Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 20th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I join the great queue of people congratulating the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) on bringing this hugely important private Member’s Bill forward today and on all the work he has done on it. I also congratulate all the hon. Members who are here to support it. I thank and congratulate Bliss, the charity Working Families and the all-party parliamentary group on premature and sick babies for all the work they have done to campaign for this legislation, which will help so many families across the country. With all the Members lining up to support the Bill, it begs the question as to why it has taken so long to get here, when it has been promised for many years. Labour is absolutely committed to supporting it and to extending statutory maternity and paternity leave. The need for it could not be more real or more acute.

As colleagues have noted, the Bill will bring in an entitlement to neonatal leave for both parents while a baby is receiving hospital care for parents who qualify for maternity, paternity or adoption leave. It will introduce an entitlement to neonatal pay for parents who meet minimum service and earning requirements. That means in practice that qualifying parents will be entitled to additional leave and pay if their baby spends at least seven days being cared for in a health setting—or other place, as has been outlined—before they reach 28 days of life. It will also mean that qualifying parents will be entitled to up to 12 weeks’ paid leave, and that leave will be taken after maternity, paternity, adoption and bereavement leave, and may be taken within 68 weeks of first admission to neonatal care.

I also welcome the employment protections in the Bill, including protection from dismissal or detriment as a result of having to take leave at this stressful time of a parent’s life. I remember my shock, after my third child was born, on being told that he would have to be taken into the special care baby unit. You just do not plan for that. Birth cannot really be planned—I do not know why women are asked to fill in a birth plan, but that is another issue—because what actually happens can change very rapidly. There is a moment when, instead of what you thought was going to happen—having family come around to visit your child and take them home—you are suddenly consumed with worry about what will happen. I am grateful to Members who have spoken about their own personal circumstances, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who has supported neonatal care leave ever since she was elected. Her story and that of her son Sulley shows the need for this legislation to enable parents to focus on care for their children and not to worry about whether they can take leave, if they will be paid or if even they will be dismissed.

The Bill will come as a huge relief for parents across the country. According to Bliss, the charity for babies born prematurely or ill, around 70% of families with a significant neonatal stay had at least one parent return to work while their baby was still in hospital. Bliss also found that 60% of fathers and non-birthing partners had to return to work while their baby was still receiving specialist neonatal care, and that 36% of dads resorted to being signed off sick in order to spend time with their baby on the neonatal unit. I think that is why the Bill is welcomed by businesses that are trying to get around that in other ways. This will be much more straightforward and clear for all concerned.

Some 24% of fathers said they were concerned for their job if they asked for more time off, 77% of parents felt their parental leave was not long enough, and half of all parents would have liked to take more parental leave but could not afford to take any more time off. Shockingly, 11% of parents left their jobs due to having insufficient leave after their baby was admitted to neonatal care. That is not good for them and not good for businesses either. Thankfully, many return home with their families after just a few days of care, but as we have heard, around 50,000 babies spend more than a week in neonatal care every year.

There is clinical evidence to suggest that babies in neonatal care have better outcomes when their parents are involved in providing hands-on or skin-to-skin care while they are in hospital. The neonatal environment is stressful, and parents need time to bond and adjust. Some babies will also have significant ongoing needs once they return home and may not be ready to be left in childcare by the time parents have to start work again. Yet every year thousands of parents have to return to work when their baby is still critically ill, relying on other family members, friends and support from elsewhere to enable them to continue their care and their work. Also, some babies will spend many weeks or months receiving care on the neonatal unit before they are well enough to go home. This means many parents use large amounts, or even all, of their leave entitlement before their baby goes home, and once they go home they have to face all that need for leave as well.

Many employers are understanding. As has been said, many do the right thing and follow best practice in this area, and the majority of businesses have shown support for making expectations for this leave clear and the ability for them to reclaim a percentage of statutory pay. The Bill will mean that parents will not have to rely on good will or the views of different managers, and they will not fear repercussions, because they can be assured of leave and protection from dismissal.

