Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Ashley Fox

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Our Government created 4 million new jobs. This Government have lost jobs every single month they have been in office.

The points that the right hon. Lady makes are not those we are debating. There is one issue in front of us, which is Labour’s desire to defend and remove a cap of £118,000. That has nothing to do with ordinary workers. What does it say about today’s modern Labour party that its focus, and the whole reason why we are back here and the compromise was not accepted, is its desire to remove a cap of £118,000, which will only ever benefit the better off?

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the shadow Minister recall that in 1999 when the Blair Government increased the cap, they held a consultation beforehand, and that in 2015 when the coalition Government introduced a cap, they held a consultation beforehand? Why are this Government behaving differently?

[Andrew Griffith]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I hope somebody on the Labour Benches will address. We have seen no analysis and we have no idea of the cost of this measure. Not a single business—not a single person who employs people—has come out and endorsed the removal of the cap. It is beyond me, I am afraid.

Yet what is happening in our employment tribunals? On Friday, as I am sure the Minister knows, it was revealed that the delay and backlogs at the employment tribunal have reached their highest ever level. At the end of the most recent quarter, there were 515,000 open claims. Before anyone intervenes, let me say that I accept that much of that was inherited—[Interruption.] But before Labour Members laugh: the Government are making it worse. Merely since the Bill was introduced to this place, the claims backlog has increased by 65,000. They are doing nothing to address the backlog, which is going up every single month—I do not think they have even discussed it with their calamity of a Justice Secretary —and we know that they have carried out no impact assessment. It is extraordinary. The scrapping of the compensation cap for the highest paid will simply stoke the fire.

I make it a rule not to learn lessons in how to run an economy from France, but even France introduced a cap on tribunal payments to tackle unemployment and encourage labour market dynamism. Perhaps we should take advice from closer to home: today the Health Secretary seems to be no fan at all of giving more powers to unaccountable unions.

Business and the Economy

Debate between Andrew Griffith and Ashley Fox

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith]

Let us hope that the Minister does indeed have an answer. I am somebody who always travels optimistically, and though we have sparred on the important subject of the 300-page, 120,000-word Employment Rights Bill, it is never too late. That Bill is undergoing scrutiny in the other House as we speak, and the Opposition would welcome and support the Government’s shelving it until we have dealt with the cacophony of headwinds that my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) talked about earlier, including the changes to the tax system and other changes; the damage that has already been inflicted on the economy; the headwinds on costs that we saw this morning, with inflation 75% higher than the Bank of England’s target rate, which will mean that interest rates are higher for longer; and the failure to reform business rates. There is an opportunity to revisit bringing forward specific proposals on employment to enduringly reduce business rates, if the Government feel a burning desire to do so.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) is quite right: would it not be good if the Minister could use the ample time that we have this afternoon to consult, and to bring forward some sensible answers that will give us all confidence that we are going to see a Government who are properly on the side of business?

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that the cumulative effect of all the Government’s measures over the past 12 months—a £25 billion jobs tax, the £5 billion burden of the Employment Rights Bill, the removal of business property relief, which is reducing the incentive to be an entrepreneur—will be to drive unemployment higher?

[Andrew Griffith]

Of course, I agree with my hon. Friend, but it does not actually matter what I or others think, because the reality is that the data does not lie. As of now, we have 100,000 fewer people on payroll than we did 12 months ago, so the data is already telling us about the cumulative chilling effect of those measures.

That is perhaps unintended. We learn today that the Chancellor and the Deputy Prime Minister are at odds, and perhaps the Business Secretary is the third leg on that stool, with each of them bringing forward measures that are enormously damaging to business. They are perhaps not adding up the sums and seeing eye to eye to understand the lived experience of what it is like to be a business on the receiving end of all of those changes, cumulatively and all at the same time.

Many businesses will, from the start of April this year, not only face a payroll increase of around 10%—in an economy without such a level of topline growth, so that hits margins directly—but, because of the failure of the Government to maintain business rates relief at anything like the same level for our retail, hospitality and leisure, have seen their business rates double. Imagine that all hitting a business on 1 April this year.