Justin Madders
MP for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough · Labour · United Kingdom
“Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard asked about, will consider the points raised in this debate and whether any of them can be put into future updates to guidance. As was mentioned, good passenger information is central to standards.”
“As the roads Minister, I of course recognise the importance of bus stops and the important effect they have on the streetscape. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard made clear that she is passionate and informed about the importance of bus journeys to everyone.”
“Where responsibility for highways or individual assets sits elsewhere, close and effective working between the relevant authorities is essential. We expect local plans to join up services, infrastructure and passenger information, rather than treating them as separate issues. That will no doubt be music to the ears of my hon.”
“Our guidance encourages authorities to take a strategic approach to stops and interchanges, including keeping an inventory of infrastructure, identifying priorities for investment and setting locally appropriate standards for facilities and maintenance.”
“She is absolutely right that the quality of a bus stop is about more than accessibility, although of course accessibility is vital. Passengers notice whether a stop is easy to find and use, whether it offers shelter or seating where appropriate, whether it is clean, whether the surroundings feel safe and well maintained and, as we have di…”
“That approach reflects a simple principle: local transport authorities know their areas and are best placed to plan improvements across the whole local bus network. That is why the Department’s vision for buses, within an integrated transport system, puts local transport authorities at the centre of delivery.”
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“There have been stories in the media about this. A street in Leigh-on-Sea had 80 or so new businesses registered in just a matter of months. Something very fishy was clearly going on. The registered office address regulations deal with cases in which addresses have been, to use the Minister’s word, hijacked, which is quite an apt term. They grant the registrar the authority to change the address to a default one and to remove the company from the register if a genuine address is not provided. As the Minister also said, the regulations establish criminal offences for the non-compliance of companies and officers. The Minister responded to the intervention from the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glenrothes, on the issue of criminal matters.”
“In the existing system, we know that criminals can fraudulently register an individual’s residential address as a company’s registered office with Companies House. That is often done using data obtained from various sources, including the dark web, without the person in question knowing that they are being used for that purpose. Since 2011, it has been possible to incorporate a company within 24 hours, and for the small fee of £12, without checks being undertaken by Companies House on the accuracy of the details. The perpetrators can then use this fraudulent registration to apply for credit and business loans. That causes significant problems for the unsuspecting individuals who may discover that a fraud is being perpetrated only when they attempt to apply for credit themselves, by which point their credit rating may be rather poor.”
“The draft Principal Office Address (Rectification of Register) Regulations 2024 are similar and will establish the process by which the registrar may change an address that is registered as the principal office of a relevant person to a default address nominated by the registrar, either on the registrar’s own motion or following an application from a third party. The power to change the address would equally be available where the registrar was satisfied that the address was not in fact that person’s principal office. I do not think much more needs to be said about those regulations, so I will spend my remaining time talking about the final set of regulations before us: the draft Registered Office Address (Rectification of Register) Regulations, which perhaps have the highest salience out of the four we are considering.”
“Two conditions have been applied to the use of the powers, namely that the registrar “(a) is not satisfied that a relevant person’s registered service address meets the service address requirements, and (b) does not consider it necessary to provide a period for objections to be made to the relevant person’s registered service address being changed to a default address.” For reassurance, will the Minister provide some detail about what will likely constitute a registrar not being “satisfied” that the registered service address does not meet requirements? Equally, will he outline what conditions would make it unnecessary for a registrar to provide a right to make an objection to such a change? I do not want to stray too much into operational matters, but it would be useful if the Minister could set out what he can on those points.”
“It is also worth noting that if the registrar contacts those people at the wrong address because it has been erroneously entered, there is a risk that they will never respond because they will never receive the contact in the first place. Regulation 10 gives a registrar the power to change a business’s address to a default address with no notice.”
“It will also potentially lead to consequences for those company directors who are allowing erroneous records to exist in an attempt to evade legal responsibilities by providing non-compliant addresses. Those are clearly welcome changes that will in the main leave all compliant and law-abiding businesses completely unaffected and will hopefully begin to tackle the scourge of rogue directors who seek to operate unlawfully. Clearly the odd erroneous entry might be caught up in the changes, so it is worth considering the legitimate business owners who may unfortunately be in that situation and who may have concerns about the exercise of regulation 10 powers and whether they will have a swift and clear opportunity to put matters right. It would be appreciated if the Minister could devote some time to providing further guidance on that point.”
