Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

rose—

[Ian Lavery]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

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[Mrs Miller]

Sorry; I said “the hon. Lady”. The hon. Gentleman should open his ears.

[Apsana Begum]

I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way. She said that the Government have done so much more than any other in peacetime history. However, in 2019 the Government promised that after exiting the European Union they would come up with an employment Bill, but they have not yet done so. Does she agree that there were promises about what would happen once we had exited the European Union and that since then we have seen at least three EU directives—one on zero-hours contracts, another on minimum wage and another on platforming workers—while we fall behind? Yes, we have been in a pandemic, but we are not levelling up. In fact, we cannot keep up with what is happening across Europe on workers’ rights.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I share her frustration about not seeing an employment Bill, but given the restrictions that there have been on this place, in terms of debate and people being able to be here, I can sort of understand why. Also, there are the changes that we have seen in the economy, which, as I said, are a result of the pandemic and of leaving the EU.

I can give the Minister the benefit of the doubt as to why the Bill has been delayed, but I want to hear from him today that that delay will not be a moment longer than it has to be; the hon. Member for Slough is right that there are some really important issues that people want to be addressed in an employment Bill. However, before I get dragged down that rabbit-hole, I will gently get back to the topic that we are discussing today, which is, of course, the Taylor review—it is important in itself.

I want to make the context of this debate very clear. When we go back to the documents that the Government produced before the pandemic, it really is quite startling to see what is in them. We have the opening to the Good Work plan, putting forward the consultation on the single enforcement body. The introduction to that document, which of course became available only months or even weeks before we saw a significant lockdown of our economy, referred to the record levels of employment in the UK and wages

“growing at their fastest pace in almost a decade”.

It said that the UK labour market was thriving, which it was. However, we cannot ignore the impact of the pandemic, and we have to put that into the mix today as we consider this really important debate.

The way out of this pandemic is not just about vaccination and boosters, as important as they might be; it is also about getting our economy growing as it was prior to the pandemic, so that we can not only pay for the cost of the pandemic but get back on to the sort of track that the people of this country had become used to under this Government.

The skills of the Great British people are crucial to that economic growth. One of the great successes of this Government has been the ability to bounce back since the pandemic hit its height, but we need to be able to use the skills of the British people to get back once again to the levels of growth that I have referred to.

The Taylor review was all about tackling imperfections in the labour market, which is important not only in its own right but in terms of getting back to those levels of economic growth. Many of the sorts of imperfections that Taylor referred to in his review are, in many ways, being tackled already. I saw that for myself when I visited my local Jobcentre Plus office in Basingstoke. We are not known for high levels of unemployment in Basingstoke, but through the pandemic we saw our unemployment rate double, despite the very significant levels of furloughing that the Government had enabled.

I am delighted to say that as a result of the work of Jobcentre Plus, and the tenacity of the entrepreneurs who live in my constituency, those unemployment levels have halved. The work of organisations such as the M3 Job Club is helping to ensure that people in longer-term unemployment also have opportunities.

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[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on securing this important debate.

The covid-19 crisis has highlighted the brutal reality of insecure work in the UK and has exposed the systemic failures of the law around worker protections. Far from simply providing flexible jobs with autonomy, the truth is that gig economy employers increasingly trap workers into a dangerous and precarious existence.

Increases in working poverty during the last decade blight our society and reflect the fact that insecure work damages people, their families and their communities. The rise in workplace precarity, zero hours contracts, bogus self employment and contracting out puts workers at risk, and is a threat to our existing health and safety laws and to achieving equal rights at work. In particular, casework in my constituency has emphasised that black, Asian and minority ethnic workers and women workers continue to face a disproportionate burden, working in insecure jobs with fewer rights at work and ongoing pay gaps. However, care workers, drivers and shop workers played a crucial role in keeping society going during the pandemic, and continue to do so.

The principle that everyone has equal rights at work that are guaranteed by law is of fundamental importance to any just society, but, more than that, a thriving and truly democratic economy cannot be created without the full involvement and empowerment of its workforce. The UK Supreme Court’s dismissal of Uber’s appeal against the landmark employment tribunal ruling that its drivers should be classed as workers, with access to the minimum wage and paid holidays, was a significant step forward, and I hope the Minister will address the importance of that ruling in his remarks. However, it is disappointing that Taylor’s proposals maintain the present multiple categories for defining workers, with different rights attaching to each, though renaming some of them. I hope the Minister will also address this point, with which I will close: would it not be better to create a single status of worker for all but the genuinely self-employed, as captured by Lord Hendy’s Status of Workers Bill?