Zero-hours Contracts

Debate between Alison McGovern and Chuka Umunna

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he is right to point that out. We are in the fourth year of this Government and blame is continually attributed to the Labour party. This Government ought to look at what they are doing to our country and our economy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) made a point about insecurity at work. That insecurity is not just born out of three wasted years of a flatlining economy following the Government’s 2010 comprehensive spending review which caused confidence to fall and demand to nosedive; it is also because the nature of work has changed in recent years. Half the rise in employment since 2010 has been in temporary work, driven primarily by people doing temporary jobs because they cannot find permanent work—more than 500,000 people fall into that category—while record numbers of people are in part-time work who would prefer to be working full time, meaning that there is huge underemployment.

But perhaps the most shocking symptom of the changing nature of work is the proliferation of the use of zero-hours contracts, under which a person is not guaranteed any work, is usually expected to be around whenever the employer wants them to be and is paid only for the work he or she gets, meaning, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South said, that individuals engaged under these contracts never know when work will come and therefore whether they can sustain themselves and their families week to week.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Is it not tough to listen to the Prime Minister giving answers about rising employment, given the type of employment that that represents, as we have just heard? Should the Government not come clean about the falling claimant count and listen to what my hon. Friend is saying about the type of work people are having to go into?

[Mr Umunna]

This is a key point. Will any job do? We are clear that any old job will not do. We want to ensure that people have decent work that is paid a salary they can live off and which is secure too. That has to be our ambition for the country.

I do not deny that these contracts have been in use for many years—I will turn to their use in the House a bit later—but until recently they were very much the exception to the rule. The problem is that now they are becoming the norm in some sectors, with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development estimating that up to 1 million people are on such contracts.