Laurence Turner MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 6 Jul 2026 · Employment and Training · Hansard source

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  At the outset, I draw attention to my membership of GMB and Unite, both of which organise workers in the engineering construction sector. It is a pleasure to speak in this SI debate, which may be auspicious as, depending on the Government’s future reform of the sector, we may be moving towards longer-term settlements for levy changes on account of the consultation that closed two weeks ago. Industrial training boards once covered a much wider share of the economy, before many of them were sadly scrapped in the early 1980s. It is difficult to imagine a role in the modern economy for the Wool, Jute and Flax Industry Training Board, but it is worth reflecting that, in the past, training boards oversaw some important skills transitions—particularly the Gas Industry Training Board’s role in the highly successful conversion from town gas to natural gas. As we think about the future of home heating, perhaps we would be in a stronger position today if that body still existed. Thankfully, both the CITB and the ECITB have survived, and are now modern, 21st-century institutions. Engineering construction refers to that aspect of the construction industry that crosses beyond design into implementation, covering everything from bridges to tunnels, and from energy from waste-plants to High Speed 2 and new nuclear sites. In other words, if we are to build the infrastructure that the UK needs, we need that steady pipeline of skills. Industry training boards are not the whole of the answer, but they are an important part of it. Construction productivity is lower in the UK than in some comparable countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands. The problems in our country are deep seated: 38% of engineering construction workers are aged 50 or over, rising to 40% in the oil and gas sector. Although some progress has been made, there are still critical shortages for skills such as plating and welding. That is an issue that the Transport Committee, of which the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) is a member, looked at. We repeatedly heard that shortages in those key skills are holding back the UK’s ability to deliver major products, as well as raising costs for taxpayers. This statutory instrument is necessary to continue the provision of essential skills training. It carries forward an effective 1.2% levy on on-site net labour costs and 0.33% on off-site costs—rates unchanged since 2023. There is clearly a good level of satisfaction in the quality of individual courses, because the share of employers who voted in favour of the levy went up slightly in this round. This statutory instrument should raise around £138 million over the next three years. To give an idea of the scale of the training that it delivers, in 2024, the ECITB supported almost 2,200 new entrant starts, and 64,000 people were trained on ECITB courses and other products. We have heard a lot, rightly, about employment in the North sea oil and gas sector. Many workers in that sector feel a great sense of frustration because they know that their skills are transferable, but there has not always been sufficient recognition across related sectors of the transferability of those skills. Indeed, attempts to create a skills passport under the previous Government ran into some frustrations and ran over in terms of timing. I think it is important to quote the three North sea trade unions—GMB, Unite and RMT—in respect of the ECITB’s connected competence programme: “The Trade Unions have been calling for a standardised, fair and transparent approach to competence and skills assessment for several years and we welcome Connected Competence. We sincerely hope this initiative is adopted and utilised by all contractors and industry bodies… This would truly enable workers to transition around the energy sector and help maintain and develop a…skills base. This is good news for both workers and the wider UK economy.” Clearly the value of the ECITB does extend beyond the provision of training courses, as important as that is. We have heard about the Government’s reform programme, which, in fairness, was prompted by the independent review commissioned under the previous Government. At the heart of those proposals is the proposed merger of the CITB and the ECITB, with the justification being more effective long-term planning and strategic decision making on which courses should receive investment. I am sure that the whole House will agree that it is important that we realise those aims. At the same time, however, while the construction industry and engineering construction are allied trades, they do have important differences. I think it would be helpful if we could hear about how the distinctive nature of engineering construction skills requirements would be protected should the merger go ahead. The consultation, as we have heard, has closed only recently, but it would be appreciated if the Minister was able to give any information on when he anticipates that the Government will respond in full. I wonder whether in the short time left I might make a point about workforce representation on the ECITB—I have previously raised a related point about the CITB. When these boards were established in the 1960s, there was equal 50:50 representation on the boards of the industry training schemes for trade union representatives, representing the workers, and employer representation. Over the years—it was not an immediate process—the trade union representatives were gradually squeezed off both boards to the point where there is now no trade union representation on the boards of either the CITB or the ECITB. The trade unions are represented on a subsidiary advisory board, but this is of lesser status, and it means that they are not in the room when the core decisions are made. As we approach the point of potentially wholesale ITB reform, I wonder whether we could take this opportunity to right what was, I think, a mistake, which was removing that direct worker voice from the boards of these organisations, whether through the continued stand-alone, separate existence of the ECITB or CITB or otherwise. I wonder whether the Minister would provide some information on that proposal either in writing or when he sums up.