PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Employment Rights Bill (Thirteenth sitting) - 17 December 2024 (Commons/Public Bill Committees)

Good morning, Mr Mundell; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. As is customary, I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the Unite and GMB trade unions.

The clause will empower Ministers to reinstate and strengthen the two-tier code on workforce matters where contracts for public services have been outsourced to the private sector. It will ensure fair and equitable employment conditions for public sector workers who have been transferred into the private sector, and private sector workers who work alongside them on public service contracts, while maintaining a high quality of service for the public. It therefore directly supports the Government’s manifesto commitment to make work pay and will tackle the issue of unfair two-tiered workforces where staff working alongside one another to deliver the same contract do not have comparable terms and conditions of employment.

The powers are constrained so that the provisions of the regulations and the code, when developed, will apply only to new contracts entered into once the Bill comes into force, but can and will apply to re-procurements of services already outsourced where the re-procurement leads to a further transfer of workers. Ministers will have the power to make regulations specifying provisions to be included in relevant outsourcing contracts. The provisions may, for example, set out model contract terms that, where incorporated into contracts, will impose obligations on suppliers. Authorities will be required to take all reasonable steps to include those provisions in all relevant outsourced contracts.

The regulations made under the clause will, first, have the purpose of ensuring that transferring workers are treated no less favourably as workers of the supplier than when they worked for the public sector contracting authority and, secondly, have the objective of ensuring that workers of the supplier who are not transferred from the public sector but recruited by the supplier to work on the contract are treated no less favourably than those transferring workers. Alongside that, Ministers of the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments will be subject to a duty to publish a code of practice addressing similar matters to which contracting authorities will need to have regard.

To ensure that the code is effectively enforced, there will be several forms of redress. Contracting authorities will be required to take all reasonable steps to ensure that suppliers meet their contractual obligations, as set out in the regulations. In addition, the procurement review unit, which will be established under our new Procurement Act 2023, due to commence in 2025, will be able to investigate whether a contracting authority has had regard to the code and taken appropriate steps in relation to provisions specified in the regulations.

These powers are being extended through amendments to the clause, which we discussed last week, to the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales so that the benefits of a consistent approach to fair and equitable employment terms and conditions on relevant outsourced contracts can be spread throughout the UK. Fair and equitable working conditions are the right of all employees working alongside one other on the same outsourced contracts, and these measures will help to tackle that issue head on.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Mr Mundell.

Clause 25 has got me thinking about many moons ago, in 2006, when I was part of the team that won Hammersmith and Fulham council for the Conservatives for the first time since 1968. One of our first acts was quite literally to take the red flag down from the roof of the town hall. Part of the symbolism of that, which is why I mention it, was that the council, in 2006, was one of the last to outsource anything at all. Competitive tendering simply had not happened in that London borough. Everything was still a direct service run by the local authority, and we set about contracting out waste, grounds maintenance and many other services. Why? Because we wanted to deliver better value for taxpayers—indeed, we cut council tax by 20% over the eight years that we ran the council—and to improve service standards.

One of the things I learned in that process, and the reason my point is relevant to the clause, is that the first iteration of any contracting out—that first contract, be it for refuse collection, street cleansing, grounds maintenance or whatever—does not tend to result in economies and improvements. It is often in the second or third contract iteration where the cost savings and improvements in service standards start to be seen. That is partly because of the TUPE provisions that rightly exist to ensure that those staff who are being transferred from whatever part of the public sector we might be talking about—in this case, local government—transfer with the same rights, terms and conditions, and pay that they had at the point that they ceased to be direct employees of the council, or whatever other public service, and became employees of whoever won the contract.

The rub comes in the real-world application. In such cases, the staff members who transferred are on favourable terms and conditions, and probably better pay, than some of the staff that the contractor brings into the team. If it is immediately locked in that everybody new has to be on the same terms and conditions and pay scales, we will never achieve value for money for taxpayers, and we will never enable the contractor, be that a refuse collection company or whatever, to find efficiencies and savings at the same time as increasing service standards in the way that we all want to see. It might as well never be done in the first place. That makes me question whether that is in fact the ideological position that the Government want to take. I can see the Minister grinning; perhaps I have hit upon something.

I gently remind the Committee of the time when every refuse service and local government service was provided directly, in house, before competitive tendering and the revolution of the 1980s and the Thatcher Government. We can all remember what delivery of those services looked like in the 1970s: the rubbish piled up on the streets with no one collecting it.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I just reflect that when I was a unitary authority leader, we were effectively a hostage client of the private sector, since the previous Conservative authority had set up a joint venture with it. That was far from the land of milk and honey. Well, it was the land of milk and honey for the private sector, whereas local taxpayers had to suffer under a system that was set up to benefit the private sector. The reality is that often it is more appropriate for local authorities to run these services so that they are run in the interests of local communities rather than the profits of the private sector.

The hon. Gentleman is clearly not of the orange book wing of the Liberal Democrats.

Are there any left?

My hon. Friend indicates that perhaps there are not any left. I fundamentally disagree with the point made by the hon. Member for Torbay. It is not about profits for the private sector, although the profit motive is an important element in driving up service standards and ensuring that if a company wants to keep a contract, it has to deliver on it.

Some councils have failed on this front by failing to set the specification of a contract correctly and failing, as the client, to enforce against the contract. That is where we see failure on so many fronts; it has little to do with terms and conditions or the points covered by the clause. Often, an ill-equipped council, be it the members or the officers—I have seen this from both sides—fails to properly specify in the first place, when it goes to market, and then fails to deliver proper contract management. That is where we see gremlins creep into the system and unintended consequences come about.

I gently point out to the hon. Member for Torbay that when I was in local government, we saw many benefits from competitive tendering over multiple iterations of the contract. I can ensure him that in the cabinet portfolios that I held in that local authority, where I was directly overseeing the waste, street cleansing and grounds maintenance contracts, I was pretty tough on those contractors in ensuring that they did drive up standards. But sometimes it is not the right step. The Labour council we took over from had outsourced housing, which we as a Conservative council brought back in house. We ended the arm’s length management organisation to bring it back within direct council control to deliver a better service for the tenants of those properties. So if it is not done properly in the first place, that model does not always work.

The measures in clause 25 are once more a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They do not recognise the practical realities of how competitive tendering has worked, excepting the flaws that I raised about how well contracts are specified and enforced against. If we want to ensure that we are delivering the best possible value for money for taxpayers—the people who pay for public services—at the same time as increasing the standard of services delivered, which I expect is a universal aim that all of us hold, there have to be flexibilities to ensure that efficiencies can be found, and that the fat is taken out of all systems, processes and ways of doing business. If we lock contractors into absolutely having to match every term and condition, with every pay scale being exactly the same, we are never going to deliver that.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I really welcome the clause. Despite the fact that their uniforms, pensions and contracts said “NHS”, staff at a community hospital in my constituency only realised that they had been effectively TUPE-ed over to a private business when they failed to receive the £1,000 bonus that all their colleagues in the main hospitals got. One may say, “How naive of them; they should have read their contracts better,” but most of them had been NHS workers for 25 years, so they were completely unaware that this had happened to them and that they were no longer entitled. I must thank the then contractor, a charity, for lobbying hard to make sure that eventually they got some kind of bonus, but to be suddenly without those conditions was quite frightening for them. So I welcome these measures.

