Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Alison Hume and Uma Kumaran

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Uma Kumaran]

Q Thank you, Dr Stephenson. I am really proud that my constituency is the home of the match girls’ strike; the fight for women’s rights in the workplace runs deep in the history of my politics. How do you think the measures in the Bill will benefit women’s workforce participation? You have talked about some of the broader views, but if there is one thing in particular that you think will mark a real difference, I would be keen to know it.

Dr Stephenson: As I said, the flexible working provisions particularly benefit women’s labour market participation. Some of it is not just about participation, but about improved pay and conditions; for example, the end to exploitative zero-hours contracts improves women’s position in the labour market, which means they are less likely to leave the labour market.

Another thing is the fair pay agreements in social care, if they were seen as a starting point and extended so that, having started out with social care and looked at how it worked, you looked at other sectors such as early education and childcare. That is a sector very similar to social care, particularly now we have the big extension of funded hours coming in—largely private provision delivering public services that are majority publicly funded, with a majority female workforce on low pay and often working part time. That model of fair pay agreements could not just support women working in those sectors, but support more women into the labour market, if you had available, affordable early education and childcare.

We did some work with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies last year looking at the loss to the economy from women’s under-participation compared with men, and that loss comes to £88.7 billion. Enabling women to enter the labour market, to stay in the labour market or to increase their working hours has the potential to bring real benefit to both the national and local economy.

[Alison Hume]

Q Some 20% of all employees in my Scarborough and Whitby constituency work in the hospitality sector, and obviously a large number will be women. According to the latest Office for National Statistics figures, 50% of women in part-time jobs in my constituency were paid below the living wage. Can you drill down a little more into how the Bill will lead to greater income security for women working in hospitality?

Dr Stephenson: Having a better enforcement body and proper enforcement of the living wage and equalising minimum wage rates with living wage rates for workers under 21—the hospitality industry in particular employs large numbers of younger people—will be really important. Good employers want to do the right thing, and they are undercut by bad employers who are deliberately breaking the law, so better enforcement is important.

To go back to my earlier point, outwith this Bill it is also important to look at access to proper legal advice for people in those situations. It can be very difficult—we have advice deserts in this country. One of the impacts of cuts to civil legal aid has been a reduction in any lawyers with specialism in certain areas, because the loss of legal aid has meant less money in the sector and fewer people going in to develop that specialism. Even if you can afford to pay, it can be quite hard to find a lawyer for certain areas. The enforcement mechanism will make a big difference, but we also need to look at legal aid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Hume]

Q Minister, we have touched on adult social care today. There are 1.6 million workers in the sector. I know that news of the adult social care negotiating body has been warmly welcomed. Can you expand on why a fair pay agreement is so important for the adult social care sector?

Justin Madders: That is a really good question. One of the reasons was in your question—there are 1.6 million people employed in the sector. It is a huge part of the economy. Unfortunately, at the moment, as we heard in the evidence, it is characterised by poor terms and conditions and high numbers of zero-hours contracts, and quite often minimum wage is not enforced properly. These are people doing really important jobs in our society. They deserve a voice and a collective opportunity to raise terms and conditions, and the opportunity to work with employers to develop a career path. This is a transformative structure that will hopefully change the lives of many working people and, of course, the people they care for.

[Uma Kumaran]

Q We heard from two business voices today that were not perhaps entirely reflective of the rest of our views. I have more than 12,500 businesses in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, of which more than 5,500 are small and medium-sized businesses. I have met lots of them over the course of the last year. I have certainly not heard similar views. We also heard from legal experts, who said that the Bill brings us closer to OECD norms than perhaps was said. Can you tell us how businesses will benefit from the Bill?

Justin Madders: There is generally an acceptance, both in the economic analysis we have heard from some of the witnesses today and from businesses themselves, that getting a motivated, engaged and retained workforce is good for productivity and the business overall. Having a more engaged and well-remunerated workforce has been shown to actually boost profits. The fact that the OECD was referred to by the Resolution Foundation as a body that believes that greater workers’ rights actually improve the economic outcome of the country is a really important factor that we need to emphasise.

Employment Rights Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Alison Hume and Uma Kumaran

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Hume]

Q Carly, you have experience in supporting businesses, including SMEs, to transform their processes and culture to become happy workplaces. How do you see the measures in the Bill making happier workplaces for people with disabilities and health conditions?

Carly Cannings: That is a good point. Arguably, from my reading of the Bill, there is not a lot of specific focus on those rights. It is about standards across the board. There are already some protections, particularly unfair dismissal rules. Even though the qualifying period is likely to change, there are still the protected characteristic rights—the day one rights that already exist.

I have to say that, from my reading, the Bill does not scream out that there is lots in there that will help specifically those with disabilities and long-term health conditions. Flexible working is definitely part of that picture, but the big change was making it a day one right, which has already been done. The legislation is just tightening that up further. Being able to have flexibility is a big issue for people in terms of accessing work, so that is probably the biggest one. But as I say, a lot of that work has been done in making it a day one right.

[Uma Kumaran]

Q Carly, this question is to you as well. The number of questions coming to you reflects the fact that we need your mission to help us to be a happy, healthy, thriving workforce in Parliament. How can we use the Bill to communicate the measures available to businesses? We heard from a previous panel that businesses may not be aware of what is coming in. How can we use some of the transformative measures in the Bill to promote happy, healthy workplace cultures?

Carly Cannings: I have reached out to businesses to try to get a sense of what is going on. At the moment, because there are lots of gaps in the detail, employers probably are not focusing their minds so much on the detail of the Bill. I suppose it comes off the back of the Budget and the NI changes. There is probably a lot for employers to get their heads around at the moment.

The consultation and engagement should be kept going so that businesses understand what is coming. Back to Cathryn’s point about seeing the greater good of this, if you get through what might be some initial pain in making some changes to your policy and implementing those changes, it is for the greater good. I suppose a lot of what I talk about is joining the dots between having happy, thriving workplaces and having more productive, successful businesses. It is about understanding that raising these standards and making working environments better for people is better for not just the people in them but the businesses themselves.

Ben Willmott: I think we need to look at how the system as a whole will work, particularly on that point about labour market enforcement. We have to look at not only national enforcement efforts but how efforts to support small firms work at a regional level, such as with combined authority areas, and the interface and being joined up at that level is really important.

One of the things that we are doing currently is the Government-funded HR support pilots through which we provide a limited amount of pump-priming HR consultancy support. We are working with Angus council in Scotland, as well as the Tees Valley combined authority and the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council. They have a number of our CIPD-qualified HR consultants who provide up to two days of pump-priming HR consultancy support to small firms. That is being evaluated by the behavioural insights team to understand what good-quality business support on the people side looks like, and what a cost-effective system of providing that would look like as well. Some of those areas also need to be thought about if we are looking at creating a system where there can be a step change in people management capability and employment standards.

Cathryn Moses-Stone: Just to add one more thing, we need to streamline the enforcement processes and provide really clear guidance and support. It is all about those comms coming from Government, not just the scaremongering legal side. A small business should be able to log on and ask, “What support can I get? Can I get short modular courses on management training to help me figure out the legalities of this?” What resources will be available to support and not just regulate? You cannot regulate positive workplace culture into existence.