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Public Office Disqualification: Terrorism Offences · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on the thoughtful and able way in which he introduced this important debate, and I thank the 583 Birmingham Northfield constituents who took the time to sign the petition. This petition raises important questions about democratic participation and the potential abuse of our political systems, and it is right that we are debating it. I understand and share the sentiment behind the petition. Most people would hold the view that terrorists should not hold elected office, and certainly not positions of executive authority. There is also a valid question to be asked about the effective five-year prohibition against standing for election that applies in practice for domestic convictions of terrorism but not for overseas convictions. Those overseas convictions are not always straightforward, as has already been acknowledged, and I am sure that we will come back to that point during the debate. It has been said that there are important matters of detail to work through. One of those is that the petition calls for people who hold such a conviction to be barred from standing for public office, but it would not, as drafted, debar appointments to the House of Lords or to senior civil service positions. I do not want to spend long on this point, because I suspect that it is a drafting issue, but hon. Members will recall when a former member of the Revolutionary Communist party—an organisation that acted as an apologist for the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign—was appointed to the other place a few years ago and has never disavowed those views. That is a particularly important point for colleagues in Warrington, and for all those affected by the Brimingham pub bombings. We must also be mindful of the precedent set by the peace process in Northern Ireland. One of the aims of the Good Friday agreement was to permit people to move from physical force republicanism and physical force loyalism to democratic participation. That peace was built on the primacy of the ballot box, and I am sure that it is not the desire or the intention of the petition’s drafters to undo any part of that settlement.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Public Office Disqualification: Terrorism Offences · Hansard source

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  I do not wish to dwell too much on this point, because we will all come back to it later, but in the interests of accuracy I think it is also important to record that 90% of people in the Sparkhill ward did not vote for that candidate.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Public Office Disqualification: Terrorism Offences · Hansard source

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  I think I have made it clear in my remarks about other representatives that I hold no truck at all with apologism for or the glorification of terrorism. There is one more problem. The petition seeks to disbar from public office all those who hold overseas terrorism convictions, but such a disqualification could, if drafted without the greatest of care and precision, effectively allow foreign Governments to determine who can stand for election in the United Kingdom. Authoritarian regimes routinely misuse terrorism laws against political opponents and democracy activists. One example is Russia. UN special rapporteurs have said that the Russian Government deploy a “repressive toolbox targeting civil society…A key part of the government strategy has been to abuse anti-extremism and counter-terrorism provisions by designating civil society organisations as ‘extremist’ or ‘terrorist’, and bringing criminal charges, including extremism and terrorism-related, against their members or anyone associated with them, including victims of human rights violations.” We need only to think about parliamentary colleagues who have been sanctioned by regimes overseas because of comments they have made in this place. Critics of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine are now routinely labelled as terrorists or terrorist sympathisers. We cannot create the prospect of British citizens being tried in absentia by states they may never have stepped foot in and then effectively being barred from running for council or parliamentary positions. However well-intentioned the petition’s aim, we cannot hand Vladimir Putin a veto over our political representation or any other aspect of British public life. It is helpful to return to the case that led to the petition—that of an independent candidate in Birmingham, the city of which I am proud to represent a part. While I do not seek to tar them all with the same brush, Birmingham had no shortage this year of independent candidates who preached messages of