Employment Rights Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Chris Law and Alison Hume

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I rise to speak in support of new clauses 39 and 40, which stand in the name of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts).

The new clauses follow the publication of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (Amendment) Bill, a presentation Bill that the right hon. Member introduced in co-operation with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and Rights of Women. They would address a critical gap in workplace safety by mandating proactive employer responsibilities to prevent all forms of violence and harassment, including gender-based violence.

The Health and Safety Executive does not currently accept domestic abuse within its remit. That might come as a surprise to some Members, but the reason is that domestic abuse and other forms of gender-based violence are not explicitly covered in the 1974 Act, even though the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 underlines the fact that employers owe their employees a duty of care that covers protection from domestic abuse.

Discrimination law inadequately protects workers from gender-based violence beyond sexual harassment, especially when such violence is not physical. The UK’s ratification in 2022 of the International Labour Organisation’s convention 190 means that the UK should take a comprehensive approach that addresses all forms and threats of gender-based violence in the workplace, psychological and emotional abuse, physical abuse and stalking, including with respect to people commuting to and from the workplace.

New clauses 39 and 40 would address those issues. They would go further than the Bill’s provisions on protection from harassment, because new clause 39 would introduce clear, actionable duties for employers to safeguard employees from gender-based harm through risk assessments, policy development and training. New clause 40 would mandate that the Health and Safety Executive create an enforceable framework that holds employers accountable and fosters inclusive, violence-free work environments for workers.

I understand that this may have been the Minister’s first opportunity to hear these points. I hope he will consider them, perhaps on Report.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

Prior to entering this place, I spent 25 years working in the television production industry, both as a writer and as a producer. I co-own an independent production company—I refer the Committee to my declaration of interests—that has made children’s drama for the BBC, including the hit science fiction series “The Sparticle Mystery”, in which a cut-price British version of the large hadron collider at CERN sends all the adults into a parallel universe, a situation with which I have had some sympathy since arriving as a new Member. I mention that not to burnish my CV in the hope of a writing credit on the next James Bond film, but to make a point about clause 15.

The television industry is full of creative, inventive and hard-working people who wish to make the most of their talents and contribute to making the programmes with which the UK is a world leader and for which it is rightly admired. Unfortunately, the nature of a fast-moving and pressurised industry based on freelancers is that it is left open to abusive practices. Freelancers move between productions, often with no HR departments, with no formal recruitment processes and with a lack of the checks and balances that we all want to see in good workplaces. It is also an industry in which the talent is protected, which has led to a culture of exceptionalism in which appalling behaviour has been allowed to continue for years.

This is not just about sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. It is also about power, or rather the imbalance of it. When I was in the green room at the start of a production, someone came up to me—I was on my own with him—and put his arm around me. He said, “Make me a cup of coffee, love.” I said, “Make your own, and then start looking for a new job,” because I was the executive producer on the show. Unfortunately, far too many women endure sexually explicit comments, inappropriate touching and offensive jokes as part of their everyday experience at work.

A few years ago, a survey found that 39% of women working in film and television had been subjected to sexual harassment at work; freelancers, members of the LGBTQ+ community and disabled people are also most at risk. Women are too scared to speak out: they fear that if they do, they will simply not work in the industry again. It is hardly surprising that last year two thirds of women aged between 25 and 59 thought about leaving the industry.

I say to the shadow Minister that clauses 15 to 17 will mean that companies have to proactively take all reasonable steps to close the vacuum of responsibility that currently exists between senior and middle management. They will need to ensure that staff have the training to call out challenging behaviour, support colleagues and prevent future abuse rather than focusing solely on damage limitation, as sadly we have seen time and again.

Employment Rights Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Chris Law and Alison Hume

Committee stage
Thursday 5th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Hume]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher.

We in this place enjoy the employment rights that come with our job, which is to serve our constituents to the best of our ability. When we are unwell, we can take time off but we are still paid. Before I arrived here, I spent a considerable number of years working as a freelancer while bringing up my family; I believe that is now called being a worker in the gig economy. I understand all too well the pressure for people to work when they are unwell, as they juggle work around caring responsibilities, as I had to for my disabled son, and worry about money, as our family worried about how we would pay the rent and the other bills if I did not work.

At present, large numbers of workers either rely on statutory sick pay or receive nothing at all if they are absent from work due to illness. Those workers are more likely to be low paid than others. We also heard in the evidence sessions last week that women are currently more likely to miss out on statutory sick pay than men, because they do not earn enough to meet the threshold or have not been in their jobs for long enough. It is estimated that 1.1 million workers earn less than £123 a week and most of them are women who are not eligible for statutory sick pay at all.

In practice, as we heard in the evidence sessions last week and as Minister just referred to, that means that people drag themselves into work despite the fact that they are ill. As it stands, our sick pay system pushes far too many people to go to work when they are ill. Working while in poor health is more common among those from marginalised ethnic groups, people in lower-quality jobs and workers lacking formal qualifications.

Under the Bill, hundreds of thousands of people will qualify for sick pay from the first day that they are ill. That change and other changes will help to increase productivity, reduce prolonged illness due to exacerbating existing conditions, and lead to better public health outcomes. Lower-paid workers will no longer have to face the unpalatable choice between coming to work and risking spreading infection, or struggling to put food on the table and to pay bills. Those are very real concerns that, as I mentioned, I have faced.

In conclusion, I believe that the Bill will transform the world of work for millions of people across the country. If I may say so, it is a privilege to have played a small part in scrutinising it.

[Chris Law (Dundee Central) (SNP)]

It is good to see you in your place, Sir Christopher. I will speak to an amendment on this issue shortly, but I will briefly say that everyone in this room, at some point in their working life, will be ill. It is not something that we would choose or desire, and most of us want to get back to work as soon as possible. The problem is that it happens, and when we are off ill we still have bills to pay, families to keep and mortgages or rents to pay. The level of statutory sick pay is frankly woeful in this country—in fact, for those hon. Members who do not know, it is the worst in the developed world. We should all be ashamed of that and we need to really think about it.

I welcome the changes to ensure that everybody gets statutory sick pay, but I find it disgraceful that we have not even touched on its level: it is £116 a week, or £6,000 a year. At some point in our lives, all of us have worked in very low-paid jobs. We have all done that, particularly in the early years. We would never imagine that somebody could live on £6,000 a year. Not everybody is expected to be off for a year, but some are, due to prolonged illnesses.

I will talk about this issue more on my amendment, but before I go into it in detail, I really want to hear from the Minister what changes the Government look to make so that we are no longer the sickest country in the world for being unreasonable, unfair and unjust to employees, and to ensure that statutory sick pay, which is about 17% of the average income—it was 35% when it was introduced—will start to restore the proper justice required for employees.