Mr Toby Perkins
MP for Chesterfield · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) is absolutely right to say that what is behind this is the deep unpopularity of President Milei; it is not anything actually that the UK has done.”
“In Chesterfield, there will be unmitigated despair at the statement we have heard today from my right hon. Friend. For the authorities for which she is doing a review—the 14 that thought they had got their decision in July—could she clarify the basis of that review?”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.”
“The report spells out the link between degradation overseas and the impact here. The assessment lays out the consequences: food insecurity, economic insecurity, increased migration and refugees, increased interstate competition, conflict and geopolitical instability, all of which will threaten us here at home.”
“The Government are right to take their time and make sure that they get this right—we saw what happened when the previous Government did not do the work that was needed. This is a delicately balanced decision.”
“Thirdly, will the Minister consider bringing forward the fourth national adaptation programme? NAP3, published by the previous Government in 2023, was deemed ineffective by the Climate Change Committee. NAP4 is not due until 2028, but can we afford to wait two more years before we have an adequate plan?”
The complete record
Every one of 3,898 lines we hold for Mr Toby Perkins, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 58 of 78.
“I do not want to engage in a debate entirely about semantics, but would the hon. Gentleman consider that the very fact that we allow products to continue to be legal when they kill people is shaming to us all? Should not that prick our consciences, because we have failed to take the action we should to make them illegal?”
“I am happy to make that suggestion to the council. I am joined here by one of our councillors who has taken a leading role in this debate. I was going to respond to the Minister’s point about the council having a role under general product safety, and his suggestion that the enfeebled trading standards might use misdescriptions legislation. I hope that when he has finished his review—I appreciate that we have to be a bit more patient on that—we will be able to give local authorities a little more for their armoury, so that they can tackle this important issue.”
“My constituent Gwen MacDonald has worked for more than 20 years in the probation service in Sheffield. When she asked why she had not been selected to move with the national probation service—she was to move to one of the new companies instead—when someone who had been in the service for only six months had been selected, she was told that it was because the selection was done by drawing names from a hat. Does that not show an utterly shambolic approach to probation? Does it not say everything about this Government’s approach, and what is the Secretary of State going to do about it?”
“The Bathroom Manufacturers Association is just one trade body which feels that regulatory policy has too little focus on enforcement of regulation. That leads to the undercutting of compliant, high-quality British manufacturers by cheap, non-compliant foreign imports. When will the Government understand that a mature and consistent approach to enforcement of regulation is not a burden on high-quality British manufacturing business, but an aid to it?”
“I entirely agree with what the Minister says about the sensitivity of this matter and the importance of getting it right. The London property market’s problem at the moment is certainly not that it is too long term. With that in mind, does the Minister think there has been sufficient consultation and enough opportunity to consider the full implications, given that the proposal has been brought forward long after all the pre-legislative scrutiny has been finished?”
“As I have said, this group contains a huge number of measures. We will seek to divide the House on amendments 84 and 2. It is entirely wrong that Members have had so little time to discuss this group, but in order to give people the opportunity to discuss their proposals, I will leave my comments there.”
“I am very concerned that there should be proper consultation on these new clauses. We think that the proposal made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is important. We are very conscious that the Green party leader of Brighton council recently slammed the entire principle of right to buy, describing it as the “biggest privatisation programme this country has ever seen.” Right to buy is important. We need to help people who otherwise would not be able to access the housing market, as with so many in Cameron’s Britain; in 1997, it took the average family three years to save for a deposit on a home but now it takes about 22 years. Given that catastrophic record of this Government, in particular, it is important that right to buy is available, but it is also important that these properties are replaced.”
“On new clauses 20 and 21, the Labour party is, as we said previously, absolutely committed to greater security for tenants and a long-term approach to the private rented market. It is revealing that at a time when the Labour party is proposing policies that will give tenants more security and certainty in their tenure, the Government are introducing something that specifically encourages more shorter-term lets. Just because their priorities are wrong, it does not mean that, individually, there is no merit in these new clauses, but they need to be considered carefully. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has made a strong case, and London Members from across the House are deeply concerned that the London letting market does not suffer from the problem of being too long term.”