I want to end by asking the Minister a number of questions, while I have his attention here on a Friday morning. First, while it is welcome to see a number of private Members’ Bills progressing workers’ rights, does the Minister not believe that measures such as those we are discussing today would be best brought forward as a comprehensive employment Bill in this Parliament? It was announced in the Queen’s Speech in December 2019 but has been missing in action ever since. Today we will discuss the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill. The Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill has already been supported, and the Carer’s Leave Bill has been passed, but the Fertility Treatment (Employment Rights) Bill remains a private Member’s Bill. All these pieces of legislation and more could be addressed in one place, much more comprehensively and clearly: an employment Bill.

Secondly, legislation to improve workers’ rights is vital, but without strong enforcement, unscrupulous employers will continue to break the law. Can the Minister update the House on what progress is being made on a single enforcement body for workers’ rights, to protect against discrimination?

Thirdly, the absence of neonatal leave is just one barrier that expectant and new mothers face in the workplace. What steps are the Government taking to tackle discrimination in the workplace against women and ensure that no one is discriminated against for having a child?

Fourthly, maternal and paternal leave is critical to new parents, but the UK’s statutory allowances and shared parental leave system leave much to be desired. Will the Government extend statutory maternity and paternity leave and urgently review the shared parental leave system, to give parents the time they need with their new baby? This is all part of the reason why the Bill has been brought forward.

It is often the trade unions that are on the frontline against unscrupulous employers, supporting parents and making sure they receive their rights—rights that are being extended today—but the thanks they get from this Government for protecting workers is a constant barrage of attack and some of the strictest trade union laws in Europe. I am proud to work alongside our unions. Will the Minister stop the Government’s attempts to undermine trade unions, such as those we saw earlier this week?

Let me end by thanking the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East again for spearheading this fantastic piece of legislation. He and parents across the country can rest assured that it has the full support of the Labour party.

Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 20th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) and the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell) on all their work on this Bill. It will make such a difference to so many people across the country, and I declare an interest, because it will make a difference for two of my older children who are working in and out of the hospitality industry and are very interested in the progress of the Bill.

The Bill is righting a wrong of many decades. When I was a waitress in a hotel, I had to drive home at the end of my shift. I was the most junior member of staff, and all the other staff lived in the hotel and would drink the tips at the end of every night, so I would not get any of those tips. I was not able to ask my employer for a written copy of the policy on tips, and I was not able to find out what my share of the tips would be. I have felt for quite a long time that that was an injustice, and I am glad that the Bill will right the many injustices that are happening on a daily basis across the country.

I support rewarding customer service and transparency and confidence for businesses, customers and employees alike. This is fairer for businesses that do the right thing. It is fairer for people who tip and expect it to go to the worker; as many Members have said, lots of things are not clear about that at the moment, and I hope it will be much clearer in future. It is also fairer for the employee, who will get the money that has been given by customers for the work they have done. Labour supports the Bill, and I am pleased to see that the Government are behind it as well. It also has the support of unions—especially the GMB, which has been campaigning on this for a long time—and UKHospitality.

Like other Members, I am surprised that there is no law on tips at the moment. However, as I said in the previous debate, this measure should have been in a comprehensive employment Bill, which has been promised time and again by Government. It is disgraceful that all this time, hospitality workers and workers in the beauty industry have been cheated out of their money. It is clear that some hospitality workers are not getting their tips, with companies instead using them to subsidise other workers’ wages, to pay for accidents such as unpaid customer bills or to pay for so-called administration costs that are very opaque. In 2015, evidence was found that two thirds of employers in hospitality were making deductions from staff tips, in some cases of 10%. With the pandemic and more people paying by card not cash, there are well-founded concerns that workers not receiving tips in full is becoming standard practice, so this law is very timely.

The Government have repeatedly promised to tackle this issue but failed to do so until now. They published a call for evidence in 2013, which showed broad support for action on fair tipping. They then promised this measure at the Conservative party conference in 2018 and in the 2019 Conservative party manifesto, and they committed to include it in the employment Bill in December 2019, but that was dropped from the last two Queen’s Speeches. In the meantime, the latest figures suggest that staff may have lost over £1 billion of tips while waiting for this legislation over the last five years.

