“Chapter 4A

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

The Government are moving amendments that will add two new provisions into part 2 of the Bill. Analysis conducted by the Resolution Foundation found that 900,000 workers reported that they had no paid holiday despite that being a day one entitlement. New clause 35 will create a new duty in the Working Time Regulations 1998 for employers to retain records relating to holiday pay and annual leave for six years.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)]

I apologise if the Minister has moved on a bit; I was just waiting to hear what he said. The Minister may correct me, but I do not believe the provisions around menstrual health—the menopause strategy and so on—include endometriosis, which can be crippling for people in the workplace. I may not have seen it in the Bill, but does the Minister have any plans to ensure that this becomes a protected area of sick leave? Endometriosis is devastating for many women, but at the moment, they are struggling to get this terrible disease recognised in the workplace.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for raising this important point. It was touched on in Committee, but there are not any amendments dealing with that specific issue today.

Returning to holiday pay, where an employer does not keep adequate records, a Fair Work Agency enforcement officer may seek a labour market enforcement undertaking from the employer to ensure future compliance. Where the employer refuses to give a labour market enforcement undertaking, or fails to comply with one, the FWA enforcement officer may apply to the appropriate court for a labour market enforcement order.

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[Greg Smith]

I am happy to confirm to the hon. Lady that I have read the Bill, and I have read a considerable number of documents from the House of Commons Library and many other organisations. I have spoken to a lot of businesses in my constituency, as well as further afield, who I can assure her are horrified at the Bill. The Minister was asked earlier to name a single small business that supported the Bill, and his answer was the Co-op and Centrica. The last time I looked, neither of those would be considered small businesses.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Wendy Morton]

rose—

[Greg Smith]

I will give way one more time, and then I will make some progress.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

Does it worry my hon. Friend that, once again, the Government have revealed they are desperately hoping that companies such Centrica do become small businesses?

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point in his stylish, witty manner.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) said, the Regulatory Policy Committee has given a red rating to the identification of options and choice of policy on zero-hours contracts and guaranteed hours in the Bill. That means the Government have not justified the necessity of clauses 1 to 6. What is the problem the Government are trying to solve with those clauses? Why are those clauses needed? We just do not know. The Bill, despite literally hundreds of Government amendments, remains silent about how these provisions will work in practice, which means the Government’s assessment that the administrative cost of the Bill to business in shift and workforce planning will be £320 million could well be an underestimate.

The deputy CEO of UKHospitality raised their concerns in Committee, saying:

“the Government are intending to leave it to case law and employment tribunal systems to figure out what ‘reasonable notice’ means.” ––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 43, Q39.]

That is an unacceptable way to legislate. Businesses crave certainty and a stable regulatory environment. This Bill provides anything but, and the result, as the chair of the CBI has said, is that it risks becoming

“an adventure playground for employment rights lawyers.”

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[Lee Barron]

No.

Zero-hours contracts are banned in Spain and in the Republic of Ireland—employers cannot use them. Do not tell me that those countries do not have flexibility; they have. We will survive in the future, as we survived in the past, without exploiting working people, because countries do not grow their economy by exploiting working people. This Bill goes some way towards stopping that.

The Bill bans exploitative zero-hours contracts, increases protection from sexual harassment, introduces equality menopause action plans, strengthens rights for pregnant workers, makes flexible working the default, strengthens bereavement leave, improves pay and conditions through fair pay agreements, provides day one protections against unfair dismissal, and establishes the Fair Work Agency to make sure all employers are playing by the same rules. The Bill will deliver the jobs for the future that will benefit working people in Corby and East Northamptonshire, and I am proud to support it.

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I will focus first on new clause 83, tabled by the Opposition.

The hon. Member for Hamilton and Clyde Valley (Imogen Walker)—who I think I am just catching before she leaves the Chamber—said that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. The right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) also said that we all agree that an honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay. A lot of today’s speeches have been focused on banning zero-hours contracts, and the argument has been made that people deserve to know what their contracts are, what they are going to be paid, and that they are going to be treated properly. One of the reasons I think this Bill is rushed and is falling down goes back to a question I put to the Secretary of State when this Bill began its passage through the House: why does it not cover unpaid internships?

Looking at this Bill, and with today’s debate having focused so much on zero-hours contracts, I find it difficult to understand why we would leave a whole section of society out of the Bill—people who can work for up to 12 months without any pay. Banning unpaid internships has been in Labour manifesto after Labour manifesto. In every Parliament I have been a Member of, I have tabled a Bill to ban those internships. My Government did not want to do it, despite Prime Ministers making promises at the Dispatch Box when I first raised the issue, but there are Members on the Government Benches who stood on manifestos that said they would ban unpaid internships. Now we have this great Bill, which was trailed in the general election and is being promoted by the Labour party, yet there is nothing in it about unpaid internships. When the Bill goes to the other place, that has to be looked at, because such internships are wrong.

We have heard a great deal today about opportunities for people, but what opportunities are there for people such as my sister and me, who had to work and earn a living to be able to do what we have gone on to do? We could not have spent 12 months working in London unpaid. The fact that a whole section of society can go unpaid is still not being addressed, and that fundamentally undermines what I am hearing from Labour Members about what the Bill will do to create equality. I think that is wrong. The review of the impact on employment tribunals that is proposed in new clause 83 needs to be wider, and it needs to be understood that if the aim is to create equality, it is not in fact being created.

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[Joe Robertson]

Does my right hon. Friend think that some of the problems that he is identifying are a result of the Bill’s being rushed through this Chamber?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke]

I do, and I am trying to make a serious point here. This is a big Bill, and it is one of the Government’s flagship pieces of policy. I heard someone say earlier, from a sedentary position, that we have 12 hours of debate, but that does not come up to the 21 days that we spent in Committee examining the Bill bit by bit. I agree with other Members that it has been rushed through for political purposes.

The purpose of debates such as this is to explore the issues, and try to make a Bill into a better piece of legislation. I am trying to be constructive in explaining where I see the flaws and in highlighting the unforeseen consequences. It worries me when we see the no-platforming of people at universities, and hear about trigger warnings and people saying that they feel emotionally put upon. That, I think, is an abuse of some of the protections that we are trying to introduce, and I think there are people who will try to abuse this particular clause. What I am saying to the Minister, and the Government, is, “Can that wording be tightened up?”

[Richard Burgon]

It is always a pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour from the other side of the House, the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke).

I really welcome the Bill, which needs to be put in its historical context. With the exception of those passed under the last Labour Government, virtually every time we have seen an employment rights Bill or a trade union Bill in recent decades, it has been an attack on trade union rights or workers’ rights, whereas this Bill makes a real difference in advancing the rights of working people in this country. They have been kicked around for too long, and it is right that we do not accept that it is fine for workers in this country to be some of the easiest to sack and mistreat in the continent. Workers in our country deserve better employment rights, and this Bill sets about putting them in place.