“On Sunday trading, I support entirely what the Minister said, and I will not be supporting new clauses 10 to 14 for the following reasons: the Government promised that their emergency legislation for the Olympics was not a Trojan horse leading to further liberalisation of Sunday trading hours; the importance of Sunday trading legislation for employees; the broad, cross-party coalition supporting our current legislation in this area; the impact these proposed changes would have on small businesses and the convenience sector, which is very much under pressure; and the fact that these measures are being proposed in the way that they are, without any consultation on an issue that divides opinion tremendously. All those things mean that this Bill is entirely the wrong place for such measures to be introduced.”
“Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) want to discuss their proposals, and despite the lack of scrutiny that these clauses will get, I will ensure that they get an opportunity to do so. However, I shall quickly speak on those measures from the Front Bench.”
“The Solicitor-General will be creating a three-tier system where, rather than there being one set of exams, people will operate in three different ways. The implications for Scotland, whose insolvency regime is very different, have not been laid out. Our amendment would delete the clause. Even if one accepts the Government’s arguments on personal insolvency specialists not needing corporate insolvency, saying in reverse that people who do corporate insolvency, which will often involve aspects of personal insolvency, do not need to have studied personal insolvency is bizarre. We think the Government are very misguided, as does the industry, and we strongly call on them to do the right thing, support our amendment and drop this clause. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), the hon.”
“When I asked a turnaround specialist from Germany who was working in Chesterfield why he was working in the UK rather than back in his homeland, he told me, “Because your insolvency regime is so much better than ours.” He gave a list of reasons why we should be proud of what we have. Amazingly, this Government are coming to this House to make changes that would de-professionalise something that is tremendously successful and which do not enjoy the support of the industry. The major trade body representing insolvency practitioners calls for clause 17 to be not amended but scrapped, yet the Solicitor-General says he is doing this on behalf of the industry. This is a bizarre set of circumstances.”
“Excluding the Secretary of State, just one out of seven recognised professional bodies in the field supports partial licences, and 75% of small firms undertake both corporate and personal insolvency procedures for commercial reasons, so it is the large players that are likely to be able to adopt partial licences. If any of the benefits that the Solicitor-General has laid out actually come to pass—I strongly suspect they will not—they will exclude small players from the insolvency market and make it very much the preserve of large companies. He is setting out to dumb down the profession rated by the World Bank as the seventh best in the world, judged on the basis of the amount returned to creditors and the speed of the process—two key aspects we would expect an insolvency regime to have.”
“The Solicitor-General said that the purpose of the Bill—its benefit—was to save money. When he was asked about that in Committee, he said that it costs £4,000 for each of these exams, and if someone only has to do two of them, they will save £4,000. He was also very critical of the insolvency profession, and then suggested that that saving will be passed on to the customers of insolvency practitioners. Many practitioners have been in the industry for some 20 years. The idea that, 20 years later, they are going to give some sort of discount because back then they saved themselves £4,000 bears no scrutiny. In Committee, the Solicitor-General described responses to the consultation on this change as “mixed”. That was an extraordinarily generous euphemism.”
“In fact, the Deregulation Bill could be the “we are where we are” Bill. Virtually no one is speaking up for it or offering much in the way of support for it. We oppose clause 17 because we believe it will dumb down the profession. As the Solicitor-General rightly said, we have one of the best insolvency professions in the world. The Bill will de-professionalise what is a very successful profession. It will give an advantage to large insolvency firms, working against the smaller firms and new entrants to the market that Members on both sides of this House profess to support. In Committee, we warned that this change would represent a regulatory move, rather than a deregulatory one. Throughout their response, the Government were unable to come up with any serious support for the Bill.”
“However, it has morphed almost daily into a leviathan of a Bill with a multitude of ill-thought-out, scarcely consulted on clauses, the aims of which are unclear, the consequences of which are uncertain, the benefits of which are unproven, and the coherence of which is absolutely impossible to fathom. If this is the final piece of legislation this Government introduce, it will be a fitting climax for them: unloved, owned by no one, with few advocates, whose central purpose has long since been obscured, and who exist now only to be seen to be doing something, in the hope that, if they hang around for a bit, the polls might take a turn for the better. The ultimate summary of the Government’s approach was heard when the Solicitor-General said in response to the very reasonable criticisms of his previous Bill that we are where we are.”
“I begin by drawing the House’s attention to my declaration of interests. The fact that the Solicitor-General had to whistle through so many new clauses and amendments says a tremendous amount about the Bill and the way the Government have approached it. We have 49 minutes to debate 43 different new clauses, amendments and new schedules. It is an absolute disgrace and an affront to democracy that this House is being asked to whistle through the approval of very important measures that this Government have brought before us at a moment’s notice. The Bill was originally an unambitious, predominantly inconsequential list of minor changes to the way we sell yarn and chocolate liqueurs that most people would not much mind or particularly appreciate, mixed in with a few substantially more dangerous provisions.”