Frontline workers in pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, hairdressers and beauty salons are often the lowest paid. With the Tories’ cost of living crisis worsening by the week, every penny counts, and we desperately need this legislation. In 2020, members of Unite the union at the Ivy tried to lodge a collective grievance against their employer on a number of issues, including withholding tips, but with no formally legally backed process to take the complaint forward, this was dismissed.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for his speech highlighting how important the Bill will be for so many of his constituents, especially for the hospitality sector and for students, and I agree with him. I am proud that it was a Labour Government who, in 2009, first intervened in this issue to make it illegal for tips to contribute to the national minimum wage, just as I am proud that, some years earlier, it was the Labour Government who introduced the national minimum wage itself.

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Lady is right to congratulate the previous Labour Government on introducing the national minimum wage. Does she also agree that it is good news that the Low Pay Commission report has produced details showing that between 2019 and 2022, young people had the largest increase in wages? It was a 25% increase for 16 and 17-year-olds, compared with 11% for those over 23. Does she agree that that is very good news indeed?

[Fleur Anderson]

An increase in the national minimum wage is very good news. I remain proud that it was the Labour Government who first brought that in and did not drag their feet for years and years over it.

Back then, too many bad bosses were using tips, which should be a voluntary extra to top up basic pay, as has been underlined by so many Members today. Once again, Labour has been ahead of the curve on this issue. The shadow Secretary of State for the future of work, my good colleague and right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), committed last year to stamp out unfair tipping practices, including through many of the provisions included in this Bill; to ensure that all tips, gratuities and service charge payments are allocated to workers in full without deductions; and to ensure that a written policy is produced to make it clear to staff how all tips are allocated, and for those tips to be paid in full at the end of the month following the payment.

Labour will ensure that tips are allocated fairly through a tronc, which is genuinely independent of the business, and we will announce proposals to allow exploited workers to lodge any workplace grievances collectively—a right denied to many hospitality workers seeking the return of deducted tips. A Labour Government will deliver for working people, ending unjust deductions and ensuring that workers themselves decide how tips are distributed.

In conclusion, I have a few questions for the Minister. First, we have before us another Bill on workers’ rights, following the passage of the previous Bill on workers’ rights. If the Government are to introduce an employment Bill effectively through supporting piecemeal private Members’ Bill such as this, which parts of the original employment Bill are they going to drop?

Secondly, many workers end up on the end of already illegal practices while at work. Without stronger enforcement of standards, there is a real risk of Bills such as this failing to meet their potential. I thank the Minister for his earlier response about the consultation on a single enforcement body. Does he believe that such a body for workers’ rights would help to enhance people’s ability to get justice against unscrupulous employers?

Thirdly, measures to strengthen the rights of hospitality workers are welcome, but ONS statistics from May last year show that nearly 25% of workers in the food and accommodation sectors are on zero-hours contracts. Hospitality workers desperately need security and flexibility, so will the Minister commit today to banning these one-sided, unfair zero-hours contracts?

I close by congratulating the hon. Member for Ynys Môn on getting this Bill so far. It will have a massive impact. It has our support and I wish her the very best in the remaining stages.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

We can make sure that we have a better focus on renewables, and we can take the decisions that work best for our communities. Fundamentally, we are maintaining and enhancing. We must not forget that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been able to introduce substantial law on water, animals and land. I have covered the dashboard, and I assume colleagues will now be pouncing on it.

Departments have been actively working on their retained EU law reform plans for well over 18 months to ensure that appropriate action is taken before the sunset date. Additional work to lift obsolete laws will inevitably be slow, but that work will continue. We cannot allow the reform of retained EU law to remain merely a possibility. The sunset provision guarantees that retained EU law will not become an ageing relic dragging down the UK. It incentivises the genuine review and reform of retained EU law in a way that works best for the UK. What reforms are desirable will differ from policy area to policy area.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said on Second Reading, the environment is one of the Government’s top priorities. We will ensure that environmental law works for the UK and improves our environmental outcomes. As I said, we will be maintaining and enhancing. The Bill does not change the Environment Act, and we remain committed to delivering our legally binding target to halt nature’s decline by 2030.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Many constituents have been in touch with me with their concerns about habitat protection, maternity leave protection and other issues. The National Archives says that 1,300 additional pieces of legislation are not necessarily in scope. Can the Minister give more clarity on how many pieces of legislation this Bill will cover?

