Antonia Bance

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Parliament's party history for this member: Labour (4 Jul 2024 – present).

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1. 3 Nov 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Poundland

   I am standing here on behalf of the workers in Tipton centre and on Union Street in Wednesbury, all of whom provide a vital service to my constituency. If it emerges that a viable bid to keep Poundland intact was blocked, putting 12,000 jobs at risk, what specific powers will the Secretary of State use to hold Gordon Brothers to account? Will the Minister now establish an urgent review of whether our corporate governance and insolvency frameworks give sufficient protection against asset stripping and short-term financial engineering at the cost of jobs and our high streets?

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2. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Houses in Multiple Occupation

   <Question HRSContentId="{2846D08B-1552-43B5-B49B-EB6C0DBA1920}">9. <QuestionText HRSContentId="{1FC9683A-D270-4F34-AF24-27686BE40907}">What steps her Department is taking to further regulate the use of houses in multiple occupation.</QuestionText> </Question>

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3. 2 Nov 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Houses in Multiple Occupation

   I thank the Minister for his answer. Residents in Wednesbury and Tipton are absolutely sick of family homes being turned into HMOs and—now that that is getting more difficult—into supported exempt accommodation, too. I have campaigned for more controls on HMOs since the day I was elected, but supported exempt accommodation is essentially unregulated. When will this Government bring in further controls on supported exempt accommodation?

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4. 14 Oct 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Inheritance Tax

   Has my hon. Friend taken a moment to work out the example put forward by one Conservative Member of the £3.5 million-worth of assets belonging to a family business in his constituency? After taking into account the threshold of £2.5 million and the further £1 million of assets, the actual inheritance tax due by that business is £20,000. That will be what is payable—£20,000 per year for 10 years, an amount that ought to be manageable for a business with £3.5 million-worth of assets. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister has set out why this tax is important to rebuilding the public finances?

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5. 14 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Speciality Steel UK

   I welcome the direction that the Secretary of State has set out today. Wednesbury Bright Bar is part of Speciality Steel UK. It is a specialist steel-finishing plant that produces precision-engineered bright steel bar in the heart of the UK metal-finishing industry area. It is used for automotive and advanced manufacturing across the Black Country and beyond. This is not primary steel production, and it will need a clear strategy separate from that for the primary steel production, which is the business in Rotherham, in Stocksbridge and elsewhere in the country. What specific consideration will the Secretary of State give to securing the long-term future of Wednesbury Bright Bar as part of work towards the public acquisition of Speciality Steel UK, and how will this support the skills, jobs and manufacturing supply chains across the west midlands and beyond?

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6. 9 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Draft Code of Practice on the Right of Trade Unions to Access Workplaces; Draft Trade Unions (Right to Access Workplaces) Regulations 2026

   I should start by declaring my interests as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the Minister for her engagement on these issues with the trade union movement and those of us who are trade union MPs, and for continuing to champion this agenda in Government. I also congratulate her on her recent promotion.<span id="7" class="column-number" data-column-number="7"></span> I wanted to note how important employment access rights are. Contrary to what the Opposition spokesperson has said, those of us who sit on the Business and Trade Committee did a careful examination of the access rights, and when asked, the business representatives that joined us on our panel representing hospitality and retail agreed that the cost of facilitating access would be basically negligible. It is clear that trade union access to workplaces and trade union recognition bring significant benefits to workers in all sizes of workplace, not least that they are more likely to be better paid and work in safer and more family friendly workplaces. Turning to these regulations specifically, the right of access was a clear manifesto commitment and we must deliver it in a way that is meaningful and effective in practice, knowing that hostile employers with deep pockets and access to specialist lawyers will push back hard. That is why I am here today: because I still have some concerns about the code of practice and the regulations. I welcome the Government’s commitment to review and consult on these measures shortly after implementation to make sure that we get them right. On enforcement, the proposed cap on fines of £500,000 is unlikely to act as an effective deterrent for some of the world’s largest corporations. I know, having welcomed the valiant GMB members of BHX5, Amazon’s Coventry warehouse, to Parliament and to the Select Committee, that Ministers should seriously consider replacing it with penalties based on a percentage of global turnover such as in the enforcement regime for GDPR breaches. That will provide a more proper deterrent and stop US-style union busting coming over here.