“The Chancellor acts as though he is the only person who has delivered growth, but we already had growth when he came to power. When there was light at the end of the tunnel, he spent two and a half years building more tunnel. Finally, now that we have growth—after everyone else—he says, “Haven’t I done well?”.”
“The Chancellor says that the economic plan is working, but who is it working for? It might be working for his friends who he used to go boozing with at the Bullingdon club, but working people in my constituency find that it is harder and harder every single month to make work pay. What will the Chancellor do to make work pay under his Government?”
“The reason people keep asking the Home Secretary questions along the same lines is that she is refusing to answer them: she refuses to say who authorised the publication of that letter, and she refuses to say when she first found out about extremism in Birmingham schools. Will she at least tell us when she found out that the letter had been published and what action she took at that time?”
“The Education Secretary either omitted or did not get the opportunity fully to respond to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) about Park View. For the sake of clarity, will he explain why Park View was not allowed to open a free school but was allowed to sponsor Golden Hillock to become an academy?”
“May I return the Prime Minister to what he said earlier about his record on jobs? In Chesterfield, I constantly meet people who are in work but in poverty, and who use food banks because they cannot make work pay. Why has the Prime Minister done so little to support people who are working hard, but cannot make work pay under his Government?”
“I should be grateful if the Minister updated the House when he gets that. My wife and I have often disagreed on what a small amount of alcohol is. I would be grateful if, on behalf of husbands around the country, I could make her aware of the legal definition.”
“Will the Minister expand on what the hoops are that self-employed people will no longer have to jump through? In practical terms, for any self-employed person who has the time or inclination to watch the debate, what is it that they will no longer have to do that they would previously have found so burdensome and obstructive to their responsibilities?”
“Despite our broad and deep support, we feel that the new clause could be clarified, so let me make a couple of suggestions for the Minister to consider as further improvements. First, on the blanket exclusion for emergency response services and military personnel, we believe that each case should be considered according to its individual merit. What further steps can the Minister take on that? The pace of technological change in the future will never be as slow as it is today—amazing though that may seem to us now—so it would be prudent to keep the mechanisms for making such amendments as flexible and responsive as possible. Why has the Minister not opted to have exclusions set outside the primary legislation as a statutory instrument simply to allow changes to the law to move with the time?”
“Making such a change is important to our Sikh communities and for our country as a whole. I am pleased that the Minister was able to announce the extension of the exemption to Northern Ireland. That will be pleasing to the Sikh community in Northern Ireland and throughout Great Britain. The turban is not only the most visual part of a Sikh’s faith, but a proud part of our island story. We want the contribution of Sikhs to be visibly demonstrated in workplaces across the country. The Minister was absolutely right to speak warmly of the contribution that Sikhs have made to Britain. The success of this approach was seen in 2012 when Guardsman Jatinderpal Bhullar became the first turban wearer on guard duty outside Buckingham palace.”
“I am pleased to speak to new clause 2 and to support amendment 72, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) and me. I start by declaring my interest as a member of Unite the Union, which has made representations on this issue, and by expressing my gratitude for the opportunity to discuss these amendments. We are grateful to the Government and others who supported our demand for proper time to debate the important health and safety aspects of the Bill. We felt that the original programme motion might well have denied Members that opportunity. Let me respond first to the Minister’s comments about new clause 2. Labour Members warmly welcome the intention to allow Sikhs to wear turbans in place of head protection in all workplaces.”
“The Minister may not have understood what I was talking about or I may not have understood what he was talking about. I believe that there is a blanket exemption to the exclusion with respect to emergency response services and military personnel.”
“I am grateful for that clarification. Will the Minister clarify the definition of “workplace”, as concerns have been raised that the term could be ambiguous and confusing? Could he offer some clarification and perhaps tighten up the definition and the language more generally? For example, would a Sikh working within a vehicle be considered to be working in a workplace?”
“It is interesting that, at a time when 150 people a year are still dying at work, we should hear voices on the right saying that we need to get out of Europe so that we can get rid of all these health and safety rights and, presumably, increase the number of people who die at work. That was quite a revealing contribution.”
