Sarah Russell MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2025 · Whistleblowers · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) for securing this debate. As is well known, I worked as a solicitor prior to coming to this place, and I advised a significant number of clients on whistleblowing matters. Based on that experience, I think my hon. Friend is quite right that whistleblowers make an immense contribution to society and that their protection is extremely important. I will take this opportunity to highlight two gaps in the law as I saw them in practice. The first relates to who is covered by the existing law. The EU whistleblowing directive would have introduced in this country coverage for self-employed people under the purview of the whistleblowing Act, but of course we have left the EU, so I assume we will not be implementing it. That is a terrible shame, because self-employed people are really important in this picture. I have some casework relevant to this matter that I cannot refer to because it is going through tribunal, but in 2022 Inside Housing magazine found that, post Grenfell, fire risk assessors were coming under pressure from their employers or, if they were self-employed, their commissioners to downgrade their assessment of fire risk in social housing, because it is so expensive to remediate. In other words, fire risk assessors were whistleblowing that they were concerned that, when they had to make a professional judgment about danger, they were being put under pressure to assess things as being less dangerous than they actually were. A lot of fire risk assessors are self-employed and are incredibly vulnerable, particularly if they have a major social housing client, as many do. They have all the vulnerability of being a whistleblower but none of the protection of employment legislation. They also work for other people, so they are not an employee and may not meet the definition of worker, so they are currently completely excluded. Protect has been campaigning for us to introduce protection into the law, and the EU has recognised that we need protection in law for self-employed people who whistleblow. I would very much like to see the law changed. It would be in the best interests of the whole country and everybody’s safety if we did so. The second problem with whistleblowing law is that it is hard to advise a client that it is worth their taking the risk to bring a case because it is very difficult to prove reliably that what caused the breakdown of the relationship with their employer is the fact that they whistleblew. Employers understandably do not want to admit that their employee was mistreated because they whistleblew, to the extent that they systematically delude themselves about why that person was excluded and subsequently dismissed. There are two ways in which that happens. In a financial services context, I have seen a person’s performance being heavily criticised as “non-commercial”. What that actually means is that the person is not giving the advice that people want to hear, which is quite different from not being commercial; it means that the person actually has regard for the law, and that is unpopular. We have seen examples of that. It is well known that the in-house counsel for the Post Office stopped being invited to meetings because she was not providing the advice on the law that people wanted to hear, so the board and the chief exec just started shutting her out. It definitely happens in legal contexts and financial services contexts. People’s performance starts to be criticised very heavily, but to the person advising them there will be a systematic set of evidence that shows that they were being performance managed. The person advising the client has to tell them, “This is high risk. Your employer is going to say that you were underperforming. I am going to say, on your behalf, that you were being penalised for whistleblowing, but some of this will depend on what the tribunal finds on the day.” That is quite a difficult environment in which to advise people to continue to whistleblow. The second line of case law that is really problematic in a whistleblowing context is about the irreconcilable breakdown of relationships. There is a whole line of case law about how badly people fall out with their colleagues when they start whistleblowing. I have seen that in an NHS context—in fact, the line of case law comes from an NHS context. The employer says, “Oh, no—you haven’t been penalised for whistleblowing. You’re an impossible human being. You are impossible to work with. You have fallen out with all your colleagues and you have been dismissed completely legitimately for another substantial reason: you cannot work with anyone, and that is compromising patient safety.” I have watched an NHS trust systematically trying to line up a member of staff—it is clear from reading the papers—to say that they absolutely cannot get on with their colleagues any more. It carried out independent investigations to find that the person cannot get on with their colleagues. The reason why the person cannot get on with their colleagues is that they are repeatedly raising concerns about their clinical practice, which those people do not want to hear, so they all round on the whistleblower. The case law on the irreconcilable breakdown of relationships is hugely problematic for whistleblowers, and we need clarity in the law such that employers cannot hide behind—or frankly, construct—an irreconcilable breakdown of the relationship to hide, and make potentially lawful, a dismissal that in any other circumstance would clearly be a whistleblowing dismissal. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset for securing the debate, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister. There is a significant need for legal change in this area.