Marie Tidball MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for her powerful statement. That is why we must urgently spell this issue out in primary legislation, alongside having a more tightly drawn definition of domestic abuse towards children in section 3 of the 2021 Act. Over four years have passed since the UK Government launched a review of the presumption, as recommended by the harm report. The Conservative Government made no response, but now there is an opportunity for our new Government to take action, look at what other countries are doing and embed child-centred approaches in the family courts. Australia has repealed a similar piece of legislation, and the US is rolling out a law to incentivise states to ensure that their child custody laws properly protect children. We must show leadership and be a beacon of light for children’s rights around the world by changing the law so that family courts prioritise children’s welfare and safety over the privilege of parental contact rights. Our Government must do what the previous Conservative Government failed to do, by taking a child-centred approach and changing the law on presumption of contact. No more towns such as mine should be left to grieve. No more parents should have to make the ultimate sacrifice of the life sentence of losing a child at the hands of an abusive spouse or partner. No more parents should ever have to send their child on a court-ordered visit and hold them tightly in their arms hours later as they die. This Government must now act to save lives for generations to come by ending contact at any cost. Let us not just imagine a world where the voices of children are put at the heart of our family court system, where children such as Jack and Paul are listened to, not ignored, where children have a childhood free of fear and oppression, and where children such as Jack and Paul live the lives they deserved to live. Minister, I urge you to do all you can to make that world a reality.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree. Our court system should be one where justice is achieved for vulnerable victims of abuse, rather than an additional and secondary means of victimising them.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. I will return to this later, but the harm report makes quite clear the re-traumatisation of both children and parental victims of domestic abuse that comes with repeated attempts at contact and the presumption that is currently in place. The consequence of that is a generation of lost voices like Jack and Paul Sykes and Sara Sharif, but there is no definitive way of knowing how many parents whose partner or spouse is a known domestic abuser have been persuaded into some form of shared care because of the presumption. The harm report, published in 2020 by the Ministry of Justice’s expert panel on harm, found that presumption of contact must be reviewed urgently, because the principle “put a misplaced emphasis on the child’s right to a relationship with both parents…above the child’s welfare and right to be safe from abuse and its effects”.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I absolutely do agree and will return to my proposals for reform later.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I agree. As someone who has worked in criminology and criminal justice for over a decade, I think the need for us to move beyond siloed working can be no more important than it is in these sorts of cases. Just yesterday, we learned that the man Kiena Dawes named as her killer when she committed suicide wants to launch a custody battle over their daughter, saying that “I’m coming to get you baby girl”. This man has been jailed for six and a half years for assault of and controlling behaviour towards Kiena. Our current law would allow this person to have unsupervised contact with their child.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. There must be urgent reform of the presumption of parental involvement in child arrangements, known in law as presumption of contact, on the basis of evidence and principle, and to ensure that children’s voices are at the heart of our family courts. The de facto common law principle of presumption of contact was legislated for in the Children and Families Act 2014, which inserted sections 1(2A) and (2B) into the Children Act 1989. That legal principle means that parents should always be given contact with their children, even in circumstances where there is a known domestic abuser.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree. To illustrate why, I want hon. Members to imagine a school night with a child being repeatedly asked by his father if he had completed his homework. The child replied in an exasperated tone, “Yes.” His dad stepped towards him with his fists ready to punch him. The boy’s mum stepped into the space between the fist and her son, and pushed him out of its way. The full force of that fist hit her so hard that she was spun round and fell down the stairs, bruising her arms, legs and back. From the top of the stairs, the child’s father shouted to his son, “Look what you made me do.” Imagine the same boy being driven to tears after his father made his brother eat peas until he was sick. The boy’s mother left her husband, taking the children with her. Imagine a scene, six months later, where the father barricaded a Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service officer in her office for 15 minutes. Social services were aware that that same father had made statements that he was capable of killing. Then imagine that, despite knowing all that, a family court permitted the father of those two boys five hours’ unsupervised contact per week. Claire Throssell, my constituent, does not need to imagine that nightmare. She and her two sons, Jack and Paul Sykes, lived it.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I do agree. I will discuss further proposals later in my speech. Jack and Paul would never have been in the reach of a known domestic abuser, were it not for the presumption of contact. Although schools have a statutory responsibility to report suspected incidents of domestic abuse, in contrast the presumption does not put the children of known domestic abusers first. Ten years on, this place must hear Jack’s and Paul’s voices reverberate loud and clear, because tragically their voices are not alone. Women’s Aid found evidence of 48 child deaths at the hands of a known domestic abuser that took place following a permitted contact visit between 1994 and 2015. The Domestic Abuse Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden) mentioned, recognises that children are victims of domestic abuse in their own right. Child contact is a known risk indicator for domestic homicide, yet we still do not know the true scale of the problem. The vast majority of court reports are not published, with only 10% of rulings coming to light. Only last month, the sentencing of Sara Sharif’s known domestically abusive father and stepmother for her murder showed all of us that action is urgently needed to change the law. Her life must not be forgotten.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I agree, and nowhere is that clearer than in the cases of my constituent’s sons, Jack and Paul. Not only was their father known to be abusive, but the boys did not want to see him—all while he was demanding 50:50 contact in the family courts. Claire promised her sons that she would not rest until the law was changed to prevent more children from dying like they did. When I was elected last year, I promised to help her. Labour’s important mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade will require a national effort, and require us to use every tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence. Last week’s Second Reading of the landmark Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill marked a transformative change to child protection in education, and now we need to hold family courts to the same standard by repealing section 1(2A) of the Children Act 1989.

