Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 21 October (HL1287), when they will update the guidance to reflect the ability to switch to a different scheme operator if the licence of their current scheme operator is revoked.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office works closely with DEFRA and Scheme Operators to enable them to manage their visa allocations.
In the event that a Scheme Operator for the Seasonal Worker route became unlicensed for any reason, the Home Office would consider each case on its own merits and tailor our response accordingly with the primary aim of preventing detriment to individuals, which may include moving workers to a different scheme operator where possible and appropriate.
The Home Office has no current plans to update the guidance but will keep this under review.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to review the treatment of Maternity Allowance as unearned income, so that employed women receiving Maternity Allowance are not worse off than those on statutory maternity pay and Universal Credit.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We want new mothers to be able to take time away from work in the later stages of their pregnancy and in the months following childbirth in the interests of their own and their baby's health and wellbeing.
Maternity Allowance is intended for those who cannot get Statutory Maternity Pay and is designed to have a range of in-built flexibilities making it accessible to as many women as possible. Work is underway to make Maternity Allowance even more accessible so that women will, in future, be able to make their claims online. Further information on when this will be available will be provided in due course.
There are two qualifying conditions for Maternity Allowance: a woman must have worked for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks prior to the expected week of childbirth and she must have average weekly earnings at least equal to the Lower Earnings Limit for National Insurance purposes (£123.00 a week, 2023/24).
The work does not have to be for the same employer nor continuous, nor undertaken on the same basis. A claim can be made where there is a mixture of employment and self-employment and work for part weeks also counts as a full week’s work when calculating entitlement. A women can choose any 13 weeks within the 66-week period to calculate her earnings. To ensure that women gets the best rate, we have introduced a real time information calculator tool in collaboration with HMRC. Full details of eligibility and how to apply for maternity pay are available on Gov.uk.
Statutory Maternity Pay is paid by employers and reimbursed by HMRC and is treated as earnings in Universal Credit (UC). As with other earnings, SMP is subject to the work allowance and tapering rules that are built into UC. Maternity Allowance is a contribution-based benefit paid by the State and is classed as unearned income in the same way as other benefits.
The High Court judgment in 2020 upheld the policy of treating Statutory Maternity Pay paid by employers as earnings as well as the treatment of Maternity Allowance. A subsequent joint NI court judgement on 25th April 2022 also upheld the treatment of MA as unearned income in UC.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following the finding in the Parental Rights Survey 2019 that only nine per cent of mothers who do not receive Statutory Maternity Pay apply for Maternity Allowance, whether they plan to make the process for claiming Maternity Allowance more accessible.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
We want new mothers to be able to take time away from work in the later stages of their pregnancy and in the months following childbirth in the interests of their own and their baby's health and wellbeing.
Maternity Allowance is intended for those who cannot get Statutory Maternity Pay and is designed to have a range of in-built flexibilities making it accessible to as many women as possible. Work is underway to make Maternity Allowance even more accessible so that women will, in future, be able to make their claims online. Further information on when this will be available will be provided in due course.
There are two qualifying conditions for Maternity Allowance: a woman must have worked for at least 26 weeks in the 66 weeks prior to the expected week of childbirth and she must have average weekly earnings at least equal to the Lower Earnings Limit for National Insurance purposes (£123.00 a week, 2023/24).
The work does not have to be for the same employer nor continuous, nor undertaken on the same basis. A claim can be made where there is a mixture of employment and self-employment and work for part weeks also counts as a full week’s work when calculating entitlement. A women can choose any 13 weeks within the 66-week period to calculate her earnings. To ensure that women gets the best rate, we have introduced a real time information calculator tool in collaboration with HMRC. Full details of eligibility and how to apply for maternity pay are available on Gov.uk.
Statutory Maternity Pay is paid by employers and reimbursed by HMRC and is treated as earnings in Universal Credit (UC). As with other earnings, SMP is subject to the work allowance and tapering rules that are built into UC. Maternity Allowance is a contribution-based benefit paid by the State and is classed as unearned income in the same way as other benefits.
The High Court judgment in 2020 upheld the policy of treating Statutory Maternity Pay paid by employers as earnings as well as the treatment of Maternity Allowance. A subsequent joint NI court judgement on 25th April 2022 also upheld the treatment of MA as unearned income in UC.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will make the next quarterly claimant data for Maternity Allowance available.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
A new operational system to record Maternity Allowance cases is currently being developed. As such, Maternity Allowance statistics have been suspended from the quarterly statistics release until data can be extracted from the new system.
Analysts are currently unable to provide a timescale for when the Maternity Allowance statistics will be reinstated, as work to develop the statistics from the new system is in very early stages. Users will be updated of progress via the Maternity Allowance statistics page and the DWP Statistical Work Programme page on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what support they give to workers on Seasonal Worker visas to switch to a different scheme operator if the licence of their current scheme operator is revoked, so that those workers can stay in the United Kingdom horticultural sector for the remainder of the time left on their visa.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
Provisions have been put in place to make certain that there is no detriment to individuals who were sponsored by any company that no longer has a valid Home Office sponsor licence.