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Space Industry · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) for securing this important debate. I am delighted to say that my constituency is part of the space economy, as it includes part of the Jodrell Bank site. Jodrell Bank is the home of the Lovell telescope—an incredible, major radio telescope that was first built at the beginning of the cold war, after world war two. It is part of the University of Manchester, so I should say that my husband is employed elsewhere in the university but has nothing to do with Jodrell Bank. The site makes a major contribution to the local economy, and its science contributes to our country’s global scientific stature. Two hundred people are employed on the site, and more than 180,000 people, including a great many children, visit the visitor centre every year. Members present may have fond memories of a Jodrell Bank school trip, and I have taken my children there since they were tiny. The site welcomes about 200 school pupils every day during school term time, providing early inspiration that a science career might be for them. The Jodrell Bank workforce is so important, and local businesses have spoken to me about the importance of our young people having a science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Jodrell Bank is far more than an employer and a visitor attraction, however. It is also a world-leading research facility that, for more than 80 years, has been making internationally important contributions to our understanding of the universe. I am very proud that it is part of my constituency. The work done at Jodrell Bank requires dark, quiet skies, which means that future space technology needs to be deployed in a careful, consultative and sustainable way. The world has changed enormously in the 80 years since Jodrell Bank was built. As the hon. Member for Wyre Forest mentioned, where once there was a space race, there is now SpaceX. In that context, Jodrell Bank is also contributing to national space security and sustainability. Scientists are now using the Lovell telescope and e-MERLIN—the enhanced multi-element, radio-linked interferometer network—to track satellites, monitor space debris and observe near-Earth asteroids using radar techniques. As space becomes increasingly congested and contested, that is a powerful and important capability in which the UK is playing an internationally leading role. It is vital to ensuring space situational awareness and planetary defence, which are key priorities of the UK national space strategy. This is not fantasy stuff: the possibility of satellite collisions risks everything from navigation to online banking, so this is crucial national infrastructure. The increasing congestion of airspace has implications for air traffic control, and the economic value of supporting that work is very real. The world will, of course, continue to change—that is inevitable—and local businesses that are part of the aerospace industry could definitely move more towards space too. I spoke recently to Bird Bellows, an aerospace manufacturer in my constituency that creates bespoke, precision-engineered metallic bellows and flexible joints. It is incredibly specialist and is used to working to the very tight, regulated demands of the aerospace industry. Last week, I visited CLD, which, if the UK Government build infrastructure, is very likely to be the company that manufactures the fencing and other security that protects it. It is fantastic that we have these local businesses, but there is real scope, particularly as part of the north-west’s investment in the net zero industrial cluster, for us to crowd in and work with academia and the manufacturing businesses in my constituency, of which there are many, to develop the space economy in my area. I want to see the high-skilled, high-value jobs and investment that can bring. I am pleased that the Government are protecting record funding for research and development, which will be a relief to anyone who recalls the words of Jodrell Bank’s founder, Sir Bernard Lovell: “civilisations that abandon the quest for knowledge are doomed to disintegration.” Thanks to researchers such as those at Jodrell Bank, we may be safe for a while longer yet.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Dementia Care · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) for securing this debate. Caring for a relative with dementia is one of the most tremendously difficult things that many people will ever have to do. I pay tribute to the many people in my constituency who are caring for a relative with dementia; it is incredibly challenging. Over time I have spoken to many people on the doorstep whose relatives were suffering from dementia, and who were finding things very difficult. When I read a dementia care plan, I saw that 51% of carers providing unpaid care in my constituency are providing more than 100 hours a week. That is the most phenomenal commitment, and I thank ever so much all those who are doing that. I have heard the Minister speak extremely movingly about his family’s experiences and I know that he is very committed to improving dementia care in this country. However, it is shocking that at present only about 67% of people with dementia in my constituency will actually receive a diagnosis. I recently spoke to a resident whose mother has been in a care home with advanced dementia for three years, but is still undiagnosed. As long as we do not have a full set of diagnoses, we cannot properly explore good healthcare outcomes for people, what proportionate spend would look like and how we can improve the system generally. A huge amount of unpaid care is provided by women—although, of course, there are people of all genders providing it and I salute everyone who does so—which is one reason why the gender pay gap doubles when women are in their 40s. Work by the Women’s Budget Group has shown that as well as improving the wellbeing of those providing that care, investment in the care sector could create 2.7 times as many jobs as the same amount of investment in construction. I do not think that we should be providing better care just because there is a good economic basis for doing so—we should