Guy Opperman
Main Page: Guy Opperman (Conservative - Hexham)(11 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Umunna
I will come to that point shortly and tell the House the story of a zero-hours contract worker I met recently in exactly that position.
The Government and policy makers can acknowledge the problem, but the question is this: at a time when people feel more insecure than ever, will they just heap further insecurity on them, or will they act to do something about the situation? What have the Government done? First, we have their failed economic plan. Thanks to the policies they have pursued, unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high, with almost 2.5 million people still out of work, including, tragically, almost 1 million young people. I do not think that that is cause for celebration. It is welcome that growth has returned, but for all the talk of rebalancing, in the fourth year of the Government, that rebalancing looks as elusive as ever. We just have to look at the statistics that came out this morning. In today’s employment figures, of course it was good to see unemployment fall in parts of our country, but in many regions—London, the north-west, the east midlands and the south-west—it increased.
Mr Umunna
I will give way shortly.
Secondly, what are the Government doing to the protections for working people in the workplace? They are watering them down left, right and centre. They have increased from one to two years the length of service required before someone can enforce their right not to be treated unfairly at work and they have introduced employment tribunal fees of £1,200. The Minister for Skills and Enterprise described that as a moderate charge, but for low-income workers it is the equivalent of several weeks’ pay. The Government have also reduced the consultation period for collective redundancy. I could go on.
Thirdly, what have the Government done on zero-hours contracts? They have done little, if anything at all. Has a full consultation and call for evidence been issued? No. To date, there has been none, despite promises at the Liberal Democrat conference by the Secretary of State to do so. Has the Office for National Statistics been asked to clarify how many of these contracts might be in use, given that research suggests there are far more than in the ONS estimates?
Guy Opperman
The hon. Gentleman was talking about the unemployment figures. Does he accept that in the north-east they have fallen by 17,000 since February this year and are now lower than when we came into office in May 2010, and that youth unemployment is down since February by 7,000, from 12% to 9.2%? Is that not evidence that things are changing for the better?
Mr Umunna
I do not deny that it is welcome to see anybody who is out of work getting into work, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) put it, the question is: what is the nature of that work?
In fairness to the Secretary of State, I think he wants to act. I know, for example, that he has hit out at people in his Government who want to slash away employment protections, describing them as “head bangers” who see liberalising the labour market as “an aphrodisiac”. Who on earth could he be referring to? I suspect that he is prevented from acting by the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon)—who is sitting next to him—who has described his boss as “slipping his electronic tag” for daring to speak about the need for a more responsible capitalism, which I would argue includes companies treating their workers fairly. In any case, the Secretary of State has allowed what has happened to go on and has therefore been complicit in watering down people’s rights at work in the way I have described.
Where this Government have failed, we will act. To pick up on the point made earlier, there are few firm data on the extent of the use of zero-hours contracts, partly because many people do not realise that they are on them. However, over the summer months, the Office for National Statistics produced revised figures, putting the number at more than 250,000. That is likely to be a severe underestimate, given that others have estimated that more than 300,000 employees in the care sector alone are now on such contracts. Consequently, I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford), who has campaigned hard on this issue, wrote to the chair of the UK Statistics Authority asking whether the ONS would clarify the data and publish new figures in the light of the evidence that has arisen. He said that the ONS was reviewing the way it collects the data and looking at whether it can include the data collected by organisations such as the CIPD. However, finding out how many of these contracts are in use is one thing; looking at how they are used is another.
Vince Cable
Yes, and I hope that happens. I have made it clear to the Low Pay Commission that we want to look at the minimum wage in a somewhat more holistic way than has been the case in the past. Of course I cannot guarantee what the commission will conclude; that is not my job.
Before considering the advantages and disadvantages of zero-hours contracts, let me make a basic point that will probably explain why my Labour predecessors did not deal with the problem: it is intrinsically tricky. There is an issue about what zero-hours contracts actually are; they are not clearly defined. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said a few moments ago, we do not have a definition of exploitation, and we do not even have a definition of what a zero-hours contract is. There are a whole lot of contractual arrangements, which have two basic conditions attached to them. One is that there is no guarantee of work and no requirement under British employment law for an employer to provide a minimum number of hours. Equally, however, an individual is not required to accept an offer of work. Those are the two defining characteristics of a zero-hours contract.