division and seemed to enjoy bringing the circus of national and international media attention down on parts of the city. We even had candidates who took their direction from or co-ordinated with George Galloway, a man who used to make a pulpit out of the Russian and Iranian state broadcasters and who now apparently lives in Russia. In Sparkhill, one of the independent candidates was a man called Shahid Butt. Mr Butt holds a Yemeni terrorism conviction dating back to 1998-99. We can also look to more recent events to see why Mr Butt is utterly unfit to be a community representative or elected politician. Before the planned Aston Villa match against Maccabi Tel Aviv, he said this on social media—I have seen the original, and it is not taken out of context: “if someone comes into your face, you knock his teeth out. That’s my message”. It is worth pointing out that while it is right that we debate the petition’s important proposals, the people of Sparkhill rejected Mr Butt’s candidature. He lost decisively and two Labour councillors were returned. In that case, we needed good organisation and trust in the people of this country. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hall Green and Moseley (Tahir Ali) would forgive some comments about part of his constituency. Much has been said in the national press about Sparkhill, egged on by inflammatory comments made two years ago by a former Member of this place who should have known better. My mum was born on Evelyn Road in Sparkhill, and I feel a certain defensiveness when that area or any other part of Birmingham is used as a national political football. Many of us are fed up, and I am fed up of the national and social media tourists who think they can use Birmingham as a passing canvas to propagate stereotypes for cheap clicks, and who give the oxygen of publicity to unrepresentative ideologues and self-obsessed narcissists who crave attention. I am very glad that this year, in Sparkhill, their politics was defeated.

• 24 Jun 2026 · Nottingham Maternity and Neonatal Services · Hansard source

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  I was born in Nottingham City hospital, and while the Ockenden report was necessarily bounded by the last 13 years, I think it is important to record that women and children were avoidably harmed and avoidably died in those settings many years before, and the pain is not diminished by the passing of time. As I have listened to these exchanges, I have had at the forefront of my mind those friends and people I grew up with who, many years later, found themselves close to death in circumstances that could have been avoided. As my right hon. Friend said in his compassionate and thoughtful statement, the description of what happened in Nottingham will be all too familiar to families well beyond that city. He will know that Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals NHS trust is one of the trusts that are subject to particular attention as part of the national investigation. What assurance can he give people in cities such as Birmingham that this time, after these reports and their recommendations, things will change and NHS senior management will be held to account?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being able to speak so early in this debate. I wish to focus on Government amendment 92, amendment 166 on devolution, which stands in my name, and the Transport Committee amendments on disability access. At the outset, I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for her leadership on this issue. Public ownership as a means to the end of improving passenger services has always implicitly been at the heart of this Bill, and Government amendment 92 makes that intent explicit. I warmly welcome its presence on the amendment paper. I hope the House will forgive a few words on the origins of this amendment. As the Minister said, a drafting issue was identified. In essence, although the requirement for public ownership was contained in other legislation, it was contingent on the circumstances of transition and on definitions set out in secondary legislation. I am sure that Members across the House will agree that, whatever their views on the merits of particular ownership models, such an important decision as public ownership or privatisation of the railways should be taken only by the majority consent of the whole House, and that is exactly what the amendment will achieve, safeguarding Great British Railways from the spectre of privatisation through the back door. I thank the Minister, the Minister of State the noble Lord Hendy and the Bill team for their constructive engagement on this issue. I am optimistic about the Bill’s devolution provisions and I hope that under them Birmingham and the west midlands can enjoy some of the improvements that passengers in London and Liverpool already benefit from. Great things were done in the past through the old section 20 agreements under the Transport Act 1968, not least the creation of the cross-city line which runs through my constituency, but such agreements proved impossible under the fragmented post-privatisation railway. I hope section 5 proves to be a worthy successor to Barbara Castle’s section 20. In the west midlands, we have a particular issue. We have a well-established devolved body, the West Midlands Railway Executive, which covers counties beyond the combined authority’s boundaries, such as Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. Clause 5, as it stands, specifies that devolution agreements will cover services in the area of a combined authority. It is important that such devolution