“That can allow a service address listed in the register for a company director, secretary or person with significant control to become inaccurate, ultimately meaning that they fail to meet the statutory requirements for a service address. That can have all sorts of legal implications. The changes in the instrument will mean that the registrar can initiate such a change or do so upon application, with the discretion to act without notice or after a specified objection period. That will assist registrars in maintaining the accuracy of the register and act to incentivise those with control over a business to ensure that their service address is accurate and kept up to date.”
“I hope there is a rather clearer explanation; maybe the Minister will be able to furnish some examples of what that means in practice, because it would be useful for us to understand what the yardstick is there. The remaining regulations are all concerned, as we have heard, with requirements for companies to maintain accurate addresses and represent a clear expansion of the powers of the registrar to enforce those standards. I turn first to the draft Service Address (Rectification of Register) Regulations 2024, which empower the registrar to change the registered service address to a default address if it fails to meet legal requirements. Currently, the registrar may not undertake that change on their own initiative and must rely on the reporting of inaccurate addresses by third parties.”
“In practice, all members of LLPs, as well as those with significant control, will be required to verify their identities. The reforms are welcome—they homogenise the law —and as a general principle I will talk about some of the details, as they apply across the board, as we go on, but I have a specific question about the LLP regulations. The definition in regulation 3(3) says that “appropriate email address” means “an email address to which, in the ordinary course of events, emails sent by the registrar would be expected to come to the attention of a person acting on behalf of the limited liability partnership.” That seems a little circular in its definition.”
“Despite the rather lengthy titles, they do actually make a real and pertinent change to people’s lives and to how companies are regulated, and of course, as we have heard, people can be innocently caught up in these webs of deceit, so before I consider each set of regulations in turn I will make it clear that we will not oppose the regulations. The draft Limited Liability Partnerships (Application of Company Law) Regulations 2024 remove the arbitrary— at least for these purposes—distinction between companies and limited liability partnerships, to ensure that the law applies coherently across the board. That will ensure that any entity that registers with Companies House will fall within the scope of the corporate transparency reforms that are part of the 2023 Act.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Mrs Murray. I thank the Minister for his opening remarks and, indeed, for his work in this policy area over many years. I would hesitate to describe him as an expert in economic crime, but he is clearly someone one who has a long record of tackling economic crime, and today we see the fruits of his labour. I also thank hon. Members for attending this evening. As the Minister said, the regulations all derive from the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which received Royal Assent in October. Each set of regulations under consideration today, as we have heard, enacts a provision contained in that primary legislation which, as we have heard from the Minister, is designed to improve the quality of the information held by Companies House. These are important changes.”
“Existing survey evidence shows that one of the key reasons for not taking leave is because of affordability.” Will the Minister explain why the Government have chosen a policy which, according to their own analysis, appears to limit the take-up?”
“The Government should at least have considered that as an option. Why have the Government decided that it would be disproportionate to make the entitlement paid without offering any supporting evidence? Has the Minister looked at costings at any point? Indeed, has there been any consideration of that point at all? Given the evidence that there is an economic benefit, it is important that there is an explicit acknowledgment in the impact assessment that keeping the leave entitlement as unpaid will discourage some carers from taking up leave. The impact assessment says that “as this is an unpaid leave entitlement some carers will be disincentivised to take the full entitlement of leave, as they do not want to lose more of their income.”
“It was not just the Opposition who called for paid leave; the Government’s own response to the consultation on the matter, which was published in September 2021, stated: “There were strong calls from charities and individuals for this leave entitlement to be paid.” Despite those strong calls, the space allocated to considering them in the consultation extended to just 162 words, in which the Government said they were “sympathetic” to the calls but judged that the impact on businesses would not be “proportionate”. There is no analysis to support that position, and no further evidence. I know that finances are tight, but we already know about the potential positive financial impact, so I would have expected some form of analysis in the impact assessment—which took a year to come out—of the costs and benefits of making the entitlement paid.”
“Sadly, though, that applies only to a small proportion of businesses overall—Carers UK report that it is around 12% of existing employers. It is an understatement to say that a very strong case for carer’s leave has been made for a number of years, but we do have concerns about some of the aspects of the regulations. Most significantly, the calls made during the passage of the Carer’s Leave Act for the Government to consider making such leave paid have fallen on deaf ears.”