I take some issue with what the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire said. For many years, I served as part of Wiltshire council, which is a Conservative-led council. It was locked into a service contract for maintenance that was poor and used to lower wages, producing a system where we had very little maintenance. Our town councils are now having to pick up the bill for repairing grounds and play areas because the company, although it had the contract and was paid by the local authority, was not carrying out the works. Therefore, I welcome this measure and I am pleased to support it.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. Merry Christmas, everyone. In that spirit of glad tidings, I draw the Committee’s attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB and Unite trade unions.

Clause 25 enables the reinstatement of one of two bodies that are to be reinstated by the Bill—the other is the school support staff negotiating body, which I hope we will come to today. The clause stands in a long and proud tradition in this Parliament, and at its heart is a simple question: what duty does the state owe to people who perform services on its behalf? The phrase “two tier” has become highly charged in recent years, but I hope that we can channel some of that spirit of protest towards the iniquity of two-tier workforces.

The injustice is easy to describe—in fact, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire, described it. When a public service is outsourced, the original workers’ pay and terms and conditions are protected to a certain extent by TUPE, but those of the workers who are subsequently employed on that contract are not. Even when they carry out exactly the same duties, they will normally be paid inferior rates.

That is understandably a cause of tension and resentment at many sites where services continue to be performed on behalf of the public sector. The original workers who are TUPE-ed over can be singled out for victimisation and adverse treatment on the part of their new employer. We know from the labour force survey, in the days when that instrument was in better health, that many such workers continue to regard themselves as part of the public sector and are motivated by public service. The workers who tend to find themselves in this position are more likely to be women, on lower earnings and from non-white backgrounds.

The case for parity of treatment was made powerfully in the last Parliament by the Defence Committee, which at the time had a Conservative Chair. The Committee’s report on the treatment of contracted staff for ancillary services states:

“In general, the terms and conditions of outsourced employees are worse than those of their directly employed counterparts, with reduced wages and benefits…The Ministry of Defence should do more to ensure that contracted staff receive comparable employment contracts to staff directly employed by the MoD.”

That is precisely what the reinstated and strengthened two-tier code, enabled by this clause, will accomplish.

Two-tier workforces are not just unfair on workers; they represent a failure of public policy. When margins are tight, bidders can end up competing not on efficiency or innovation, but on a squeezing of wages. We need only look at Carillion for a prominent example of what can go wrong, and of the wider liability for taxpayers when a contractor loses sight of its wider operations. The direct cost to the public sector has been estimated at some £150 million, the wider debts to the private sector were in the region of £2 billion, and the National Audit Office has warned that we will not know the true cost for many years to come.

The shadow Minister referred to the sepia-tinted days—perhaps we should say the blue-rinse days— of 2006, but I was grateful for the contributions from the hon. Members for Chippenham and for Torbay, because there is a long-standing and cross-party record on this matter. We can go back to 1891, when the radical Liberal politician Sydney Buxton moved the fair wages resolution, a resolution of this House, which was carried unanimously—at that time, Parliament had a Conservative majority. He said:

“The Government is far the greatest letter-out of contracts in the country, and Government contracts are the most popular for three reasons. In the first place, the contractor makes no bad debts; secondly, he has quick returns; and, thirdly, a Government contract forms a good advertisement. The consequence is, that there is great competition, and tenders are cut down very much at the expense of the labour market. Such a state of things is unfair to the good employer…and injurious to the community. The fair employer is placed at a very great disadvantage as compared with the unfair.”—[Official Report, 13 February 1891; Vol. 350, c. 618.]

Those arguments hold true today. That fair wages resolution was adapted and improved down the years, and took its final form under the Attlee Government in 1946. It has subsequently been exported around the world, in the form of International Labour Organisation convention No. 94. Indeed, those great British protections, developed in this Parliament, apply now in Italy, Spain and such far-flung places as Brazil, but because of decisions taken in the 1980s, they do not apply to contracted-out workers in this country. I very much welcome the opportunity to put that right.

The two-tier code existed previously, between 2005 and 2006. It grew out of an earlier iteration in local government, and it has been in force subsequently in Wales, where the sky has not fallen in in terms of service provision. [Interruption.] If the shadow Minister wants to intervene, he is welcome to.

How does the hon. Gentleman feel that the NHS in Wales is doing—better or worse than in England?

I would say better, having had some experience. The hon. Gentleman might want to return to that point.

On the substance of the clause, there were some concerns about the original incarnation of the two-tier code. It was purely voluntary and did not contain meaningful provisions for redress where an employer who had signed up to uphold the standards of the code did not follow through. I hope that that deficiency will be remedied when the associated regulations appear.

It is legitimate to have differences on points of principle. After the current Lord Maude abolished the two-tier code, the Secretary of State—now Baron Pickles—said that the Government of the time had

“Abolished the…two-tier code that…hindered the voluntary and independent sector from delivering better value for money.”—[Official Report, 26 March 2015; Vol. 594, c. 166WS.]

The shadow Minister has made much the same point. This was explicitly about driving down wages for the large number of people who are contracted out to deliver public services. I very much welcome the fact that this Government have a policy objective of making work pay. For a large number of people in the labour market who have been overlooked by politicians for too long, the clause represents an important step forward for remedying that deficiency.

We have had a broad debate—very broad from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield, who took us on a canter through the history. He was right that it was the coalition Government who abolished the two-tier code, which is why it is welcome that the Liberal Democrats have realised the error of their ways; I welcome their support on this. Their spokesperson, the hon. Member for Chippenham, made the important point that the inherent unfairness of people doing exactly the same job for the same employer finding out that they are on different terms and conditions and are earning less is a big morale sapper. It is also a big issue in terms of workforce retention—one problem that we often see with outsourced contracts.

I will turn to the shadow Minister’s misty-eyed days at Hammersmith and Fulham, and I will raise him Ellesmere Port and Neston borough council, which was a great believer in direct provision of services; we certainly felt that was the best way to deliver value for the taxpayer and good-quality services. In his contribution, the shadow Minister alighted on the illusion of outsourcing—the fact that consultants can demonstrate that savings can be made, but when you drill into the detail, those savings are always off the back of the workforce. They are not some magical way of doing things differently. It is about cutting terms and conditions and it is about a race to the bottom, which we are determined to end.

I do understand the ideological difference between the two sides on this point, but I take issue with the Minister that this is about a race to the bottom and cutting terms and conditions; it really is not. From my experience, it was not a matter of consultants, but of properly probing contracts, setting the right specification to deliver for the residents in the place that the council served, and requiring the flexibility to ensure that some people would be doing very different jobs in a different way from before in order to deliver that. It was not about wanting to cut anyone’s pay or terms and conditions; it was about service delivery and value.