[Ms Ghani]

We are working across Departments to cover laws that will either be assimilated, amended or revoked. We are finding that a number of those laws are obsolete, and the fact we are still identifying them is good. We are putting them on the dashboard as soon as we can, and we will update the dashboard again this month. It is right that we conduct this exercise to know where we are and to ensure that we refer to UK law where we assimilate, and that we amend it to improve the situation for our communities and businesses. If the laws are not operable in the UK, we can revoke them.

The hon. Lady mentioned maternity rights, which is one of the unfortunate misinformation campaigns on this Bill. I struggle with the fact that colleagues are sharing misinformation, as people who may be vulnerable are made more vulnerable by such misinformation. The UK has one of the best workers’ rights records in the world, and our high standards were never dependent on our membership of the EU.

Indeed, the UK provides far stronger protections for workers than are required by EU law. For example, UK workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of annual leave compared with the EU requirement of four weeks—we are doing better here. We provide a year of maternity leave, with the option to convert it to shared parental leave. The EU requirement for maternity leave is just 14 weeks—we are doing better here. The right to flexible working for all employees was introduced in the UK in the early 2000s, whereas the EU agreed its rules only recently and offers the right only to parents and carers—we are doing better here. The UK introduced two weeks’ paid paternity leave back in 2003. Who can remember then? The EU legislated for this only recently—once again, we are doing better here. I ask Members please not to hold up Brussels as a bastion of virtue, as that is most definitely not the case.

Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill (First sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Davies. It is a real pleasure to be here for this Bill Committee—what a great start to the day! I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East again for bringing the Bill this far, for her relentless campaigning and for not giving up on a Bill that will, as she said, make a difference to millions of people across the country. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn for all her campaigning and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central for the campaigning she outlined.

So many people have campaigned for the Bill here in the House and outside it. I thank the TUC, the Pregnant Then Screwed campaign, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s “Flex From 1st” campaign and the Multiple Sclerosis Society, to name just a few of the campaigning organisations that will be cheering us on from around the country today, because they know the difference this will make to working people.

This is a huge step towards the right to work flexibly being enshrined in law and to tacking the employment gap that exists for carers, women, people with disabilities and low earners. This is good for employers and good for employees. There is a chronic shortage of workers in many areas of employment, and the Bill will go a long way towards bringing people back to the workplace and giving people confidence that their flexibility needs, many of which will be non-negotiable for them, will be able to be heard, understood and acted on by employers.

In my own working life, I have seen the need for this flexibility many times. I have had four children and returned from maternity leave four times. Every single time, my children are well and fine until my first day back at work, when they suddenly get ill, and it is at the beginning of my return to work that I need flexibility most. That is why this being a day one right is so important. After that, I get back into the routine, my children get into the routine, and off we go—it is fine—but it is the return to work that I have always found the hardest; I do not know why that always happened, but I cannot be alone.

I have also seen in my working life how a move from one workplace to another triggered anxiety and mental health issues for someone. I was able to arrange flexible working for him, with time off and then a slow return to work, working in different places; it was about what worked for him. He has now been working in that place of employment for years, but he only needed that flexibility right at the beginning. As a manager, I was able to accommodate that, but agreeing it with my managers was not entirely easy, and it was not seen as a right. Having the right to ask for flexible working from day one will be so important for those kinds of cases and so many others.

I was reassured by the Minister’s answers to many of the questions that I was going to ask. Ensuring that this is a day one right and seeing that in the secondary legislation will be very reassuring to us all. Another issue is moving at pace. It has been a year since the consultation closed. I have heard the Minister say that this will go through in the course of next year and be enacted early in the year after. Could it be sooner than that? Could we see it going through early next year and being enacted next year? Every day that it is not enacted is detrimental to so many workers. We really need that workforce back in the workplace.

Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Friday 28th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to speak in the debate. As a mother of four who has had to negotiate very different flexible working practices throughout those years of being a mother and carer, I can assure the House that this subject is close to my heart.

I would like to invite you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to my jobs fair on 11 November at the Roehampton leisure centre. I hope that plenty of people who want flexible-working jobs—and, indeed, many other jobs—will be able to come and find out more about employment opportunities in the Roehampton, Southfields and Putney area.

I also want to pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the Mother of the House, who marks 40 years in Parliament today, and who inspired me to get into politics. She has campaigned for flexible working throughout her time in the House. She was the architect of the Low Pay Commission and the Equality Act 2010, she has been a champion for women in the workplace in Parliament and at home, and she is a long-time campaigner for flexible working for parents, grandparents and carers.

I congratulate my hon. and brilliant Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on bringing this vital Bill to the House, on working with Ministers, many organisations, many employers and others to bring it this far, and on her powerful speech. Labour fully supports the Bill, and I am glad that so many Members who have spoken today have come together to allow this common-sense piece of legislation to progress.

As I said earlier, I have four children, and at different times during their early years and primary-school education I would have benefited greatly from these provisions—from knowing that I could ask for flexible working, knowing that I could ask for it for my team as a manager, and knowing that it would not just be up to a certain manager or senior manager or the culture of a particular organisation where people might say, “This just isn’t the way we do it here”. I have had two job shares. I have experienced various changes in working times and hours and locations, depending on when my children were at nursery or at primary school and when I had to pick them up. Every time I went back from maternity leave—four times—my children immediately fell ill and I had to ask for some kind of flexible working: it just seemed to happen that way. The “day one” provision is very welcome, meaning that people will no longer have to wait for six months or many weeks. I have job-shared in politics as well, as deputy leader of the Wandsworth Labour group, and I would welcome much more flexible working in our political systems too.

Covid showed how differently we can work, and was a huge culture-changer. That, I think, will enable this Bill to be enacted and make an even bigger difference. It does make a huge difference to be able to stay in work with caring responsibilities, and, as others have mentioned today, that will greatly increase the recruitment and retention of the best possible workforce for our country. Flexible working should have been the past for far longer, but it is certainly the future. It is crucial to achieving gender equality in the workplace and a fairer, growing economy, changing our economy and the world of work for the better.

It is disappointing that the Government have not made a pledge on flexible working in an employment Bill—such a Bill has still not been brought to the House—and up to now have repeatedly failed to follow through on their promises to promote flexible working. As Working Families showed, one in three requests for flexible working has been turned down, so we do need this legislation to lead a change in working culture. With rights enshrined in law for those conversations, working culture will catch up much faster. Flexible working is not just about working from home, it is also about the place in which people can work and changing hours according to needs. The changes that the Bill would make are straightforward and make complete sense.

As has been said, the Bill would introduce a requirement for employers to consult the employee before rejecting a flexible working request—or accepting it, as I hope will happen more frequently. It would also allow an employee to make two statutory requests in every 12-month period rather than the current one request. That talks to the realities of life, where people can have changes to their caring responsibilities, changes if they have a long-term illness—there could be a change to that illness during the year—or changes that may come about for their partner or other people with whom they are sharing caring responsibilities. There may be many changes, so two requests instead of one would be welcome.

The Bill would also reduce the period in which an employer is required to administer the statutory request from three months to two months—obviously, it would be hoped that a decision would be made more quickly—and remove the requirement that the employee must explain in their statutory request what effect the change would have on their employer and how that might be dealt with. That would be shifted so that the employer would have to look into it and think about ways in which it could make a request work.

A Labour Government would go further. As part of our new deal for working people, we will ensure that all workers have the opportunity to benefit from flexible working and that they can do so from day one as a default right, with employers required to accommodate that as far as possible. The right to flexible working would include flexible hours, compressed hours, staggered hours and flexibility around childcare and caring responsibilities. A Labour Government would support small and medium-sized businesses to adapt to flexible working practices and increase the uptake of flexible working. Labour would also end one-sided flexibility, with all workers having secure employment and regular and predictable working hours so that they can plan their lives around a stable job.

