer, and I show my absolute support for any enforcement agency or Government of any political persuasion that brings forward workable laws to clamp down on those unacceptable criminal behaviours, full stop.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am building up to my wider point. To skip ahead, there will be circumstances where, even within the reasonableness test—I understand that test—something so unexpected and unforeseeable happens that the employer could not in any way have planned a protection for their employees around that. Despite that, the employer might find themselves challenged in a tribunal or, worse, some form of criminal investigation about why they did not take reasonable steps against a totally unexpected and unplanned-for eventuality. I accept that, in most cases, there are practical steps that could be put in place to prevent harassment of any sort, but there will be times where that reasonableness test could fall over and someone could find themselves in a very tricky spot, unable to account for why they did not prepare for the totally unexpected.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will give way in a second. Many comedians—Jimmy Carr is an example—talk frequently at the moment about comedy being shut down. It is not criminal; it is not racial hatred or hatred on the basis of religion, sexuality or anything like that. It is beyond those points.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  There is quite a lot in this grouping, and I will try to go through it in a sensible order. I will start with new clause 29 and amendment 135. The Regulatory Policy Committee has said that the Government have not managed to demonstrate sufficiently the need for the clauses in the Bill that require employers to prevent harassment of their employees by third parties, nor that the measures are sensible—those are the RPC’s words, not mine—and it has rated the impact assessment on this as red. I want to be absolutely crystal clear from the outset, across all the clauses, amendments and new clauses that we are debating, that harassment is wrong; that the sort of sexual harassment that the Minister spoke about is absolutely, categorically unacceptable; and that whatever it takes in the law, and from an enforcement perspective, to stamp harassment out must happen. Such harassment is simply unacceptable in our country and society. The comments that I am about to make are not in any way, shape or form critical of action against harassment, therefore; they are about trying to best understand how the Bill and the amendments that have been tabled would work, and the difference they would realistically make to people’s lives, including by protecting them from harassment or other unacceptable behaviour. With those ground rules set, if I may put it in that manner, the Opposition are concerned, and have doubts about, the need for and the operability of the provisions in clauses 15 to 18. I repeat that that is not about the principle of stopping harassment, but about the operability of the proposals that we are considering. We must question whether the benefits of these clauses will be outweighed by the burden on employers and, in certain respects, by the chilling impact on free speech. New clause 29 would require the Secretary of State to “report on the extent to which the prevalence of third-party harassment makes the case for the measures in sections 15 to 18”. Within that report, the Secretary of State must include “an assessment of the impact of sections 15 to 18 on free speech…an assessment of the likely costs to employers…an assessment of which occupations might be at particular risk of third-party harassment through no fault of the employer, and…proposals for mitigations that can be put in place for employers employing people in such occupations.” Amendment 135 quite reasonably provides that clauses 15 to 18 will not come into effect until—not never, but until—the House of Commons has approved the report required under new clause 29. We then come to the two new clauses tabled by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, the leader of Plaid Cymru. I share the Minister’s concerns about the new clauses. I do not think they are necessary, I do not think that they particularly add to the spirit of what the Government are trying to achieve in the Bill and I do not think they pass the Opposition’s tests of operability. The official Opposition will therefore not be supporting them. Amendment 130 would require employers to have regard to protecting freedom of expression when exercising the Bill’s duty not to permit harassment of their employees. I do not believe any business wants its employees to be harassed. No business owner that I know wants their staff, or any human being, to face harassment at all, in whatever setting. However, the amendment is designed to show the impossibility of the position in which the provisions on third-party harassment will put employers. It is a probing amendment, in the sense that we are not trying to create additional burdens for businesses by giving them another duty. It has been tabled so that we can talk about how unrealistic it is to expect employers to be able to enforce all the provisions in the Bill and, inherent to that, so that we can make the challenge that there may be more appropriate and operable pieces of legislation that already sit in statute or that may yet still need to be debated and passed through Parliament to prevent that. The amendment is about how an employer can balance the right to free expression with the duties explicitly in the Bill. I do not believe that, in the moment, it will always be clear whether someone’s behaviour, say, in a pub falls on the right or wrong side of the line—it is a subjective test. Leaving that aside, there are situations where it will be frankly impossible for employers to abide by the law that the Government are seeking to make. I am interested in the Minister’s reflections on that.