“Interestingly, in corresponding on Twitter with my constituents and others about the fact that we would debate health and safety legislation today, I received a response from a constituent in Derbyshire. He said, “I bet you’re not going to mention Europe when you get into that debate, because a lot of our health and safety legislation has come from Europe and we should be out of Europe so that we can get rid of all this health and safety legislation.” When I looked at his profile on Twitter, I found out that he had recently joined UKIP—so he is in the right place, at least.”
“Labour Members, however, are proud that Britain was a safer place in which to work at the end of the last Government than it had ever been before. We were proud, too, that we delivered the first Olympics in history without a single death occurring during its construction. In the last 20 years, there has been a clear downward trend in the number of fatal injuries in the workplace. In 1993-94, 300 people were killed at work; in 2012-13, that number had fallen to 148. It is proof that strong health and safety legislation, advice and guidance make a difference. When almost 150 people a year still set out for work one morning and never return home, there cannot be any cause whatever for complacency on health and safety.”
“All Members—possibly with one exception—want to see this important change delivered, so I hope we can work together on a cross-party basis to achieve it. Just as it is important to update and clarify legislation on behalf of Sikh workers, so it is important constantly to review all regulations to ensure that there are no unnecessary burdens that undermine growth. We fear, however, that little of that will be achieved in this wide-ranging—albeit limited in its positive effect—Bill. Fundamental questions need to be answered about the kind of economy and the kind of workplaces that Britain should have now and in the future. We sometimes hear voices on the right of the political spectrum arguing that health and safety has gone mad and too far in Britain.”
“That is an interesting point. It is important, of course, to get clarity for Sikhs in Northern Ireland but also for Sikhs across Britain. The Minister spoke more broadly, which is important. It has been brought to our attention that one interpretation of section 12 of the Employment Act 1989 could have the effect of permitting an employer to use the defence of having a legitimate aim when forcing a Sikh employee to wear a safety helmet in the workplace. This could undermine the new clause’s intention in a similar way to the definition of a workplace. I would be grateful if the Minister responded to that point in his summing up. I hope that the Minister will listen to and engage with those concerns.”
“Now we shall hear from someone who has far more responsible views on health and safety in general, although his views on Europe may be different from mine.”
“The Tory vision of the working Britain of the future is of a place in which everyone’s position and rights are insecure and enfeebled employees live in constant fear of losing their jobs, with low security, low wages and zero hours: an easy-in, easy-out workplace. The Tories think that a workplace that is engaged in a race to the bottom makes for a competitive economy.”
“The House of Commons Library estimates that businesses benefited to the tune of £3 billion a year as a result of the various deregulatory measures introduced by the last Government. A comparison between that scale of savings and this pygmy of a Bill sends a clear message about who was serious about backing business. However, a sensible approach to regulation is about proportionality, consistency and clarity, and I object in the strongest possible terms to the idea that making workers less safe or less well off is being done in the name of small businesses. This Tory-led Government clearly have a view of the type of workplace that they want Britain to be.”
“A few years ago funds for the Health and Safety Executive were cut by 35% in a single year, which has led to fewer inspections and the issuing of improvement notices. The present Government slowed the progress that we had been making on health and safety. However, we entirely reject the idea that the fact that Labour made that progress means that we favoured excessive regulation. Indeed, we are glad that the important work of the Better Regulation Commission—which was formed as part of the last Government’s commitment to deregulation, and which has played an important part in removing unnecessary burdens and ensuring that more are not unintentionally created when new regulations are introduced—has continued under the present Government.”
“I share my hon. Friend’s tremendous pride in the Act, and he is right to observe that very significant steps were taken in the 1970s. It should also be acknowledged that further steps were taken during the 13 years of Labour government through consultation and work with colleagues in Europe, and that Europe is a much safer workplace for it. Back in 1993-94, 20 years ago, self-employed workers accounted for a sixth of all workplace deaths. In 2012-13, they accounted for a third of such deaths. In other words, the self-employed are twice as large a proportion of all those who die at work now as they were 20 years ago. If the Government are serious about driving down workplace deaths, reducing health and safety requirements for the self-employed seems a pretty odd way to start.”
“Unite has drawn attention to the fact that many workers in the care sector have been pushed into false self-employment, with the result that people on whom much of the fabric of a decent society depends can be sacked without warning, receive no holiday or sick pay, have reduced benefit entitlements, and are denied access to employment tribunals. They do not want to set up their own businesses or become entrepreneurial, but they are being told that the only way in which they can care for the old people for whom they have cared for so many years is to become self-employed. It is important to recognise the difference between those who want to be self-employed and those who are being forced into it.”
