Zero Hours Contracts Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

In politics, it is said that there are no final victories and no final defeats; that each generation must fight many of the same battles that the generation before have, and that the generation after may have to fight as well. Today, I am fighting for the same thing that people of every generation have fought for: the right to decent and secure conditions and terms of employment.

It is not a great ask. A well-paid and steady job is the bedrock on which people build their lives. It is the starting point for planning for the future, and the platform of stability needed to pay the bills, meet the rent, pay the mortgage and start a family. Those are not extravagances, but the minimum that should be available to any person who is prepared to work to pay their way in a wealthy nation such as ours. Yet that stability and security is denied to millions of workers in this country. Increasingly, people are finding themselves plagued by job insecurity, not knowing from one day to the next whether they will be working or earning.

In recent years, the rise in the number of those feeling insecure at work has been startling. In 2011, 6.5 million people surveyed said that they felt insecure in their work. By this year, that number had almost doubled to 12 million people.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

rose—

[Ian Mearns]

Let me make some progress. What we have witnessed is not so much an economic recovery as an economic transformation. Almost daily, the Government boast about job creation in the private sector, but the truth is that the jobs that were lost due to the global economic crash and the Government cuts have been largely replaced by low-skilled, low-waged and, sadly, insecure jobs. It is leaving large swathes of the work force living on, or just above, the breadline.

As they are so keen to remind us, the Conservatives have a long-term economic plan, but it is not one for the working person. Nowhere is that clearer than in the explosion in the use of zero-hours contracts. As recently as last year, the coalition was claiming that slightly more than 200,000 people were employed on zero-hours contracts. The true figure, as revealed by the Office for National Statistics, was in fact seven times higher than Government Ministers admitted—a staggering 1.4 million people engaged in zero-hours employment contracts.

Zero-hours contracts—if they are used at all—are supposed to be used for short-term or seasonal work, occupying a niche in the labour market, but the reality is that they have become the norm across many sectors.

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman makes reference to the number of zero-hours contracts that exist at the moment. Back in 2000, the ONS estimated that there were 225,000 people on zero-hours contracts. Why is it all right for people to be on a zero-hours contract under a Labour Government, but not under a Conservative- led one?