Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Friday 28th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. May I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) to his rightful place on the Front Bench? He will bring incredible expertise to his role.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on bringing this Bill to the House. I spent some time with her on a parliamentary delegation a few months ago and know from the conversations that we had then, not just with each other but with counterparts and other organisations, how much this matters to her.

The working world has changed fundamentally over the past two decades—not just the typical 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, but flexible working, too. What was once an exception is now very much a norm. Whether it is flex time, part time, compressed hours, annualised hours, working remotely, job sharing or sabbaticals, it is far more common for employers to offer it and for employees to accept. That only increased further during the covid-19 pandemic, when we saw lots of business rethinking how they do things and what they need from their staff, including many in Burnley and Padiham, who saw organisations for the first time adopt flexible working practices and do so rapidly.

That did not just mean employers in my constituency offering remote working. They also took a more flexible approach to childcare and the hours that employees could work. Some have sought to scale that back, but a great deal more have continued with those arrangements, even if with tweaks, because they have seen ways in which their business can adapt.

We must recognise, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) has said, that flexible working is not suitable for every company, every employee or every set of circumstances. We need to encourage employers to give greater thought to flexible working and to whether it is one way of getting a more productive workforce.

There are a host of brilliant manufacturing businesses in Burnley and Padiham. For them, flexible working may—I emphasise the word “may”—be more difficult to operate in practice. They may have shift patterns or they may need to keep the factory open 24/7. We saw how important that was during covid, when companies switched from manufacturing their traditional product to producing PPE and hand sanitiser. If flexible working, employees working from home and annualised hours do not fit a shift pattern, we in this place have to be mindful and respectful of that.

I wonder, therefore, whether there should be an option in law not just to say yes or no to a request for flexible working, but to give a trial period, where the statutory consideration period of three months—or two months, if this Bill is passed—would not be necessary and the employer could say, “It’s not a yes and it’s not a no; we want to see whether it works.” I think that would alleviate the concerns of small businesses and businesses that have never found a way to offer flexible working.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

It is an interesting idea to consider how to allow a bit of flexibility both ways. Who would my hon. Friend see as the right arbiter for such a scheme?

[Antony Higginbotham]

Ultimately, that must be a conversation between the business—the employer—and the employee. I think most employers want to do the right thing for the people who work for them; that is how to have a productive and motivated workforce, and the employee often wants to do the right thing for the employer. Getting both sides together to say, “Is there a way of coming up with a trial period? It may not be exactly what the employee has asked for or exactly what the employer has offered for so long, but is there a trial period?”, while the employer knows that at the end of that period there is no obligation to say, “Yes, this definitely works.”, or, “No, it definitely doesn’t.”, but that there is the option to consider it, would help.

If the trial does not work out as planned and the employer does not think it is sustainable in the long term—something that is sustainable for four or five weeks might not be sustainable for four or five years—then that gives the employer confidence to say, “Not now, but I’m happy to look at it again.” It gives the employer a little bit more flexibility.

As I think about my constituency, an area with higher unemployment than some other parts of the country, flexible working offers an opportunity to bring people back into the workforce who might otherwise struggle, be it because of childcare issues or because they are not ready to take on full-time hours. In doing that, we must ensure that we address some of the points my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) made about building a culture: if we are bringing someone back into the workforce for the first time, they might want a greater propensity for working from home or doing annualised hours, but if the impact is that they do not properly get the opportunity to embed themselves in the organisation and get the benefits of learning from colleagues, the downsides outweigh the positives.

[James Daly]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but I want to touch on productivity, because that is the central point. It is great to offer people the chance to work in various different ways and by various means, but if that employee is not productive in that situation away from the office, it simply cannot happen.

[Antony Higginbotham]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. One of the great problems that has vexed our economy for at least a decade is lost productivity or the suppression of productivity growth. Any changes that we try to make to employment law and employment regulations must have at their centre, “What will this do for productivity?”. Ultimately, we have spoken for a long time about a focus on economic growth, but—particularly in an economy like ours, where unemployment at the national level is at 3.5%—the only way to have sustainable high growth in the economy is by increasing employee productivity. We must think carefully about how we do that.

This Bill provides a way forward and offers both employers and employees a balance of flexibilities. As we think through the Bill as it goes to Committee, we must consider whether there are further tweaks we could make to flexible working and the kind of options available to employers, so that they can say yes, no or offer a possible third option. Nevertheless, I look forward to supporting the Bill later.