• 22 Jan 2025 · Child Arrangements: Presumption of Parental Involvement · Hansard source

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  I agree. We have said that we will take a mission-centred approach in Government, particularly to halve violence against women and girls, and I will return to that point. As a reference for Hansard , I mention that Claire Throssell MBE is with us in this Chamber today.

• 20 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T2. Constituents of mine in High Green were told that a social housing repair project for their home would take 12 weeks. The project has now been ongoing for 64 weeks, with contractors leaving the works in a disgraceful condition. I welcome the Government’s boost to the building of more social housing and the extra £350,000 of homelessness funding announced for Sheffield this week. How does the Minister plan to empower local authorities to ensure that contractors deliver social house building and repairs to a high standard and on time?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I will make progress. The Bill will implement child-centred government, emphatically embedding it in education and children’s social care, and there must be parallel work to put children first in the family courts. That important piece of the jigsaw puzzle will complement the Bill. I commend the Bill to this House. It takes a landmark approach to safeguarding children at risk, and I am proud to support it.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I first met my constituent Claire Throssell at a remembrance service at my old secondary school in Penistone. Every year, the headteacher marks the deaths of Claire’s sons, former pupils Jack and Paul Sykes, who died at the hands of their father, known to be domestically abusive, in a house fire that he started while on a permitted contact visit. The names of most of the children who have been murdered at the hands of their domestically abusive parents in the decades since Claire’s boys were killed remain unspoken, but we must not forget them. Women’s Aid research found that between 2005 and 2015, 19 children, including Jack and Paul, had been killed as a result of unsafe contact with abusive parents. Those children have to remain nameless to avoid causing further distress to their families. Many more deaths will have followed, uncounted and unrecalled. The number of children at risk may be on an even higher scale; in the year to March 2024, in England and Wales, 215,640 “child in need” social care case assessments identified that either a child or parent was experiencing domestic abuse. One name is sadly known to us only too well: Sara Sharif. Her tragic death makes the need for action on this issue all the more poignant, the sentencing of her murderers having taken place just before Christmas. The Bill will help protect children like Sara. It will create a safer, higher-quality education system for every child, and will introduce a register of children who are not in school, to help ensure that no child falls through the gaps when home-educated. Our Government are taking strong action in response to Sara’s death through the Bill’s establishment of a single unique identifier for children, and the introduction of new duties that will improve information sharing across and within agencies, bringing together multi-agency child protection teams from education, social work and the police. I commend the Secretary of State for Education for bringing forward a Bill so transformative of child protection, and so powerful in strengthening regulations on the use of agency workers in children’s social care. My constituent Claire Throssell promised her two boys that no other children would die in the same tragic circumstances. I am proud that our mission-led Government have a mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade, and recognise the need to use every Government tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence. Achieving this mission and fulfilling the promise that Claire made to her children will require us to connect the incredible strategic work in the Bill with the urgent need to change the law to remove the family courts’ presumption in favour of contact. This principle, added via the Children and Families Act 2014 to the Children Act 1989, allows known abusers to have contact with their children, putting their lives at risk.