I take the shadow Minister’s point. I am not familiar with the machinations of Hammersmith and Fulham council in the 2010s, and it may well be that savings were made by doing things differently. But there is absolutely no reason why that cannot be done directly from a public body: if it is well led, if it is able to have constructive dialogue with its work force, savings can be made.

The difficulty with the shadow Minister’s analysis is that, while he may have been able to find savings for the taxpayer through those kinds of measures, too often the savings are made by cutting terms and conditions for new workers. That is why, as he said in his original contribution, the second or third outsourcing is usually where the savings happen, because it is when those new workers come in on lower terms and conditions that the savings begin to emerge. That is why the whole outsourcing trick is a con, because it is how those savings tend to be made.

When we add in the contract monitoring costs and the profit motivations for the outsourced company to make a living from these things, we can quickly see why it becomes a bad deal for the taxpayer. I certainly make no apologies for putting forward this proposal, because we think it is the right thing to do, to respect and value those who work in public service and ensure that they are paid the same as their colleagues for doing the same work. I therefore commend—

I thank the Minister for giving way at the death. Does he also recognise that one example of a council that tried to go down the wholesale outsourcing route was Northamptonshire? We all know how that story ended, and Eddie Martin, the Conservative former leader of Cumbria county council, stated that the then Government

“says that outsourcing is everything, but while it might get you an initial cheaper price, that price simply doesn’t last, you lose flexibility, and it causes a great deal of unrest.”

I think that is the kindest thing that has been said about me this year, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; I think we can all see the difficulties. I know, from dealing with public bodies in my area, that sometimes when there is more than one person responsible for a service—the public body and then the contracting body—we find duplication, differing priorities and often a poorer service as a result, because there are competing ambitions in those bodies. That is one of the main reasons why we want to see a much more holistic approach to our public services. I commend clause 25 to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 25, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 26

Equality action plans

I beg to move amendment 112, in clause 26, page 38, line 35, at end insert―

“(c) supporting employees with menstrual problems and menstrual disorders.”

This amendment would add menstrual problems and menstrual disorders to “matters related to gender equality”, in relation to any regulations made under the Bill to require employers to produce equality action plans.

I am very pleased to move this amendment. First, as the Bill stands, there are provisions for businesses to report on the impact of menopause on women in the workplace as part of the equalities impact assessments. I think the hon. Member for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) is right to table this amendment and to remind us all that menstrual problems can hinder women at any point in their working life, not just as they enter menopause. She is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women’s health and an officer on the APPG on endometriosis; I feel confident that she has tabled this amendment with the best intentions. It seems an omission that this issue was not included in the original Bill.

Several constituents have contacted me about endometriosis, and specifically its impact on them at work. Endometriosis costs the UK economy £8 billion a year in treatment, loss of work and healthcare costs, and it takes an average of eight years to get a diagnosis. One in six workers with endometriosis leaves the workforce due to their condition—an issue that the Government and employers cannot afford to ignore. Those people could go back to work and stay in work if there was additional flexibility for them.

As one of my constituents told me—she does not wish to be named for these reasons—many employees with endometriosis find that their employers do not believe them about their symptoms, that their flexible working requests are refused and that they are subject to discriminatory automated absence procedures that penalise short but intermittent time off work. The amendment seeks to address that injustice. I want to be very clear that I support it, and I hope that the rest of the Committee will see its importance.

I hear very clearly what the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough have said. I do not take issue with anything that has just been said. The endometriosis point is a clear one, and well made. Where I challenge the hon. Member for Chippenham, and indeed the Minister, is that that women’s health issue is not exclusive; there are many health concerns that only women face, and indeed some that only men face. Given that the clause explicitly refers to gender equality, would it not be better, from a pure legislative drafting perspective, to say that gender equality will be the catch-all that encompasses all that?

Is there not a danger that by listing one or two medical concerns, we will lock out other health problems faced exclusively by women, or exclusively by men? Naming one or two things in legislation often creates a problem in the interpretation of the rule. Courts may look back at this debate, or at any other debate on the Bill, and understand that this gender equality provision is intended to be a general catch-all for anything that any man or woman may face. If we name one or two things in legislation, however, it could become dangerous for when a man or a woman presents with something that is not named.

I cannot help agreeing that naming a few conditions in the Bill might well be a concern, and when I first looked at the amendment on its own without looking at where it would fit into the Bill, it did seem slightly incongruous to suddenly mention one aspect. But if we look at where it would be inserted into the Bill, following a direct reference to menopause, it seems far more appropriate to make the point that menopause is not the only ongoing issue that women face. Many women are quite relieved to go into menopause, because it has been so onerous for them to have periods that keep them off work or in bed for several days a month. If we are going to mention menopause, mentioning menstruation makes perfect sense. The amendment makes sense only in the context of the Bill.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that clarification. There is a danger that we will end up dancing on the head of a pin, but I am always concerned about naming individual things in a catch-all provision. If amendment 112 were to be accepted, it might create an interpretive problem for the courts at a later date. Indeed, it might create a problem for employers in navigating whether they have to abide by legislation that mentions one condition but not another.

I would be grateful if the Minister, in his response to the amendment, gave the Government’s interpretation—[Interruption.] With two Ministers on this Bill, it is confusing to work out which one will be responding. I would be grateful if, in her response, the Minister gave clarity on the Government’s interpretation and the legal advice that they have received.

I echo the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham about the impact of endometriosis on younger women’s lives. It can be extremely incapacitating. A constituent of mine in Torbay shared how her daughter had to give up work because of the impact and the length of time that it was taking her to go through the NHS system to get the treatment that she deserved. Action to resolve that and get her in the right place was months and months away.

To me, the Bill needs a couple of touch points that test the employer and challenge them to reflect on certain areas of their workforce. That will result in a culture change among employers, so that they reflect on these matters and see the broader picture. It is extremely important to drive that culture change by adding this amendment, because throughout the United Kingdom, including in my Torbay constituency, there are significant issues related to finding enough people to fill workplaces. If we have the appropriate culture through this proposal and other changes in the Bill, we can make sure that the pool of people who can step up and work and contribute to our economy is enhanced.

Amendment 112 would add menstrual problems and menstrual disorders to matters related to gender equality in clause 26. Prioritising women’s health is a positive step that the Government are taking, and the hon. Member for Chippenham is absolutely right to highlight the terrible impact that many different conditions related to menstruation can have on whether a women can perform to the best of her ability. Physical symptoms can be further compounded by the taboo that often surrounds conversations about women’s reproductive health, and I thank her for bringing that to the Committee’s attention.

Clause 26 does not provide an exhaustive list of matters related to gender equality, as the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire referenced. As the hon. Member for Torbay said, this is about culture change in a place of employment. In creating equality action plans, we are reflecting the fact that many actions will be beneficial for people in lots of different circumstances. For example, the improved provision of flexible working can be valuable for an employee balancing childcare, as well as someone managing a health condition.

