Queen’s Speech

Lord Monks Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, we know that the most vulnerable in our society are in for a very rough ride in the next few years and there is the real threat of a deep recession. Against that context, the Queen’s Speech is a disappointment, offering little hope of easement to many workers. With the very rocky period ahead, a lot of people must be extremely worried at the moment. I join those who have called for another look at the restoration of the universal credit uplift, a measure that should never have been done away with.

My remarks today are about another omission from the Queen’s Speech: a much-promised employment Bill, which has already been mentioned by my noble friend Lady Donaghy. Remember the manifesto of the Conservative Party in 2019, promising to make Britain

“the best place in the world to work”?

Promises were scattered on sharing tips, extending sick pay, more predictable contracts, flexible working, extended leave, new protections for women on redundancy and sexual harassment, and others. Since then, there have been regular promises of this new Bill on these and other matters. We have counted 20 at least, with the hapless Paul Scully, the Business Minister, responsible for 18 of them.

The need for new laws is obvious to any fair-minded person. There are 3.5 million workers in insecure work in this country; half of them get no sick pay at all. Guess what many of them did when they caught Covid? Of course, they continued to work. It was not just in Downing Street that the Covid rules were broken. Our sick-pay arrangements are among the worst in the developed world. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that almost half of employees went to work feeling unwell. Our absence rate is less than half the European average and one of the lowest in the OECD. It is not because we are healthier, unfortunately—it would be a good thing if we were. As little as 19% of the average UK salary is covered by statutory sick pay, again putting us very near the bottom of the league of advanced countries. The more generous occupational pension schemes, which are common for people in the higher-paid sectors, leave many others, including factory workers, carers and retail workers, at the mercy of inadequate support. Is this the best place in the world to work? I do not think so.

Another worrying feature of the UK labour market that I will just touch on is the growth of fire-and-rehire practices. We saw this recently in the P&O Ferries case, which followed a similar occurrence at Irish Ferries a couple of years ago. We currently also see it in household-name companies such as Centrica, British Airways, Clarks shoes and even the Girls’ Day School Trust, all of which have damaged their reputations by slashing terms and conditions of employment for employees. The boss of P&O even admitted deliberately breaking the law on consulting British trade unions—but we should note that he did not do that with the French and Dutch crews. The laws are much stricter in those countries, and we should match them in these kinds of protections. So I ask the Minister: when can we expect the much-promised actions that would make this country a much less nasty and brutish place to work, which it is for far too many of our fellow citizens?