Antonia Bance
MP for Tipton and Wednesbury · Labour · United Kingdom
“We all support greater production here in the UK, but the details of these tariffs need more work. Black Country MPs, such as me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), have heard huge worries from our downstream industries, including stockholders such as Amari, fabricators such as Angle Ring, and trade associatio…”
“T4. We now know what was going on in the economy before the attack on Iran. Growth was up. Unemployment was down. Borrowing was lower than forecast. The Chancellor took the right decisions and it was working. Does my right hon.”
“I thank my hon. Friend and fellow member of the Business and Trade Committee for giving way. We have sat in a number of hearings where different industries have expressed to us the competitive disadvantage that they experience because people in the industry use the gig economy or platform work to avoid responsibilities.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for this announcement, which will make a big difference to so many young people in our area of the Black Country who are looking for work or training but unable to find the opportunities they need.”
“Given the global situation, what discussions has the Chancellor had with Cabinet colleagues on helping to keep industrial energy costs manageable? Will she work with colleagues to bring in the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which would cut manufacturing energy costs by 25%, as soon as possible?”
“As a manufacturing MP and manufacturing champion from the heart of the industrial revolution—indeed, where it started—I stand here to champion our industrial strategy, and particularly the work that the Department has done, as evidenced in these estimates, to support our automotive industry: the £2.5 billion to support DRIVE35 and the tra…”
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“I proudly draw attention to my membership of the Unite union and my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I thank my friends at the GMB and ASLEF for their support of my election campaign. I am in this place to stand up for working people, and that is what I will do. The best protection anyone can have at work is the support of their workmates, organised together in a union, and bargaining with management, sitting down with them as equals at the table, and making sure that the business grows and thrives, and that everyone takes home a fair wage.”
“Standing up to huge intimidation and under huge pressure, they ran a brilliant campaign, but the deck was stacked against them, and they lost the ballot by a heartbreaking 29 votes. The GMB’s general secretary, my friend Gary Smith, is clear: if the legislation we are debating today had been in place, the GMB members at Amazon would have won their fight.”
“Amanda told us how Amazon delayed the access agreement— 52 days to agree access to the workplace, a chance for the company to swamp the workers with anti-union propaganda. All the screens in the warehouse and the app used for work allocation were anti-union, threatening to close the site if workers unionised. When the access scheme was finally agreed, the GMB got a tiny number of screens and one 45-minute session with each worker, while Amazon had five one-hour sessions and screens everywhere. It induced GMB members to leave the union and in every way impeded access. I pay tribute to the GMB leaders at Amazon in Coventry: Ceferina Floresca, Garfield Hylton, Paramanathan Pradeep and Mohammednur Mohammed—heroes, all of them.”
“BHX4 in Coventry is not a safe workplace, with fulfilment centre workers getting injured, being asked to pick up too much, to load from the back of vehicles on their own, and to lift heavy weights above their heads. Those workers at that Amazon plant were forced to take 37 days of industrial action over poverty pay. At the Select Committee, the company’s badly briefed, evasive executives could not bring themselves to acknowledge that. Recognising the GMB is a modest request, something 1,000 companies would have accepted without question, but not Amazon. At the Select Committee, the GMB organiser, Amanda Gearing, told us that Amazon flooded the bargaining unit; there were 1,400 workers when the GMB first sought statutory recognition but, strangely, just 27 days after that application went in the number went up to 2,749.”
“Most employers do not have to be forced to recognise a union—it is just what they do as a responsible employer—but where employers refuse, statutory recognition can be triggered. Until now that process has been absolutely mad and totally dysfunctional, and the cards are stacked against the working people and their union at every turn. The worst example of this in recent years is at BHX4 in Coventry where a company dedicated to keeping unions out of its warehouses brought its US-style industrial relations to the UK, and took on its own workers who wanted no more and no less than for management to have to sit down and negotiate with their union, the GMB. Amazon is a £27 billion company in the UK yet its sales are growing three times higher than its frontline workers’ wages and it has had 1,400 ambulance call-outs in just five years.”
“I do acknowledge that, every single of which will go into the pocket of a working person in improved rights and higher wages, alongside £13 billion of increased productivity, reduced stress, better employee wellbeing and reduced conflict in the workplace. On the amendments, I will start with access to workplaces, which are the key to getting more workers into unions. I strongly welcome provisions to give unions the right to access workplaces for meeting, representing, organising, recruiting and collective bargaining. I am glad the Government amended the rules to ensure they cover digital as well as physical access, and I am glad to see the Central Arbitration Committee oversight and penalties when employers do not comply, as is sometimes the case. Once a union has established membership in a workplace, it will want to seek recognition.”