A wide spectrum of practices has come out of that. At one end of the scale, we have casualisation of different forms—we have heard about the history of the docks and other similar traditions, many of which were highly undesirable. Equally, at the other end of the scale, however, there are large numbers of traditional systems of freelance-type employment—in the creative industries and education, for example. When I started thinking about this subject, I realised that my late wife spent much of her working career on a zero-hours contract working for a further education college. She taught music to sixth formers, depending on how many turned up for their classes. It was effectively a zero-hours contract. Many people in FE and adult education worked on the same basis, and this is established practice in many other industries. In these cases, it has not been viewed as a problem before.
I make that point to stress that the definition of a zero-hours contract is not precise. Hundreds of thousands of people—and if we believe the shadow Secretary of State, millions—are on these contracts, which vary enormously. Some people carry the rights attached to being a worker—[Interruption.] Well, Unite think it is 5 million people. Some people in these contracts have basic employee statutory rights attached to them as well. They are enormously varied.
Guy Opperman
To add to the list of contexts and sectors in which this type of contract is the norm and is welcome, let me cite rural Northumberland—represented by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) as well as myself. Zero-hours contracts are in place there, and because of the nature of rural employment, neither of us has found anyone complaining about them.
Vince Cable
There are many industries of that kind, and I shall shortly enumerate them. I do not want to eulogise this system of employment because there clearly are problems in many sectors, but it has worked well in other sectors. That is why when it comes to rushing to prohibitions, we need to be careful about the unintended consequences.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
It is an honour and a privilege to speak in this debate and it is right that we debate low pay and the nature of contracts. I should make a declaration: as a former barrister, I was unquestionably on a zero-hours contract in that I was an employee whose employer was not obliged to give me work, and I had to accept that. It is certainly the case that in rural Northumberland there is an acceptance that these types of contracts help to plug a gap. I am not going to attack local authorities, whether Liberal, Conservative or Labour, which have utilised them in the past and continue to do so. I suggest it is a question not of this House being for or against zero-hours contracts, but of this House being against inequitable and exploitative zero-hours contracts.
Alison McGovern
I am intrigued by what the hon. Gentleman says about his previous experience. In a report that I and two of my colleagues produced, one person told us:
“It has been very difficult as I want to move on with my life but can’t as I don’t know when and if I will be next out of work so this stops me from committing into anything financial like moving out or furthering my education”.
I hope he can identify with that experience, perhaps not in his own life, but in reality, in our economy now. He says we should not be for or against, but I really hope he is against that sort of experience, where people cannot commit to bettering themselves because of these sorts of contracts.
Guy Opperman
As a barrister, I spent two and a half years without a contract. With respect, I therefore suggest I do have some experience of that, with no contract whatsoever. I accept that it is right that this House is addressing these issues, and it is right that we are collecting and assessing evidence. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has put in place the consultation and that over this winter we will be obtaining evidence on this issue.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
One thing that strikes me is that there is a big difference between employment and self-employment. Is it not important that we are clear which of those zero-hours contracts relate to self-employment and which to contracted employment, and are therefore not being used appropriately?
Guy Opperman
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. The shadow Secretary of State said that the jobs figures are not satisfactory, but he also accepted that we in the north-east are delighted that the jobs figures are finally improving significantly. Youth unemployment has fallen by 7,000 since February and is now back to the level of May 2010. Adult unemployment in the north-east has fallen, too.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Is it not a fact that the unemployment figures for the north-east have been the highest in the country for a number of years? The figures released recently appear to show a reduction, but a lot of that is to do with people who are on zero-hours contracts.