“All this shows that not only are many making a massive personal sacrifice, but there are societal consequences as well. The inequalities in terms of who is responsible should trouble us all, but there are also profound financial impacts. The impact assessment notes that the potential cost incurred to the Exchequer alone is around £2.9 billion per year. Analysis suggests that better carer’s leave policies could save businesses a cumulative £4.8 billion per year in unplanned absences, and a further £3.4 billion in improved employee retention. Clearly, those figures may need to be tested by experience, but it is clear that some businesses have caught on to the benefits of providing carer’s leave and introduced voluntary policies.”
“The impact assessment notes that the impact of caring while in work hits those aged 45 to 54 hardest—I declare an interest at this point as I am in that age group; I know it is hard to believe, but I am under 54—with more than a quarter of people reporting that it had taken a toll on their work. There is also a gender aspect to this, with women more likely than men to be responsible for caring. The family resources survey found that 9% of women, as opposed to 6% of men, are in this position. If we put the facts together, it is no surprise that women aged between 45 and 64 years old are most likely to be carers. As we know, with such added responsibilities they are more likely to be leaving the workforce, which exacerbates the existing gender pay gap.”
“I hope the regulations stop that happening as much as it has been to date, but according to research 9% of the population have had to do that: the impact assessment notes that 5% have left the workplace altogether and a further 4% have had to cut their hours. Carers UK claims that this translates to 600 workers leaving the workplace per day. If that is correct, it is a staggering figure and clearly something that we should all want to do something about. It is clear that informal care needs can impact on one’s career, leaving many working people in a state of economic inactivity in order to provide care. When so much potential and experience is lost to the labour market, we need to address that; I hope the regulations will help in that respect. It is important to note that the burdens do not fall on all sections of society equally.”
“Members here will appreciate how taxing such caring efforts will be for workers, and many will, of course, have personal experience of such difficulties. Research published by the CIPD in 2021 found that almost one third of working carers provide at least 30 hours of caring per week, meaning that they are effectively undertaking another full-time job on top of their full-time caring responsibilities. Of those working full time, 28% provided at least 30 hours of care. Understandably, for many that can take a huge physical as well as psychological toll, not to mention the need to balance such personal challenges with the development of a career. For many the situation can seem insurmountable, and people often reduce their working hours or give up work entirely.”
“A 2018 report by the Work and Pensions Committee summed up that unfortunate practice as “detrimental” to carers’ “own physical and mental well-being,” and said that, in the long run, it would increase “the risk of sickness, exhaustion and ‘burnout’.” Those warnings appear to be accepted in the summary of the “do nothing” approach in the impact assessment published alongside the regulations, although I cannot help but point out to the Minister the irony of the Government’s being alive to the importance of a worker having the option and the ability to take annual leave in the context of caring, just a couple of months since the introduction of reforms to rolled-up holiday pay, which will have the opposite effect. All hon.”
“That was uncovered during the Government’s 2020 consultation, which found that two thirds of carers had had to use annual leave to provide care for their dependants. In essence, until that point the issue was hidden: carers would use annual leave or find another way, by hook or by crook, to take the time out that they needed. We should make it very clear that annual leave is meant for rest and recuperation, not caring responsibilities.”
“There are, therefore, several different estimates of the number of people who will be impacted by the regulations, and I will return to that briefly later on, but whatever figure we choose, it represents a substantial proportion of the total population, let alone of the number of people actually in work. Given that, at the latest count, there were about 33 million people in work, around 11% to 15% of the overall workforce may benefit from the regulations. There is a large amount of evidence that good employers already have informal care leave practices in place, but of course many employees do not have that option and, unfortunately, often take caring leave in the form of annual leave or sick leave.”
“As we heard, the number of people potentially affected by the regulations is not insignificant. There are millions of people who are both in work and responsible for caring. Carers UK found that before the pandemic almost 5 million people were juggling work and caring, and that increased to 7 million during the pandemic. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimates that the figure is closer to 3.7 million people, while the impact assessment published alongside the regulations states that the total number of carers—not just those who are in work—stands at 4.2 million.”
