Employment Rights Bill

Chris Law Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

In conclusion, I am pleased to have been afforded the opportunity to speak for a second time on Report. We have, in this Employment Rights Bill, a momentous uplift in workers’ rights and protections, which addresses the balance that has swung far too far in the opposite direction. However, the appetite remains for yet further improvements. I commend the Government for their work in bringing forward the legislation, which I wholeheartedly support. I look forward to working together further on the journey to delivering well-paid, secure and unionised employment.

[Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)]

Although I have broadly welcomed the Bill as it has progressed through the House, I have caveated that by stating that the Labour Government should be bolder and must go further in future for the rights and protections to become entrenched rather than rolled back. Indeed, on Second Reading I quoted the Scottish Trades Union Congress general Secretary, Roz Foyer, who summarised the Bill by saying:

“the Employment Rights Bill isn’t the terminus. It’s the first stop. This can be the foundations on which we can build.”

I agree.

[Antonia Bance]

The hon. Member may not have had a chance to look at the Government website and encounter the document entitled “Next Steps to Make Work Pay”, which sets out a programme of continuing work to improve rights at work and parental leave and the review of employment status to come. I am sure he will be glad to hear that.

[Chris Law]

No, I have not had the chance to look at the Government website, but I thank the hon. Member for raising that. As I have broadly said, I support the Bill, but there are reasons why I am contributing to the debate, not least because of a lack of devolution to the Scottish Parliament, which I will come to shortly.

On Second Reading, the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and local Government, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), made it explicitly clear that the foundations will not be built upon in the long term, as a future Conservative Government would simply repeal protections. He declared that

“many of the measures will be brought in through secondary legislation, therefore making it easier for a future Government to reverse some of the catastrophic changes.”—[Official Report, 21 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 58.]

Employment rights for workers in Scotland cannot be dependent on the merry-go-round of Westminster politics. They have seen their rights attacked and diminished by years of Conservative Governments, and where the Bill reverses some of the worst excesses of those Governments’ policies, that must be protected and strengthened in the long term. Westminster cannot guarantee that for the people in Scotland, so I have tabled new clause 77, which would amend the Scotland Act 1998 to devolve employment and industrial relations to the Scottish Parliament.

Back in 2014, all Unionist parties, including the Labour party, promised maximum devolution for Scotland, as displayed on the front page of a national newspaper days before the independence referendum, in which Scotland voted no. This Labour Government have failed to devolve a single power to Holyrood since coming to power in July—not a single one—despite the Scottish Parliament voting for employment rights to be devolved.

In November, the STUC called on the UK Government to

“end the excuses and devolve powers over taxation, migration and, importantly, employment law from Westminster to Holyrood.”

Moreover, Scottish Labour’s 2021 election manifesto stated:

“We support further devolution of powers to Holyrood including borrowing and employment rights”.

Here is a question for Scottish Labour MPs: will they respect the wishes of the Scottish Parliament?

[Antonia Bance]

indicated dissent.

[Chris Law]

The hon. Member shakes her head, but I am speaking to Scottish Labour MPs.

[Antonia Bance]

I care about the people of Scotland.

[Chris Law]

I care about the people of Scotland and what they say. Will Scottish Labour MPs listen to trade unions and deliver on the promises made by their party by supporting the new clause, or will they continue to follow instructions handed to them from No. 10? Silence. I thought so. They are too scared to stand up for the people of Scotland.

[Johanna Baxter]

The hon. Gentleman says that he is a big supporter of workers’ rights. Would he like to comment on the fact that for every year of the last nine years that I was lead negotiator for local government workers in Scotland, they had to have consultative ballots for industrial action just to get a decent pay rise out of the Scottish Government? Does that really mean standing up for workers in Scotland?

[Chris Law]

I thought I was asking a question of the Scottish Labour MPs, only to be asked another question. The hon. Lady will be well aware that the Scottish Government have worked collectively with both unions and other bodies to ensure that the living wage in Scotland is higher than in any other part of the UK. I remind her that it was Scottish Labour in November 2023 that voted with the SNP for employment rights to be evolved through the Scottish Parliament.

Throughout its existence, when powers are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, decisions are taken in the interests of the people of Scotland and outcomes improve: publicly owned rail and water, higher per-head education and health spend, free prescriptions, free tuition, a more humane welfare system and a progressive taxation system. Fair work practices are being delivered already by the SNP Scottish Government, such as supporting collective bargaining, achieving real living wage employer status and closing the gender pay gap faster than anywhere in the rest of the UK.

[Katrina Murray]

Does the hon. Member agree that it is an absolute failure of collective bargaining for the Scottish Government to have walked away from the commitments they made in a deal with health service unions two years ago on the reduction of the working week? They are failing to go through with reducing the working week by half an hour as of 1 April 2025.

[Chris Law]

I listened to the hon. Member with interest, but I suggest that she has that debate in the Scottish Parliament. After all, we are talking about the devolution of powers here in the UK Parliament.

A framework for collective bargaining in the adult care sector has been developed by the Scottish care unions—Unison, the GMB and Unite—along with the Scottish Government and care providers, with a Scottish social care joint council proposed. The Scottish care unions have intimated that the constitution, composition, remit and function of the Scottish social care joint council is preferable and should assume the role of the Adult Social Care Negotiating Body for England. Scotland already has a 10-year history of joint commitments to fair work, whereas England is only embarking on that journey. Furthermore, there is a need to extend sectoral bargaining to all sectors of the economy, not just adult social care.

Measures such as creating a single status of worker for all but the genuinely self-employed, strengthening protections for those with unfair contracts and increasing the minimum wage to at least the national living wage, and then in line with inflation, are all missing from the Bill. The SNP Scottish Government would support those measures if employment law were devolved, and they would be delivered if this Government respected the votes of the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Labour manifesto.

Just as the Bill should be the first stop rather than the terminus, devolution is a process, not an event. Not only has devolution moved at a glacial pace, but we live in the world’s most asymmetrical political union, where each nation has differing devolved powers. Why is it that employment law is devolved in Northern Ireland but not in Scotland? I want to see employment rights strengthened continually rather than in a cycle of piecemeal progress when Labour is in power, only to be reversed when the Tories next get their turn. The gains for workers’ rights in the Bill must therefore be protected. That is why the SNP remains committed to advocating for, at a minimum, the urgent devolution of employment powers. That is the best way, short of independence, of protecting workers’ rights in Scotland.