Zero-hours Contracts

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I am disturbed to hear that. The provision has certainly come in and will be publicised in the normal way. As part of the work we are now doing, we consulted in February on redress. We will be bringing in a route of redress against employers who ignore the ban, and this will give a further opportunity for people to know about this exclusivity. An issue that I have often discussed on these Benches is how you get information about new legislation out. I take the point in general, but I assure the noble Baroness that the new provisions have come in and we are taking steps to publicise those.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, that we are not opposed to zero-hours contracts. However, when someone is on a zero-hours contract for six months or more, surely they deserve an offer of a permanent contract. The Minister talked about flexibility and a fair deal. Is it a fair deal to continue in the same employment without any pension contribution or guarantee of holiday payment? That does not seem like our idea of a fair deal, and it does not seem in accord with the Government’s recent re-espousal of “one nation”.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I think there is a fundamental disagreement between us. We believe in the value of zero-hours contracts. We also believe that we need to look at how they work in practice. There are parts of business where, just because you have worked in some area for 12 weeks, that does not actually mean that what is required by the employer will be the same 12 weeks later. There is a fundamental problem with the proposal put forward by the Labour Party. However, I assure the noble Lord that we continue to look at this with the objective of trying to ensure that it really works well in our flexible economy.