“As we know, the entitlement can be taken in chunks as small as half a day or as one week’s continuous leave, and it cannot be refused by an employer, nor can an employee be detrimentally treated as a result of taking such leave, in common with many other protections in employment law. Campaigners have pushed for many years for the right to statutory care leave, but until now there has been no such right. We know that there is a whole range of reasons why carers might need to take time out; the regulations will hopefully allow them to provide assistance with a doctor’s appointment or recovery after surgery, for example. The regulations are undoubtedly a step forward, and they should make a difference to those with caring responsibilities who are in paid work.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Hollobone. I thank the Minister for his introduction. We will not be opposing the regulations today, although that is not to say that I do not have a few questions and comments—I know the Minister would have been disappointed if I did not have anything to say. Let me start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for North East Fife and my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for their work on the private Members’ Bills that led to these regulations. As the Minister highlighted, the draft carer’s leave regulations will provide employees from day one—we in the Opposition certainly like day-one rights—the right to a maximum of one week’s leave per year to care for a loved one, without any requirement to provide evidence.”
“In closing, I remind Members again that the Select Committee report with actions in relation to where we are with the regulations today was published in 2016. We know that a week is a long time in politics, so eight years must seem like an eternity, particularly to those 54,000 women who we can estimate have been forced out of work each year during that period. The total is more than 400,000 women during that time. As I said, I will conclude on those points. We support the regulations, but there are some questions that I hope the Minister will address when he closes the debate.”
“As a result, employees may find it difficult to exercise their rights.” The other, which is a surprisingly candid comment about how the current system is not robust enough to adequately protect workers, says: “Employers are currently not incentivised to provide sufficient employment protection for pregnant and new parents, and are likely to prioritise their costs and bottom line.” It would be useful to hear the Minister’s reflections on those comments, because they allude to a wider problem. Will he reassure us that there will be adequate support for businesses to understand the new protections and that they will be accompanied by a robust enforcement mechanism to ensure that the protections actually benefit the people they are intended to benefit?”
“The concern is reflected in the part of the impact assessment that raises concerns that the effectiveness of the regulations could be blunted through an employer’s adherence to them. I will draw to the Committee’s attention two passages in the impact assessment. The first is the comment on the wider landscape, where it says: “The legislation in this area is complex and thus businesses may struggle to understand their obligations.”
“The impact assessment noted that 70% of employers reported a high level of awareness of female employees’ rights, but it also noted that deeply concerning biases were held by an unacceptably large proportion of employers. Reportedly, 70% of employers held the belief that women should declare a pregnancy during the recruitment stage, and 25% thought it was acceptable to ask a woman about their plans to have children when hiring. Those statistics are concerning and should be setting off alarm bells about the latent discrimination that still exists. I started work nearly 30 years ago and even then those sorts of questions were simply unacceptable, so the fact that the impact assessment reveals that that kind of prejudice is still alive is worrying to say the least.”
“What do the Government think will happen, when the extension of the period comes into force, to actually ensure that all discrimination in the workplace is eliminated? We know that tens of thousands of women are already being forced out of their jobs, through reasons not associated with redundancy, during pregnancy or within six months of their return to work. I fear that the measure will not go far enough, so does the Minister have any thoughts or suggestions about what else could be done to reduce the very high numbers? The regulations on which the statutory instrument builds are reliant on awareness by the employer of the rules and on the ability of the worker to enforce their rights.”
“Clearly, that is a not insignificant number of workers, and it is a welcome step that additional parents will have the protections, but that is only a small proportion of those who start a family each year, and it is certainly a drop in the ocean compared with the 11% figure in the surveys to which I have referred. There is concern, then, that the regulations will not take us all the way to where we want to be in protecting women and new parents from discrimination during and after pregnancy. I think we can all agree that the surveys and the evidence show us that there is currently an unacceptable level of discrimination, but it is important to remember that that has all been happening under the current rules on maternity, adoptive and shared parental leave, so it is reasonable to ask this question.”
“In 2020, a Pregnant Then Screwed a survey of almost 20,00 women also found a figure of about 11% of women on maternity leave who had been made redundant or expected to be made redundant. The Government recognised that position and made positive noises following a 2017 Women and Equalities Committee report, but did not launch a consultation on the issue until 2019. Again, a commitment to act was made in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, but here we are in 2024 before we finally have some regulations. It must be stated that the second set of regulations will address only one element of the challenges that women and other parents face: that of being made redundant while pregnant. On page 7 of the impact assessment, it is estimated that the measure will likely cover about 7,500 people.”