“That is why the changes in this Bill to both collective rights and individual rights are so crucial, and so opposed by the Tories and the absent Reform party. This is the type of growth that my party stands for—the type of growth where proceeds are shared by all. It is time to make work pay.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank my fellow member of the Business and Trade Committee for his intervention. As he will have seen from the amendment paper, the Government are not proposing the return of secondary picketing. New schedule 2 will give unions greater protection from unfair practices during a recognition process and make winning it more likely. I wish that Ministers had gone the whole hog and deleted the three-year lockout; perhaps there will be an opportunity to take that forward. In conclusion, as a whole, this package of modern industrial relations will lead to more sitting roundtables sorting out issues, fewer picket lines, fewer strikes, more productive relationships, more long-termism across our industrial base, better jobs, higher wages, higher skills and higher productivity.”
“The hon. Member may not have had a chance to look at the Government website and encounter the document entitled “Next Steps to Make Work Pay”, which sets out a programme of continuing work to improve rights at work and parental leave and the review of employment status to come. I am sure he will be glad to hear that.”
“The hon. Member has referred a number of times to yesterday’s proceedings. I am sad that he was not able to join us in the Division Lobby in voting against the amendments and in favour of the Bill, given that 73% of his constituents in Farnham and Bordon support statutory sick pay for all workers from day one, and 67% of his constituents support banning zero-hours contracts.”
“I will help the hon. Gentleman to come back to the point. Two in three young women have experienced sexual harassment or verbal abuse in the workplace. It is important that where they are in customer-facing roles, they are protected from abuse both by their colleagues and managers and by their customers. That is particularly important if they work in a university bar, another sort of bar or a shop or retail setting. I was very pleased to have taken the first piece of evidence about the nature and extent of workplace sexual harassment when I worked for the TUC in 2015, and I am sad that it has taken us a decade to get to the point where we say, “No more sexual harassment by customers and clients.” The Conservative party could have achieved that much more quickly if it had just accepted the private Member’s Bill put forward by the hon.”
“Does the right hon. Member accept that someone choosing to take on an irregular contract when they are at the high end of the pay scale with significant professional skills and expectations for the future is very different from the endemic insecurity at the bottom of the labour market, which is where zero-hours contracts are concentrated? Some 83% of people on a zero-hours contract—”
“The hon. Member and I both serve on the Business and Trade Committee. The statistics show that the vast majority of young people do not have two years’ service and therefore have no protection from US-style “fire at will” policies. In hospitality and catering, which are industries that the hon. Member has massive concerns about, vast numbers have no protection from fire at will—overnight firing for no reason and with no process—and the Bill will outlaw that. I know that she supports fair process and fair reasons for firing, so I hope that she will support the Bill today.”
“Brendan talked to me about wheelies down Wood Green Road in Wednesbury. Jo talked to me about walking down Princes End High Street with her child: a rider raced round the bend onto the pavement in front of them and swerved back onto the road at the last minute with a load of abuse. Jayne told me about riders doing wheelies by Great Bridge island, riding all over the road, on the wrong side, jumping red lights and intimidating drivers and pedestrians.”
“They then shoot off around the roads of our estates, filling the air with the noise of engines and the smell of burning oil, endangering anyone trying to cross the road or sometimes even walk on the pavement. Residents have told me time and again how unsafe it makes them feel. I am going to share some of their stories. Other Members might have stories they wish to share, and I will happily take interventions. Ian Carroll, the chair of Friends of Sheepwash nature reserve, told me about bikers shooting down the paths and jumping off banks with young children sat on the handlebars. Christine in Great Bridge told me about tripping and falling on the ruts left by bikes. Kelly, a mum to a disabled child, told me about nearly being hit on the towpath. Matthew told me about bikes mounting the pavement and driving at him in Friar Park.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered anti-social behaviour and illegal use of off-road bikes. It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I am so pleased to secure this debate about off-road bikes and antisocial behaviour. It is great to see so many Members here today standing up for their communities against the menace of off-road bikes. Across my constituency, in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, residents have told me over and over again about what off-road bikes do to their lives. Riders scramble across parks and playing fields, turning the turf into mud, disrupting sports games, dog walkers and kids playing or riding their bikes, scaring mums with prams and scattering walkers out of the way.”