I want to spend some time reflecting on the impact of that on women in particular. The level of economically inactive working-age women rose by 124,000 compared to the year before. There are 1.5 million more women than men currently out of and not looking for work. In January to August 2022, the number of people—men and women—who were economically inactive due to having to look after family members increased by 79,000 on the year before, and one in five economically inactive people cite looking after family members as the reason for that. Those figures demonstrate the need for the Bill.

For too long, working women have been denied good quality, affordable childcare, proper parental leave and access to flexible working, and our country has been denied the opportunity for growth that they would bring. Gaps in employment because of a lack of flexibility and needing to leave work at times result in a loss of confidence to return to work, having been out of work for some time. They also result in reduced pension entitlement and reduced opportunities for career progression. Those, in turn, are a major reason for the gender pay gap. The changes that this flexible working Bill would bring about would transform many people’s work and go a long way to reducing the gender pay gap.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East as well as the TUC’s “Flex For All” campaign, Action for ME, Working Families, and Pregnant Then Screwed. Those groups have been right to call out the Government for their shocking track record and repeated broken promises on supporting working mums, dads, carers and people with ME, but the Bill will be transformative for working people and will address many of those appalling statistics.

This is an excellent and long-overdue piece of legislation that will transform the lives of hard-working people up and down the country. This place is at its best when it is united around common sense and a common cause, so I thank the Government for their support in letting the Bill progress through the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Just before I call the Minister, it was a pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) on the 40th anniversary of her election to this place. May I, on behalf of the whole House, send our congratulations to the right hon. and learned Lady, who, 40 years ago, was a trailblazer about to become not only a very young female Member of Parliament, but a mother? She has been a role model and a champion for women in politics these past four decades and the whole House joins me in sending her our most sincere congratulations and best wishes. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I now have even greater pleasure in calling the newly appointed Minister, Kevin Hollinrake.

Long Covid: Impact on the Workforce

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for securing this debate, and I reiterate what has been said by many: we understand that so many people are suffering from long covid, and it must be taken seriously by the Government. We understand the impact it is having not only on those individuals and their daily lives, but the workforce. This economic issue will continue to have a serious impact, and it needs to be addressed. I reiterate the main ask that we have and that the all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus has in its very helpful report on long covid, which is for employer guidelines so that people are not at the whim and the mercy of different employers regarding understanding and support for their continuing in or returning to the workforce.

I have come to this debate for two groups of people. One is all those suffering from long covid across the country—an estimated 1.5 million people, or 4.4% of the workforce. The other is those constituents who have been suffering from ME, who have learned many lessons from that and think they are relevant to working with those with long covid. They have been underestimated, not believed and not supported. When they have gone to their GP, they have been told the wrong advice—advice that makes their ME worse—and they have not been understood in schools, whether by young people or teachers, or by their employers, and they do not want anyone with long covid to go through the same. I have been disturbed to hear some of the evidence given to the APPG about workforce practices that are not conducive to helping people come back to the workforce and not the best for those individuals and our economy.

A couple of my constituents have written to me. One said:

“I have now had long covid for two years...We desperately need more investment in potential treatments. It is clear that the illness impacts the blood, autoimmune system, organs, brain and central nervous system. None of these mechanisms are being treated by the NHS so far. Treatments are being trialled in other countries.”

There are questions being asked about the trials being conducted in other countries and what more could be done here.

Another constituent said:

“I contracted covid-19 at the very end of September. Like many people, I suffered mild symptoms…2 weeks on from my initial infection I was suddenly hit with a wave of long covid symptoms and was truly horrified at what was happening to my brain and body. I felt drained and broken, and…I felt as though a foreign body was inside my head—I could no longer hold even a conversation, yet alone work. For the last 7 months I have been unable to function in any sort of capacity.”

Finally, my cousin has had long covid for a long time. He sent me a list of his symptoms: fatigue, concentration impairment, memory problems, cognitive loss, internal pain, chills and sweats, sleeplessness, sore throat, dizziness, shaking, anxiety, faintness and muscle aches. All these symptoms and impacts of long covid need to be understood by employers, by teachers and education settings, and by general practitioners and all medical workers, as recommended by the report of the APPG on coronavirus.