agreements reflect the natural railway geographies of those areas, so I hope that reassurance can be given from the Government Front Bench. Several amendments would take forward the Select Committee’s recommendations on disability access. We can judge our transport services on the ability of all passengers to use them and the Bill contains some welcome provisions. Clause 18 states that GBR must “in particular” advance the interests of disabled people. I believe this is the first time any such commitment requirement has been set out in railway legislation. GBR will be subject to the public sector equality duty, but new clause 39 would ensure that when the passengers’ council is constituted disabled people are represented on that body in accordance with the old commitment, “Nothing about us without us”. I hope Ministers will look carefully at that issue. We heard from the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), that they wished to advance a passenger growth target. The hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage will know that that was the subject of some constructive disagreement on the Select Committee. Freight has historically been the poor relation on the railway network, in particular when it comes to pathing agreements. I fear that if a passenger growth target was in the Bill on the same basis and weight as the freight growth target, the advantages for the freight growth target in those decisions would be lost. That is an argument we heard in the Public Bill Committee’s evidence sessions from the Rail Freight Group.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills is, I say respectfully, wrong on this issue. When the Labour party first committed to the reintegration of track and train, under the then shadow Rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), I wrote the announcement—so I do bring some bearing to that question. It has been a privilege over these years to ride on the footplate of this reform journey. The Bill will end the national buck-passing game of “Whose Line is it Anyway?”. Most importantly, it will establish a rail network that is run by and for the nation. I look forward to voting against amendments that would undo that important journey of reform.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  When privatisation happened, the Government of the day fought hard to keep state-owned foreign railways out of the running of the railways, but they were compelled to accept them by European Union legislation. In Committee, the hon. Gentleman described the involvement of state-owned foreign railways as “a gift from abroad”, so may I congratulate him on his bravery in taking a more pro-European approach on this question than John Major?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I hear what the right hon. Lady says, but it is contradicted by the record and our own experience. She says that integration of track and train is an idea that came from that review, but we were advancing that idea for railway reform on the Labour Benches in 2011 and 2012. The Bill is the culmination of all that reform effort over many, many years.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member describes the railway as it could be—and he tempts me to get on to Red Star Parcels, but that might be one for another day—but we must have regard to the railway as it is now and the fact is that the railway the Bill inherits sets up that binary choice all too often. I very much hope we can get more interaction between modes, as he describes. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) said—I hope I do not misrepresent her—that the Bill carries forward, in a different form, an idea created by the previous Conservative Government, but I think that is really too short a horizon.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend will have heard representations for ensuring that, under clause 5, devolution agreements must not be unduly limited, either by the Bill or its implementation. Is he able to offer any reassurances to Transport for West Midlands and other bodies that they will continue to be part of the conversation about how the Bill is implemented?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Belfast: Violent Disorder · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) for her words in this place. My constituents will have been horrified by last night’s scenes in Belfast, just as they were horrified by the attacks on police in Southampton. Both followed horrifying individual incidents that were subsequently exploited for extremist political ends, including online, as the hon. Lady said. The only difference between shouting something through a megaphone and posting it on social media is that the latter might reach millions, so what consequences will be faced by those who meet the threshold for encouraging acts of criminality, including online?

• 9 Jun 2026 · Road Safety: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. It is striking how many of the issues she describes ring true for city constituencies as well. In Birmingham, the number of collisions has fallen over the past decade, but the number of people killed or seriously injured on the roads has remained remarkably stable, at around 500 a year. That indicates that if someone is unlucky enough to be in a smash, the risk is actually greater. Many of our roads were not designed for the wider and heavier vehicles that now use them. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need more adaptations for historic roads, and better and more up-to-date guidance on what interventions are effective in this age of wider and heavier vehicles?

