Graham Leadbitter

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) on securing this debate. I want to take the debate in a slightly different direction, as there has not been much mention of national security so far. I am a Member for a constituency that has a large Ministry of Defence footprint, particularly in the RAF. Outsourcing of catering and mess facility management over many years has had a significant and detrimental impact on the cohesion of our fighting forces, not just on bases in my constituency, but in every base where outsourcing has occurred. The reason is because we have a two-tier workforce. We have people who have been TUPE-ed across from the civil service, who started their career as MOD civil servants. They are now working alongside people who are on considerably lower pay for doing the same job. That creates division in the workplace. People who are getting paid less, and are valued less, then do not value their employer. This is understandable: why should anyone value an employer that does not particularly value them? We end up in a situation where there is less attention paid and standards fall. There are situations where a contract is ending—with maybe six months left to run—and, for the sake of argument, let us say that the staffing complement for the team should be about 25 but it is now down to 15. Does the employer have any intention whatsoever of bridging that gap with another 10 people, when it is struggling to make a profit in the last six months of a contract? Absolutely not. It will be sucked up by the 15 people doing the job of 25. That is a totally unacceptable way to work. If we parliamentarians and the civil service believe that the people who work directly for them are worth a living wage, they should believe that for every single person that is doing a job that facilitates what that organisation does. It is a simple act of fairness. In the military, they talk about the esprit de corps or a single-force approach; if there is that separation, then that is not there. If people are not getting the quality of food or accommodation they want, they will not stay. We can spend a fortune training them, and they can be very good at what they do, but they will not stay in because the facilities are not good enough for them. If we want a coherent military, people who are dedicated to it and good national security, we must treat all the workers, whether they are service personnel, civilians or contractors —and I would rather they were not contractors—with the same degree of respect and with the same degree of rights. The other problem that I want to highlight is that people who have been TUPE-ed across when contracts have been put out may, broadly speaking, retain their pay and conditions, but what they do not tend to retain is their pension. That is an absolute travesty because it is completely mortgaging their retirement life and their right to a decent retirement. Many of them, particularly in more rural areas where our services are being provided, may not have other opportunities to move into another role within the same organisation to avoid being contracted out. I want to pick up on a point that was made about radical socialism. There is nothing radical about paying a fair wage for a fair day’s work. It is just a matter of human decency. I will leave it at that.