Employment

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Prosser has given us a highly opportune moment for debating this issue, as “employment crisis” is a pretty fair description. It will unfortunately intensify this winter. I do not want to be a Cassandra, but there is growing disaffection in many parts of the country, which is not just the result of the economic crisis per se but of the way that this Government have responded to it.

We now have the apotheosis of the Victorian employer’s philosophy being epitomised in a report, we understand, from Mr Adrian Beachcroft, who is described as a venture capitalist. That rather reminds me of the imperial adventurers who ran the East India Company, particularly in the years leading up to the Indian mutiny in 1857. In Britain, the corresponding philosophy is that satirised by my noble friend Lord Sugar with, “You’re fired!”.

What is the status of this Beachcroft report? Was its commissioning a decision just made by No. 10 Downing Street or was BIS involved? Specifically, was Mr Vince Cable involved? Or perhaps BIS knew nothing about it, like it knew nothing about the Chancellor's pre-emptive statement at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on employment tribunals. Maybe BIS still does not know anything about it. If you read the newspapers, you might find that this report has now been received by No 10. Downing Street. Has it been received in BIS? Perhaps BIS could make a request to No. 10.

What we have now is two examples. One is that of No. 10 doing its own thing, well outside what its normal responsibilities might be, although you would think that there would be consultation in government. The other good example recently is that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Manchester, speaking on employment tribunals. Obviously, we have got to the point where we have two Governments: the Bullingdon Club Government and Her Majesty’s Government. No doubt Mr Vince Cable has already made that point, but I imagine in more colourful language.

The trouble is that the Conservative Party has now brought 100 clones of Mr Beechcroft into the parliamentary party. They seem to have been cloned along with a set of myths on employment rights, which they peddle around the country on all the media outlets, brooking no contradiction by reference to any facts—which of course get in the way—and resting on belief in their own propaganda.

In a sense, we on this side of the House—including many on the trade union side of the House, if I may declare a collective interest on behalf of the trade union movement—must be grateful that as the penny is beginning to drop, pretty sharpish, it will be abundantly clear that this doctrine of “devil take the hindmost” has passed its sell-by date so far as the people of middle Britain are concerned.

One specific example of the myths of employment rights and the effect on employment is maternity rights. On Monday this week, the Prime Minister, in his Statement on the European Council, which was repeated in this House, said, somewhat to my surprise, that he had been advocating maximising the amount of women’s employment in the European Union. I recall that when I was covering that patch for the TUC some 12 or 15 years ago, that was the strong lead taken by the European Commission at Amsterdam. The Commission was then led on social rights and social policy by a most distinguished Swedish former finance Minister, and a distinguished director of social policy, Mr Allan Larsson.

The need to have a far wider and extensive framework of rights for women at work was driven not only by the inherent arguments but by the fact that if we wanted to increase our living standards and output in total, we needed to have more women in the labour market. It has grown in the past 10 years, and I believe that now 70 or 80 per cent of women have some involvement in the labour market. Someone is nodding, which may mean that two of us are wrong, but I think that it has been significant.

Who is to say that this growth would have happened faster if we had not had maternity rights? We need to look at it from the point of view of the 90 per cent of people who are workers or employees, rather than employers or company directors, and hear their view, rather than the myths peddled by the backwoods variety of employers. I agree with my noble friend Lord Haskel that there are many distinguished exceptions to that, but I have to say that the propaganda coming out at the moment is from this myth-creating group, who would look at the downside of employing women—because, gosh, they all go off and have babies.

To state the obvious, it is absolutely vital that we have what used to be called Scandinavian rights for maternity and paternity. I take that as one example of this mythology.

Moreover, all of these rights under the social chapter are thanks to Jacques Delors and the agreement on the social chapter. This was subject to an opt-out by the Conservative Government, but within two or three months of May 1997 Robin Cook went off to Brussels and signed it. I predict that these will be taken as read by the British people, and none of them will be repealed. The Conservative Party will soon wake up and realise what a bad idea that was.

I want to say one other positive thing about the European Union and employment. I was once a member of a “high-level group” on benchmarking. Although it is a candidate for derision in the Sunday Telegraph, best practice in Europe is surely highly desirable as a way of looking at where the British economy ought to be going.

The National Economic Development Council used to be heavily into benchmarking, before the word came into popular usage, and it is rather obvious that we need to create a body of that type in Britain today. I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Lamont—he was the Chancellor who scrapped Neddy—and others believe that this is corporatism gone mad. But you do not need to sit outside St Paul’s cathedral today to say that there is something strange about the modern British model of capitalism, as my noble friend Lord Monks has said. “Us and them” is now, as in the Victorian era, the name of the game on employment. However, I must say that as regards St Paul’s, God and Mammon have got a bit mixed up in the target.

Our own multinationals are quite different in their operations from multinationals in many countries, such as Germany. They have a much higher share of their value added overseas than German companies. I am in conversation with some officials in BIS to produce some more robust numbers on this, as it is a vital question for the economy, but we seem unable to produce those statistics.

In conclusion, I would say that these are the countries which have the greatest social cohesion and have been the least badly affected by the crisis of the past four years. Going forward, we need to emulate them, not ridicule them.