Employment Rights Bill (Second sitting)

Alison Hume Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unite and the GMB.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unison and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a member of the GMB.

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[The Chair]

One last question.

[Alison Hume]

Q I have a question for you both. In 2023, there were 8,000 people working in the hospitality sector in my Scarborough and Whitby constituency. That is 20% of all employees, which is substantially higher than the average in the UK. In your view, do the Bill’s zero-hours contract clauses sufficiently cover seasonal work?

Neil Carberry: I am happy to say that from our point of view, it does not. Allen mentioned earlier the reference period, and that is how you would allow for seasonal work to be properly reflected. That balance to be struck is between protecting the interests of workers in the east coast’s hospitality industry while also protecting hospitality businesses who we know are often, as Allen said, hard-pressed. The reference period is absolutely key.

Allen Simpson: I recognise that. I said 26 weeks as a sensible reference period. Ireland’s 52-week reference period is probably longer than we need. The clarity on exclusions around fixed-term contracts and genuine casual work is material. And then, there is something in the Bill around where there is no work available after that period. It does need to be no work or limited work, because you could have a business that is still open, but the number of people staying in the hotel, say, is materially down. It needs to be possible to reflect that, and I do not think the Bill does at the moment. But that is a practical matter that does not affect the principles of what the Bill is trying to achieve.

[The Chair]

Order. That brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank both our witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witnesses

Jamie Cater and Jim Bligh gave evidence.

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[Steve Darling]

Q I visited Torquay girls’ grammar school in my constituency of Torbay some time ago, and met the head and some of the sixth-form students who were experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace throughout Torbay. Does the proposed legislation go far enough? I am particularly thinking of young people who may lack confidence. What could be built in to support them to call it out, so that it is not just seen—as other people might call it—as a bit of a banter or something like that? It is deeply hurtful and painful for those individuals, and the sooner we give them support the better. I welcome your reflections on how the Bill could be strengthened in this area.

Jemima Olchawski: It could be strengthened by having clear guidance and expectations around the reasonable steps that will prevent. That should include multiple reporting routes, which might be anonymous if that feels more appropriate, and training for managers. Our research shows that managers want to respond appropriately, but often when those conversations come up, they do not know what the right thing to do is. Consequently, lots of those conversations end up going badly, and young people or employees do not get the support they need.

It is also important that enforcement agencies have the resource to investigate whether policies and procedures are in place, so that we can embed a culture of prevention rather than just respond decently when incidents happen. That is in the interests of employers too, because cultures where there is bullying or harassment are bad for productivity and staff turnover. It is in everyone’s interest to ensure we address this and cut it off at the pass.

Joeli Brearley: The only thing I would add is that when women experience sexual harassment or any form of discrimination and want to access justice, the justice system is currently failing them—it is not working. We know, certainly in cases of pregnancy and maternity discrimination, that fewer than 1% of women who have that experience even raise a tribunal claim. Part of what we need to do is extend that time limit to raise a claim. It is currently three months. It needs to be at least six months, so that women have the opportunity to recover from their experience before they start to go through that onerous, difficult process of raising a tribunal claim.

[Alison Hume]

Q Ms Brearley, I have read that you will be leaving your role in the new year, so may I congratulate you on all you have achieved with your organisation, and on being the tremendous advocate you have been for the causes of women’s rights and equal work? When you look back at the journey that the conversation about gender equality has been on since you founded your organisation 10 years ago, do you feel that the steps in the Bill have the potential to make lasting progress?

Joeli Brearley: I started Pregnant Then Screwed 10 years ago, because of my own experience with pregnancy discrimination. I was pushed out of my job the day after I informed my employer that I was pregnant, and it was the tribunal time limit that prevented me from taking action against my employer. When I started campaigning on these various issues and talking to people within Government about them, I honestly felt like nobody was listening. It really felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. Nobody really had any interest in what we were talking about. Certainly over the last 10 years, the dial has not moved very much at all. I mean, we have seen changes in flexible working law and changes in redundancy protections, but they are minor tweaks.

This Bill takes a significant step forward, but of course I am always going to say that there is a lot more that we can do. I was particularly excited to see the flexible working part of the Bill, but if we do not get this right—cross the t’s and dot the i’s—then it will make very little difference whatsoever.

Thank you for your comments; they were very kind.

[Dr Tidball]

Q Jemima, you described the Bill as a “win for women”. Why do you feel the measures in the Bill are so transformative, and how will they benefit working families, women and disabled women?