I underline those recommendations and ask specifically for the urgent production of clear employer guidelines, otherwise there will continue to be an employer lottery in the treatment of people with long covid as they return to work. I ask for guidance to education settings, because many students with ME found it difficult to get understanding in order to continue with their education. We cannot have the same happen for those with long covid. And I ask for clear guidance to medical practitioners on children and adults with long covid so that everyone gets the proper care, support and understanding they need so that they have hope and do not add being misunderstood to their long list of symptoms, only increasing their anxiety.

I welcome this debate, and I hope to hear some good news from the Minister about the key recommendations of this report being taken up to create a good situation for everyone with long covid.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I know that my hon. Friend is a huge advocate. I obviously cannot comment on individual applications. I am happy to come and visit and her support is noted.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

T5. A recent survey showed that 91% of Wandsworth businesses are suffering negative effects from new Brexit regulations. Will the Minister commit to a region-by-region impact assessment of how businesses are adapting to the Government’s Brexit deal or are the Government leaving businesses to sink or swim?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

This party of business will not let businesses sink or swim. We will continue to engage with businesses around the regions and around the sectors to understand exactly where they need to change and to help them in their transition.

Economic Crime

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

I completely concur with the sentiments expressed so powerfully by the hon. Member.

We are now, sadly, one of the jurisdictions of choice for money launderers, criminals and kleptocrats. We do not just tolerate, but—unwittingly, perhaps—facilitate economic crime. Our Moody’s credit rating has fallen a notch, specifically because of the

“weakening in the UK’s institutions and governance”.

Fraud, an important element in economic crime, now affects one in 15 adults, and it too often destroys the lives of innocent victims who are just normal, trusting citizens.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I have a constituent who had a dormant company that was taken over by criminals and used to defraud others, but Companies House says that it cannot do anything about it. LinkedIn is colluding, with a whole lot of false company information, which helps to undermine the situation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Companies House should be able to do more, and that it is damaging its own reputation?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

One of the specific areas on which we make a recommendation in our motion before the House is the reform of Companies House. The situation of my hon. Friend’s constituent is just the sort of situation in which Companies House ought to be able at least to verify and possibly to pursue the wrongdoers.

Economic crime is often the facilitator of other crimes—from people trafficking to drug smuggling, and from terrorism to corruption. It does not just enable other crimes; it impacts on our national security. Dirty Russian money laundered into the UK is spreading like a spider’s web through our society. It is used to buy influence and to control our football clubs, our vital infrastructure and, more recently, our politicians and our politics. Today, we want not just to lay out the problem, but to put forward three pragmatic reforms that the Government could adopt—not tomorrow, but today. These are three oven-ready policies that together could have a significant impact in both preventing economic crime and punishing its wicked perpetrators.

We have become the destination of choice for a number of reasons. First, we have a very weak regulatory regime after decades of deregulation. Introducing reforms to our corporate liability regime would start to address the inadequacies in the regulations we have inherited. Even where we do have clear laws—this is my second point—our enforcement agencies are both inadequately resourced and risk averse in their policing of our system. Lack of money and fear of failure drive their decisions, and unlike America, we let criminals get away with it. Reform of Companies House would constitute the start of creating a tougher enforcement regime. Thirdly, we still allow a lack of transparency to flourish, giving wonderful cover to ne’er-do-wells and making it difficult to follow the money. If we cannot follow the money, dirty money triumphs.

Animal Testing

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Elliott. I thank the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) for introducing this important debate on behalf of all those people who have signed the petition and for giving such a persuasive speech, covering so many of the different areas that we need to talk about when debating this issue.

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, more than 319,000 people have signed the petitions, which shows the huge strength of feeling on the issue across the UK. More than 200 people in my constituency of Putney have emailed me on animal welfare issues, ranging from testing, to warfare experiments, to sentencing. And nearly 300 of my constituents in Putney have signed this petition. I am sure that many more would have signed it if they had known about it. There is strong feeling about this issue, so I am glad to be debating it.