Guy Opperman
I accept that the north-east has higher unemployment figures than some parts of the country, but the May 2010 unemployment figure for the north-east was 80,105, a 6.4% rate, and it is now 78,525, a 6.3% rate. It is also true that successive Governments have welcomed the fact that part-time work and some types of zero-hours contracts have formed the basis of employment. That continued under the previous Government and it has continued under this Government. The question is the extent to which there is exploitation.
Ian Lavery
The figures have fallen very minimally in the north-east since 2010. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is largely due to people being on zero-hours contracts?
Guy Opperman
I have no evidence to suggest that a fall of 17,341 from February 2012 to September 2013 is all due to zero-hours contracts—in fact, I suggest that it is not, although clearly some of these contracts are involved, and nobody disputes that. As I said to the Secretary of State, in the north-east the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and I have not received a specific complaint about the utilisation of these contracts in the rural environment in which we work, because such freelance contracts are generally welcomed, although not in every case, I am sure.
In welcoming the job numbers, may I make my final point—
Guy Opperman
I will not, because a number of people wish to speak.
My final point is that we need to widen the terms of the debate on zero-hours contracts to consider the minimum wage and the living wage. I welcome the work of the Archbishop of York. I should declare that I serve in the High Pay Centre with such notable right-wingers as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), who leads the Green party in this House, and the TUC general secretary, Frances O’Grady. We have been looking at not only high pay, but low pay; we have been trying to address the problems that definitely do exist and making the case that the living wage and the minimum wage need to be addressed and embraced as we go forward. I agree with the earlier point that it is bizarre that we have a subsidy system whereby tax credits, in effect, subsidise the employment of low-paid workers. That needs to be addressed.
The final point must surely be this: the living wage has been proven not only to save the taxpayer money in the longer term, but to improve productivity and to benefit the business. One need only look at the US retail giant Costco to see that. It has broken the mould, paying its staff $11.50 an hour compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Its chief executive has said:
“We know it’s…more profitable in the long term to minimise employee turnover and maximise employee productivity, commitment and loyalty”
by paying a living wage. I certainly continue to support that.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
It is always a great delight to follow my good and hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who I tend to follow in these debates—he always gets taken last, although I am sure that can be dealt with in another place.
This afternoon’s debate has added yet another dimension to the cost of living crisis that is engulfing the UK. It is not just the weekly shop, the energy bill or travel costs, but the hidden contributor of job insecurity. It is worth reminding ourselves that the UK had the third most flexible employment regime in the OECD even before this Government came to power and that there is a direct correlation between job insecurity, consumer confidence and economic growth. In fact, the Lib Dem Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), the former employment relations Minister, said that any changes to the employment regime that undermined consumer confidence and created job insecurity would be “crazy”. He later got the employment relations ministerial brief and proceeded to do exactly what he said he would not do.
Many Members have discussed the plethora of other changes that have been made to the employment regime. It is worth reflecting on those changes, because they feed into the insecurity at work, which many hon. Members have mentioned, that is a symptom of zero-hours contracts. We have had—this is not an exclusive list, but gives an indication of why people feel more insecure at work—the qualification period increased to two years, collective redundancy cut to 45 days, fees for employment tribunals, the consequences of which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), compensated no-fault dismissal by the back door and settlement agreements. We have also had shares for rights, compensation and employment tribunals slashed, lay people taken off employment tribunals and employment appeal tribunals, TUPE regulations diluted—that is perhaps partly why the problem of zero-hours contracts has increased—the Agricultural Wages Board abolished, national minimum wage enforcement slashed, the very existence of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority questioned, and health and safety taken back to what it was before the Boer war. That is a cocktail of job insecurity, which is highlighted by the fact that we are having this debate on zero-hours contracts.
A lot of Members have talked about whether we should have done more in government. Many hon. Members have made that criticism, but it is a false criticism, because they are missing the explosion of zero-hours contracts in recent years and the underemployment that we are seeing across everyone’s constituency.