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7. 9 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Draft Code of Practice on the Right of Trade Unions to Access Workplaces; Draft Trade Unions (Right to Access Workplaces) Regulations 2026

   I agree with my hon. Friend, as he would expect. He is right to raise the scale of investment that countries such as Amazon have made in union busting. The Amazon executives who joined us at the Business and Trade Committee two years ago seemed barely familiar with UK employment rights legislation and the UK labour market environment. We do not want US-style union busting in the United Kingdom. There is a real risk that hostile employers could use vexatious complaints as a tactic to impede union access to workplaces and it cannot be right that unions might be fined for going to talk to workers. It should also not be the case that unions should have to bear the cost of expensive legal advice to enforce access rights or defend themselves against vexatious complaints. If the employers are found to have broken the code of practice, the fines are paid to the Treasury rather than the workers or unions who have suffered the detriment. As Members would expect, I do not think that we should exempt smaller workplaces and we should amp up workers’ protection from victimisation and stop workers losing <span id="8" class="column-number" data-column-number="8"></span>pay if they engage with unions during the access process. Model access agreements should include clear protections on those points. I am so glad that Ministers have promised a review and consultation shortly after the implementation of these regulations. I strongly welcome that commitment. The review must lead swiftly to strengthened regulations and a strengthened code of practice. The right of access is critical to improving life at work and we must ensure that those rights work well in practice, as intended in the manifesto that Labour MPs stood on.

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8. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   I thank the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), who I think has just stepped out for a moment, and all my hon. Friends who have worked on this matter for so long, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson). I rise today to speak particularly on behalf of a group of babies who are particularly vulnerable and sometimes forgotten: babies who live with their families in temporary accommodation. There are 177,500 children living in temporary accommodation at the moment—a record level. We all wish that level to be brought down, and yesterday I listened to a statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, who set out plans as to how exactly we will do that. But for the moment, those 177,500 children remain in temporary accommodation, often in single rooms with shared facilities, living with damp and mould, and with no space to play, crawl or learn. They are often moved repeatedly, and are in a situation where their families lose touch with support networks; services struggle to keep in touch, as those families are far from their GPs, their health visitors and the hospital where their babies were born—multiple bus journeys away from the schools, early years settings and SEND specialists who were previously supporting them.

