Oral Answers to Questions

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)]

Yes. As I said earlier, we welcome the thorough and interesting report from the Select Committee. Recommendation 16 said that alongside university admissions, schools should publish apprenticeship starts from their former pupils, and I agree. Through the new destinations measures, which were introduced this summer, we will ensure that that happens.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

There are more than 1,200 people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in the Secretary of State’s constituency. Under his proposed “shares for rights” scheme, employers in his constituency will be allowed to make the acceptance of job offers conditional on people agreeing to give up their basic rights at work for shares. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that JSA claimants in Twickenham will not lose their benefits for refusing the offer of a job because it is conditional on them giving up their rights for shares?

[Vince Cable]

In a statement in the Commons a couple of days ago, I think, the Minister in the Treasury who is responsible for taxation made it absolutely clear that the scheme was voluntary. While the hon. Gentleman hunts for the ghost of Beecroft in this proposal, I will put a simple proposition to him. If employers were seriously interested in trying to set up an arrangement that had minimum job protection for employees, why would they go to the trouble of establishing a complex employee ownership scheme when they could do that so much more easily through an agency workers agreement, which would have far lesser employment rights than this proposal?

[Mr Umunna]

There was no answer to my question in what we have just heard from the Secretary of State. He cannot answer it because this has not been properly thought through. He has said that the scheme has had a mixed reaction. That is a gross understatement: it has been described as “awful” by the National Center for Employee Ownership. He has said that it is not intended for most ordinary businesses. It would be interesting to know which businesses have lobbied him to introduce this nonsense. While we support strongly employee ownership, it is beyond me to think why that must be tied to giving up rights at work. Is it not the case that, just as the Secretary of State was forced to consult on proposals to fire employees at will by the Treasury, he has now been forced to do the same on this crazy proposal? This is a Secretary of State in office but without the power to say no to the Chancellor.

[Vince Cable]

There is no proposal to fire employees at will, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. I will repeat what I said: the scheme is entirely voluntary. He should perhaps reflect in a little bit more detail on some of the comments of both businesses and trade union stakeholders. Businesses have said that this is an interesting proposal that many are unlikely to take up. The trade unions have said, similarly, that they do not like it, but they do not expect it to have a significant impact on the labour market.