• 3 Jun 2026 · Rail Freight · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Rail freight moves everything from Tesco containers to Cornish clay on its way to Stoke through my constituency. I would like to raise the issue of the rail freight workforce, because drivers’ wages and employment conditions can be very variable in the sector. Will the hon. Lady join me in recognising the value of ASLEF’s “Rail Freight Future” campaign? It backs many of her calls and emphasises the need for proper sanitary, welfare and rest facilities for freight drivers.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  It is a great honour to bring this Adjournment debate before the House to mark the centenary of the general strike of 1926. Twelve years after the general strike, the Welsh miners’ poet, Idris Davies, asked, “Do you remember 1926? That summer of soups and speeches,” which was a reference to the bitter months endured by the miners and their families after the general strike ended. He also referred to the strike itself, which he called “The great dream and the swift disaster”. I am really grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting parliamentary time so that we can answer that question in this place and do so in the affirmative, just as it has been answered at events across the country during the past month. The general strike remains the most extensive confrontation in our national history between organised labour on the one side and employers and Government on the other, and it remains contested history.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  That was an important intervention, and it is absolutely right that we remember the role of the Red Clydesiders and the members of the Independent Labour party, among whom Jimmy Maxton was so prominent not just in responding to the strike but in shaping the course of Labour history. In Birmingham, production continued throughout the strike at such employers as Fort Dunlop and the BSA, despite a strong response from members of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union. At Cadbury, more than 1,000 workers walked out. Although the firm’s Liberal owners were relatively sympathetic to the strikers’ cause, differences in turnout within the workforce were apparent from the beginning. The position at the Austin Motor Company’s works in Longbridge in my constituency was instructive. Herbert Austin had been a Conservative Member of Parliament. He had lost the King’s Norton seat two years before, but the factory remained a bastion of what has been called “cloth-capped Chamberlainism”. The universities provided many middle-class volunteers, who tried their hand at skilled manual work—sometimes with comically inept consequences; sometimes resulting in tragedy—so the factory swelled the ranks of the strike’s opponents. It is likely that more workers did strike than the company claimed, but they were comfortably outnumbered by the 400 men who volunteered as special constables. The politicisation of policing and the justice system during the strike left broken heads and bitter memories in many areas. For every account of friendly relations, which were real enough—in many districts, the police and strikers took pride in the fact that no violence occurred during the strike; the most famous example is probably the football match between strikers and the constabulary at Plymouth where the strikers won 2-1—there were more cases of police overreach and the denial of freedom of speech. The chief legal weapon ranged against the strike was the set of regulations expedited under the Emergency Powers Act 1920, which were debated in Parliament only retrospectively. It is necessary to quote regulation 21 to bring home just how loosely some of those powers were worded. It was made an offence for a person to cause, or attempt to cause, “disaffection among any of His Majesty’s Forces, or among the members of any police force…or among the civilian population”. Further, it was made an offence to possess “any report or statement”, the publication of which would cause such disaffection. The term “disaffection” was never defined, however, and the police had the power to raid premises on the basis that they might contain such documents. Although those powers were affirmed by Parliament mid-way through the strike, they were established by an Order in Council—that is, under the royal prerogative—and were in force before Parliament had a meaningful chance to debate or scrutinise them. It is no wonder that the then Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks, could reflect that the powers practically “made the Government dictators”. Many strikers were brought before magistrates simply for making statements of political opinion. As Miliband—Ralph, that is—put it: “Large number of arrests were made…often on the flimsiest of pretexts, and sentences to short terms of imprisonment were freely handed down by magistrates little disposed to sympathy with those brought before them.” To give one example, in Cumbria, a lead miner and branch secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers posted handbills that encouraged members to refrain from enlisting as special constables. He was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour. The headquarters of the Daily Herald , the only Labour-supporting newspaper of the day, were raided on the basis that seditious literature might be discovered. The Government attempted to prevent the publication of the TUC’s improvised news sheet, the British Worker , by commandeering paper stocks. The nascent BBC preserved its technical independence, following consultation with Ministers, through the expedient of denying its platform to critical voices, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) noted. As John Reith put it in his diary: “They”— that