What the hon. Gentleman may not realise is that the workers of the banks that have been taken into public ownership will be specifically excluded from the exit payments cap under the Government’s plans. That might change his mind, so he might like to join us in the Lobby later. Yet again, it seems to be “Up with the bankers and down with the workers”. What a shocking value-free zone this policy is, if the Government stick to it.
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We have received strong representations on the matter from Magnox workers, from trade unions including Unite and Prospect, and directly from the workers.
The bodies that we have included in new schedule 1, which are affected by the “public sector fat cat” policy, are Sellafield Ltd, Westinghouse Springfields Fuels Ltd, Magnox Ltd, the National Nuclear Laboratory, International Nuclear Services, Atomic Weapons Establishment Ltd, Low Level Waste Repository Ltd, Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd, RSRL Winfrith and RSRL Harwell. I note that none of the companies in that list is called “Fat Cats Ltd”, but they are all included on the list of companies with workers that the Government are, by their own admission, treating as fat cats.
The Public Bill Committee received dozens of letters from Magnox workers, and I congratulate them on the quality of the representations that they made. I quoted in Committee from a letter from one of the workers, and I will quote it briefly again. Ian Milligan, who works at Bradwell as a waste engineer, said:
“I should like to start with a definition quoted from the Oxford English Dictionary, the dictionary that has sat on my desk for the duration of my career within the Nuclear Industry which has spanned over 20 years. The question I had was, what does the term a fat cat infer? The answer: A Fat Cat—a wealthy person, a highly paid executive or official.”
He goes on to say:
“I, and many of my work colleagues employed by Magnox Ltd, are likely to be ‘caught’ in the proposed Exit Payment Cap of the Enterprise Bill, to which I, and my work mates across the board were shocked to discover, as we are ordinary working class people and do not consider ourselves to be Fat Cats by any stretch of the imagination.”