In the same way, ensuring that employers support staff going through the menopause will necessitate them taking steps that are positive for supporting women’s health in the workplace more broadly. For example, menopause best practice includes greater discussion around women’s health and awareness of potential workplace adjustments—things that have a much wider potential benefit. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Chippenham to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move amendment 162, in clause 26, page 38, line 35, at end insert—

“(c) supporting employees who provide or arrange care for a dependant with a long-term care need, as defined by the Carer’s Leave Act 2023.”

This amendment adds caring to the list of “matters related to gender equality”, on which regulations will require employers to produce an equality action plan.

This amendment relates to research showing that by the age of 46, 50% of women have taken on caring responsibilities, whereas the equivalent age for men is 57. Clearly, the impact of caring happens much sooner for women, and that is why it is appropriate to take carers into account under the equality action plan.

There are approximately 10.5 million carers in the United Kingdom, 2.6 million of whom work. That shows that a significant number of carers do not work. In an earlier debate I made the point about the pool of workers for whom there are opportunities in our workforce yet who are not able to access longer-term employment. I strongly contend that the amendment is a way to enhance the pool of opportunity by driving the culture change that I was delighted to hear the Minister say a lot of the Bill is all about.

Carers will often stay in lower-paid jobs or refuse promotion because of caring commitments. It is extremely important to include caring as part of the consideration and clearly flag that to people who consider the action plans, because it is not an obvious matter for an employer to take into consideration, but it affects such a large number of people in the United Kingdom that it would be an error in judgment not to include it in the Bill.

I rise to address the technicalities of how the amendment would work in legislation and with the Bill’s gender equality provisions. I entirely accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the disparity between the average age by which a woman might take on caring responsibilities compared with the average for a man, but those are averages and there will be outliers and exceptions across all age ranges and all genders.

I say clearly that the Opposition welcome the contribution of all carers and salute them as the heroes they are, but I am concerned that the amendment would shoehorn a very worthy and important matter into a provision on gender equality. I do not see how it fully fits; it would have been more sensible to have created provisions for the support and recognition of those with caring responsibilities in a new clause or in another part of the Bill. I worry that, like amendment 112, amendment 162 could confuse the Bill’s interpretation as it goes down the line and, potentially, is challenged in court at some point.

I accept the core argument about support for those with caring responsibilities, but it is dangerous to shoehorn provisions into clauses where that is not the primary intent. It is important that the gender equality points remain focused on gender equality issues, on which I think the Government have good intent. If the Bill gets changed too much by us bringing in things that—although clearly in scope, given that they have been selected—are on the edge of scope, that could cause an interpretative challenge later. Provisions on support for those with caring responsibilities would be far better in a new clause or a different part of the Bill, where they might fit more neatly and enable us to avoid judicial challenge.

If I may, Mr Mundell, I will draw attention to my registered interests, including my membership of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the National Education Union.

Amendment 162 would add caring to the matters related to gender equality listed in clause 26. The hon. Member for Torbay is absolutely right to highlight the impact of caring responsibilities on women in the workplace, and we recognise that carers might need extra protection and support. I reassure him that many people with caring responsibilities are likely already to be afforded protections under the Equality Act 2010, through the provisions relating to age and disability discrimination.

The Equality Act protects people from direct discrimination by association. That means that individuals with caring responsibilities for someone who is, for example, elderly or disabled are likely to have protection from unlawful discrimination because of their association with someone with a protected characteristic. The Government frequently receive requests for the creation of new protected characteristics. Unfortunately, merely creating new characteristics within the Act will not necessarily lead to a change in the behaviour of service providers and employers. We can see that from the number of court cases that continue to be brought under the existing characteristics.

Clause 26 does not provide an exhaustive list of matters related to gender equality. Instead, we are reflecting the fact that many actions will be beneficial for people in lots of different circumstances. For example, improved provision of flexible working can be valuable to someone who is managing a health condition as well as to an employee who is balancing care. Equality action plans will increase awareness of the need for a wide range of potential workplace adjustments for all who would benefit from them, delivering a much wider potential impact. I therefore ask the hon. Member to withdraw the amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

The clause is the first step towards introducing equality action plans, and it provides the power to do so in subsequent regulations. Women are a crucial part of securing economic growth and improving productivity, but the national gender pay gap remains at 13.1% and eight in 10 menopausal women say that their workplace has no basic support in place. This lack of support adds up to a significant loss of talent and skills. Menopause affects 51% of the population, with one external estimate showing that the UK is losing about 14 million work days every year because of menopause symptoms.

Large employers have been obliged to publish gender pay gap data since 2017, with action plans being encouraged, but voluntary. Analysis in 2019 found that only around half of employers that reported data went on to voluntarily produce a plan saying how they would act to improve the figures. That demonstrates that only making it mandatory will push employers to act. The best employers already recognise that providing women with the conditions to thrive is good for their employees and good for business. In taking this step towards introducing mandatory action plans, we are making sure that all large employers in scope of this clause follow their lead.

We are using a delegated power, mirroring the approach taken for gender pay gap reporting. Just as with that requirement, we want to give employers as much detail as possible in legislation—more than would commonly be in a Bill. The use of regulations allows us to do that while maintaining flexibility. When drafting this power, we reflected on what we have learned from gender pay gap reporting and from the hundreds of employers we have engaged with as a result. Most organisations think about equality in the round. They have one diversity and inclusion strategy, recognising what is borne out by the evidence: the most effective employer actions have benefits for more than one group or identity. That is why this clause proposes that employers produce one plan that covers both the gender pay gap and the menopause, reflecting the way they already work, reducing the burden of duplication and ensuring that they can get on with putting the plan into action. I commend clause 26 to the Committee.

We covered many of the issues relating to this clause when we discussed amendments 112 and 162. I am grateful to the Minister for citing the 2017 changes, which were brought about by the previous Conservative Government. It is morally right to completely close the gender pay gap. That will undoubtedly take some time, but every step taken to close it completely is a welcome one. It is important to make sure that employers are taking proper and serious account of the issue and action on ensuring gender equality in the workplace.

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Mundell. I have fought to break down barriers to equal justice, opportunity and dignity without discrimination for women and disabled people at every stage of my personal, professional and political life. I know that our Labour Government’s work on our missions for 10 years of national renewal has the purpose of changing lives across our country. This clause will be an important part of achieving that change for women in the workplace, ensuring that no matter what their background or where they live, women can thrive in the workplace. I am standing here because of the difference that world-class public services made to my life chances. This Bill creates a culture for world-class employers to break down barriers for women employees. The requirement to develop and publish equality action plans showing the steps that employers will need to take in relation to gender equality will be a significant move forward to improve equality, alongside collecting and publishing figures on the gender pay gap.