be doing it because it is the right thing to do—but it is important to note that there would be huge economic benefits. I welcome the Government’s launch of an independent commission into adult social care as the first step towards creating a national care service. In Cheshire East, there has been inconsistent funding of Admiral nurses, which has led to inconsistent support. I have been impressed by the care provided by local hospices; although traditionally associated with cancer care, they are now often involved in dementia care. I would like us to provide more funding for hospice care as soon as we are able to do so. The services that people receive are hugely important to them, whether they are delivered in the community or in care homes. A dentist in my constituency has told me that due to an issue with insurance, many dentists are no longer covered to provide services in care homes, which is a huge loss as those people deserve dental care. The Alzheimer’s Society has called for dementia training for paid carers, and I agree that we should be moving to do that at pace. I want to thank not just the unpaid carers, but the volunteers in my constituency who are doing the most incredible work. In Congleton, we have the Congleton Lions dementia buddy scheme and the New Life church “Forget-me-not” group for carers and those living with dementia; we have over 1,000 Dementia Friends in Sandbach and the “Bring me sunshine” group at Sandbach library; we have memory cafés at Alsager library, Astbury village hall and Holmes Chapel Methodist church; and I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone involved in making Holmes Chapel a dementia-friendly village. I have not captured the full range of support provided and I apologise to the groups that I may not have picked up on, but the variety of services provided by people on an unpaid basis across my community is staggering. However, that does not take away from the fact that we need the right paid services for people in their homes and subsequently in care homes, if that becomes the right choice for families. I thank everyone who is providing enormous support to the people who they care for, across our entire society. I know that hon. Members from all parties will agree that we need to provide more support to those giving that care.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Green Book Review · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the Green Book review. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank all hon. Members who have come today to talk about the Green Book. Our constituents all know that something is very clearly not right and has not been right for a very, very long time. They pay their taxes but they cannot see things getting any better. In Congleton, I cannot see any evidence of any significant infrastructure spending for many years, except for where it has been facilitated through house growth. Government money does not appear to have been involved in significant ways for a long time. The previous Government talked a good game about levelling up the north, but actual investment never followed, which is why my constituents voted for change. In my area, I want to see the Middlewich bypass, the A50/A500 north midlands manufacturing corridor, massive investment in improving our electricity grid, and all kinds of other changes and improvements, but I can see very clearly that something is not right. Total capital public spending per person in the north-west in 2022-23 was £13,297 per year; in London, it was £14,842. Something is being done to allocate money in that way. The Green Book is the guidance issued by His Majesty’s Treasury on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects. The five-case model is the required framework for considering the use of public resources. They must be used proportionately to the costs and risks involved, taking account of the context in which a decision is taken. The five-case model involves a strategic dimension—what the case for change is, including the rationale for the intervention, the current situation, what is to be done and so forth. There is an economic dimension and a commercial dimension: can a realistic and credible commercial deal be struck, and who will manage which risks? There is a financial dimension and a management dimension—are there realistic and robust delivery demands, and can the proposal be delivered?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Green Book Review · Hansard source

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  I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I absolutely accept that, underlyingly, we need a framework for evaluating projects. I am immensely looking forward to the 10-year infrastructure strategy, which is a real opportunity for the Government to grasp and fundamentally change how we are investing in the north of England; that is encapsulated by the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall). We need to stop our communities being seen as low-return risks rather than high-potential communities. I want growth to stop going to where growth already is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) said; I want growth going where people are, in the north-west of England. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the Green Book review.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Green Book Review · Hansard source