Jemima Olchawski: We know that women are currently more likely to miss out on statutory sick pay because they do not earn enough to meet the threshold or have not been in their roles as long; you heard evidence earlier about the impact on people who have to try to work when they are not well enough, and the impact on incomes through people not being able to work. Women are more likely to be juggling work and care, so they are more likely to need the flexibility and protections in this Bill. That is why getting the piece around flexibility is so important, whether it is because you are caring for children, for disabled children or for elderly relatives. We also know that one in 10 women we surveyed in our research who had been experiencing the menopause had left their workplace as a result of their symptoms, and flexible work and support in the workplace is really important to enable them to continue to participate when they are at the peak of their careers and skill levels. They should be allowed to thrive and be in their prime.

We know that the majority of households in poverty have at least one adult in work, but at the moment we do not have a system that properly supports either lone parent families, which are predominantly women, or households where both parents want to work. We also know that 40% of women who are not working would work more hours, or would work paid hours, if they had access to flexible working, so these measures are also really important as a part of overall efforts to address poverty and prevent child poverty.

Joeli Brearley: Adding to what Jemima has said, particularly on flexible working, the current law is that you have a day one right to request flexible working, and that has obviously moved from having had six months in a job. A right to request is still a right to decline, and we strongly feel that it does not go far enough in changing the dial on flexible working.

I know that the RPC opinion on flexible working has said that there is no evidence that we need to change the law on this. There will never be enough official evidence because those who want flexible working tend either to ask for what they think that they can get—or, if they know that it will not be granted, they do not ask for it at all. TUC research found that a third of people who want flexible working do not ask for it, despite needing it, because they think it will be rejected, and a further third ask for what they think that they can get, rather than what they actually need to manage their personal and professional obligations.

To really change the dial on flexible working, you have got to switch this on its head, and an advertising duty would do that. It is a hugely ambitious change; it is not a slight tweak to the current legislation, which is a much easier thing to do. An advertising duty would ensure that employers design jobs as flexible from the outset. It would mean that, in a job advert, employers would have to stipulate the types of flexible working available, and the candidate they chose would have a legal right to take up employment on whatever arrangement was stipulated in that job advert. The pushback on this has been, “Well, not all jobs can be flexible.” That is of course true, so if you do not believe that a job can be done flexibly, you could stipulate that and set out the reasons why.

The duty would particularly impact the women we work with. They would not be in a situation where they are having to move job. At the moment, they need to go to a new job and then ask for the flexibility they need to fulfil their personal and professional obligations. If at that point they find out that that is not possible, they have to leave that job—and both employer and employee lose out. We are currently trying to shoehorn flexibility into a very rigid structure, and we need to really change the culture. We believe that an advertising duty is the way in which you do that.

If we are not going to be that ambitious, and an advertising duty is off the table, we really need to reduce the number of reasons that you can decline a flexible working request—we believe that it can be reduced to three. We need to make it a legal right to be able to request flexible working from the point at which a job is offered rather than the first day of employment. That makes complete sense for everybody. Finally, we need to have the ability to appeal decisions to a third body, perhaps the single enforcement body. We also want employers to have to publish their flexible working policies online so that employees can see them. It would be a game changer and would really shift the way in which our employment market works, and it certainly would be a game changer for women.

The other thing in the Bill that I would really like to talk about is parental leave—the fact that it is not remunerated and that you are moving it to the first day of employment. We know that the take-up will be very low. We did some research with the Centre for Progressive Policy that found that if you increase paternity leave to six weeks and pay it at 90% of salary, you reduce the gender pay gap by 4% and you increase labour force participation, particularly by women. We really need to keep up with our European counterparts and increase paternity leave. Two weeks at £182 a week is not good enough, and we know that one in four dads are not even taking their two weeks because they cannot afford to do so. Families are losing out as a result. It is really bad for kids if dads and second parents are not enabled to spend time with their children. It is really bad for women, and it is a big cause of the gender pay gap, so we would really like to see the parental leave review happen as quickly as possible, and paternity leave increased, ringfenced and paid properly.

Jemima Olchawski: To come back on flexible working, Fawcett has been campaigning for that advertising duty and agrees that it is really important to make these measures meaningful. It is also important to recognise that this is good for employers because it increases the pool of talent that they have access to, rather than being able to get applications only from people who meet a rigid but not relevant set of criteria. It broadens it out to everyone who genuinely can do the job, which benefits everyone and is hugely important for enabling women to succeed at work.