In an evidence session for the Bill Committee, Jemima Olchawski from the Fawcett Society said:

“We have a gender pay gap of just under 14%. On average, women take home just over £630 a month less than men. It also has a detrimental impact on our economy, because it is a marker of the ways in which women are not fully participating or contributing to the economy at their full potential. Estimates indicate that that means we are missing out on tens of billions of pounds of GDP.

We strongly support the measures as an important step towards redressing that balance. In particular, we are pleased to see the inclusion of equalities action plans as an important way to get employers to drive forward progress on the gender pay gap.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 81, Q76.]

This is helpful. The clause makes an important contribution to advancing gender equality by including the requirement to develop and publish equality action plans, which address the gender pay gap and support employees going through the menopause. I am pleased to be a member of the Committee seeing this go through today.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Mundell. I draw the Committee’s attention to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unison and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

I associate myself with the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge on the gender pay gap. I particularly welcome the focus on menopause support, which will be provided by the equality action plans proposed in clause 26. The TUC has reported that research from Bupa estimated that 1 million women have been forced out of their jobs because of discrimination and a lack of support for them while experiencing the perimenopause or menopause. I have lost count of the many talented women whom I count as friends and who have left jobs and careers that they loved, simply because they were not given support by their employers to manage their symptoms while at work. I am pleased that we have moved on from an era in which women going through the menopause had to suffer in silence, but we have a long way to go. That is why the mandatory equality plans are so necessary. They will help employers to provide the best workplace experiences.

USDAW research involving women members who are going through the menopause has found that one in five women take time off because of menopause-related symptoms. Given that women between the ages of 45 and 54 make up 11% of all women in employment— 3.5 million women—it is vital that employers consider the needs and experiences of women during this period and ensure that support is in place, that women can keep working and earning, and that their talents are not lost to the workforce.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge and for Scarborough and Whitby for their powerful contributions.

I cannot stress enough to the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire how important our continuing consultation will be. We are keen to engage with stakeholders to ensure that we get this right and lay the appropriate regulations before the House in the appropriate way. On that note, I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 26 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 27

Provision of information relating to outsourced workers

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

This clause is the first step towards requiring employers that already report gender pay gap data also to provide information about where they receive outsourced support from.

A 2019 YouGov survey found that seven out of 10 employer respondents had used third parties to provide key services. We know that the success of a business is down to everyone who contributes, including those who do some of the most demanding jobs but whose pay may be overlooked because they are employed by outsourced service organisations.

By getting large employers to disclose who they have outsourcing relationships with, we are building on what we have learned from gender pay gap reporting. Public accountability is an effective motivator for organisations. Instead of trying to get organisations to share employee data, which risks data relating to outsourced workers getting lost in the wider data, our approach will put those outsourcing relationships front and centre. That will act as a prompt for employers, and so achieve our original aim: getting employers to work throughout their networks and be invested in the pay decisions of those from whom they receive outsourced services.

We are taking a delegated power, mirroring the approach taken for gender pay gap reporting. That will enable us to provide as much detail as possible to employers in legislation, including the definitions and parameters of what will need to be reported. We recognise that outsourcing is not clearly defined and that we will need to work with employers to ensure that the measure works. The use of regulations will allow us to engage on an ongoing basis with experts in the area, provide as much clarity as possible in legislation and still maintain flexibility.

This measure is a step towards valuing and supporting some of the lowest-paid workers; it is a step towards businesses working together, rather than engaging in a race to the bottom; and it is a step in the right direction. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.

The clause builds on the gender pay gap reporting introduced by the last Government. Of course, in 2017 we were on the second of four female Conservative leaders, while the Labour party is still yet to show its commitment to gender equality in its leadership. Perhaps the Minister might be the first female leader of the Labour party—who knows? I gently and slightly naughtily make that point; it is the Conservative party that has shown a clear commitment to gender equality, particularly with the changes to gender pay gap reporting.

Expanding reporting to outsourced service providers does not seem a controversial move, but I urge the Minister to ensure that the provisions that the Government introduce do not create loopholes or miss anyone out; I can imagine various scenarios in which someone might argue that something is not outsourced, even though it is contracted. I urge her to double check that the specific language used does not create something that anyone can exploit or legally challenge. That is to ensure that the provisions build in spirit on the previous Government’s 2017 changes and do not create loopholes.

I will pick up the point just made about the changes made in 2017. Some of the opposition at that time came from the august institution of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which said that, if the regulations were introduced,

“they may encourage outsourcing of lower-paid jobs which happen to be taken by women (to avoid inclusion in a firm’s own return).”

That point has also been made by other organisations. King’s College London published a study on this matter three years ago, which said that

“focusing on the pay gap headline number can risk organisations seeking to window-dress their figures by outsourcing lower-paid jobs, which in turn worsens overall gender segregation within the labour market.”

Therefore, this extension of gender pay gap reporting to outsourced workers really does close that loophole and remove that perverse incentive—one example of many that we have heard about in this Committee.

We also heard from the Women’s Budget Group; Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, giving evidence, said:

“We welcome the move to include outsourced workers in gender pay gap reporting…We are very conscious that you will quite often see that the lowest paid workers, particularly in the public sector, are now outsourced.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 28 November 2024; c. 163, Q176.]

The measures as proposed would effectively link the outsourced employer’s reporting to the reporting of the primary contracting authority. I hope that, when the regulations are drafted, they will shed some light on the extent of outsourcing across the economy; these workers are often invisible in official statistics, which is a wider problem for our understanding of the labour market. However, this move within the Bill is welcome.

I will just come back on one point; the shadow Minister referred to elected leaders of the Labour party. He is quite right to point out that the Labour party has not elected a woman leader—I very much hope that that will happen—but, for completeness, under the Labour party rulebook there is no role of “acting” or “interim” leader. It is therefore important to say, for the record, that in the eyes of the rulebook the noble Baronesses Beckett and Harman were as much leaders of the Labour party as any men who have fulfilled that role, and they served with distinction.

I am not sure that highlighting quite how quickly the Conservatives go through leaders is helpful, but we do have to recognise that they have had the highest number of female leaders of any of our parties here, which is to be commended.

On a serious note, I welcome the intentions of clause 27. It is incredibly important that we start to shine a light on outsourcing, especially in the public sector, which I have seen myself, as I highlighted earlier, regarding the Chippenham hospital. To a certain extent, it seems to be a way of hiding some of the less clear and sensible ways we employ people, especially when it comes to low-paid, often female workers. I will therefore be supporting this clause and I am very pleased to do so.

I think I had better start by putting on the record that I am not intending to stage some sort of leadership coup—[Hon. Members: “Shame!”]

Well, I shall leave Members to interpret my words in Hansard as they choose. On that note, may I just make sure that I have not inadvertently made a mistake? I was referring to the 2019 YouGov survey, and I may have inadvertently said 2020, so I would like to just correct that on the record.

