Employment Law: Devolution to Scotland

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of devolving employment law to Scotland.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.

The Minister will recall that I have spent many hours in this place calling for reform to employment law. She will also be aware of the backlash from unions at an employment Bill being nowhere to be seen in the most recent Queen’s Speech. Indeed, Frances O’Grady of the Trades Union Congress highlighted that vital rights that Ministers have promised, such as flexible working, fair tips and protection from pregnancy discrimination, are at risk of being ditched for good. The fact is that this Government need to get a grip on workers’ rights. If they refuse to do so, then now is the time to devolve employment law powers to Scotland to allow the Scottish Government to enact our own reforms.

The SNP Scottish Government are doing everything in their power to improve workers’ rights where they have devolved competence. Throughout the pandemic, the Scottish Government have worked to prioritise workers’ rights, calling on employers, trade unions and workers to work together during this challenging time to ensure that workers are treated fairly. The SNP Government refreshed their Scottish business pledge to align with the fair work principles, and they established a new learning network and an international fair work summit. They also published a fair work action plan in February 2019, which set out a range of measures to support employers to embed fairer working practices. That is supported by trade unions across Scotland.

Additionally, the Scottish Government published a gender pay gap action plan in 2019, bringing together a cross-Government group to approach the gendered impact of inequality in the labour market. The Scottish Government are also a champion of the real living wage, which is of the utmost importance during the cost of living crisis. There are nearly 1,500 living wage-accredited employers in Scotland, giving Scotland the highest rate of workers in the UK earning a real living wage.

With the limited powers that they currently hold, the Scottish Government have worked hard to tackle in-work poverty and support those on low incomes and, ultimately, to condemn exploitative zero-hours contracts by establishing a fair work convention to support the fair pay and conditions agenda. However, with employment law reserved to the UK Government, Scotland can only go so far; it is only able to address part of the problem. Full devolution of employment law would allow Scotland to go even further by creating fairer workplaces, increasing wages, reducing insecure work and fundamentally tackling in-work poverty head on. Shifting that power to the Scottish Government would allow them to stop the race to the bottom on workers’ rights that we are seeing in the post-Brexit UK.

Last December, the European Union delivered employee status to gig economy workers, untying them from the constraints of self-employment status and allowing them basic employment rights, such as minimum wage, holidays and sick leave. That reform of workers’ rights in the EU may well have been one of the most ambitious extensions of workers’ rights from Brussels since Britain left the EU, and we are missing out. Since leaving the EU, the UK Government have been complacent on updating employment law to tackle the injustices faced by the UK workforce.

Scotland overwhelmingly supported retaining EU membership, in no small part due to its commitment to the extension and promotion of workers’ rights. Instead, the UK Government’s approach appears to be to leave workers to appeal to the courts where they cannot access justice, as in the Uber and Addison Lee cases. Without reform of existing legislation, workers are left at the mercy of rogue employers. In 2019, this UK Government were elected on a manifesto that promised to introduce measures to protect those in low-paid work and the gig economy. That was embodied in the promise of an employment Bill that would protect and enhance workers’ rights, with the tagline, “Making Britain the best place in the world to work”.

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Taylor review reported five years ago and recommended things that the Government should do quickly, including simplifying worker status. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government have sat on that report for five years with no action?

[Angela Crawley]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The Taylor report gave the Government a comprehensive list of items that they could address, but sadly they have been sleeping on the job.

Although there was no commitment in this year’s Queen’s Speech to bring forward the promised employment law reforms, perhaps the Government now have an opportunity to do so. Will the Minister tell us why we should trust this Government to treat workers’ rights as a priority when, three years after that promise was made, no employment Bill has materialised?

We have already seen the ambitions of the UK Government slip. Now we are knee deep in pandemic recovery, a cost of living crisis and a looming recession. It is imperative that the Government make a concrete commitment to improving workers’ rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Crawley]

I want to make some progress, but I will come back to the hon. Member.

There are more and more people in insecure work, more and more people with insecure wages, and more and more people with insecure rights in the workplace. More people are under-employed, and more people are holding down multiple jobs and yet struggling to support themselves. Sadly, more and more people are struggling to invoke their workplace rights and unionise.

In real terms, that means more people have been plunged into in-work poverty and are unable to rely on stable incomes, which is invaluable to those trying to make headway through what will be a bleak winter for many families as we approach a cost of living crisis. The impact of the pandemic is clear, the impact of Brexit is clear, and the impact of this Government’s stagnation and failure to act is blatant. I call on the UK Government to either act now or let the Scottish Government do so. I would love to have every competence that this Government have to bring forward an employment Bill and transform employment rights. They have failed to do so, and they do not appear to want to.

I was deeply disappointed that there was no commitment in the Queen’s Speech to improve workers’ rights. The decision to shelve the employment Bill represents a missed opportunity for this Government to make serious progress on changing employment law. They have missed the opportunity to update policies on flexible working, carers leave and paid miscarriage leave, which I have argued for time and again. They have failed to strengthen protections against workplace sexual harassment and other equalities protections.

The Minister will recall that I have spent many hours in this place calling for the introduction of paid miscarriage leave. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has pursued relentlessly the right for neonatal leave and pay, and I welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce those measures. I have pursued numerous vehicles in Parliament to try to ensure that the important policy of paid miscarriage leave is introduced but, sadly, I feel I am reaching the end of the road. The policy has cross-party support, yet it has been unable to succeed because of the archaic working practices of this place and this Conservative Government’s failure to commit to legislating on the issue. That reinforces why this system will never work for Scotland. It is becoming clearer by the day that we cannot trust this Conservative Government to prioritise workers’ rights. Instead, we see the further entrenchment of socioeconomic inequality in our society.