   Hansard source
9. 4 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

   Infants, Parents and Carers Bill

   I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. What a fantastic idea from our brilliant new Mayor of Greater Manchester—one that I will raise with our fantastic Mayor of the West Midlands to see if we can do something similar. I frequently argue with my Sandwell council to ensure that bus passes are provided to families in temporary accommodation. For some families, though, life in temporary accommodation can be even more devastating. Our friends at the all-party parliamentary group for households in temporary accommodation set out evidence showing that 104 children died in temporary accommodation between 2019 and 2025, and 75 of those were under the age of one. The Lullaby Trust, which does work on sudden infant death syndrome, sets out that temporary accommodation provides the ideal environment for unsafe sleeping. Often, these children are placed with their families in single rooms without cots; in 2023, 4,100 babies under one were placed in temporary accommodation by councils that provided no safer sleep advice to those families, and 903 babies were placed by councils in rooms without cots. This is personal. Babies in the 10% most deprived areas of the country are twice as likely to die as those in the 10% least deprived areas. My constituency is the 38th most deprived out of the 543 constituencies across England. I am always bound, when I say stats like that about Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, to say: we are proud, we are resilient, we care about our kids and we want the best for them. But, as our Prime Minister has <span id="615" class="column-number" data-column-number="615"></span>set out, 40 years of deindustrialisation and 15 years of austerity has put us at the bottom of all the wrong lists, and it is our job to reverse that. Two hundred and twenty-two families are in temporary accommodation in my borough of Sandwell, with more in the bit of Dudley that I represent—that is 554 children. I am sure that other hon. Members will agree with me that there are some constituents who contact us who we worry about—and we worry about them constantly. We all have our lists. I know my families in temporary accommodation. Every one of them gets a call from my office every two weeks to find out where they are up to. Every one of them has been asked by my office, as soon as I know that they are in TA, “Do you have a cot for your little one?” Please ask families you come into contact with in temporary accommodation if they have cots, and please do your level best to find them a cot if they do not have one, because temporary accommodation is not safe for babies, and we should all be aware of that. I think of the families I have met. I met Katie in central Wednesbury,<strong> </strong>pushing her two sons through town, on the first day that I was a candidate. I do not think my agent thought that one of his jobs was going to be childcare for small children, but it was because I needed to speak to Katie. She talked to me about how the council had placed her two bus rides away in Walsall, and she was trying to keep her autistic son in his nursery setting, by hook or by crook, on two buses. Then, quietly, she rolled up her sleeve and showed me the insect bites from the infestation in the temporary accommodation that she was living in. She told me that she was ashamed to show me. The shame is not hers; the shame is all of ours that that was where she was living. It was not for long—we got her out—but there are still families in those situations. I think of Sarah—these are not their real names, by the way—trying desperately to cook, with three children, in a shared kitchen. How do you cook with three little ones around your feet? You cannot leave them in the single room that is your only private space. Steve, fighting for his family, called me at 20 past 6 about a month ago. He left a message: “Antonia, maybe you can help. We’re going to sleep in my car tonight—me, my missus and two kids.” They did not sleep in their car. I will not let people sleep in their car and my council, thankfully, will not let people sleep in their car, but I worry about our families in temporary accommodation. That is why I am here to speak on the babies Bill. Although the babies Bill cannot solve the housing crisis that we face for children in this country, it can ensure that babies caught up in that housing crisis are not forgotten. It will mean support for infants and parents put on a stronger statutory footing; a stronger assessment of need; and accessibility of services that families receive. It will help to make sure that our most vulnerable babies are identified earlier and supported better, especially our babies forgotten in hotel rooms, two bus rides away from where they usually live. The Bill will build on a measure introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 that councils must notify schools, GPs and health visitors when a child is placed in temporary accommodation. That means that <span id="616" class="column-number" data-column-number="616"></span>better access to health visitors, stronger perinatal mental health support and earlier intervention to stop escalation will be more likely to happen for children in temporary accommodation. It means a better chance to thrive for some of our children, despite the challenges that their families face. I have to end by paying to tribute to my three family hubs—my Tipton family hub, my Wednesbury family hub and my Coseley family hub—because behind every statistic is a child and a family left devastated. We remember every one of the 76 babies who died in temporary accommodation between 2019 and 2025. They should not have died; they should have been safe. The Bill will protect services for all children, especially the most vulnerable, like our babies in temporary accommodation, and I am proud to support it today.

   Hansard source
10. 3 Sep 2026·Parliament·Antonia Bance

    Building Homes and Renewing Communities

    Isn’t it great to see our right hon. Friend back in her place? It was also great to see the first allocations of the social and affordable housing programme last month, and we <span id="520" class="column-number" data-column-number="520"></span>desperately need our share in Tipton, Wednesbury and Coseley, including at the Friar Park development of 650 new homes. Will she support the campaign that I have been running with our West Midlands Mayor to get Sandwell council and Homes England to help local people, who have been stuck on waiting lists for years, by raising the proportion of social housing in the Friar Park development to 50%?

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2024 General Election: Tipton and Wednesbury

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