Employment Rights Bill

Antonia Bance Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kate Dearden]

I listen to the Conservatives again and again as they come to the Chamber—they have done it again today—and talk down what was a clear manifesto commitment of this Bill.

[Antonia Bance (Tipton and Wednesbury) (Lab)]

I am sure the Minister is coming on to this in her speech, but it might be worth reiterating, for the benefit of those on the Opposition Benches, that the best way to avoid having to pay compensation for unfair dismissal is to avoid unfairly dismissing someone in the first place.

[Kate Dearden]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, as she always does, and I thank her for it.

To conclude, we are seeking the support of the House so that we can finally secure Royal Assent and move towards implementing our long-overdue reforms to make work pay. Today’s correspondence from business representatives to the Secretary of State states that British business believes that

“now is the time for Parliament to pass the Bill.”

I urge Members across the House to reflect on that comment, on our election mandate from last year and on all the work and consideration that has been put into this Bill so far in both Houses. I thank all colleagues for their work, and I commend this motion to the House.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

The concerns that we Conservatives have with the Bill have long been known, and I accept that we have debated them at length. I will not repeat them all today, because we are not here to debate the whole Bill, just the message sent to us from the other place.

There was a time when the Labour party would have cared about protecting jobs and those who wanted one. There was a time when Labour believed, as we do, in the dignity of work and what that meant for families and communities—a Christian socialism, if you like, rather than the state worship that seems to have replaced it. I cannot honestly think of a previous Government who would ever have passed this Bill—certainly not since the 1970s. The result, whether Labour likes it or not, is that day by day, week by week, month by month, people are losing their jobs.

This Christmas there will be 192,000 fewer people in private sector payrolled employment than last Christmas, and who knows what it will be like next Christmas. We have the worst ever graduate jobs market. Adzuna estimates that jobs for degree holders have fallen by 33%. Labour used to care about youth unemployment, but for those aged between 16 and 24 unemployment has now reached 15%, according to the Office for National Statistics. As has been the case every month so far under this Government, tomorrow morning we are likely to hear that the rate of unemployment is higher.

This Bill could have been on the statute book today, but for one simple reason: a gross betrayal of trust. The small group of business groups that Ministers invited in for tea and sandwiches took this Government at their word.

[Antonia Bance]

I wonder if the hon. Gentleman would like to tell the House which of these business groups he disagrees with and that he thinks we should not listen to today, because these are the groups telling us and peers in the other place that we should be voting for the Bill. Does he disagree with the British Chambers of Commerce or the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development? Does he disagree with the Confederation of British Industry, with the Federation of Small Businesses, with the Recruitment and Employment Confederation or with Small Business Britain?

[Andrew Griffith]

The hon. Lady would have been wise to contain her excitement, because I agree with all of those groups in their letter today, which the Minister selectively quoted; she did not quote them saying that they are not in favour of removing the cap. I have spoken to each and every organisation that was in the room, and they are crystal clear, with one group saying:

“That was not a concession discussed with us or agreed by us in the negotiations”.

I invite the Minister to intervene on me if she thinks that a word of what I say is wrong. She is misquoting, and it is misrepresenting those business groups that do not support the cap.

Why would any sane Government scrap the cap entirely? Indeed, this Government themselves did not for 13 and a half of the 14 months that we have been debating this Bill. It was not in the manifesto or the Bill or the impact assessment. It was not considered by the Regulatory Policy Committee, and it was never discussed in this House until Ministers threw it in at the last moment in a breach of trust of the business groups with which they negotiated.