Scotland did not vote for Brexit, Scotland did not vote for this Conservative Government—it has not done so for many years—Scotland did not vote for this latest Prime Minister, and Scotland did not vote to roll back workers’ rights and leave the European Union. Yet we find ourselves in a situation where this Government will not act, and our Government want to act but do not have the powers to do so.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; she is being very generous. Does she share my concern and that of many others that the Government seem to want to roll back trade union rights further, and are threatening trade unions that they are going to raise thresholds and make industrial action more difficult?

[Angela Crawley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) wished to intervene too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

It will have a clear commitment to implement what we are currently doing in terms of the Labour party’s commission. I am not going to discuss what is in the commission in a Westminster Hall debate because it is being finalised and will be launched in the early part of November. However, the hon. Gentleman will not be disappointed with some of the outcomes of that detailed work.

The commission is not about Scotland as such; it is about all the nations and regions that come under the umbrella of the UK. I know the hon. Gentleman does not believe in the UK, but we do and some of that is in there on devolution. That is the reason the Scottish Labour party, of which I am a member, is entitled to have a different set of policy perspectives from the UK party on a whole host of issues. Gordon Brown’s commission, which will be launched in November, will do some of that.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. His history is a wee bit wobbly. I gently say to him that not all the UK trade unions were opposed to the devolution of employment law, Unite being one of them. If I remember the exchanges I had with them during that debate, the hon. Gentleman was quoting the Trades Union Congress and not necessarily all the UK trade unions.

[Ian Murray]

I cannot recall who was and who was not, but the conversations that went on through the conduit of the TUC, which was responsible for taking those conversations forward, had come to the conclusion by speaking to their members that the UK trade unions would not want to devolve. Those positions may have moved since; in fact, I think the GMB’s position has moved since, which is hardly unsurprising given the state we have.

I am sorry the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) is not here after that rather difficult and strange intervention. In the time that I was the shadow Minister responsible for employment law, I sat across from the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, who was a predecessor, successor and then predecessor again to the Scottish National party in East Dunbartonshire. She was the Minister at the time and took that Bill through the House of Commons, which not only did a whole host of anti-trade union things but extended the qualifying period for employment rights from one to two years. The Liberal Democrats are not sitting on the fence; they are quite clearly on the other side and trying desperately to climb back across the right side. I am disappointed that the hon. Lady came out with that because it undermines her arguments about what she needs to do.

I conclude with a canter through the question of what the Labour party would do. Our deputy leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), launched our fair work policies at conference last year for a new deal for working people. Launching that, she said it was an attempt to make Britain the best place in the world to work. I think it is an attempt to do that. We did not develop those policies in a vacuum of ideology, which is essentially what the previous Government have operated on—I hope the new Government will be slightly better—but by working with our trade union colleagues and employers, and working together to come up with something that can be implemented for the benefit of the economy and workers.

We would strengthen workers’ rights from day one. We would take away that two-year qualifying period and take it down to day one. That is the right thing to do and it gives people security. It cannot be right to be able to sack someone without a reason at one year and 364 days. In fact, the argument I have always made on that is that if we wait until one year and 364 days to find out if someone is good enough, the manager should be sacked for not doing their job properly. They could find out much earlier in the process if someone is good enough for the job they have been employed to do.

We would ban fire and rehire; that is a fairly straightforward thing to do, which would protect workers in this country and create good businesses. I went on holiday by ferry this year, but I just could not travel on P&O; I used another ferry company. When I saw that big P&O sign as I approached Dover, I just felt disgusted that a firm would do what P&O did to its employees at a time when they require their jobs and their wages more than at any time in the past.

Banning fire and rehire would also make work more family-friendly by helping to balance home, community and family life. We have done that before, through the maternity and paternity pay brought in during the last Labour Government. We would extend statutory maternity and paternity pay now that we are out of the European Union. Shared parental leave is a big issue. In fact, I agree with the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) regarding the uptake of shared parental leave, but I do not think it is a legal thing. I think it is a cultural thing and also about equal pay, because all the analysis shows that there is such a low uptake of shared parental leave because it is still the father who is the main or highest earner in a family, and sharing parental leave may be a cultural thing in terms of employers and employees asking for it. Those are some of the cultural barriers that we have to break down.

We would ban zero-hours contracts. All workers have the right to regular contracts and predictable hours, reasonable notice of changes in shifts, and wages paid in full for cancelled shifts. We would strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and conditions, and—crucially—we would use fair pay agreements to drive up the pay and conditions of all workers.

I did not want to be political in this debate, but some of my colleagues from the Scottish National party could not resist being political earlier, so I cannot resist now. One of the key things that a Government can use to drive up standards is procurement, and one of the biggest levers that the Scottish Government could pull, given the powers of the Scottish Parliament, is procurement, using it to drive up standards.

However, we have just seen £700 million of licences for ScotWind being issued to companies with no procurement specifications on wages, local employment, apprenticeships and all those kinds of workers’ rights. So, yes, devolving these matters might be the right thing to do, but my challenge to the SNP is not about the principle of devolution but to tell us what it would with it.