Employment Rights Bill (Sixth sitting)

Anneliese Midgley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I will be brief in my response to these Government amendments, which make the requirement for the right to reasonable notice of cancellation or changing of shifts more onerous. I spoke to these principles during our debate on the previous set of amendments in my name, but I ask the Minister gently now, why were these provisions not included in the Bill on introduction? Was it an oversight? Will there be a repeat of the line, “It was the intention but we just didn’t do it”, or is it something else? I would be grateful for clarification.

As I argued during the debate on the previous set of amendments—this point is relevant to this set too—why are these amendments so necessary? Does the Minister really think it a proportionate burden to place on businesses, particularly in those cases where there will be fair and reasonable grounds for a business not needing to provide notice of a change in shift to an employee? What assessment have the Government made of the cost to businesses, given that they will now essentially have to pay for work not done, without recourse to force majeure provisions or whatever it might be—where it is genuinely not their fault that they cannot provide the work to their workers for whatever reasons? Force majeure is a well-established principle in all sorts of sectors across the world.

I urge the Minister to consider carefully how he can ensure that out-of-control eventualities are looked after in the Bill; otherwise I fear it will create a scenario where particularly the smallest businesses—those one, two or three-employee businesses—are placed in a very difficult financial position. I cannot believe that the Government believe that is the just and right thing to do, and that they could not come up with some other safeguards to protect those microbusinesses—those small enterprises—that might find themselves in a sticky spot.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my declaration of interests. I am also a member of Unite and the GMB. It was said in an evidence session last week that in hospitality—a sector that we are very focused on improving in the Bill—

“employers bring in too many workers for shifts and say: ‘Sorry, we do not need you any more. Go home.’ They then cancel a shift without any compensation for the workers for their travel time”. ––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 76-77, Q71.]

As many of my hon. Friends have said, while we are considering the burden on business, we must also consider the burden on workers. We are trying to level the playing field and make a more equal way, where workers are considered.

[Greg Smith]

I do understand the hon. Lady’s point. Nobody wants to see people turned away as they turn up for work, with their employer saying, “Sorry, no work today.” That is not a position that we want anybody else to find themselves in, but I am trying to make another point.

Let us take the hospitality sector as an example, which has had a pretty rough time since covid. It is one of the sectors—be it pubs, restaurants or attractions—that is struggling the most to recover from the pandemic. There are certainly times when I turn up to a pub in my constituency, perhaps on a Tuesday night, and it is completely empty and has no bookings. That is not necessarily the pub’s fault, but it will be a problem if there is an absolute requirement for the pub still to pay its full staff rota because it was full the previous Tuesday night and needed all those staff. I think this is one of those real-world examples where there has to be a little bit of flexibility; businesses have to be able to say, “Sorry, we’ve got no bookings tonight.” Worse than that, there might be the nightmare scenario that the beer delivery has not arrived and there is not actually any beer to sell.

[Greg Smith]

Fundamentally, I agree that it is not the worker’s fault either—I am absolutely at one with that. I made it very clear that I do not want to see anyone turn up for work only to be turned away and told, “Sorry, no work today.” That is not a great place for anyone to be. I absolutely understand and accept the hardship that that will place on someone who will perhaps not get that day’s wages, but I think there should be greater flexibility in circumstances where it is not the business’s fault either; those situations may be few and far between, but they will happen in hospitality, and they may happen in some manufacturing sectors where supply chain problems have occurred, as we discussed earlier.

If we force businesses into a place where they have to shell out significant amounts of money for no gain—as we discussed earlier, the workers are the ones who produce the services, goods, products or whatever it might be that enables the business to have the money in order to pay people in the first place—and we push them into a place where their low margin is eroded even further by paying for things that are completely outside their control, then those businesses may well go bust.

We are talking about the hospitality sector—and we are seeing pubs close virtually every week. That is a very sad state of affairs, particularly in rural communities, where the pub is often the beating heart of a village, or certainly the social hub. It is not just a place for a pint; pubs do a lot of social good as well. We are seeing pubs close far too frequently for all sorts of reasons, often because of the low margins and other factors that have come in—I will resist the temptation to go too hard on the Budget. There is a cumulative impact, and this measure could well be the straw that brings the whole house down. I want the Minister and Government Members to reflect on where we could bake in other forms of safeguard and flexibility, so that the Government do not put a number of businesses on to that sticky wicket.

[Anneliese Midgley]

Can I clarify whether the shadow Minister believes that workers should shoulder all the burden, and that businesses should bear no responsibility?

[Greg Smith]

No, I do not accept that. It is not helpful to see this as either/or. As I explained, there is a symbiotic relationship between businesses and their workers—their employees. Neither succeeds without the other. It is therefore not the case that I, in any way, shape or form, want to put all the burden on one or the other; what I am arguing for, and what I hope Members in all parts of the Committee can reflect on and appreciate, is some of those real-life, lived-experience and real-world examples, where things just do not go very well and people find themselves—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Gibson]

The Minister made an extremely good point about the security that is required. It should not be an arbitrary 48 hours that is given. Specifying the time for each sector, presumably under guidance, would perhaps be the most appropriate thing.

I have talked many times to people in my constituency who work in the care sector and are employed to visit people in their own homes. They are given a start time for a shift and are quite often told that they will work a certain number of hours, but it is not clear until they turn up to the shift how much of a gap there will be between the times at which they are getting paid. That can leave them with shifts that last a considerable time but contain a gap of several hours, during which they might be miles from home and it might not be worthwhile going home for lunch, so they incur costs on their own time.

I welcome the attention to the lack of clarity about shift working specifically for home visits in the care industry. This is something that we need to look at. Perhaps there needs to be guidance on the time for each sector, because each sector has its own issues. That is certainly true when one looks at hospitality.

[Anneliese Midgley]

I am sorry for referring to the shadow Minister as “you” earlier, Mr Stringer; I was not suggesting that you needed to clarify whether you thought workers should shoulder all of the burden.

I want to remind hon. Members of some evidence that we were given last week in support of the right to reasonable notice of a shift. Matthew Percival from the CBI said that

“there are areas where the Bill can be a helpful step in the right direction. To give a few examples, we have previously supported the idea that it is wrong that you should turn up for work expecting an eight-hour shift, be sent home after two hours and only be paid for two hours. There should be a right for compensation there.”

Jane Gratton from the British Chambers of Commerce said:

“As Matthew said on the compensation of shifts, we certainly support that, and we would be very happy about the fair work agency to create a level playing field and measures around workplace equity.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 13, Q6.]

Allen Simpson from UKHospitality said:

“Again, reasonable notice is an important principle and there should be protections.”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 43, Q39.]

[Justin Madders]

The way the shadow Minister was intervened on made it feel like this was an Opposition amendment, but it is actually a Government amendment to deal with the issue of split shifts and the anti-avoidance measures. This is about rebalancing the level of risk faced by a worker and an employer. At the moment, the balance is shifted too far one way. We estimate in the impact assessment that the cost to businesses of this policy could be up to £320 million a year. Clearly, a lot of that will end up being transferred directly into workers’ pockets. We hope that, through better workforce planning, that figure will go down and we will see improvements to the lives of those who will benefit from the Bill.

I will make one further point. The shadow Minister referred several times to force majeure situations. There is provision in a later clause, which we will not get to today, for us to set out in regulations when there might be exceptions to this provision. There are lots of potential arguments about whether the provision should apply, and we intend to consult further before the final regulations are published and debated.