Turning now to the clause itself, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield for making some powerful points, as did the hon. Member for Chippenham. On the burden and the detail required, I say to the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire that we are absolutely committed to ongoing stakeholder engagement in this matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 27 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 28

Pay and conditions of school support staff in England

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Clause 28 introduces schedule 3, which inserts proposed new part 8A into the Education Act 2002. Paragraph 1 of schedule 3 contains proposed new sections 148A to 148R of the 2002 Act and will be discussed separately.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body will give school support staff the recognition they deserve for the crucial role they play in children’s education and development. Establishing the SSSNB through the Bill will help ensure that schools can recruit and retain the staff needed to deliver high-quality, inclusive education and support the Government’s work to drive high and rising standards in schools, so every child has the best life chances.

The body will bring together representatives of school support staff employers, representatives of support staff, an independent chairperson and a representative of the Secretary of State. The SSSNB will consider the remuneration, terms and conditions of employment, training and career progression opportunities for school support staff. Its remit will lead to the creation of a national terms and conditions handbook, fair pay rates and clearer training and career progression routes for school support staff in England.

Most school support staff are currently employed on National Joint Council for local government services pay and conditions. The NJC is a negotiating body made up of representatives from trade unions and local government employers. Existing NJC arrangements are not statutory or school specific. Moving to a school-specific body where pay rates and pay awards for support staff are negotiated by school support staff employer and employee representatives and ratified by the Secretary of State will both help to ensure fair pay rates for school support staff and allow central Government to have a strategic view of pay across the school workforce.

It is essential for the SSSNB to have a statutory remit so that all prospective and current support staff in state schools nationally benefit from a transparent, guaranteed core pay and conditions offer. The Bill re-establishes the SSSNB as an unincorporated body on a similar footing to the previous body from 2009 that was abolished by the coalition Government in 2010.

As education is a devolved matter, the extent of these measures is therefore England and Wales and the measures will apply to England only. This is consistent and in line with the remit of the School Teachers Review Body being England only.

The 2009 SSSNB included only those support staff employed by local authorities and governing bodies to work in maintained schools within its scope. Roughly half of schools are now academies, compared with around 200 in 2009 when the body was previously established. Support staff employed by academy trusts are now included within the SSSNB’s remit. It is crucial that the body has a remit for all state-funded schools in England in order to achieve greater national consistency, irrespective of which type of school support staff work in. That is a point that we may come on to debate in due course.

The Opposition have tabled a number of amendments that probe what is introduced by clause 28 and schedule 3, which we will come on to in subsequent debates today. I will reserve the bulk of my remarks for those debates, although, as clause 28 introduces schedule 3, I will preview those debates now by noting our strong opposition to these provisions. There was a very good, solid and rational reason that the former Secretary of State for Education during the coalition years—now editor of His Majesty’s Spectator magazine—abolished SSSNBs, which was to give that flexibility and freedom to the quite right and good, educational standards-raising revolution in education that came through the creation of the academies by the last Labour Government and in particular the creation of free schools by the last Conservative Government, including in the coalition years. Clause 28 and schedule 3, which we will come on to shortly, seek to undo a lot of that. For the reasons I will outline when speaking on those amendments, I think this part of the Bill requires a rethink.

I draw your attention to my declaration of interests, Mr Mundell. I am a member of the Community union, Unison and GMB.

I found it difficult to hear, in anything the shadow Minister just said, any rationale for getting rid of this body all those years ago. I missed three years of school as a child because of the surgeries I needed. Incredible classroom teaching assistants helped me to build my confidence and learn to mix with other children again when I returned—making education and learning an escape, a way to express myself, to overcome people’s assumptions about my disability and to feel free.

I stood in my constituency because I wanted to use my skills and experiences to give back to the communities that gave me so much. To know that, because of this Bill and the clause before us now, teaching assistants and other school support staff like the ones who made school a less daunting place for me will once again have a collective bargaining system for pay and conditions—which will ensure that those staff are finally valued and recognised for their vital work—is a very great privilege indeed.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body in England, previously scrapped by the coalition Government for reasons that still remain unclear, will be key to providing professional recognition for a group of staff who have been overlooked for far too long. As Unison, of which I am proudly a member, has highlighted, the proposals in this clause

“demonstrate that the Employment Rights Bill isn’t just tackling worker’s rights—it holds the key to tackling long standing public policy failures that have been ignored because they affect workers and service users whose voices are too often neglected by decision makers. Tackling this neglect and allowing trade unions to engage in constructive social partnership and better represent their members is long overdue”.

This clause therefore empowers that group of working people, who have been so long overlooked by the Government, to have a better life at work. It will help trade unions to raise standards and pay across the labour market.

In addition to the interest to which I drew attention earlier, my partner is a trustee of a multi-academy trust.

The reinstatement of the school support staff negotiating body is a hugely welcome measure and long overdue. It is a real shame to hear that there will be cross-party division on this question, because the consequences of the decision to abolish the SSSNB are negative, they are serious and they are now plain to see. We will come on to detailed discussion of the schedule and the amendments, but it is worth reflecting on the rationale that the then Government gave back in 2010 for abolishing the SSSNB. The Secretary of State at the time said—and he never went much beyond this—that the Government had

“concluded that the SSSNB does not fit well with the Government’s priorities for greater deregulation of the pay and conditions arrangement for the school workforce.”

What has been the consequence of that decision? We saw it last year, when the Low Pay Commission, for the first time, reclassified school support staff roles as low-paying occupations. That should be a mark of shame on the Governments that oversaw that unhappy outcome—which, as I said, was a consequence of the decision to abolish that body.

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman; I must make a declaration that my parents were a state headmaster and headmistress before their retirement. One issue that I strongly feel needs to be taken into consideration—though perhaps it is not relevant to this Committee—is that funding for education in general has driven down the pay of these roles. If there were good funding for the education sector in general, these roles would not need so much protection. While we are considering giving more bargaining power, we also need to ensure that there is enough funding for education so that those roles can be paid, otherwise there will merely be fewer of them. I think that is something we need to take into consideration, do you not?

I thank the hon. Member for Chippenham for her intervention. I agree with her up to a point. Teaching assistants’ wages have increased by about 24% on average over the period that we are talking about, while the consumer prices index has increased by 40% over the same period, so there has been an erosion in wages. We could talk about funding at great length. However, as she said, it is beyond the scope of the Bill and the clauses that we are discussing.

The matter goes beyond funding and pay, as important and relevant as those two issues are, because it is also about contracts and about terms and conditions. There are real problems, which we will discuss, involving the construction of term-time only contracts as they currently exist. We saw in the Harpur Trust v. Brazel decision the liabilities created for employers, as well as for workers, by existing contracts inherited from negotiating arrangements that are not fit for purpose. There is a strong rationale for extending and separating the negotiation over terms and conditions, as well as over pay. That point has been recognised for a long time. Given the complaints that we have heard from the Opposition about what they see as the expeditious drafting of policies and clauses in the legislation, I hope they welcome having this matter before us, which has precedent and is the result of more than 20 years of policy development.