I have long believed that the UK should lead the world in high animal welfare standards. We are a nation of animal lovers, so this issue speaks very much to our British values. I became a vegetarian when I was 12, at school, because quite honestly the food was better on the vegetarians’ table and so I joined them. They were better company as well; we had a great time. Then I started looking into animal welfare issues. I am really grateful to organisations such as the Body Shop, Cruelty Free International and PETA for the information that they make available in order for us to understand what is quite a secret practice and the suffering of animals that goes on in animal testing. When I found out about that, I became a very committed animal rights activist, and have been ever since.

I am really glad and proud that the UK banned cosmetics testing on animals in 1997 and extended that to cosmetic ingredients in 1998. However, despite that—according to Cruelty Free International—in 2020 alone, 2.88 million experiments were carried out on animals in the UK. The UK reports conducting more animal tests than any other country in Europe. I think that that is not very well known by the public.

The Environment Bill, for which I was on the Bill Committee, was a perfect opportunity to make progress on this issue. I was really disappointed that the Government voted down a new clause that would have required the Secretary of State to set targets to reduce animal testing. The Government’s resistance to change in this area is very frustrating and, I think, the reason why so many people signed this petition—they want to see more action.

It is welcome that animal testing practices have improved and advanced greatly over recent years and that non-animal methods of research have also developed and improved over time, so it is time for a rethink. We should not let the scientific community just continue with this practice for lack of ever being questioned about it. I remain concerned at the lack of transparency around animal testing and project licence applications, as well as the continued permissibility of severe suffering, as defined in UK law.

Animal testing is not the answer to protecting people and the planet. In fact, there are major scientific problems with animal experiments. Significant differences in our genetic make-up mean that data from animal experiments cannot be reliably translated to people. The current reliance on animal experiments may well be holding back the progress that patients so urgently need. More than 92% of drugs that show promise in animal tests fail to reach the clinic and benefit patients, mostly for reasons of poor efficacy and safety that were not predicted by animal testing. If animal testing was 100% proven to really work, I do not think we would be having this debate. However, the fact that it causes suffering and does not work means that we absolutely need a rethink. Most animal tests have not been validated to modern standards, to prove that they do predict effects in humans, and there is a reluctance on the part of Government and regulators to do this.

As has been said, a growing range of cutting-edge techniques provide results that are directly relevant to people and can replace, or at the very least immediately significantly reduce, the use and the suffering of animals. These new-approach methodologies include the use of human cells and tissues, artificial intelligence, and organ-on-a-chip technology.

I echo the calls for the Minister in his response to give information about funding for these non-animal alternatives and about the route and deadlines by which we will move away from the suffering of animals in testing and to non-animal techniques. Put simply, there are better ways to make progress in public health and the environment while reducing and eliminating the suffering of animals in laboratories.

While we are speaking in this Chamber, a debate is taking place in the main Chamber on animal welfare. We must join these two things up. We cannot make progress on one side and, on another, continue this barbaric practice. If the UK is serious about its commitment to animal protection, the Government must stop the suffering. They must take decisive and ambitious action to phase out animal experiments and phase in the use of cutting-edge, human-relevant, non-animal techniques. Modernising medical research in this way will deliver major benefits, which the people of Britain want to see for people, animals and the economy.

Gas Prices and Energy Suppliers

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

No one in Basildon and Thurrock, or anywhere else in this country, need fear the eventuality that my hon. Friend describes. As I have said, the supplier of last resort process is absolutely focused on ensuring that customers have continuity of supply. That is a top priority.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Better insulation of homes is essential for cutting rising fuel bills and emissions. Does the Secretary of State agree that it was a mistake to cut the green homes grant earlier this year, and will he commit to reforming it and bringing it back?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As I have said a number of times, in this role and in my previous one, the green homes grant attempted to do three things. The first was to decarbonise public sector buildings, and that worked very effectively through Salix, the bank that disbursed those funds. The second element, which was disbursed by local authorities, has also worked very well. The third element is the one that we closed, and we want to get a renewed version of it.