is, Ministers— “want to be able to say that they did not commandeer us, but they know that they can trust us not to be really impartial.” In Birmingham, after the local strike bulletin contained an erroneous—but, it seems, innocently arrived at—report that the Government had suffered a defeat in this House, the union’s entire emergency committee in the city was arrested, and the printing presses held at the Birmingham Labour party’s offices on Corporation Street were seized. One Labour councillor, Percy Shurmer, was dismissed and blacklisted by the Post Office on account of a speech made during the general strike, although he was later elected to this place as the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Sparkbrook. I can do no better than quote Dr David Torrance, who somehow manages to combine writing histories of this decade with his role as a subject specialist on the constitution in the House of Commons Library. In his excellent recent book on the politics of the strike, he put it this way: “If anything, it was the…government rather than the TUC which came close to behaving ‘unconstitutionally’ during the general strike.” The strike’s end and the final rift between the Miners’ Federation and the rest of the general council has been covered elsewhere, and I cannot do it justice in the time available tonight. It is sufficient to say, I hope, that the trade unions, having lacked a theory for winning the strike, also lacked a plan for ending it. At some firms, the unions were able to secure a return to work on the same terms as prevailed before and without victimisation, but other employers took the opportunity to reduce wages and settle scores. Some strikers never worked in their chosen occupation again. The Economic League, a professional blacklisting organisation, found new reach and strength, often in collusion with public bodies. An even harder fate awaited the miners, as they struggled on during those hot and hungry summer months, until they too were eventually forced to concede. In the most hostile districts, principally south Wales and Nottinghamshire, their independent associations were all but broken by the so-called non-political miners’ industrial unions—better known as Spencerism—which owed their position to the coercive enforcement of the colliery companies and the quiet backing of a fund instituted by Baldwin. It left a legacy of division that I think is comparable with the aftermath of the 1984-85 strike, which has still not entirely faded. If the House will indulge me, I have in my pocket a token of the Nottinghamshire Miners’ Association. It was a small token that hung around the neck of miners, and it is stamped “1925”. They were never made again, because it was too dangerous for men to identify themselves as members of a free union. In the months that followed the general strike, the defeated issued pamphlets and the victors issued commemorative truncheons. If the trade unions conducted inadequate soul searching before the strike, they made up for it later, asking themselves many inward questions. By contrast, the Government perhaps asked themselves too few. At the time of the 80th anniversary, we could still meet women and men who stood in their youth on the picket lines. Now, the strike has all but passed out of the outermost limits of living memory. The collieries are gone, the Austin works are gone, and so is much of the world that they sustained. It has sometimes been argued that the general strike had little long-term effect on industrial relations or political life, as great as the consequences for some individuals may have been; that the response of the Government was surprisingly restrained; and that the conflict, in its own peculiar way, represented a very British form of moderation. I think this is a misreading. The severity of the blows dealt to many of the strike’s participants disqualifies the last claim, and the strike fundamentally altered politics and industrial relations, too. It drove the unions closer to the Labour party, and it seems to have hastened Labour support in some working-class areas. For the ageing leaders of the new unionism, the strike marked the end of an era. It might be said that the spirit of 1889, already dampened by the war, was finally extinguished in 1926, giving way to a paternalistic and deferential internal style that dominated union politics and shaped the post-war consensus, until that too broke on the rocks of the prices and incomes policy 50 years later. Let us look at the official response. The Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 imposed restrictions on the political levy, and consequently upon political funding, despite the issue being of no relevance to the strike. That was undone in 1946 and reimposed in 2016, but we repealed those provisions again in December. In that sense, we are still contesting the battle lines drawn up 100 years ago. I think the best way we can remember the general strike’s participants—and I make no apology for placing the emphasis on the nearly 3 million coalminers, transport workers, printers, dockers and more who answered the TUC’s call—is by carrying forward some lessons from their times to our own. It seems to me that the strike raises questions for us that are immediate and vibrant. What should the roles and limits of the police and the courts be in the settlement of industrial disputes? What obligation does the state owe to its dissenters’ liberties in times of civil contingencies? Do our laws provide sufficient protection from the potential abuses by the Executive of prerogative powers? Those questions must be asked and answered another day. Tonight, it is enough to answer the question put at the start of this debate. In Idris Davies’s words: “Ay, ay, we remember 1926… And we shall remember 1926 until our blood is dry.”