It was recognised as far back as the 2005 schools White Paper that an early challenge for the school workforce agreement at that time—signed, I think, in 2003—would be ensuring fair pay and rewards for support staff. We want to ensure that that is supported by a more coherent approach to union recognition at school level, clearer career paths and skills escalators, and a more standardised and benchmarked approach to grading, job descriptions, contract awards, deployments and school support staff training and development. Those are exactly the issues that we are talking about. It is sad to look back at those complaints from 20 years ago and to realise just how little progress has been made.

The decision to increase the number of school support staff workers, which was carried forward by Governments of all parties, was taken because at the time the workload of teachers was far too high. There were serious problems of classroom management and teachers found themselves undertaking a huge number of administrative duties, rather than teaching. Those complaints are current today, but it was worse then, and that was remedied by the introduction of more school support staff workers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge spoke about her own experience. I can also speak from direct experience, having been a special educational needs and disabilities kid during that time, about the value to me of school support staff workers. I do not think I would be here in this Committee without them. However, for too long we collectively have not recognised their contribution.

The Minister made the point that the National Joint Council for local government services is not adequate for school support staff workers. The Green Book was never designed to accommodate those roles, and it is an anachronism that school support staff workers continue to fall under the Green Book. Indeed, while the Confederation of School Trusts has some wider concerns—I think one of the Opposition’s amendments is modelled on the submission that the CST made to the Committee—it has said that it agrees that the time is right to take school support staff negotiations out of the local government umbrella.

I know from representing school support staff workers in the past that they are some of the lowest paid workers in the public sector. I have represented some—primarily women—who have been forced to resort to food banks and payday loans to make ends meet, but they often still dip into their own pockets to provide educational essentials to children who do not have enough to get by. That record has led school support staff to be reclassified as being in low-paying occupations, which should really be a badge of shame for us. The logic of live and let be, and of deregulating and letting a thousand flowers bloom across schools, has not worked, and I would be interested to hear what the Opposition have to say on that.

The hon. Gentleman says that the great educational experiment has not worked, but would he not acknowledge the significant improvement in our children’s ability to read, write and do mathematics over the past 14 years? Scores in the programme for international student assessment show that standards of reading, writing and mathematics have improved enormously in England—although they have regrettably fallen in Scotland, for reasons we can imagine. I am really proud of the achievements of the coalition and later Conservative Governments in improving educational standards. The freedom granted to academies—the freedom to innovate and to employ staff on the terms and conditions that they wish—has been critical in that, but the Government are rolling back those freedoms. Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge the educational achievements of the past 14 years?

That was quite a generous amount of time for an intervention. The hon. Member may wish to go back to the record, because the point I made was that the experiment over pay and terms and conditions has failed. The challenge to the Opposition was: do they recognise that there is a serious problem with school support staff remuneration and contracts? If they do, what are their proposals to fix it? I would be willing to take a second intervention on that point.

Much as the hon. Member for Chippenham said, this is about political choices. If this new Labour Government, six months in, wish to make a political choice to fund schools to pay support staff more, why do they not make that political choice and make that money available? We all want people to earn more, to get more in their pay packet and to be richer.

I think we have it there: the Opposition do not see this as a political priority. They chose not to take steps or to put forward meaningful proposals to raise the employment standards of school support staff. My challenge was: do they have any proposals for this group of workers, particularly in light of the Low Pay Commission decision? We have not heard an answer.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way again?

It is Christmas.

I am glad the festive spirit is alive and well, but I remind the hon. Gentleman—there is no sugar coating it for Opposition Members—that the Labour party had a thumping victory in July. There is no general election on the horizon, and there is little chance of any change of Government before 2029, so it is on the Labour party to make political choices for the next four and a half years. Will the hon. Gentleman do that, or is he just going to deflect back to the Opposition?

I doubt I am going to do it personally; as with all these things, it is a collective endeavour. The hon. Member asked whether the Government are going to do this, but they are doing this—it is in the Bill. I ask again: what is the Opposition’s alternative? We are yet to hear it.

It is worth reflecting on the nature of these review bodies—not that this is a pay review body; it is a negotiation body—and the way in which we establish new agreements, because these things do not happen quickly. I think that the establishment of “Agenda for Change” in the NHS took seven years from initiation to completion. That exercise took a long time, but I do not think anyone would seriously argue for going back to the plethora of terms and conditions, and the mismatch between different grades of workers, that existed before, which created serious equal pay liabilities. That is the situation that we inherit in respect of school support staff.

These things do take time. If the shadow Minister goes back to the record of the original school support staff negotiating body—from 2009 to 2010—the progress made in that relatively short time was not on establishing the new pay system, but on drawing up model role profiles and moving towards a national handbook for terms and conditions. Those measures would be hugely welcome today. In fact, the Conservative Government acknowledged that some the school support staff negotiating body had done some important work during that time. They were on record as saying that there was a clear case for carrying forward some of it, but that never happened, and we have been left with an absence in that area of policy for almost 15 years. The changes to pay will be hugely welcome when they come. It will be a negotiation, so the outcomes will be a matter for the parties represented on the negotiating body, including the Department for Education.

We must go back to the problem: schools are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain skilled school support staff. A number of private sector employers, including supermarkets, are increasingly offering term-time only contracts, with the intention of attracting people out of schools and into alternative roles. Freedom of information requests show that, where data is held, teaching assistant vacancy rates run at around 10%. That is having a real impact on the ability of schools to deliver inclusive education, which is a shame.

On schools’ ability to deliver, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater asked the hon. Gentleman a moment ago to acknowledge the significant rise in the performance of English schools in the PISA rankings and other international comparative studies. Will he clearly say whether he acknowledges or denies that rise?

That is a direct question. We could talk about the way the PISA rankings are constructed.

That is fine—I think that applies to both the intervention and the response. A direct question had been put about whether there is an alternative proposition on pay and terms and conditions, which is the matter we are considering today. I hope we will have an opportunity to talk in much more detail about the matters the hon. Member for Bridgwater raised, but the Opposition could not answer that direct question.

It is a shame that there is not more agreement on what is a very real policy problem. We have a serious—dare I say it—road-tested proposal in the Bill to reinstate the school support staff negotiating body. I am none the wiser about what measures the Opposition propose, but it is important that the clause be part of the Bill.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and to my membership of GMB union. I note the comments that you have made, but if I may I will just respond to the shadow Minister, who talked about the previous Conservative Government’s record. I draw his attention to an article published by the London School of Economics that said that England was an outlier among OECD countries, having both lower numeracy and literacy levels among school pupils.

Does the hon. Lady accept that it is not just the PISA rankings that show great advances in achievement in English schools, but the TIMSS—trends in international mathematics and science study—report published last week? That report said exactly the same thing: English schools are ahead of any comparable western country.

The school support staff negotiating body—to stick to the Bill—is an important part of the Bill and will help to ensure standardised fair pay and employment terms across the board, addressing not only local but regional disparities.