The Home Office has ensured that there is continuity of work with alternative sponsors for those who were originally attached to companies that have had their sponsor licence revoked.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the revocation of Ethero’s licence as a scheme operator under the seasonal worker visa scheme, whether that company still holds a Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority licence; and if so, what plans they have to review that licence.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
Ethero still hold a GLAA licence and the GLAA are considering appropriate measures in light of the revocation.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that all seasonal worker scheme operators have complied with the requirement that all workers must receive a minimum of 32 hours’ pay for each week of their stay in the UK; and what plans they have, if any, to investigate scheme operator practice to ensure compliance with this requirement.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office has a designated Seasonal Worker Scheme (SWS) team that regularly conducts visits to individual farms employing seasonal migrant workers. Checks are undertaken to ensure workers are offered a minimum of 32 hours employment per week and are paid at the appropriate rates.
Scheme operators that are responsible for the recruitment of the migrant workers are obliged to retain records of working hours and wages and these are inspected annually by sponsorship compliance officers. If discrepancies are discovered, then the SWS team will commence action against the respective scheme operator. This can include suspension or revocation of an operator’s licence.
From March 2023 to date, 241 farm visits have been conducted and 1,700 migrant workers interviewed. We will continue to consider how best to tackle labour exploitation in the Seasonal Worker Scheme.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the announcement by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer on 23 September 2022 to remove the cap on bankers' bonuses (HC Deb col 936), what consideration they have given to curbing any risk-taking in the financial sector which may occur as a result of the removal of that cap; and further to the finding in the High Pay Centre report Analysis of UK CEO Pay in 2022, published in August, that FTSE 100 CEO pay rose by 16 per cent in 2022, what consideration they have given to curbing the pay of senior staff in the financial sector, including by implementing the then Prime Minister's plans for the reform of boardroom governance in July 2016 by ensuring worker representation in boardrooms.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton
As the Chancellor set out in the Edinburgh Reforms last year, the government remains committed to high standards and to a robust regulatory environment that safeguards the UK’s financial stability.
The PRA and FCA, who are responsible for rules on remuneration, are operationally independent from government and have statutory objectives to promote safety, soundness, and effective market functioning.
The removal of the bonus cap is entirely a decision by the independent regulators.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park will address risks to workers posed by the spread of AI in the workplace, including regarding decisions on hire and fire, intrusive surveillance and potential increased discrimination; what plans they have to consider regulatory protections in the UK similar to the EU Artificial Intelligence Act; how they plan to ensure that workers' voice, concerns and ideas for solutions will be heard at the summit; and what plans they have to invite a representative from the Trade Union Congress to the summit.
Answered by Viscount Camrose - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The AI Safety Summit will focus on frontier risks posed by the most advanced AI systems. It will bring together key countries, as well as leading technology companies, academia and civil society, to drive targeted, rapid international action to drive safety at the frontier of this technology. The Summit will seek to advance international collaboration to understand, identify and mitigate frontier AI risks.
While the Summit is not focused on AI’s impact on the labour market and workers’ rights, these wider societal risks that AI, both at the frontier and not, can pose are issues the UK government takes extremely seriously at the highest levels. We are grateful for the engagement we have had to date from trade union representatives and the analysis they have shared, and we look forward to continuing that engagement after the Summit.
On regulatory protections, the AI regulation white paper was published in March this year. It set out five high-level principles that regulators should consider when thinking about AI: Safety and Security; Appropriate Transparency; Fairness; Accountability and Governance; and Contestability and Redress. On fairness, the White Paper set out that AI systems should not undermine the legal rights of individuals or organisations, discriminate unfairly against individuals, or create unfair market outcomes. The white paper proposed that regulators will need to ensure that AI systems in their domain are designed, deployed and used considering descriptions of fairness that they have developed for their remits. We expect that the implementation of fairness by existing regulators will be underpinned by existing law that protects against discrimination such as the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998 as well as data protection, consumer and competition law. Where AI might challenge someone’s human rights in the workplace, the UK has a strong system of legislation and enforcement of these protections, using both state and individual enforcement through specialist labour tribunals.
The UK notes the EU Artificial Intelligence Act with interest and highlights the importance of international cooperation and interoperability across AI governance approaches to ensure a global approach to responsible AI. While the EU are taking a statutory approach to AI regulation, the UK’s regulatory approach will be closely monitoring the impact of existing regulation on the wider ecosystem and we will consider whether further interventions are needed. We believe this approach strikes the right balance between responding to risks and maximising opportunities afforded by AI.
Asked by: Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to Good work: the Taylor review of modern working practices, published on 11 July 2017, and the Government response to the Taylor review, published on 7 February 2018, how many employers have been prosecuted for abusing interns’ rights, and how many prosecutions are being prepared.
Answered by Earl of Minto - Shadow Minister (Defence)
The existing legislation and enforcement are sufficiently robust to ensure that workers undertaking work experience or internships should get the minimum wage to which they are legally entitled. HMRC have contacted over 3,200 employers advertising unpaid internships to ensure they are compliant with the law. Where HMRC come to the view that the arrangements constitute “work” under National Minimum Wage regulations, they will require the employer to pay any arrears to the worker, in addition to penalties of up to 200% of the arrears.