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  I certainly agree. We are pleased that the Treasury has initiated a review into the Green Book and we believe it is an opportunity to once and for all address a range of key issues that have undermined successive Governments’ attempts to rebalance our regional economies. We must grasp this opportunity. We believe that the review must be done with ambition and a willingness to challenge underlying customs and practices. In particular, it needs to learn from the successes and failures—largely failures, I would say—of previous Green Book reviews, in particular the 2020 review. The review recommended that the locational effects be understood via place-based analysis, with the benefits of any intervention valued specifically for the area, hence enabling any transformational impacts to be properly recognised. But once again, those recommendations do not appear to be generally reflected in practice, particularly in the application of Department-level appraisal guidance. It is vital that the current review addresses that. I believe that considering options in the context of place and properly valuing the transformational impacts of interventions is crucial if we are to realise the potential of the north-west and all our regions. We need to simplify and speed up our Green Book processes. The guidance is enormously long and incredibly complex. It has multiple supplementary documents adding up to thousands and thousands of pages. Its changes, subtleties and intent get lost within the complexity, and practice remains unchanged. That very complexity leads to a desire for a metric that cuts through, and that probably explains why the business case thresholds remain so dominant. That is probably how the weighting towards expenditure in London and the south-east continues to predominate. There is a consultancy industry around the Green Book, and that raises the cost of developing a successful business case. It also makes it very difficult for smaller local authorities to successfully put together a business case because the complexity of doing so is absolutely mind boggling. Frankly, the whole thing is just a bunch of piffle—we need to make this very simple and outcomes driven. We need to really slim it down and for it to be in a format that our local and devolved mayoral authorities, as we acquire one in Cheshire and Warrington, will be able to actually use in a practical way. We need a stronger focus on place. We need to really look properly at where money has been spent historically and where we therefore need investment. We need to weight that specifically towards areas that have not received investment so that we can redress the imbalance in which transport spending in London vastly outweighs that in the rest of the country. When I moved to the north of England, I was so shocked when I first used the railway network; I was in my 20s and the Pacer trains were still being used. Those trains were fashioned out of bus chassis and carried on being used for 37 years. They were given a maximum lifespan of 20 years; they were supposed to be a very basic short-term thing to start with, and the level of shoddiness was just astonishing. That is what we are always given in the north-west. We are given the cast-offs, and then we are expected to make do, and then what we are expected to make do with is expected to continue way beyond its intended lifespan. That has been going on now for as long as anyone can remember, and our economy then reflects that very sad point. I know the Labour Government are focused on improving the situation. I would really like us to work extensively together on that. I know that the Green Book review will be carried out at pace, and that the Government have announced these plans. That cost-benefit analysis needs to be fundamentally changed so that we can shift capital expenditure out to our regions at pace. By that, I do not mean demanding, as the last Government did, that local areas produce a shovel-ready project at the drop of a hat, so that they could rush spending through and make it look as if they were doing something for the north of England. I mean a fully considered set of proposals that enable regions to be fully developed through our devolved mayoral authorities, which I think are going to be a spectacular improvement for many areas of the north, and that will enable us to have proper economic development in the north of England. Alistair Darling said: “it isn’t just about pots of money or building the odd rail or extending a road. It’s about quality of life. It’s about making places that people want to go and live in, where they feel confident, they can live there, their children can grow up there, there’s opportunities there, and they don’t have to go somewhere else to get on, as it were. None of this is beyond us. Most other countries do it, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t either.” That was quite some time ago, but it applies more than ever now.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  Typically, the agreement’s wording will contain an exemption for whistleblowing—the Solicitors Regulation Authority says it must—so the chances are that the hon. Gentleman’s constituent can actually talk to him about the details, and he can refer to it under parliamentary privilege. However, most people do not fully understand the relationship between the whistleblowing exemptions—they are extremely limited and tightly drafted and say that someone can only speak to very limited people in very limited circumstances to whistleblow in line with the law—and the broader statement that I referred to: “You cannot discuss the circumstances surrounding your employment.” Unless someone has had good legal advice that makes that really clear, and they can retain that quite sophisticated combination, they do not understand. The exemptions that we have just do not work.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  There is a defence to that form of discrimination, which is where an employer has taken all reasonable steps to prevent it—and I speak only of reasonable steps, not every single magical thing that could be thought of. In fact, there was a case just last week in the Employment Appeal Tribunal in which an employer did successfully defend a harassment claim on the basis that it had taken all reasonable steps to prevent harassment. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the position is not as extreme as he is presenting by any stretch of the imagination, and that as long as hospitality businesses have taken all reasonable steps to prevent their employees from being harassed, they will be fine?