“My hon. Friend is correct. I so look forward to the Crime and Policing Bill coming forward in the next couple of weeks. It will give police the powers to seize those antisocial bikes.”
“I want to be clear that our local police, the council and our police and crime commissioner Simon Foster all know that this is a problem. Together, we are taking action on off-road bikes. In Friar Park, our No. 1 hotspot, the council leafleted every house so that people know that their tenancy is at risk if they or their kids ride illegal bikes, and it closed off the entrances to our parks and towpaths.”
“My hon. Friend is correct. By working together—the police, councils and local communities—we can stop this happening. I heard more stories, including from Terri-Ann in Hateley Heath, who told me that she is just waiting for someone to get hurt because they go so fast down Jowetts Lane and Lynton Avenue. Paul contacted me one Saturday when there were seven illegal scrambler motorbikes at the top of Brunswick Park, pulling wheelies, ripping up the grass and destroying the football pitch. They were right up close to 15 kids who were trying to play football. As he said to me, it does not bear thinking about what would have happened if one of them had crashed into a kid. This is a problem across Sandwell and in Dudley, but we have particular hotspots in Friar Park in Wednesbury and in and around Tipton Green.”
“It sounds like there is really good work going on in Stoke that the rest of us can learn from, and I encourage everyone to think about doing so. Back in my area of Friar Park, the police got petrol stations to report when bikers bought fuel. They put up temporary CCTV to spot where bikes went and when they met, and the police stepped up patrols. Our police and crime commissioner sent out his new bike team officers on new Honda CRFs, funded by cash seized from criminals, so the bikes cannot just disappear off into the woodland. All that intel meant that police could go to addresses linked to nuisance bikes, and guess what they found? Not just illegal bikes to seize and riders to arrest, but stolen goods and criminals wanted for robbery, burglary and road traffic offences.”
“We have to make sure that the police have the powers, money and kit to stop these bikes once and for all. Over the years, they have been hamstrung by huge cuts to policing from the Conservatives, meaning that we lagged far behind similar-sized forces. When Labour was elected last summer, there were fewer officers in the west midlands than in 2010—800 fewer officers and 400 fewer police community support officers. That is why I am so pleased that, after 14 years of the Tories, who wrote off these crimes as low-level and left our communities alone to deal with the consequences, things are changing under Labour. Having a neighbourhood police team who know the places, faces and times to expect trouble makes all the difference.”
“My hon. Friend is completely right. It is neighbourhood policing that will make the difference, and I am so pleased that we are bringing it back. Most of the bikes in my area are stolen and are often used for other crimes, such as robbery and drug dealing. But this sort of targeted action works, and police reports of nuisance bikes in Friar Park, our biggest hotspot, have halved this year compared with last year. They are still not gone completely, and there is more work to do, but I want to say thank you to the police officers and the Sandwell council teams who got on this issue and kept on it. There is still more to do to spread this approach across my constituency to all the estates blighted by illegal bikes and ASB—from Tipton Green, Princes End, Great Bridge, Ocker Hill, Hateley Heath and Tantany, to Stone Cross and Coseley, too.”
“I absolutely agree. Chelsea and Fulham may be some way from my constituency, but councils and the police working together, and consistency of approach, is precisely what will make the difference, just as he outlined.”
“I absolutely agree. Digging up pavements, creating ruts, noise and disturbance, and shooting around the corner with no warning are precisely the sorts of things that may make elderly people afraid for their safety when they are out and about, which is something that none of us wants. That is why, as we promised when we stood for election, we will recruit 13,000 extra neighbourhood police officers. Every area will have a named officer. Neighbourhood policing is coming back and we are returning funding to frontline policing, with an overall police funding increase of £1.1 billion this year. In my area of the west midlands, that is £43 million, and I hope that there is more to come. Our new Crime and Policing Bill will give police new powers to immediately seize these bikes, which cause havoc in our communities.”
“At the election, I stood on doorstep after doorstep, sometimes with bikes roaring down the street behind me, telling residents that Labour would stop them. I am prouder than I can tell you to say: today we will.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. His work and leadership on this issue are exemplary, and I know that Ministers will have taken note of what he said when presenting his ten-minute rule Bill. Our Crime and Policing Bill will say, “No more warnings” and “No more selling them back to the people they were pinched from”—it is time to crush illegal bikes used for antisocial behaviour. This Government are taking real action, just as we promised at the election, to stop these bikes making people’s lives a misery, so that people living nearby can enjoy Brunswick Park, Jubilee Park, Victoria Park, the Cracker and the Railer, Sheepwash nature reserve, our playing fields, our towpaths and all our green spaces across Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley.”