• 19 Dec 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I take this opportunity to wish all colleagues in the Chamber and beyond it a very merry Christmas. Ten years ago, my constituent Claire Throssell promised her sons, who had died at the hands of their domestically abusive father, that no other children would die in the same tragic circumstances. This week has seen the sentencing of Sara Sharif’s father and stepmother, who murdered her. Too many children have died at the hands of known domestically abusive parents who have been granted unsupervised contact in the family courts. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on changing the law on presumptive contact in order to prevent further child deaths at the hands of known domestically abusive parents?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I draw your attention to my declaration of interests, Mr Mundell. I am a member of the Community union, Unison and GMB. I found it difficult to hear, in anything the shadow Minister just said, any rationale for getting rid of this body all those years ago. I missed three years of school as a child because of the surgeries I needed. Incredible classroom teaching assistants helped me to build my confidence and learn to mix with other children again when I returned—making education and learning an escape, a way to express myself, to overcome people’s assumptions about my disability and to feel free. I stood in my constituency because I wanted to use my skills and experiences to give back to the communities that gave me so much. To know that, because of this Bill and the clause before us now, teaching assistants and other school support staff like the ones who made school a less daunting place for me will once again have a collective bargaining system for pay and conditions—which will ensure that those staff are finally valued and recognised for their vital work—is a very great privilege indeed. The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body in England, previously scrapped by the coalition Government for reasons that still remain unclear, will be key to providing professional recognition for a group of staff who have been overlooked for far too long. As Unison, of which I am proudly a member, has highlighted, the proposals in this clause “demonstrate that the Employment Rights Bill isn’t just tackling worker’s rights—it holds the key to tackling long standing public policy failures that have been ignored because they affect workers and service users whose voices are too often neglected by decision makers. Tackling this neglect and allowing trade unions to engage in constructive social partnership and better represent their members is long overdue”. This clause therefore empowers that group of working people, who have been so long overlooked by the Government, to have a better life at work. It will help trade unions to raise standards and pay across the labour market.

• 17 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I have fought to break down barriers to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination for women and disabled people at every stage of my personal, professional and political life. I know that our Labour Government’s work on our missions for 10 years of national renewal has the purpose of changing lives across our country. This clause will be an important part of achieving that change for women in the workplace, ensuring that no matter what their background or where they live, women can thrive in the workplace. I am standing here because of the difference that world-class public services made to my life chances. This Bill creates a culture for world-class employers to break down barriers for women employees. The requirement to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps that employers will need to take in relation to gender equality will be a significant move forward to improve equality, alongside collecting and publishing figures on the gender pay gap. In an evidence session for the Bill Committee, Jemima Olchawski from the Fawcett Society said: “We have a gender pay gap of just under 14%. On average, women take home just over £630 a month less than men. It also has a detrimental impact on our economy, because it is a marker of the ways in which women are not fully participating or contributing to the economy at their full potential. Estimates indicate that that means we are missing out on tens of billions of pounds of GDP. We strongly support the measures as an important step towards redressing that balance. In particular, we are pleased to see the inclusion of equalities action plans as an important way to get employers to drive forward progress on the gender pay gap.” –– [ Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 81, Q76.] This is helpful. The clause makes an important contribution to advancing gender equality by including the requirement to develop and publish equality action plans, which address the gender pay gap and support employees going through the menopause. I am pleased to be a member of the Committee seeing this go through today.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Steel Industry: South Yorkshire · Hansard source

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  1. What steps he is taking to support the steel industry in South Yorkshire.

• 12 Dec 2024 · Steel Industry: South Yorkshire · Hansard source

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  Stocksbridge Speciality Steels in my constituency is a world-leading plant, with specialist capability to produce cleaner and stronger high-grade steel for our aerospace industry. The plant supports hundreds of jobs and has an exceptional on-site skills training centre, with links to local universities. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the future strategic significance of Stocksbridge Speciality Steels and its fundamental importance to our national steel industry?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield and for Gloucester for their ably made speeches outlining the very good and pragmatic reasons for the measure. They made points about ensuring that there is a good preliminary process to prevent litigation and laid out all the evidence with regard to the Law Commission. The shadow Minister asked the Minister about principle, which my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield and for Gloucester also touched on. It is clear that, after 14 years of Conservative Members not considering principle when it comes to access to justice, we are making these changes particularly for disabled employees and women who often have very complex lives. Disability is not static—it is dynamic, and health conditions fluctuate—so three months is a very short time period for people to put a case together if they have complex and fluctuating health conditions. It is right that the measure brings that time period up to the level of other equalities cases. It is also fair to say that many working people have a huge amount to juggle in their day-to-day lives. For me, it is a point of great principle that this Government want to make it easier for them to access their rights and to access justice by giving them more time, being cognisant, as we are, of the many challenges that they might face just to keep a roof over their heads and to keep their family in a stable and supported situation. The need to strengthen access to justice in such circumstances is important. We heard a great deal in the evidence presented to us about the many barriers for various groups and about the effect of the measure on women. It will give women an opportunity to have a longer period of time at the most challenging and complex moments of their life, such as during pregnancy and post birth, which seems to be eminently sensible and principled.