“For a parent taking shared parental leave, protections apply only if they take off at least six consecutive weeks of parental leave. We absolutely support the Government on increasing protections and, as the Minister said, a range of evidence that has been available for a long time indicates that new mothers have been pushed out of jobs and discriminated against. The Minister referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s 2015 estimate of about 54,000 new mothers being forced out of their jobs, equating to about 11% of the women responding, who had “been dismissed, made compulsorily redundant where others in their workplace were not, or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their jobs”.”
“The rights stem from the MAPL regulations of 1999 and similar provisions in the Paternity and Adoption Leave Regulations 2002 and the Shared Parental Leave Regulations 2014. All the existing regulations state that if a worker’s job is being made redundant during their maternity, adoption or shared parental leave period, they are entitled to be offered alternative employment that is not substantially worse than their previous job. As the Minister said, the new regulations will expand the time during which those protections apply up to 18 months after the birth of the child. That will mean that a mother taking the full 12-month entitlement to maternity leave or a parent taking the full 12-month adoption leave will be protected for at least six months after their return to the workplace.”
“I think it was universally accepted that it was a positive step forward, which poses the question of why we have had to wait seven years for this to be delivered. Why did we have to rely on a private Member’s Bill for it to come into law? Hundreds of thousands of workers could have benefited from the protections in the legislation had it been issued earlier. It is positive that we have finally got there, but it is reasonable to ask the Minister why it has taken us so long. I now turn to the second set of regulations, the draft Maternity Leave, Adoption Leave, and Shared Parental Leave (Amendment) Regulations. As the Minister stated, they are about the protections against being made redundant that are afforded to workers who take maternity, adoption or shared parental leave.”
“It is now not far off seven years since the Government promised to “give workers a new statutory entitlement to carer’s leave, as enjoyed in other countries”, in the 2017 Conservative general election manifesto. That was repeated in the 2019 manifesto, which stated that they would introduce the “entitlement to leave for unpaid carers, the majority of whom are women, to one week.” A promise to introduce the provisions as part of the now mythical employment Bill was made in the 2019 Queen’s Speech. A consultation was launched in March 2020, followed by a Government response a year later, but then we heard nothing more. As we know, throughout the passage of the Carer’s Leave Bill there was no opposition to its principles and no amendments were made.”
“I suggest that the way the draft regulations are framed means that the employer could, if so minded, refuse a request for whatever reason they chose, as long as they use the wording of regulation 8(b). On the face of it, under the draft regulations, there is no mechanism to challenge an employer’s decision. On reasons to postpone carer’s leave rather than refuse it—it is supposed to be operational in a month—what explanations does the Minister expect a business to produce? What measures can the Government take to ensure that consent is not withheld unreasonably? Before I move on to the second set of regulations, I will say that it is a little disappointing that we have had to wait such a long time for regulation.”
“It is also worth noting that if an employee provides less than one week’s notice, the leave could be postponed before the earliest day or part day requested in the employee’s notice. That means that there are asymmetrical notice requirements. Where an employee must provide adequate notice to proceed with their entitlement, the employer can seemingly postpone at a moment’s notice. We can all see why that that might not necessarily align with people’s caring responsibilities. Most of the time, the leave will be dependent on the care needs of the recipient, and it might not be possible to rearrange cover in such a fashion, so will the Minister accept that a balance must be struck between the needs of the carer and of the employer?”
“One possibility is that many carers do not qualify for the assessment because they are not employees. I do not know whether that has been part of the issue. I have some concerns about the mechanics of the entitlement and will ask the Minister to address those when he responds. The particular issue is the ability of an employer to postpone the leave for a period of up to one month. The regulations state that an employer is entitled to delay the take-up of leave if “their business will be unduly disrupted if the employee took carer’s leave during the period identified in the notice”. That appears rather open-ended. What constitutes a business being unduly disrupted? Will the Minister help us with that? Will there be guidance issued on that point, alongside the regulations, to clarify the circumstances in which it can be invoked?”
“As I mentioned earlier, there is a question about how many people will actually benefit. I quoted figures from Carers UK and the CIPD, which place the number of people in work who are carers at more than 5 million or at 3.7 million, respectively. The Government’s estimate of those who will benefit is substantially lower, at 1.9 million, according to page 13 of the impact assessment. That number is also alluded to in the explanatory memorandum, which states that the number of in-work carers is roughly half the total number of informal carers, which is 4.2 million. It would be useful to hear from the Minister why we have such discrepancies on the figures; after all, there are several million people between the Government’s and the CIPD’s estimates.”