“My hon. Friend is eloquent in setting out the skills challenges of the Black Country. My constituency neighbours hers, and locally 40% of jobs need level 4 skills, but only 16% of people have those skills. That is the challenge we face locally. Does she agree that Skills England should be set up and based in an area of the country that desperately needs a skills upgrade, such as the Black Country?”
“The Minister has set out how we delivered £2 billion-worth of support for the automotive sector in the Budget. That support is both for manufacturing and for the crucial supply chains in places such as my Black Country constituency and Oxford. Is she able to set out any further details about how that money will be used to support our brilliant manufacturing?”
“That is why I am so worried about the fact that there were only 24,000 construction apprenticeship starts last year. Secondly, I want us to prioritise level 3 and 4 apprenticeships, because that is where the wages premium really is. Just 17% of people in my constituency have level 4 skills, but 40% of the jobs on offer need those skills. Finally, the mandatory grade 4 English and maths at GCSE continues to be a barrier to young people accessing apprenticeships in my constituency. The perpetual resits are so dispiriting. I bow to no one in my belief that working-class kids need qualifications, but there has to be a better way. I hope the Minister has some answers for me.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) for securing the debate. I am a proud manufacturing MP from the Black Country. I represent Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, where manufacturing still makes up 25% of the jobs available, but we have two and a half times the national average of people with no qualifications. I want to make three points. First, I want our skills strategy to prioritise manufacturing, engineering and construction in line with the industrial strategy. We do not want to see welding, bricklaying and retrofitting on the Migration Advisory Committee’s shortage occupation list, because we want to grow our own. We want to build 1.5 million new homes with new construction workers brought in through construction apprenticeships.”
“T3. The Government were elected on a promise to buy, make and sell more in Britain. What action is the Minister taking to prioritise UK manufacturing and UK-made steel in public procurement for energy and defence products on national security grounds, as is allowed by the World Trade Organisation?”
“Does the Attorney General’s experience, having served both as a distinguished advocate and now as a Law Officer, not make him uniquely qualified to uphold the rule of law and advise the Government appropriately?”
“I was disappointed to hear of plans to close the Old Chainyard pub in Coseley in my constituency to make way for yet another convenience store. Will the Leader of the House give her support to campaigners in Coseley fighting the closure of their local, and will the Government make time for a debate on the vital role of local pubs in local communities?”
“Last summer’s Labour manifesto included the words “Fully costed, fully funded—built on a rock of fiscal responsibility”, and they were words on which I was proud to be elected. Money resolutions are normally a formality, but not this one—not today. This resolution asks us to give a blank cheque to this Bill, which makes me nervous, because that sounds like something that we in this changed Labour party just do not do. When we put forward a proposal for public spending, we know how we will fund it.”
“No, I will not. In the case of this Bill, we not only do not know how much it will cost or how it will be paid for, but we do not even know what the money will be spent on. Let us think of the questions that we do not know the answers to. What will be the cost of NHS doctors attending the final appointment and waiting while their patient dies? What will be the cost of a second doctor to sign off? What drugs will be used, and how much will they cost? Will assisted dying happen in hospitals, in hospices or in new, purpose-built facilities? How many will there be, and where?”
“No. How much will those facilities cost? There are even bigger questions, too. Will this be an NHS service, or will we be contracting private providers? If it is an NHS service, which of my constituents will have to wait longer for an operation or a GP appointment because this Parliament will today authorise massive, unspecified spending in our cash-strapped NHS?”
“I will not—I have only a little time. It is not just the health system that will take on new costs. Our civil courts are groaning under the strain of years of Tory underfunding, although my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary is doing a brilliant job of putting our court system back to rights. However, this Bill will impose new unfunded and unknown costs on our courts. It blithely assumes that judges and courts will be available, yet the waiting time for a family court case at the moment is 10 months. That just will not work for the Bill. How much will the extra spending on courts cost?”
“Alongside others, the Minister is a member of the Public Bill Committee, and I thank him and all members of the Committee for their work on behalf of this House, scrutinising and seeking wisdom. I particularly thank the Minister for upholding the neutrality of this Government and our party towards the Bill in his acts on the Committee and in this House. Those of us with concerns will not push this resolution to a vote today. I know that colleagues are desperate for there to be procedural game playing, but there is no such thing; there are in principle concerns and questions about practicalities. I do hope for some answers to my questions.”