• 3 Dec 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his speech so far. We heard a lot from the Opposition about the cumulative impact on business, and I wonder whether he might say something about the cumulative benefit for workers. We know that 2 million zero-hours workers may benefit from the changes in the Bill, and we also heard evidence last week from a number of small businesses, or those who work with them, that they do not want a two-tier system. They said there are benefits in these provisions that will lead to not only better quality rights for those currently on zero-hours contracts but happier businesses with a more productive workforce.

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Today’s decision has been one of the hardest that I have had to make. In my career in disability law and policy, I chose not to focus on debates about whether disabled people should be born or whether we should die. Instead, I focused on enabling disabled people to live better, more fulfilling lives. Today, I find myself voting in a way that I thought I never would. I will vote in favour of moving the Bill to the next stage of the legislative process. That has been a difficult journey for me. I have arrived here by looking at the evidence, reflecting on my own lived experience and listening to the many, many constituents who have written to me in support of the Bill, sharing their compelling and tragic stories of death—death which did not come with dignity or respect. In reflecting on my own life, one moment from my childhood stood out. When I was six years old, I had major surgery on my hips. I was in body plaster from my chest to my ankles, and in so much pain and requiring so much morphine that my skin began to itch. I remember vividly laying in a hospital bed in Sheffield Children’s hospital and saying to my parents, “I want to die. Please let me die.” I needed to escape from the body I was inhabiting. That moment has come back to me all these years later. That moment made it clear to me that if the Bill was about intolerable suffering, I would not vote for it. I have subsequently had a good life, a fulfilling life, a life where I have worked towards ensuring disabled people are valued by our society. But that moment also gave me a glimpse of how I would want to live my death: just as I have lived my life, empowered by choices available to me; living that death with dignity and respect, and having the comfort of knowing that I might have control over that very difficult time. For so often, control is taken away from disabled people in all sorts of circumstances. In order to ensure that there is compassionate choice at the end of life, it is right that the Bill is tightly drawn around the final stage of terminal illness for adults and includes the strongest safeguards. The choice of assisted dying as one option for adults when facing six months’ terminal illness must be set alongside the choice of receiving the best possible palliative and end of life care, or it is no choice at all. Having analysed the Bill closely, therefore, there are changes I would want to see in Committee to strengthen those options and ensure the way that choice is presented by medical practitioners is always in the round. People deserve dignity in death, and for those who do not choose to end their lives in this way, they and their loved ones should feel reassured and safe in the knowledge they will receive the very best of care. I would also want to ensure that the final stages of the Bill properly define “dishonesty”, “coercion” and “pressure”. I think it is necessary to embed mandatory language in the Bill around the need for a code of practice on palliative care, as well as improving the regulations on training for medical practitioners. I trust my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) to champion those amendments and to continue to diligently listen to Members, as she has throughout this process. However people vote today in this House—a decision of conscience—it is incumbent on all of us to commit to improve palliative, end of life and adult social care. It must be the start of the work that we do in this place to ensure the very highest standards in these areas. That will be a very great legacy indeed: giving people the dignity they need in the moment of death. For many of us across the Chamber, considering these issues has been extremely hard and upsetting. We have had to go to the very depths of our selves to understand what choice we will make today. While we may enter different voting Lobbies, we leave this Chamber shoulder to shoulder. I know we will all work in our own ways to make systemic change to improve the lives of our constituents, and people up and down this country.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It may be that I do not ask a question, but for clarity, Professor Alan Bogg was my professor for labour law many years ago, and we were at one point work colleagues.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Seven children in every classroom of 30 in my constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge are in poverty. Can you set out more broadly the economic benefits of the Bill, many of which were set out in the TUC’s report this week? In particular, while you have mentioned some just now, can you focus on the economic benefits for working people and working families? Justin Madders: Obviously, the TUC report is not an official Government document, but it has some interesting figures. It reckons that we could gain up to £974 million from reducing the number of days that people take off due to stress and anxiety because of poor working conditions; another £930 million a year from improved staff wellbeing; £168 million a year from improved minimum wage compliance; £510 million a year from reduced industrial action; £8 billion a year, potentially, from improved industrial relations; and up to £2.6 billion a year from increased labour market participation—there are a number of reasons why that might be the case. We do not know how much of those figures will be delivered, because an awful lot of variables are in there, but it is an impressive attempt to quantify, in a way that we cannot, given the rules of Government the positive impacts of the Bill on the wider economy.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You have mentioned where the Bill places the UK internationally in terms of strike law. Where do you think the Bill broadly places the UK compared with other developed nations, when it comes to the level of employment rights? Professor Deakin: If we take the whole of individual employment law, for example, the Bill will bring us closer to the OECD average, but there will still be various respects in which we would not be as protective of individual rights as other countries, especially when they relate to remedies for unfair dismissal. Enforcement could be made much more effective, but there is no doubt that the Bill brings us closer to the OECD norm—and not just there: many countries in east Asia and other parts of the world will have labour law systems that are at least as protective as ours. So it is a corrective. On the other hand, I emphasise that UK employment law has never been as deregulatory as US law has, for example. We are not in a situation, as US unions and US workers are, of starting from scratch. We also have a history of labour law that we can build on. That makes it easier to think of this as the first step in a rolling programme that will effectively restore us to where we were before the 1980s. In the 1970s, more than 80% of workers in this country were covered by a collective agreement. Union membership was around 55% or even 60%, but coverage was over 80%. We had a very progressive employment protection law at that point. Going back further, we were the first country not just to industrialise, but to have modern factory legislation. We now know that the implementation of the Factory Acts led to not just protection and things like the weekend, but improved productivity. This history is important for us. Professor Bogg: This Bill seems as radical as it does only because the baseline is so low, and it is very important to keep that in view. Let us assume that this Bill is not enacted—if you look at the OECD countries, we are the fifth least regulated on dismissal protection out of 38 countries, and we are the third least regulated on hiring on temporary contracts. That is where we are in OECD terms, so the measures on dismissal protections and guaranteed hours will push the UK back into an intermediate position in the OECD. I do not think the Bill marks any kind of revolution just yet; it just pushes the UK back into the mainstream of other civilised OECD countries with employment regulation that works effectively. Professor Simms: To return to enforcement, the challenges of both individual and collective enforcement in the UK at the moment really do add extra difficulty. Not only do the rights not exist in general—there are relatively few rights in general—but they are very difficult to enforce.

