Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Friday 28th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is an absolute pleasure to speak in the debate. As a mother of four who has had to negotiate very different flexible working practices throughout those years of being a mother and carer, I can assure the House that this subject is close to my heart.

I would like to invite you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to my jobs fair on 11 November at the Roehampton leisure centre. I hope that plenty of people who want flexible-working jobs—and, indeed, many other jobs—will be able to come and find out more about employment opportunities in the Roehampton, Southfields and Putney area.

I also want to pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the Mother of the House, who marks 40 years in Parliament today, and who inspired me to get into politics. She has campaigned for flexible working throughout her time in the House. She was the architect of the Low Pay Commission and the Equality Act 2010, she has been a champion for women in the workplace in Parliament and at home, and she is a long-time campaigner for flexible working for parents, grandparents and carers.

I congratulate my hon. and brilliant Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on bringing this vital Bill to the House, on working with Ministers, many organisations, many employers and others to bring it this far, and on her powerful speech. Labour fully supports the Bill, and I am glad that so many Members who have spoken today have come together to allow this common-sense piece of legislation to progress.

As I said earlier, I have four children, and at different times during their early years and primary-school education I would have benefited greatly from these provisions—from knowing that I could ask for flexible working, knowing that I could ask for it for my team as a manager, and knowing that it would not just be up to a certain manager or senior manager or the culture of a particular organisation where people might say, “This just isn’t the way we do it here”. I have had two job shares. I have experienced various changes in working times and hours and locations, depending on when my children were at nursery or at primary school and when I had to pick them up. Every time I went back from maternity leave—four times—my children immediately fell ill and I had to ask for some kind of flexible working: it just seemed to happen that way. The “day one” provision is very welcome, meaning that people will no longer have to wait for six months or many weeks. I have job-shared in politics as well, as deputy leader of the Wandsworth Labour group, and I would welcome much more flexible working in our political systems too.

Covid showed how differently we can work, and was a huge culture-changer. That, I think, will enable this Bill to be enacted and make an even bigger difference. It does make a huge difference to be able to stay in work with caring responsibilities, and, as others have mentioned today, that will greatly increase the recruitment and retention of the best possible workforce for our country. Flexible working should have been the past for far longer, but it is certainly the future. It is crucial to achieving gender equality in the workplace and a fairer, growing economy, changing our economy and the world of work for the better.

It is disappointing that the Government have not made a pledge on flexible working in an employment Bill—such a Bill has still not been brought to the House—and up to now have repeatedly failed to follow through on their promises to promote flexible working. As Working Families showed, one in three requests for flexible working has been turned down, so we do need this legislation to lead a change in working culture. With rights enshrined in law for those conversations, working culture will catch up much faster. Flexible working is not just about working from home, it is also about the place in which people can work and changing hours according to needs. The changes that the Bill would make are straightforward and make complete sense.

As has been said, the Bill would introduce a requirement for employers to consult the employee before rejecting a flexible working request—or accepting it, as I hope will happen more frequently. It would also allow an employee to make two statutory requests in every 12-month period rather than the current one request. That talks to the realities of life, where people can have changes to their caring responsibilities, changes if they have a long-term illness—there could be a change to that illness during the year—or changes that may come about for their partner or other people with whom they are sharing caring responsibilities. There may be many changes, so two requests instead of one would be welcome.

The Bill would also reduce the period in which an employer is required to administer the statutory request from three months to two months—obviously, it would be hoped that a decision would be made more quickly—and remove the requirement that the employee must explain in their statutory request what effect the change would have on their employer and how that might be dealt with. That would be shifted so that the employer would have to look into it and think about ways in which it could make a request work.

A Labour Government would go further. As part of our new deal for working people, we will ensure that all workers have the opportunity to benefit from flexible working and that they can do so from day one as a default right, with employers required to accommodate that as far as possible. The right to flexible working would include flexible hours, compressed hours, staggered hours and flexibility around childcare and caring responsibilities. A Labour Government would support small and medium-sized businesses to adapt to flexible working practices and increase the uptake of flexible working. Labour would also end one-sided flexibility, with all workers having secure employment and regular and predictable working hours so that they can plan their lives around a stable job.

I want to spend some time reflecting on the impact of that on women in particular. The level of economically inactive working-age women rose by 124,000 compared to the year before. There are 1.5 million more women than men currently out of and not looking for work. In January to August 2022, the number of people—men and women—who were economically inactive due to having to look after family members increased by 79,000 on the year before, and one in five economically inactive people cite looking after family members as the reason for that. Those figures demonstrate the need for the Bill.

For too long, working women have been denied good quality, affordable childcare, proper parental leave and access to flexible working, and our country has been denied the opportunity for growth that they would bring. Gaps in employment because of a lack of flexibility and needing to leave work at times result in a loss of confidence to return to work, having been out of work for some time. They also result in reduced pension entitlement and reduced opportunities for career progression. Those, in turn, are a major reason for the gender pay gap. The changes that this flexible working Bill would bring about would transform many people’s work and go a long way to reducing the gender pay gap.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East as well as the TUC’s “Flex For All” campaign, Action for ME, Working Families, and Pregnant Then Screwed. Those groups have been right to call out the Government for their shocking track record and repeated broken promises on supporting working mums, dads, carers and people with ME, but the Bill will be transformative for working people and will address many of those appalling statistics.

This is an excellent and long-overdue piece of legislation that will transform the lives of hard-working people up and down the country. This place is at its best when it is united around common sense and a common cause, so I thank the Government for their support in letting the Bill progress through the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Just before I call the Minister, it was a pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) congratulate the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) on the 40th anniversary of her election to this place. May I, on behalf of the whole House, send our congratulations to the right hon. and learned Lady, who, 40 years ago, was a trailblazer about to become not only a very young female Member of Parliament, but a mother? She has been a role model and a champion for women in politics these past four decades and the whole House joins me in sending her our most sincere congratulations and best wishes. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I now have even greater pleasure in calling the newly appointed Minister, Kevin Hollinrake.