Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill

Danny Kruger Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I am delighted to support the Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) on presenting it and on his speech. I am pleased that the Government are giving the Bill their backing. Of course, it was a Conservative-led Government who banned exclusivity clauses in 2015, which was an important step towards the system of worker protection that is needed in the new economy that is unfolding. I am pleased to see that we are supporting this new measure, which will end the system of one-sided flexibility that prevails and ensure that workers can request a predictable pattern of work. It is right that we are doing that.

The Bill sits in the context of a broader question about the model of work we want in 2023. One part of the answer to that question is that we want a model of work that is not fixed or ossified, as work perhaps was in the industrial age. We cannot respond to the gig economy by insisting on restrictions and inflexibilities that are inappropriate to this age. Ultimately, we will end up destroying jobs if we insist on too much structure and predictability, but neither can we chase the gig economy down the plughole of ever greater rights for employers at the expense of their staff. We cannot let employers dictate terms that include unacceptably low wages or unacceptable conditions.

One part of the answer, which is not within the scope of the Bill, is to ensure we have an immigration policy that ends the economic model of the last 20 years, in which we have imported foreign labour at the expense of British workers and at the expense of investment in our own people and in the innovation and technology that are needed if labour has its real value, which it does not if our rates of immigration are too high.

We also need to empower workers. My hon. Friend explained the problem very well. People are not robots that we can just switch on and off and leave dormant when we are not using them, waiting for us to switch them on again. We have to respect the human dignity of staff. As I said in an earlier debate, we need to recognise that people are not just workers; they have obligations and relationships outside work that we need to respect.

The question of what model of work we want is part of a broader question about what type of life we think people should have in this country. My simple answer is that we want people to have the conditions for a decent family and community life. An important measure to achieve that is ensuring we have a model of employment in which one adult can earn enough wages to support their family. We need jobs that support whole families, whether that is one full-time job or two, three or four part-time jobs. If someone has a partner, they need to be able to share the workload, to earn enough money to support the family, enabling them to have time for children or dependent adults and, importantly, to spend time supporting their community.

This introduction of a right to request a predictable pattern of work is good, and I applaud it. I like the fact that we are imposing a duty on employers in terms of what they should do when a request for a predictable pattern of work is made. I prefer duties to rights—the language is better, and the implication is better. We need to beware the wrong enforcement of duties that we create, but in principle, duties are better than rights because they imply relationships and obligations. The alternative—a world in which society is regulated only by individual rights—is one of eternal competition, a constant contest between individuals each claiming their due and eternal legal battles over who has broken which contract and which law.

We need a better culture than that, in which we recognise that we live under our obligations, not our entitlements, and our responsibilities matter more than our rights. That starts with people who have power in society—people with the power to hire and fire. We are insisting today on the fulfilment of employers’ duty to enable their staff to create the conditions for a decent family and community life. That is a good use of the power of the state, and I am delighted to support the Bill.