“Indeed, the idea that people should pluck up the courage to go it alone and start a new business, should challenge the established order and should find new ways of innovating and different ways of doing things—adopting the values and attributes of entrepreneurs—is very closely aligned with the history of the Labour party. Challenging the established order is precisely what the Labour party has always done. Of course we support people who want to set up their own businesses, but the healthy push towards starting up new firms that was established under Labour—with the spirit of adventure coursing through the veins, and ambition bursting through every pore—is very different from the growing move towards bogus or forced self-employment that we have seen under the present Government.”
“We supported most of the report’s recommendations, but we think that the professor failed to understand the nature of the British labour market when he said that the rights of the self-employed in Britain were greater than those granted by some of our European competitors, and, in particular, failed to appreciate the huge growth in false self-employment in this country to which my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) referred. At the end of the last Government, the World Bank said that Britain was the easiest place in Europe in which to set up a new business. That is a key feature of our economy, and in itself it is something to be celebrated.”
“This is what Tory Governments have always done, and they should be honest about that, rather than claiming that they are acting in support of small businesses or in anyone else’s name. I was a small business owner myself for five years before I entered Parliament, and I entirely reject the idea that impoverishing workers and stripping them of their rights was done in my name or at my request. That just shows how out of touch the Government are. It is very unfair of them to introduce measures such as this, and then claim that they are doing it in order to support small businesses. In fact, they are doing it because it is what Tory Governments always do. As the Minister said, this idea originated in Professor Löfstedt’s report on health and safety regulations, which was published in 2011.”
“A substantial part of my speech will deal with precisely that point, because I think it represents perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the Bill. When the Minister presented his idea, he was probably told that it was good news that authors would no longer be suing themselves because their chairs were the wrong height. However, the real impact of the Bill is exactly as my hon. Friend has described it. When people ask the Government what they will do about zero hours and the exploitation of workers, the Government misunderstand the question. The easy sacking of workers and the reduction in their rights is not an accident of Tory policy; it is Tory policy. It is precisely what Tory Governments have always been about. Of course, this is not actually called a Tory Government, but it certainly feels pretty much like one.”
“There were tough decisions to be made.” They will try to claim some little bauble: “We may have tripled tuition fees, VAT may have gone up and workers’ rights may have been taxed, but we got something out of it.” We shall see whether, when they bring their agenda to the 2015 election, they throw off the clothes that they have worn for the last five years and claim to be different. What an exciting time we have to look forward to.”
“That is an important point. The exact nature of the alliance that was formed will have to be left to the history books to judge. Were the Liberal Democrats willing accomplices who wanted to support everything that the Tory Government did, or were they, as my hon. Friend put it, poodles who were simply excited by the idea of ministerial office, and who decided to join in when they did not really support what was being done? I suspect that, as we head towards the 2015 general election, a whole array of Liberal Democrat Ministers will suddenly emerge and say, “They made me do it. I did not really want to pursue that policy.”
“The idea that the Liberal Democrats might be able to save themselves a bit of shame is a novel concept—perhaps my hon. Friend is being a little bit too ambitious—but we shall none the less listen with great interest to what they say.”
“I am one-nation Labour, and one-nation Labour attempts to bring all these different strands of our movement together. There is a huge amount of value in having a flexible work force, but if that works against the best interests of workers, it is reasonable that workers will question whether that is a price worth paying. Some important points have been made about public opinion and we should listen to them. It is also right to consider how, in a modern economy, we bring the best of the private and public sector together. That is what I am in favour of, and that is what the Labour party is in favour of.”
“My hon. Friend makes an important contribution and he is right. The issue of bogus self-employment, and the broader issue of the vision this Government have for our economy, is working very badly for people in our constituencies and working quite well for a small number at the top. It was ever thus; this is what the Conservative party was set up to do. It was set up to ensure that the rights of a privileged few were protected and to try to convince enough of the lower orders to buy into it in the meantime. That is why the Conservatives did not want the lower orders to have the vote for 100-odd years. We all know where they are coming from, and no doubt if they could get rid of the lower orders having the vote now, they would do it again.”
“What he says is that there will be a perception that there is less people have to do before they become self-employed. Well, he can say that to the carers, who are being told that they are now self-employed when looking after the old lady they have been looking after for the past 20 years. He should ask whether that removes a disincentive to them setting up a business. That is the reality of what is happening under this Government.”