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the hon. Member join me in encouraging the Government to bring into force clause 24 of the new Employment Rights Bill as soon as is humanly possible? It will enable the Government to make provision in respect of dismissals relating to pregnancy other than those covered by redundancy. That was a huge element of the dismissals that I used to see wrapped up in NDAs.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  That culture is totally everywhere—across sectors. There is no specific sector where if we just sorted it out, the others would be all right. There is also the phenomenon of organisations that say publicly that they do not use NDAs, but I have seen their settlement agreements and can tell Members that they absolutely do. That is not at all unusual. In summary, we have a systemic problem that is being used to cover up employment rights abuses across the board. We really do need to legislate and have standard wording that people cannot derogate from, whether they are lawyers, HR consultants or business owners. There are lots of good employers out there. I do not want anyone to think that I think all employers are terrible—I really do not: a lot of people are busting a gut to do the right thing by their employees—but we have to stop the use of NDAs.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  Members who have heard me speak on these issues before—I do so a lot—know that I am a solicitor specialising in employment law. I am not currently practising, but I spent 13 years doing employment and particularly discrimination law work. A small amount of it was for small employers, but predominantly it was for employees. I have seen a lot of settlement agreements—pretty much every client I ever had ended up with one—and it is extremely unusual for them not to contain some form of NDA. The typical wording states that the person cannot discuss the terms of the agreement, nor the circumstances surrounding the termination of their employment. There are too many difficulties to unpack in seven minutes, but one is that some of the people who put forward the agreements are not solicitors. A lot of businesses have a human resources adviser who is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Many of them are good people who do a good job of providing affordable advice to businesses; I do not want to universally condemn HR consultants. The reality is that at some point they will have been given a precedent settlement agreement by a solicitor—we might be talking 20 years ago—and those agreements contain NDAs, so they are still in widespread use. As a solicitor, I would go back and say, “But if my client can’t say anything about the circumstances concerning the termination of their employment, what are they supposed to say to their new employer when they try to get a new job?” Some employers would agree to negotiate some sort of vague wording such as “left by mutual agreement”, so the person could at least say that, but some of them would just say flat out, “There’s money on the table. Your client can take it or leave it.” But the client faces significant legal bills, and although the employment tribunals were hypothetically designed to enable them to represent themselves, the reality is that if it is a complex discrimination claim and they have a mental health problem—either because their claim related to it in the first place or because they developed one after they were treated so badly in their employment—they may not be able to face the prospect of an unrepresented employment tribunal claim. It is all well and good that the Solicitors Regulation Authority has said that people should not put forward NDA clauses, but they are still in extremely widespread circulation. The flipside is that in order for someone to be persuaded to sign a settlement agreement, there is a requirement that the employer pays for them to have some legal advice. The standard legal advice offer is somewhere between £250 and £500, and for low-paid people the standard is still £250. The reality of the legal market is that no specialist employment lawyer will explain a potentially 20-page legal document to the person, send them follow-up written advice and renegotiate the terms for £250. People on low pay can go to a lawyer who for £250 will perhaps take them through the terms of the agreement and explain what they mean, but then they have run out money, so that is the end of it. The terms are not renegotiated and the person just signs what is put in front of them. Senior execs can often afford the advice, which means they get it fully explained and totally renegotiated, so it is compliant at the end. A solicitor like me working against a solicitor on the other side who has put forward something that does not meet the SRA guidelines will say, “We’re not signing that—you know it’s not compliant. You’re in breach of your professional obligations, now get this off the table.” And they do—swiftly. If a person has £250 and earns £20,000 a year, there is no way that they will pay for that level of top-up legal advice. That is not happening for them at all. Most good solicitors will explain that they cannot do it for the money and tell them how much it will cost to have it done properly. The person will not be able to afford it and, at best, they end up with some really shoddy solicitor who is not necessarily a specialist employment lawyer and is prepared to sign off pretty much anything and, bluntly, leaves them completely stuck. This payment structure is enriching for non-compliant solicitors at best. There is, in theory, legal aid for people who are on very low wages or in receipt of certain benefits and who have equality claims, but that has been paid at such a low rate for such a long time that there are almost no providers whatsoever. Unless we significantly increase the hourly rate that we pay to providers, they will simply continue to hand back their contracts, which is what has happened in the majority of places. It is extremely difficult to access advice unless someone is a trade union member. There are still lots of employers who regard all this stuff as just priced in. I have had clients come to me and say, “He’s absolutely notorious—the chief exec is a complete perv.” Everyone in the organisation knows it, but the board does not care. The board can give the women 20 grand to go away, they sign an NDA and that is the end of that. We have watched the chief exec do that time after time—it is just the cost of doing business. He is regarded as the superstar who brings home the bacon, so no one cares. Those are the fundamentals for many UK employers. At UKFast, for example, the chief exec got done for raping his staff. It had been going on for years: he did not just wake up one morning and do that to one woman. He was notorious in Manchester and lots of people knew what was going on. It happens across different organisations; there is no one specific sector.

