Business Secretary Peter Kyle spoke to the Mirror about workers rights as millions of people will benefit from major reforms to sick pay and expanded parental leave from Monday
Business Secretary Peter Kyle has said Labour’s workers rights shake-up will bring workplaces into the modern age – as he accused Reform for trying to drag Britain back to the 1950s.
Millions of people will benefit from reforms to sick pay and expanded parental leave from Monday, as part of the Government’s flagship Employment Rights Act. It comes after hikes to the national minimum wage kicked in on April 1, delivering a pay rise to estimated 2.7million people.
Other measures due to come in by 2027 include scrapping exploitative zero hours contracts and outlawing fire and rehire practices, greater rights to flexible working and bereavement leave.
The reforms are fundamental for Mr Kyle, who has had a long road to the top. He struggled with severe dyslexia and was written off by his teachers, leaving school without any qualifications. He went back to sit his A-Levels aged 25, before going on to university and later earning a doctorate.
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After his Dad grafted his way out of a childhood in poverty in Liverpool, Mr Kyle hit out at Reform for pledging to rip up the worker’s rights reforms.
“We’ve always known that [Reform are] nostalgic for a past we could never quite pin down,” he told the Mirror. “I think we now know the point in time they want to go back to, and it’s broadly around the 1940s and 50s.
“My Dad grew up in that time. I love my Dad, and my Dad was very proud of the tough upbringing he had and the way he was able to overcome it, but he was the first to say that he strove in life to deliver me and my brother from what he had to endure when he was a child.”
His father Les, who died just before the 2024 general election, suffered acne scarring for life due to his poor childhood diet. He left school at 14 to become an apprentice stonemason, before joining the Navy at 16. He went to become a door-to-door salesman, working his way up to becoming the owner of the company.
“He had no rights at all when he was a 14-year-old, leaving [school] with no education,” Mr Kyle said. “When I hear Nigel Farage talk in kind of glory times, about the good old times. Actually, for people like my Dad it was grinding, it was unrelenting, and he was on his own.
“He didn’t have anyone that was on his side, and he sure as hell didn’t have a Government that was on his side when it came to some of the fundamentals.”
He added: “I’m proud of what he did, but my Dad told me so many times that he would have done anything to stop me experiencing a childhood that he had to go through – and that’s what Nigel Farage wants for everyone. Well, Nigel Farage can go back to the 1950s but I’m staying in the 2020s and I want to be a secretary of state that delivers the best of life in 2020s and into the 2030s that life has to offer.”
Speaking to the Mirror in his grand departmental office, Mr Kyle, 55, said he was worried that his younger self would struggle to succeed now.
He said: “This is so fundamental for me because I was able, through persistence and graft, to work my way from really having few opportunities because of barriers to learning, but also coming out of school with no qualifications, growing up in a small, traditional coastal town where kids like me – we’re talking about the 80s – didn’t have the best opportunities in life.
“But through sheer persistence, like going back to school when I was 25, applying again and again and again to get into university, but getting in, really fighting for it. I don’t think that pathway is there for people these days.
“I have worked my way into a secure, high paid job. But when I look at the economy we’ve inherited it, it is very hard for the Peter Kyle, as an 18-year-old, to realistically earn enough money to buy a car, even though it was second hand, to get the education and pay the fees, to think about owning a property.
“I worked my way into those positions when I was going through my 20s and into my very early 30s, but it’s really hard now to do that.”
He went on: “The minimum wage and raising it isn’t just about giving people money in their pockets and easing the challenges of living.
“It’s actually about investing into somebody’s future and somebody’s security into the very long term – for pensions, property, cars, education, these things that you need to invest in as you go through life, but was just ripped away from a whole generation of people because of this vicious cycle of increased costs and then the blight of low pay. We’re changing that, and we’re creating an economy that puts British values actually into action.”
From Monday, all workers will qualify for statutory sick pay (SSP) from the first day of illness, rather than being forced to wait until day four. The lower earnings limit will be axed, meaning the lowest-paid employees can claim SSP for the first time.
New fathers and partners will be able to claim paternity leave from day one, rather than waiting six months to be eligible, and unpaid parental leave will available from the first day rather than after a year in the job. Grieving parents will also be granted a new right to time off following the death of a child’s mother or primary adopter.
It also follows a hike to the national minimum wage on April 1, with the hourly rate rising by 50p to £12.71 for over 21s. Pay for workers aged 18-20 went up by 85p to £10.85 an hour.
Discussing the wider reforms, he said: “Fire and rehire, for example, has crept into the economy in recent years, but it wasn’t there when I was a kid. Zero hours contracts? Wasn’t there.
“People in the 2020s expect a more empathetic approach to the challenges that people have in life when they’re at the workplace, such as moments of grief, such as sickness and support. So we’ve brought workers rights into the age we’re living in.”
He added: “I want this to be a key legacy for this Government and a key achievement as we go into the next election.”
Right-wing critics have bashed the plans for giving greater power to trade unions. But Mr Kyle said the plans could thwart strikes by setting higher standards for pay and conditions.
However he hit out at resident doctors, who are preparing to down tools on Tuesday for a six-day strike. He said: “A 26% increase in pay, a solid package of reform and investment into their workplace, as well as remuneration well in advance of what any other public sector worker has been offered.
“It may not satisfy all their needs, but it is a hell of a long way down the road towards getting it. And there will always come a time on behalf of the taxpayer, we have to draw a line.”