• 28 Nov 2024 · Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have two questions. First, to pick up on your point about the economic inactivity of women with caring responsibilities, can you reflect on the value of the maternity leave and paternity leave protections in the Bill for women and their job retention and economic activity? As part of that, what other opportunities are there in relation to paternity and parental leave to strengthen women’s economic activity? Secondly, we heard from an earlier witness that they were not certain whether the Bill would lead to a decrease in jobs among people with protected characteristics. What is your perspective on the role of the Bill in positively affecting those who have protected characteristics, particularly women and disabled women? Dr Stephenson: On your first point, as I said earlier, women’s unpaid work is at the heart of their economic inequality. One thing we need to do is to have a better balance of those unpaid caring responsibilities between women and men. The paternity and parental leave changes in the Bill are a step—a small step. We need to go much further, because we still have one of the biggest gaps in Europe between the entitlement for fathers and second parents and the entitlement for mothers. We also need men to have periods of leave in their own right that they are not taking while the mother is on leave. The thing about paternity leave is that it is generally taken immediately after the birth and it is about providing support to a new mother just after she has given birth. It is a very difficult time: the first time you do not know what you are doing, and the second time you normally have a toddler to look after as well as a baby, so you need more than one pair of hands. If we are going to change patterns of caring, there needs to be provision that would encourage and support men to have leave after their partners have gone back to work, where they are the sole carer, because it is not until you are the sole carer in charge of a baby that you actually understand what it is really like. If you are one of two parents at all times, there is always somebody else to do it. That needs a different type of leave. We have called for a period of maternity leave, which is about recovering from childbirth, establishing breastfeeding and so on; for a period of paternity/partner leave, which is about supporting a new mother; and then for both parents to have a period of what we would call parental leave, which is about caring for a child. Both of those need to be paid, and they need to be individualised. We think that would make a difference. That is something that we hope would come out of longer-term reviews of maternity, paternity and parental leave. In terms of whether the Bill would lead to a decrease in jobs for people with protected characteristics, as I said earlier, that warning is often heard when you improve employment rights—that actually, it will lead to job losses. That has not proved to be the case thus far, and I do not think the changes in the Bill are so significant that they would lead to job losses. For example, the changes to paternity leave are relatively minimal—it is about making it a day one right, rather than making people wait. It will really help those whom it benefits, but it would be unusual for an employer to go, “Actually, men now have a day one right to paternity leave, therefore I’m not going to employ them.” Of course, men have a protected characteristic of sex, just as women do. In many areas, improving the situation of workers on zero-hours contracts, who are more likely to be from ethnic minority backgrounds, is more likely to improve their overall standard of living. It will help to lift them and their families out of poverty, so it is more likely to be beneficial.