“As the Minister knows, we will publish our proposals with costings when we get to the general election. However, as the Government have been considering the regulations, I want to know whether they have undertaken such an exercise. It appears they have not, and I think, given that there is apparently some financial benefit, that it is perfectly reasonable to ask why that question has not been addressed at all. I further point out that the impact assessment states that “some employees may prefer to use their annual leave for caring responsibilities, as this is an unpaid entitlement and annual leave is paid at full-pay.” That undermines the purpose that the regulations are trying to achieve, so I hope the Minister can address that in a little more detail when he responds.”
“T4. I have heard the Minister defend the reintroduction of employment tribunal fees, but the last time the Government brought them in, there was a 70% drop in applications. How many people will be denied access to justice this time?”
“The Minister’s rosy picture of the economy shows a complete lack of awareness of what is actually going on in this country. He claims that the Labour party is somehow a risk to growth, but it is his party that has taken the country into recession. That shows a complete lack of self-awareness, too. That is the nub of the matter. We are in a recession, yet the Chancellor is nowhere to be seen. I would have thought this was important enough for him to be here to answer questions. Given that growing the economy is yet another of the Prime Minister’s pledges that has not been met, who does the Minister think should carry the can for this failure: the Prime Minister or the Chancellor?”
“I want to pay tribute to my constituent Loyd, who is in the Public Gallery this morning. He is a remarkable young man. Every time the Ellesmere Port Wombles have a litter-pick he is there, come rain or shine. I also want to record my appreciation of another young constituent, Heidi, who is nine years old and who, on Sunday, will complete her cycle ride—the equivalent of London to Paris—to raise funds for Alzheimer’s Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support. She has already raised nearly £6,000, which is a fantastic achievement. There are so many other young people in my constituency and, I am sure, every other Member’s constituency who do fantastic things for their communities and for good causes. May we please have a debate to celebrate the great work that our young people do?”
“I welcome this long overdue focus on dental access. I am particularly interested in the 240 golden hellos that will be available. Clearly, they will be inadequate to deal with the scale of the challenge. I am also concerned that the focus of the statement seems to be on putting those golden hellos in rural areas. Visibility and transparency are needed about where they are allocated, because places such as Ellesmere Port have exactly the same issues as other areas in the country. We get phone calls every week from constituents asking where they can see an NHS dentist. We are not able to send them anywhere at the moment. Is the Secretary of State able to guarantee that in future we will be able to send them somewhere?”
“On the issue of police and crime commissioners, I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the appalling comments made by the Cheshire police and crime commissioner about schoolgirls wearing very short skirts. This raises huge questions about whether victims can have confidence in the justice system in Cheshire. Will he take the opportunity to distance himself from those comments and join us in calling on the PCC to resign?”
“The right hon. and learned Member makes an interesting point, but if working conditions are so poor, may I suggest that he joins a trade union?”
“Being a Minister is not easy, I am sure, but that should not distract from the fundamental issue that the treatment given to those in governmental positions is completely different from that given to the wider public—even the members of the public working in the very same Departments that those Ministers serve.”
“These are vast sums of taxpayers’ money available only to a select few, and they come with absolutely no caveats for performance, conduct or length of service. We do not disagree with the principle of loss of office payments to Ministers; like all workers, they should be entitled to some form of payment in the event of suddenly losing their job and income through no fault of their own. However, I suspect many of my constituents will not have much sympathy for that, given that those in such a position will still have their MP’s salary to fall back on, and we know that some Members have other sources of income. Those salaries are well in excess of what most of our constituents earn.”
“If damaging the economy and people’s living standards, as well as degrading our health service, councils and other public services, were not enough, this Government have also enriched themselves and cost the taxpayer close to £1 million as a result of their sheer incompetence and infighting. We have found out that Ministers—some of whom were in post for only a matter of weeks, faced serious accusations or were ineligible through age—have received handsome sums of taxpayers’ money. The question on my lips, and no doubt the lips of many of our constituents, is: why are Ministers given such special treatment? Just one day in post as a Cabinet Minister entitles an individual to £16,876 as a severance payment. For one day in the job for a Minister of State, it is £7,920. One day as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State gets them £5,594.”