‘If you fall into the dialogue of the far right, the far right wins’: Spain’s deputy PM on the need for workers’ rights

Yolanda Diaz Perez's leftwing government has championed employment reform similar to Labour's proposals - and she tells British business there is nothing to fear

Spain's leftwing deputy prime minister, Yolanda Diaz Perez, has a message for Labour politicians as the UK government's employment rights bill takes its next step to becoming law this week: take heart from our success.

With business groups in the UK issuing dire warnings about the impact of the workers' rights package, Diaz, the minister of labour and social economy, remembers her own government's battle when it thrashed out radical labour laws that came into force in 2022. We went through nine months of hell, literally. We had the press against it, academia, research centres - everybody was saying this was going to contribute to unemployment and not eradicate it," sherecalls.