• 2 Apr 2025 · Non-disclosure Agreements · Hansard source

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  As I understand it, the whistleblowing provisions in the Employment Rights Bill will let people go to the police or a regulator, but they do not automatically mean that they can go to the media, although they might be able to in some circumstances. If the Minister does not mind my saying so, what he has described is possibly not a blanket solution to the problem.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Modern Slavery Act 2015: 10th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) for securing the debate; I know she is a great champion for these issues. The Global Slavery Index estimates that 122,000 people are living in conditions of slavery in the UK, and over 19,000 victims were referred to the national referral mechanism in the last year alone. My constituency of Congleton is absolutely beautiful, and most of it has a low crime rate by national standards, but this problem is so widespread that it will be occurring in my constituency, because it is occurring everywhere. The figure of 122,000 people is significant; that is roughly one and a half times the number of people in my constituency. We often talk in this Chamber about violence against women and girls. That subject is extremely important, and I will talk about it in the context of modern slavery, but of those who were referred to the national referral mechanism last year, 72% were men. The people most common referred were UK nationals. Children constituted about 31% of referrals. In 48% of those cases, the referral was for criminal exploitation, and about 78% of those referred were boys. It is crucial that we keep up the pressure to reduce and remove violence against women and girls, but it is critical that we are aware of how much violence there still is in society against boys and men. There are lots of different ways in which modern slavery occurs in the UK, and its diversity makes it more difficult to tackle. For men, it often occurs in the agricultural and building sectors, and in takeaways. The growth in the takeaway sector in the UK means that large numbers of takeaways are operating from warehouses, where the workers are completely unseen. Many of them are earning incredibly little. If people can order a takeaway for less money than it would cost to cook the same meal at home, the chances are that that has come about through modern slavery.

• 19 Mar 2025 · Transport Connectivity: North-west England · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. In my constituency, we have had a large amount of housing growth in the last few years, and we expect to have much more. My constituents are not nimbys; they absolutely recognise that it is a huge problem that young people cannot afford to leave home in our area. It is also a huge problem that there is an absolute shortage of care workers in my area alongside an older population, and that we do not have sufficient nurses and teachers. We need key worker housing, but we also need the infrastructure to go with it. Transport is primarily about roads in my local area, which consists of a series of small towns and villages that people drive between as much as they can. I live in my constituency, so I despair of the potholes in exactly the same way that my constituents do. Our roads are dark and dangerous, and far too many of our young people are dying on them completely needlessly. The A500 is a complete mess. The A34 is the major road to Manchester and lots of people commute on it, but it is single-lane, unlit and frequently flooded. It is completely dangerous; indeed, it is a disaster. I could carry on ad infinitum—I could list so many roads—but the only other one that I will mention specifically is the Middlewich bypass, which would unlock major employment opportunities. We need the Government to fund work on it. When I talk to young people in my area or to older people who cannot drive, the major mode of transport they talk about is buses. For example, I had the pleasure of talking to Shipton explorer scouts about their experience of trying to use buses in our local area. They told me about buses being so full that the drivers simply drive past them on the way to school and will not pick them up. There are not enough services and, as I say, they simply do not stop. If someone tries to take a bus from Alsager to Royal Stoke university hospital or Leighton hospital, for example, it will take them nearly an hour, despite the distance being only 9 miles. If someone tries to take what might be one of the most important journeys they are ever going to make, for example from Holmes Chapel to one of our local hospices, it will also take them a really long time. Similarly, there is no direct bus from Congleton, a town of 30,000 people, to Macclesfield district general hospital, which is our nearest major general hospital. Bus services are fundamental services. We want to invest in the NHS, and it is vital that we do so, but there is no point in us creating additional appointments if people simply cannot get to them. And don’t get me started on trains in my constituency. They are unbelievably unreliable. There have been no Sunday services for literally years: Congleton’s last train from Manchester is at about 9 o’clock on a Saturday night. I reiterate: this is a town with 30,000 people. Sandbach, a town of 20,000 people, has no accessible route across the platform, so people with disabilities, with buggies or with luggage—it is a route to Manchester airport—simply cannot get there and have to go backwards to Crewe to make the journey to Manchester. It is absolutely crackers. I could talk about that in more detail, but I really want to talk about the fact that the decisions about transport investment have historically been incredibly short-sighted. I reiterate the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper): we would have had £66 billion more in the last decade alone if we had had the same per person investment as London. I do not want to take money away from London. I want us to have a thriving capital, but I want my constituents to be able to get there. I also want them not to have to get there—to have opportunities in my constituency and in the wider north-west in the first place, and to be able to access them.