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will just finish this point, then I will be delighted to give way to my hon. Friend. The point I am trying to make is that bits of legislation that we are asked to consider sometimes have unintended consequences, and that there is a risk of someone being offended by something that does not pass the reasonability test in this Bill. Outside the well-defined areas that go into the criminal, part of free speech is the right to offend on certain levels.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Certainly there is no objection from the Opposition to the principle of flexibility in ensuring people can have that choice and ability to dictate when leave is taken, particularly in the case of paternity leave. I can think of many examples, including colleagues from the previous Parliament. I acted as the proxy vote for one of them while they were on paternity leave. They pushed that back slightly—the obscurities of this place—to ensure that their paternity leave did not marry up with recess. However, there will be many other reasons and flexibilities that people require away from the eccentricities of working in this place. I ask the Minister to reflect on whether, within that framework of flexibility, which in its own right is a good thing, there needs to be any secondary guidance or advice to businesses on what might turn out to be some very rare but foreseeable circumstances where employees or individuals push the boundaries a bit too far with their employers. and on what to do in those extreme cases. That is not to detract in any way, shape or form from the principle of flexibility, but I ask whether there is a requirement for guidance notes or Government advice, however it is formed, to give employers a bit of a safety net if, in one or two cases, those boundaries be pushed a bit too far.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Planned fire alarms are always quite disturbing, but never mind. I will broadly address the subject we are debating, before making specific comments on the new clauses tabled by the Liberal Democrats. I do not have a direct interest to declare, but I have had paternity leave three times in my life. I value its provision and the importance of ensuring that fathers and partners are there to support mothers in the early days of a new child arriving in the world. Paternity leave is incredibly important, at any point when it arrives. For my second child, I had only been an MP for four weeks after the 2019 general election, when I disappeared for two weeks. That was vital to support my wife, who had valiantly gone through a general election with me while she was eight months pregnant. Of course, she was not pounding the streets in the way most of us were at that point, but I just wanted to give that personal reflection on how important paternity leave is.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am not certain that is quite the point that my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk was making. However, in the interest of fairness, I will commit to properly looking up that case, which I had not come across until my hon. Friend mentioned it a couple of moments ago.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will just finish this thought; the hon. Lady knows that I am not shy about taking interventions. Every business, even if it has only one or two employees, will know what the plan is if one of its employees comes to it and says that their wife, partner or whatever is pregnant and that they will require at some point in the near future two weeks of paternity leave. On the grounds that virtually every business that I know has that plan—has that understanding of what it will do in offering the statutory requirement for paternity leave and the way it will remunerate it or not, as the case may be—I am struggling to understand why it should be only those companies with more than 250 employees that are subject to the requirement.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will just finish this point. Both hon. Ladies know that I will give way. Where would the test come? What should the NHS, as the employer, have done to prevent that situation? What is the overall outcome in that scenario? Where does the reasonableness test fall? I repeat that I am not excusing the behaviour; I am putting it forward as a test to the provisions in the Bill, as a situation in which the employer—ultimately the national health service or perhaps the Health Secretary—would find themselves.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  However, maybe the hon. Gentleman will tell me.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is right to bring the Committee’s attention to that which is already laid down in statute. I think that perhaps where the misunderstanding is coming in—the Opposition are trying to test this—is whether the new reasonability test will deliver perverse results in a tribunal. Probably nobody sitting in this room would expect that to happen, but it could supersede that which is already set down and create a new precedent.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes. I am the last person to want to put a greater burden or unnecessary burden on any form of business. All I gently suggest is that this probably is not that great a burden on a business, on the grounds that it will already know what it is going to do when an employee comes and asks for paternity leave, maternity leave or whatever. That is particularly the case given that much of the rules and regulations is already set in statute and, when this Bill undoubtedly achieves Royal Assent at some point, will be further enshrined in statute. There are many other regulations that businesses have to comply with when publishing on their website—I am thinking of privacy notices and various GDPR regulations and so on—just as all the members of this Committee and Members of this House have to do on our own websites. I do not think anyone would try to define any of us as large businesses or huge employers, and I do not think that there are any hon. or right hon. Members left who do not have a website. Perhaps one or two do not—