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend, and it is only right to say that he, through his role on the GMB executive and as one of the delegates to the national policy forum in opposition, was one of the people who helped draw up the reforms to employment rights that have been passed by this Parliament. The general strike raised profound questions about the proper balance of state power and the rights of dissenters at times of civil contingency, and we should ask them again and with urgency in each generation. It is difficult to capture the essence of the world that created the strike: the depths of poverty in the older mining districts; the extreme social control exercised by employers in the villages put up around the more lucrative and newly exploited seams; and the critical dependence of the nation’s economy upon a coal industry that killed one in 1,000 of its workers each year and seriously wounded one in 10. When working people rallied across occupational boundaries to defend the miners in 1926, they showed extraordinary solidarity, and their unions channelled national power to a degree perhaps unseen before, even if they were unsteady in exercising it and uncertain of its limits.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has displayed his customary ingenuity in mentioning Harlow. I believe that, as a new town, it did not exist at the time of the general strike—but I will come on to the points he made. Ranged against Ramsay MacDonald was, of course, Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative party leader who convinced many of his natural critics of his sincere desire to bring about industrial reconciliation, summed up by his famous declaration in this Chamber a year earlier: “Give peace in our time, O Lord.” —[ Official Report , 6 March 1925; Vol. 181, c. 841.] That apparently heartfelt plea masked a hidden ruthlessness, and an extraordinarily singular capacity for political calculation. In 1926 the Government made, not altogether comfortably, common cause with the coal owners who, taken together, could have been the archetypes of Baldwin’s famous description of “hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.” The British coal owners, unlike their counterparts in America and Europe, mostly represented small concerns that had failed to adapt, amalgamate and modernise, and they would go unmourned when Parliament obviated their role 20 years later. Opponents of organised labour sometimes claimed that union leaders sought national confrontation, or that they wished to supplant the authority of Parliament with that of the TUC general council, but those wild words had foundation only in the imagination of their accusers. As Jonathan Schneer’s brilliant and evocative new history of the strike shows, they spent the weeks before the strike exhaustively, even desperately, trying to prevent the breakdown of talks and searching for some compromise, some new formula, and a negotiated path through. The way in which they convinced themselves that settlement was possible, as they masked their private doubts of the likelihood of victory and tried to balance what were probably irreconcilable internal and external forces—often in the small hours, and often in rooms not far from this Chamber—as the clock ran down, will feel familiar to many who have had the privilege and responsibility of trade union office. But such doubts cannot have been at the forefront of the minds of the great majority of the nearly 3 million men and women who answered the stoppage call on 3 May. They did so at great personal risk to their livelihoods and pensions. In that hot spring, many of them wore their war medals as a conscious rebuke to those who charged them with a lack of patriotism, and even with falling under the influence of a foreign power. It is easy to see why so many strikers thought that victory was imminent and assured. In Birmingham—then, as now, inland transport’s great, interlocking heart—it was said that neither bus, tram nor train moved on that first day. “Every man in every union involved is out,” the city’s trades council enthusiastically, if somewhat improbably, reported to the TUC. That claim, incidentally, committed the sin of omission, because many women joined the strike. At the Joseph Lucas factory they were led by Jessie Eden, an imaginative version of whom was immortalised as a character in “Peaky Blinders”. Some officials actually had to coax members who had not been called out to remain at their work, with mixed success. Most strikers could see neither the depth of their opponents’ preparation nor the lack of their unions’ own. In truth, most union leaders and the members of their executives expected the Government to resume negotiations swiftly, and extend the subsidy until the mining industry could be reorganised along the lines of the Sankey and Samuel commissions. They did not perceive, until it was too late, the Government’s hidden determination to force not settlement but surrender. While the TUC and the newly constituted local committees attempted to resolve profound logistical problems on the fly and to adapt sometimes confused central instructions to local circumstances, the well-resourced and carefully attuned Government machine sprang into action. In Birmingham—the city of a thousand trades, where general unionism and the centralising and organising tendencies that it represented had long struggled to prosper—the response to the strike was uneven from the start.