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Domestic Abuse Offences · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Josh Babarinde) for speaking so movingly and convincingly. I want to raise the case of a constituent who has come to me with multiple problems to do with her abusive husband. He is not yet her ex-husband, because he is stalling the divorce process, and hiding and dissipating assets. I worked briefly in family law, so I know that this is by no means an unusual situation and that, in most cases, it is the man who is involved in perpetrating this sort of thing. If this was happening in any other situation—for instance, between two business partners—such actions would be prosecuted as fraud, but when pursued through the family court, as they are all the time, they are not prosecuted at all; they are just treated as one of those things. Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 created the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship. An example of coercive or controlling behaviour is economic abuse, including coerced debt, controlling spending and similar activities. However, in this case the husband is no longer directly controlling or coercing the wife because they are separated; he is just spending all of their money and she cannot stop it. Economic abuse that relates to deliberately dissipating someone else’s assets is not really dealt with. Many victims of domestic abuse have their personal finances ruined in the course of their relationships. It is a real problem that any insolvency solution that might help them to rebuild their finances involves having their home address and other personal details published online in the insolvency register. That deters a lot of people from getting involved in the insolvency solutions that would enable them to start to rebuild their finances and their lives. One can apply to withhold the details of addresses and so forth, but that involves paperwork, possible court proceedings and a fee of £300, which is a huge amount of money for someone who is already in an insolvency process. There is a strong argument that we need to reform the process and potentially make the insolvency register private. Finally, I again thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne for securing the debate. I thank Cheshire Without Abuse, which does work in this area in my constituency, and the Money Wellness service, which people can engage with if they are having money difficulties.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I draw attention to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a member of Community and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us how many times such a ballot has actually resulted in the closure of a political fund? I think he will find that the answer is none.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  In my constituency of Congleton, we have been blighted by approximately seven years of strike action by Northern. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the key to modern industrial relations is to have good industrial relations, not to pull apart Bills that make things better?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the shadow Minister give way?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Gentleman not ashamed that, under his Government, hard-working ambulance drivers felt they had to go on strike?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her point, but I think it is a very difficult distinction to make: that they are pro-trade union but anti things that make it easier for trade unions to effectively represent workers. To return to my point, access to trade unions means access to good-quality advice, quicker resolution of disputes and a reduction in unrepresented litigants in person, which, in my experience, can make life genuinely difficult for well-meaning employers. Every single thing in this Bill will be good for workers, but it will also be good for employers, and I will be very pleased to vote for it later today.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  This afternoon I want to talk about a point that I think many of us across the House would agree on: employment rights are quite useless without any sort of enforcement mechanism. I should first mention that I am a member of the Community union and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, and I refer everyone to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. On enforcement, I am very pleased with clause 122 increasing the time for bringing employment tribunal claims from three to six months. It is a result of extensive campaigning by Pregnant Then Screwed and other organisations including the National AIDS Trust. They were very aware on behalf of their members of something I used to see regularly as a solicitor: a lot of people who have been very badly treated in their employment are so traumatised that they cannot come forward and make their claims within the three-month time limit. In addition, that reduces the potential time available for negotiation between former employees and their former employers, which is not in the best interests of either employees or employers. It is therefore really good news for both parties that we will have