Copyright (Rights and Remuneration of Musicians, etc.) Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow so many fantastic and very knowledgeable speeches in the Chamber today. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) on bringing forward this incredibly important Bill and on his speech outlining the reasons why he thinks it matters.

Today has been a great opportunity to talk about music. After serving my constituents and the love I have for my family, music is the most important thing in my life. I am very lucky to have two very talented musical parents. My mother is a pianist and my father played the trumpet and the cornet, and also had a most marvellous tenor voice. It is probably not quite as marvellous these days, at 83, but he still likes to have a good sing.

I have put in in excess of 10,000 hours over my life as a singer. I spent my teenage years singing in a worship band in church—a rock band—several times a week, and I was in a covers band at the age of 15. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) talked about the soft power of UK music. Well, that came all the way to New Zealand, and it was great to be able to sing the likes of U2 as a 15-year-old. I have recorded lots of vocal tracks for a song-writing friend, who would send these over to Nashville, Tennessee—

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It isn’t going to happen.

[Angela Richardson]

Well, just you wait!

My song-writing friend would send these songs over to music producers in Nashville, Tennessee to review them and see whether they could go forward. In the spirit of oversharing that my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) regaled us with earlier, I may even have auditioned for the New Zealand version of the Spice Girls in 1998, and I was also in a queue at 3 am, in the ExCeL centre in London, to audition for “The X Factor” in 2010. I hope no recordings of any of these things are still available, but one never knows and, like another former Member of this place, I may be able to have a go in “The Masked Singer” in the future.

I was very lucky, before I was elected, to be able to sing for seven years in my village for the award-winning Ewhurst Players, as well as vocal coach them for their productions. These days, being a Member of this place, the only opportunity to sing is probably at the famous annual karaoke sessions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). However, I am very lucky to have found many kindred spirits in this place, such as my hon. Friends the Members for Redcar (Jacob Young), for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher)—he is here—and for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher), and many more. If we need a new generation of MP4, many of us would quite like to step forward and do that. However, as I am only 15 years younger than the hon. Member for Cardiff West, I am not sure that would suffice for a generation, and we may share a lot of crossover in our taste in music.

It is important that we are here today to make sure that creatives and small producers are able to make a decent living from the joy that they give us with music. It matters to me to perform, but I also love to listen to other people. I have been contacted by a gentleman called Robert Piper, who runs Lockjaw Records in my constituency, and I want to put on record what he had to say to me. He has been involved with music for 20-plus years, and for the last 10 years he has run a label specialising in the punk genre, with over 25 bands from the UK and overseas on its roster. He was very concerned about what this Bill would mean for him. He says that his label’s role is to invest at the grassroots level in a diverse range of artists and support them to achieve as much success as possible. Although he supports the motivation behind the Bill to support artists, he does not believe its full impact is understood. If imposed, he feels that the Bill’s consequences would be felt across the whole industry, but it would particularly affect independent small and medium-sized businesses such as his. He felt it would undermine his ability to grow the next generation of talent and support local jobs. He was also concerned that it would dent the competitive—

Employment Rights: Government Plans

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab) [V]]

A few years ago, a number of free market extremists published a book claiming that British workers

“prefer a lie-in to hard work”,

slandering them as

“the worst idlers in the world”

who

“work among the lowest hours”.

One of the authors is now the Foreign Secretary, another the Home Secretary, another the International Trade Secretary, and another the new Business Secretary, who has established a new, 30-strong panel of business leaders to discuss changes to workers’ rights. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite the union, is right to warn the Government against refusing to engage with the trade unions on the same basis.

These authors turned Cabinet members would all proudly call themselves Thatcherites, and they now want to use both Brexit and this current economic crisis to drive back workers’ rights—a chance to deliver Thatcherism 2.0. Unemployment is set to soar. Millions will be thrown further into poverty and debt. The Conservative party views that not as a crisis but as an opportunity—a chance to exploit people’s vulnerabilities and their fears of not being able to feed their children—to force them into ever-worse working conditions.

With fire and rehire as a blueprint for the economy, one in 10 workers already affected and a race to the bottom, who will benefit? For over 40 years, ever since Thatcher set about smashing the trade unions, the share of the cake going to workers has been getting smaller. In 1976, wages made up 64% of GDP; the figure now is only 54%. That is a huge transfer from workers to line the pockets of the already super-rich. That is why poverty is up. That is why people find themselves working harder and harder just to stand still. More attacks on workers’ rights will make it even harder.

We will hear denials from the Conservative party that it plans to dilute workers’ rights. It has a chance to show that it has no malintent, by backing Labour’s motion that opposes fire and rehire and protects rest breaks at work and holiday pay entitlements. Given that the Tories like to claim that they are now the party of workers, they should go even further by giving everyone full rights at work from day one on the job, banning zero-hours contracts and reintroducing sector-wide collective bargaining. Sadly, such change will have to wait for a future Labour Government.

In the meantime, let us be absolutely clear. If the Tories try to proceed with a bonfire of workers’ rights, they will have one hell of a fight on their hands. I salute the trade unions taking part in that fightback. I urge the Government to think again.