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention and for sending me a copy of the documentary on the Cramlington train wreckers ahead of this debate. It was moving to see those men in their later years. It is telling that the general strike tends to be remembered as local history, and there will be much to say throughout this debate about the general strike in Birmingham and elsewhere.

• 3 Jun 2026 · General Strike Centenary Commemorations · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I truly welcome the cross-party support he has demonstrated for the principle of trade unionism and for workers’ rights. It is only fair to note that right now, additional enhanced employment rights are being considered in Northern Ireland, as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom. In interpreting the general strike, it is important to note that union members were, as they remain, fiercely defensive of the independence of their individual organisations, and those factors militated against planning for the national confrontation that fell upon them. Ranged against the unions were a Government determined not to repeat the humiliation of the so-called red Friday a year before and whose preparations had been meticulous over the nine months that followed.

• 21 May 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In Birmingham Northfield and across the country, there are many reports of inappropriate houses in multiple occupation that prove actually to be poor-quality supported exempt accommodation. At its best, SEA can provide a valuable service, but at its worst it can be a byword for neglect, antisocial behaviour, exploitation and serious organised crime. Please can parliamentary time be found to discuss the need to bring forward proper regulation and end the unacceptable blight on the lives of many of our constituents?

• 21 May 2026 · Employment Rights Act 2025 · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions, and I welcome and acknowledge the Minister’s firm commitment to this area. The Department recently published its response to the trade union right of access consultation. Capping fines at £500,000 equates to a potential liability of 0.02% of operating profits for Amazon’s warehousing operations, but up to 20% of the surplus of a medium- sized trade union. We must get this right. How does disproportionate liability achieve the Government’s aim of creating a workable right in the minority of cases involving very well-resourced and hostile employers?

• 21 May 2026 · Employment Rights Act 2025 · Hansard source

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  6. What progress his Department has made on implementing the Employment Rights Act 2025.

• 20 Apr 2026 · Draft Train Driving Licences and Certificates (Amendment) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister and the Government for bringing forward this secondary legislation. As he knows, there is a need to improve the diversity of the driving workforce and to address the challenges of an ageing workforce, so this is a much-welcomed change and a fantastic example of industry, Government and unions working together to deliver for workers and the travelling public. Will he join me in recognising the role that ASLEF, the train drivers’ union, played by working with industry and with the Labour party in opposition to help secure this important change?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  Peter Mandelson’s conduct has disgraced himself and, by extension, brought shame upon the two Houses of which he was formerly a Member. Does the Prime Minister agree that the famous Armstrong memorandum on the conduct of the civil service was correct and holds true today, as it says that “it is the duty of the civil servant to make available to the Minister all the information and experience at his or her disposal which may have a bearing on the policy decisions to which the Minister is committed or…preparing to make, and to give to the Minister honest and impartial advice, without fear or favour, and whether the advice accords with the Minister’s view or not”?