Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Chris Law and Katrina Murray

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.