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. I broadly agree, but my challenge to him is that reasonableness can be interpreted in many different ways. There will always been an appeals process or something similar, but I worry that unless the legislation is clearer, some good-willed employers who are entirely honest and decent in how they try to protect their staff could, in some circumstances, be on a very sticky wicket trying to defend themselves against something that they never foresaw or dreamed of. They may have been a little too innocent, but they will find themselves in a difficult spot. That is where safeguards need to be locked into the legislation in respect of what is a very subjective test. I was about to come on to an example. I will preface it by saying that absolutely nobody should be abused in the workplace and absolutely nobody should face any form of harassment in the workplace. However, let us think for a moment about how some of the Bill’s provisions would operate in an NHS accident and emergency department. In any A&E up and down the land, our wonderful doctors and nurses sometimes put themselves in harm’s way, particularly late at night. Perhaps they have a patient who is clearly inebriated but has injured themselves. I am not excusing it for one second, but it can and does happen. Let us say that an incredibly drunk patient, who may have fallen and broken their hand, verbally abuses—not sexually harasses—the doctor or nurse treating them. The doctor or nurse does not deserve that, and that behaviour should not be happening, but I would wager that it happens most Friday or Saturday nights somewhere. It is unacceptable, but it does happen. What should happen in that circumstance?

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that. It may well be such an example. I must admit I resisted the urge to attend The Spectator awards last week. I am told the Health Secretary did make what many considered a very funny speech. However, it is clear that some deem it uncomradely. Who knows? Had this legislation already been enacted the Labour party itself might have found itself on that sticky wicket. On that note, I ask the Minister to reflect on the provisions in this Bill in that regard and check that the Government really do have this right. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Anna McMorrin.)

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I understand the point the hon. Gentleman is making. However, in the examples he gave he has shown exactly why there is a need to ask the Government to doubly rethink the way in which the original Bill is drafted to ensure that some of those areas are covered off so that the reasonability test is clearer and people do not find themselves on that proverbial sticky wicket for innocent reasons. We tabled the amendment—we fully accept it does not cover everything and every eventuality—because it is our job as the Opposition to highlight cases which in turn highlight areas where the Bill may be deficient and where it needs a little surgery to ensure that it achieves what the Government are trying to achieve, rather than creating many loopholes and perverse outcomes. I have probably spoken for long enough on this group of amendments.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I hope that the hon. Gentleman is right, but that is not how the Bill is worded. The Bill allows the reasonability test to be applied over the top of the Equality Act definition he has brought to the attention of the Committee. I gently ask him to reflect on that point and just check, because I do not think he would want this unintended consequence to be followed through into legislation. It would undermine the very serious things we spoke about earlier and, dare I say, trivialise them.

• 10 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  He is a fine television superstar these days. All of us will have published these statements on our websites, because that is straightforwardly set out in statute—straightforwardly set out in law. I am at a loss to understand why it would be a burden for a business of any size to do that, but I am mindful that we do not want to overburden businesses. I accept the explanation given by the hon. Member for Chippenham. Turning to new clause 17, I would have loved to have six weeks of paternity leave when my three children were born. When my first child was born, I was still self-employed. It was before my election to this place, so the time I took off in 2016 was entirely unpaid because I just had to forgo client work, but it was important to do that. I am slightly concerned that, as desirable as six weeks would be, it is too great a burden for businesses automatically to have to shoulder. Some good and generous employers may well find a way of offering it in one way or another, paid or otherwise. However, to go beyond the current entitlement of two weeks, which can be split up, as the Minister mentioned, seems to be too big an ask for some businesses, desirable though it may be for fathers to be able be there with their new child in the most precious early days of life to support the mother and the child. I gently invite Liberal Democrat Members to reflect on whether six weeks is realistic for every business.