School support staff make a massive contribution to the running of our schools. Just last Friday, I visited the Odessa school in Forest Gate in my constituency, which has an above-average intake of SEND pupils, and I saw at first hand the contribution the support staff made. That is why the Bill, and this clause, are so important—because those staff, too, deserve to have their contributions properly recognised through a negotiating body. At present, their job profiles are out of date, opportunities for professional development are poor and the work they do often goes largely unrecognised or unnoticed. The SSSNB can play a major part in tackling the recruitment and retention crisis across our schools.

I do not think anyone could look at our current approach to school staff and say it is a functioning system—that is certainly not what I hear from teachers when I visit local schools. Local support staff have told me the hardships they are under, and the TUC has shared a report with us showing that one in eight workers use food banks, a quarter take second jobs and half are actively looking to leave their role because they cannot make ends meet.

The attitude—which some may call neglectful—that we have had towards school support workers due to the approach taken by the last Government has sent a clear message that they simply are not valued. By re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body, the Bill will change that. I therefore commend the clause to the Committee.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. We are discussing clause 28 and schedule 3, and the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield asked what the Opposition’s proposal would be. Well, nothing needs changing—the clause and schedule are completely unnecessary. I say that because it is my belief that the way the education system in England is delivered—mostly by academies—is a successful model. The Government’s proposals will harm our education system because they will take freedom away from schools and academies. There is a fixed amount to be spent on education, and the governors of schools and academies are best able to decide where those resources are allocated.

The hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield told us it was unfair that some teaching assistants have lower pay than others and that their terms and conditions are not identical. He also said it was difficult to retain and recruit teaching assistants. If that is the case, the governors of a school or the leaders of an academy can pay more to recruit the staff they need.

What we see from the Government is a belief that Whitehall knows best. They intend to centralise terms and conditions and will try to specify how much each teaching assistant in each school will work, because that suits their political agenda and the agenda of the trade unions that pay for their election campaigns.

Why does the hon. Gentleman’s argument against central direction-setting not apply to teachers? Is he arguing for the abolition of the School Teachers Review Body?

Teachers are different because teaching is a profession that should certainly agree not to strike on pay and conditions, in return for the provision of the pay review bodies, which should play an integral part in ensuring that children’s education is not disrupted by industrial action. I would be happy to grant academies the freedom to pay a little more or less for scales, although perhaps that is not currently possible. I want the maximum freedom granted to academies and schools because, fundamentally, I believe they are best able to allocate the limited resources.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire said, if the Government really wanted to raise pay and improve conditions for teaching assistants, it is in their power to increase substantially the amount of money available for schools. They choose not to do that, but instead say that schools must stick to certain parameters on pay and conditions that will not enable schools to deliver the best education for children.

It is important that I talk briefly about the enormous improvement in educational standards for our children, which has been enabled by the freedom that academies have been granted. Clause 28 and schedule 3 start to roll back those freedoms. My fear is that this is the start of a process in which we will see educational standards in England deteriorate.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. He describes a picture of extraordinary success. Classroom-based support staff spend the majority of their time supporting SEND learners. Does he regard the SEND system as a success?

I am trying to think of how clause 28 and schedule 3 relate to SEND education, and I am struggling. I do not believe that the SEND system is a success, and I do not think that more central control is the way to solve that. In fact, one of the problems is that every time there is a problem, we in Parliament and Whitehall think, “The solution is a directive from above. That will sort out the problem.” That is precisely the model that the Government are adopting in clause 28 and schedule 3: “There’s a problem with low pay, so we will set up a process in London that will help matters.” That is not true at all.

I hope we can all agree that the purpose of spending money on education is to improve the life chances of our children. How are resources allocated? Are they best managed on a school basis or an academy basis? Or are they best decided in London? I argue that they are best decided on a school or an academy level. As I say, I fear that clause 28 and schedule 3 are the beginning of a process in which we will see more and more central control exerted over schools, and that that will lead to worse outcomes for our children.

I will respond in the strict terms that you have directed, Mr Mundell. I also point out to Members that an education Bill will be presented today. So there will be an opportunity for the wider debate that Members are keen to have, when that Bill gets its Second Reading in due course.

Will the Minister give way?

I will avoid the temptation to start to read out the PISA statistics. It is important that the Bill that is published today is seen alongside this Bill, because together they chip away quite substantially at the academy freedoms that have been behind school reform. It would be good to hear the Minister acknowledge that fact.

Of course, the Bill has not been published yet, so we cannot stray into that. We may be able to get on to it this afternoon, but we are trying to help some of the most poorly paid people in our society, who do such an important job. My hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge, for Birmingham Northfield and for Stratford and Bow all talked about how important teaching assistants are, particularly in supporting those with special educational needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield was right that it is shameful that the Low Pay Commission has now deemed teaching assistants to be part of the low pay environment. We are determined to address that, which is why the reinstatement of the SSSNB is an important step.

Let us reflect on some of the evidence that we have had—for example, the GMB evidence. Andy Prendergast said:

“we see increasingly more pupils with special educational needs go into mainstream education, and they need that additional support.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 28 November 2024; c. 132, Q136.]

Some of those staff do detailed things such as phonics, supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and help to deliver classes.

I take the point that has been made about the NJC being an inappropriate way of evaluating and assessing job value. It is clear—indeed a number of other pieces of written evidence have supported our assertion—that the NJC is not the right vehicle for assessing teaching assistants’ pay. We believe that the SSSNB is the way ahead.

The hon. Member for Bridgwater talked about this being a centralising move. Of course, the SSSNB will comprise mainly employers and employee representatives. It will not be a Whitehall-dominated machine.

But to the extent that the SSSNB will decide the terms and conditions of assistants in Bridgwater, Mid Buckinghamshire and Birmingham Northfield, and those conditions will apply to all teaching assistants, regardless of the school’s or academy’s view on the subject, it is a centralising measure, does the Minister not agree?

It is a necessary measure because, as we have seen, teaching assistants and school support staff have suffered in recent years. The point that the hon. Member for Chippenham and several other Members made about funding is correct. It will, of course, be incumbent on future Governments to ensure that any proposals that come forward are affordable. It should be noted that the recent Budget put some additional funds into special educational needs.

Let us look at why this measure is needed. We know that there is a chronic issue of low pay, a lack of career progression and damaged recruitment and retention among school support staff. A survey of teaching assistants found that 27% were considering leaving education altogether—surely we need them to stay—while 60% cited low pay as a reason for leaving, and 40% said that lack of opportunities for progression was. Eighty-nine per cent of schools said they found recruitment difficult, particularly in respect of teaching assistants, and 78% said they found that group hard to retain. There were similar figures in terms of the difficulties with the recruitment and retention of teaching assistants with SEND specialisms.

We are setting up this body to recognise that these people do a critical job in our education system and that they are not properly represented at the moment. They do not have a proper voice, and they do not have a proper mechanism to ensure that the valuable work they do is properly measured, remunerated and recognised. That is why the SSSNB is so important.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.