“I will not. Those are all reasonable questions, and this House deserves to have many more answers than it has so far been able to get. According to the Hansard Society, “To table a money motion, the Government must therefore assess how much money will be required and have some idea about where the funding will come from, although it is not required to set this out in the motion itself.” That information is not in the motion, so will Ministers make that assessment available and set out where the funding will come from? I am glad to hear we have a timetable for the impact assessment, but it would be good also to see the delegated powers memorandum, given the scale of powers delegated to Ministers in the Bill.”
“7. What steps she plans to take to help protect the steel industry from high-emission steel being diverted away from the EU to the UK following confirmation of the UK carbon border adjustment mechanism for 2027.”
“Newby Foundries and Alucast in my constituency of Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley have raised with me the impact of the UK CBAM coming into effect later than, and differing from, the EU CBAM. This could threaten domestic steel production and make the export of metal products to the EU more difficult. Can the Minister please support the UK’s steel and metal finishing industries by reassuring me that the UK CBAM will not be weaker than the EU CBAM, and will he meet me and other steel MPs to discuss this?”
“I spent the pandemic as a trade unionist at the TUC, supporting Frances, now Baroness, O’Grady in her fight for the rights to safety of working people. The covid inquiry heard time and again about the impact of the pandemic on those with low wages and insecure work—people who had to go into work even when it was not safe because otherwise they could not feed their families, and who were disproportionately from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Will the Minister ensure that the new national vulnerability map treats insecure workers as vulnerable for the purpose of crisis planning and resilience, and will he ensure that the unions are key stakeholders in building that resilience in the UK?”
“Twenty-seven per cent of working-age people in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley rely on universal credit. I welcome the fair repayment rate announced in the Budget, but a major reason for benefit debt is the design flaw in universal credit, which means that claimants must wait five weeks for their first payment. Will the Minister confirm that the five-week wait will be considered in the review of universal credit?”
“I thank the Justice Secretary for that answer. In common with many Members of the House, I have heard horrific stories of perpetrators breaching orders to which they are subject, giving them further opportunity to terrorise, injure, or in some cases kill women protected by those orders—may Harshita Brella and so many others rest in peace. What action is the Justice Secretary taking to assess and improve the effectiveness of civil orders in safeguarding survivors of domestic abuse?”
“The plan for change is clear. This Government will restore order to the asylum and immigration system, clear the asylum backlog, end the use of hotels, increase returns and cut small boat crossings. Does the Minister agree that this plan stands in stark contrast to the open borders policy that the Conservative party subjected the country to?”
“I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a member of Unite the union. I thank the Secretary of State for coming to the House on such a difficult day for the car industry, and all our thoughts are with the workers in Luton today. I thank him for the work he is doing in engaging with the industry and with unions on a better way forward on electric vehicle targets. This news is really disappointing, but does he agree that we can and should be positive about the future of the automotive industry in this country? It matters to me locally as the MP for many businesses in the automotive supply chain, as I know it also matters to many Members across the House.”
“I wish to associate myself with the comments that have been made about the scourge of illegal motorbikes. They are a particular scourge in communities across Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley. One of my favourite pledges in the Labour party’s manifesto was the pledge to seize those bikes without notice and crush them within 48 hours. Can the Minister tell us how soon we will get on with crushing the bikes?”
“One of the last Government’s best policies was the introduction of a £20 additional uplift to universal credit during the pandemic. It stopped poverty growing in its tracks and showed the impact of increasing access to money—not to be facile—on poverty. Does the hon. Member share my hope that the Government will bring forward their review of universal credit, as promised in the Labour manifesto?”
“According to last month’s Skills for Care report, most care workers are paid only a couple of pennies above the national minimum wage, while the sector cannot recruit and retain the people it needs. Will the Minister set out the timetable for establishing the fair pay agreement and adult social care negotiating body, and will he give the House an assurance that the care trade unions will be closely involved in its design?”
“On 2 and 3 November, a massive burst water main in my constituency left 8,000 homes without water for more than 12 hours. The response of the water company, South Staffs Water, was slow, ineffective and secretive. Will the Minister remind South Staffs Water, and all water companies, of their responsibilities to help residents and work with local stakeholders following an incident?”