Chuka Umunna
Main Page: Chuka Umunna (Liberal Democrat - Streatham)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), if he will make a statement on the Government’s plans in respect of the report on employment prepared for the Government by Adrian Beecroft.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)
May I apologise to you and to the House, Mr Speaker, for the absence of the Secretary of State? He is currently travelling back from the north of England, where he has been visiting a number of businesses, and will return to the House later this evening.
The Beecroft report was commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as part of the red tape challenge and the employment law review. Mr Beecroft was asked to give his initial thoughts on areas of employment law that could be improved or simplified to help businesses and for the purposes of job creation. The report was intended to feed into the work that the Department is carrying out to review employment laws to ensure that they maximise flexibility and reflect modern workplace practices. That is important to employers and employees. The report was designed specifically to strengthen our international competitiveness in difficult economic times. It is worth noting that the UK is considered to have the third most flexible labour market in the OECD. That is good for jobs, and we intend to maintain that situation.
Mr Beecroft was asked to take a candid look at a wide range of issues. He submitted his report in October last year. Over the past few months, Ministers have been working on the red tape challenge and the employment law review. We are already actioning 17 of the 23 topics that he raised.
On considering the Beecroft report, it was clear that further evidence was required, most notably on the issue of no-fault dismissal for micro-businesses. The call for evidence on that began on 15 March and will conclude on 8 June. Given that that date falls when the House is not sitting, the Government decided to bring forward publication of the report to this week, so that it could inform the debate. Last week, the Home Secretary announced the outcome of the equalities red tape challenge, which impinges directly on employment and workplace issues. Our intention was therefore to publish the Beecroft report this week, in time for Business, Innovation and Skills oral questions.
However, I noticed in the press today that an earlier draft of the report is in circulation. Therefore, in the interests of accuracy and so that the House has the correct information before it, I confirm that I have instructed officials that the report will be published later this afternoon. Copies will be placed in both Houses.
The Government are taking positive action to reform the labour market and to ensure that we can help more people get back to work as soon as possible.
Mr Umunna
What a complete and utter shambles! I understand, as the Minister said, that the Secretary of State is in the north-east today. However, will he explain why the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is responsible for employment relations and is the author of this book
“to help you to maximise compensation awards”
in the employment tribunal, is not responding to this question, given that he would appear to be the expert on these matters?
The Secretary of State has called the Beecroft report, which has been promoted by the Prime Minister, “bonkers”. However, on page 3 of the report, Mr Beecroft says that he owes a “debt of gratitude” to the deputy director of labour law at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who helped to produce it. Will the Minister confirm that his Department was complicit and fully co-operated in the production of the report, despite the misgivings of the Secretary of State?
We agree that improvements can be made to the way in which employment tribunals operate, for the sake of employees and employers, but we do not think that watering down people’s fundamental rights at work is a substitute for a growth strategy.
The Secretary of State has said that there is a “reasonably good balance” between workers’ rights and employers’ flexibility. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor, however, suggest that the balance has gone too far in favour of employees. Will the Minister tell us who is determining Government policy in this area—his boss or his ultimate masters in Downing street?
On growth, Beecroft suggests that his recommendations will solve all our problems. However, the double-dip recession that we are in is not a consequence of people’s right not to be unfairly dismissed or of our employment law regime; it is a consequence of the huge drop in demand that has flowed from the loss of business and consumer confidence caused by the Government’s policies.
Is it not the case that putting people in fear of being fired at will, far from promoting growth, will have a huge detrimental impact on consumer confidence? I ask that because Mr Beecroft proposes to give businesses of fewer than 10 employees the power to fire at will through compensated no-fault dismissal. That could affect more than 3.6 million workers in the private sector. Mr Beecroft said:
“The downside of the proposal is that some people would be dismissed simply because their employer did not like them.”
That, he said, was “a price worth paying”. That is wrong. Does the Minister agree?
Does not the noise from Government around this report demonstrate what our business leaders have made very clear: that the Government have lost the plot on growth? Having sought to blame British businesses for the lack of growth, with Ministers telling firms to stop “whingeing” and to “work harder”, the Government now want to blame the hard-working employees in those businesses for the mess that they created. The truth is that they have run out of excuses for tipping the country into a double-dip recession. Everyone wants them to change course to get more people into work. That is what they should concentrate on, not on making it easier to do precisely the opposite.