Employment Rights Bill

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

For the final Back-Bench contribution, I call Anneliese Midgley.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding my membership of and financial support from the trade union movement.

I stand here as a proud trade unionist, with a couple of decades of work behind me standing up for the working class. I pay the truest of tributes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders).

[Ian Lavery (Blyth and Ashington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about some hon. and right hon. Friends and the work that lots of people have done to bring this transformational Bill to the Commons. We also need to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) for his tremendous work at the very beginning of this process. It is transformational and everybody deserves lots of credit.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Success has many mothers.

[Anneliese Midgley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I absolutely agree with him about the work that my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East has done on this for over a decade.

This Bill brings changes that tip the scale in favour of working people and, taken together with the rest of the new deal for working people, it amounts to the greatest uplift in workers’ rights in our generation. That is down to the friends that I have just mentioned here today. It is their legacy and it is one that will change the lives of millions of working-class people for the better. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), will do a great job of completing the process.

This is personal for me, because it was my dad’s secure, well-paid, unionised job on the production line in Ford’s Halewood plant that gave me a better life than my mum and dad had. It lifted us out of poverty and provided us with enough money and stability for a decent home, and enough to live a life of dignity on. Everyone should have that, and that is why I will fight for work where people can flourish and thrive and for jobs to take pride in that can provide a good life. No way would I be here in this place, representing the place where I was born and raised, if it was not for my dad’s job.

The Tories, backed by the Lib Dems in the other place, are trying to water down the Bill. They are aided and abetted by Reform, who are never in this place to debate this and have consistently voted against the Bill. Some of the Lords amendments would rip out the heart of the Bill. I am going to speak briefly to amendments 23 and 106 to 120, which would delay protections from unfair dismissal until a worker had been in their job for six months. This would mean that a worker could be dismissed at whim, for no reason. How is this okay? How is it defensible? A day one right not to be unfairly dismissed is good for workers and good for businesses.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) spoke about the research from the IPPR and the TUC, which found that 73% of employers supported giving employees protection from unfair dismissal from day one of employment. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), dismissed the TUC’s research from the Dispatch Box, but it represents 5 million workers and everyone else at work. Are they not stakeholders who should be listened to as well? We know that good employers up and down the country already live up to the standards that we are setting out in this Bill. Today, we need to stop these attempts to water down the Employment Rights Bill, deliver the protections from unfair dismissal that our constituents voted for and make sure we deliver the new deal for working people in full.

[Kate Dearden]

I thank all Members for their brilliant contributions today and for their engagement with the Bill throughout the many months we have been debating it. That is incredibly appreciated and valued.

I start by reiterating a quote from Professor Simon Deakin at the Cambridge University centre for business:

“strengthening employment laws in this country in the last 50 years has had pro-employment effects. The consensus on the economic impacts of labour laws is that, far from being harmful to growth, they contribute positively to productivity.”

I remind the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), who made a number of contributions, of my opening remarks. UK employment laws are mostly a product of the 20th century. They have not kept pace with how businesses employ people or with how people experience their working lives today: when, how and where they work. The world of work has fundamentally changed in recent years. It is regrettable that the hon. Gentleman’s party spent 14 years impotently watching the rise of the gig economy and the many changes in our employment landscape but now pretends that the status quo still works for everyone. It simply does not. That is why the Bill is so important: it raises those standards and levels the playing field for businesses, so that they are not undercut by people who do not play by the rules, which negatively impacts their businesses and productivity. The Bill is important for working people so that they get that security and those rights at work, as well as for businesses, including those good businesses that already go above and beyond and do brilliant work supporting our workforce and different economies across the country.

The shadow Minister mentioned seasonal work. The initial reference period will be set out in regulations, as I have already spoken to. I reiterate that we believe that 12 weeks is the right length, balancing the need for qualifying workers to be offered those guaranteed hours reasonably soon after they start a role and the need for a reference period long enough to establish the hours that they regularly work.

I was surprised to hear the remarks from the shadow Minister on employment tribunals. On their watch, average wait times for an employment claimant increased by 60% between 2010 and 2022 due to funding cuts. The previous Government’s introduction of fees had a disproportionate impact on woman and the low-paid. Yet again, we are fixing messes that they left behind. The taskforce I mentioned in my introductory speech for how we can fix our employment tribunal system, and our work under the Fair Work Agency, which will be up and running next year, are incredibly important as part of that wider package.