this increase in the amount of time available to bring those claims. The other measure that I am particularly delighted about in the Bill is the creation of the Fair Work Agency. We absolutely need there to be accountability for employers that are not paying the national minimum wage. They are few and far between, and those that are not doing paying it need to be properly monitored and subject to enforcement, in order to create a fair playing field for all companies. I am sure that Opposition Members would completely agree that the national minimum wage is a fundamental part of our society and that everyone should be paying it. The other matter I want to draw attention to is the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body. In my constituency, significant numbers of people need adult social care, and having a stable workforce is important in delivering that.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a massive difference between major corporations wanting to take money out of people’s bank accounts every month and trade unions wanting to represent people as effectively as possible in the workplace?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I need to highlight to the House that I am a member of the Community and USDAW trade unions, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I would like to speak to various bits of this legislation today. There is so much in it, and I know that so many of us on the Government Back Benches are really pleased with what we are bringing forward. The first part of the legislation that I want to address is clause 22, which will bring forward in future legislation more protections for women who are pregnant, on maternity leave and in the period immediately following their maternity leave. I have spent the past 13 years representing large numbers of women who were either made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave or trying to come back from maternity leave, or whose employer suddenly woke up one morning and decided that they were underperforming, often within 24 hours of their announcing their pregnancy. I had a client who had been headhunted and brought into the company, was totally stellar, doing incredibly well and got promoted, but then announced her pregnancy and within a week she was on a performance plan. HR explained to her that because they were, you know, kind and did not want to do that to her while she was pregnant, they were very generously offering her a settlement agreement so that she did not have to go through that. Lots of perfectly decent people do not understand why they are losing their jobs, and it is because they are pregnant. Pregnant Then Screwed found that 12.3% of women who have had a baby have either been sacked, constructively dismissed or made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of their maternity leave ending. It is a widespread problem, so it is fantastic that the Bill contains clause 22, which will allow the Minister to bring forward steps to expand the available protections. I would like to know how quickly we can do that, because pregnant women out there need that protection literally today.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely and utterly agree with the hon. Member. Actually, a lot of what is coming from Conservative Members is scaremongering. A lot of those discussing this behave as if employees with unfair dismissal rights were unexploded bombs. All the people I represented did not want to bring tribunal claims; they just wanted to have been treated fairly and reasonably in the first place. They were typically extremely destressed by their experiences, and for quite a lot of them, their mental health had deteriorated substantially in the course of what they had gone through. I do not think that when people have unfair dismissal rights a little bit sooner, they will all be rushing to employment tribunals the moment that something goes slightly wrong in their workplace. What most people want to do every morning is get up, go to work, do a decent job, get paid for it and go home. That is what we will continue to see after this legislation passes: that most employers want to look after their employees perfectly reasonably, and most employees want to do a perfectly decent job.

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I could talk about NDAs at some length, but I do not have time to today. They are definitely problematic, and they are definitely concealing the extent of the problems that women suffer when they announce their pregnancies. The second element I like in the legislation is the improvements to the right to request flexible working. Those on the Conservative Benches have questioned why we would do this. The answer is that the term “part-timer” is still a term of abuse in this country. While that is still something that people say fairly regularly within workplaces and popular parlance, we still have a problem, so this legislation should help to improve that. Conservative Members have talked a lot about clause 17 and the third-party harassment elements, and it is worth getting into some of the detail. The defence for an employer for failing to protect their staff from third-party harassment is taking all reasonable steps to prevent that harassment from occurring. Employment tribunals have been interpreting the meaning of “reasonable” for a long time, and in a discrimination claim there is essentially a three-part judiciary: a judge with legal experience, someone with employer experience, and someone with employee experience—sometimes from a trade union, but sometimes from elsewhere. When they talk about “all reasonable steps”, it is only reasonable steps; it is not every single step in the entire history of the universe that anyone could ever dream up or imagine.