Zero-hours contracts are not a new phenomenon—we have mentioned that already. They work for some employees—let us put that on the record; of course they do—but let us be clear, and say time and again, that the exploitative nature of such contracts has to be dealt with. That is what we need to do in the House today—and, indeed, in anything the Government bring forward. It is also not hard to see why zero-hours contracts are attractive to employers. They allow for maximum flexibility. However, in many cases, we are seeing the transfer of business risk—this is an important point—in a difficult economy from the employer to the employee. We should not hide behind the word “flexibility” so that it can mean exploitation.
Let me highlight a couple of case studies. One employee of a cinema firm—I will not mention the firm involved—said:
“I was offered part-time work with a zero-hours contract. It was all down to the whims of the managers whether or not you got work that week, which is just impossible to live with.”
He continued:
“They were very manipulative. And they employed so many people that we ended up getting about three hours a week. It seems as though zero-hours contracts are being used more and more to get as many staff as possible without any intention of using them…or giving us the hours we need to live and earn”
the income we need to survive.
Let us look at why the Government are so interested in zero-hours contracts and flexibility. Could it be because they have a flexible Cabinet? They have a part-time Chancellor. Indeed, I might even contest that the Business Secretary himself is on a zero-hours contract with the Liberal Democrats so that he can work full time for the Tories to deliver all these attacks on workers’ rights. Whether he likes it or not, that seems to be the case he is putting through. I wonder whether this issue also epitomises the kind of economy that this Government are looking to achieve—a low-wage, low-skilled, low-productivity work force that has insecure employment, to provide maximum flexibility and start a hire-and-fire culture. The Minister might come to the Dispatch Box and dispel that rumour, but it was only 24 hours ago that he suggested that small business should be exempt from any employment law whatever. If that is not creating a hire-and-fire culture, I do not know what is.
Let us reflect on the Government’s response to this issue. Although I appreciate the tone of the Secretary of State’s earlier comments—many have mentioned that—the record is: three BIS officials working part time on this issue, “speaking informally” to stakeholders, with a consultation promised some time in November. The Business Secretary said he hoped it would start some time in November, and I hope that he will bring forward strong proposals.
Many Members have spoken about issues in their constituencies and about what zero-hours contracts mean to their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs Riordan) made a powerful contribution. She made the critical point that most employers in Halifax look after their staff. I think that the vast majority of employers leave home every day to go to work with the intention of looking after their staff so that they can have a productive work force. I was struck by my hon. Friend’s story of the young person who was desperate for a job and paid to travel to work, only to be told that his name was not on the list. He had to travel home again at his own expense.
I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) is no longer in his place. He made a deplorable contribution, comparing people on zero-hours contracts with his zero-hours contract as a barrister. I hope that the Minister will agree that that is really not a true comparison with the problem we are looking at. If the hon. Gentleman wanted to complain about being on a zero-hours contract as a barrister—[Interruption.] Here he comes! Perhaps he was picking up his next £10,000-a-day contract while he was out of the Chamber.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) has always been a strong proponent of the arguments that we are putting forward today. He rightly concluded that zero-hours contracts needed to be used, but he also argued powerfully that, if major private sector employers such as Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s do not need to use them, others such as Wetherspoon’s and Burger King should not need to either. This is all about fairness in the workplace.
Ian Murray
I will not give way, because the hon. Gentleman was not in the Chamber for the start of the winding-up speeches. Anyway, before he arrived, I might have said something particularly complimentary about him.
Guy Opperman
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he not accept that, when someone is working for free, when they are obligated to take on work and have no choice in the matter and when they are contracted to carry out that employment, that is exactly the same as a zero-hours contract? That was the situation that I was in, and I regret to say that his allegation was wrong.
Ian Murray
The hon. Gentleman might be confusing self-employment with zero-hours contracts. It is particularly unfair for a Government Member to stand up and compare people on zero-hours contracts in the retail and home care sectors with those who work as barristers. That is not particularly helpful. It just shows how out of touch the Government are. I am sure that people watching this debate at home will draw their own conclusions from that, as many people in the Chamber have done.
I want to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who, along with a number colleagues, has produced a fantastic pamphlet on this issue. I would encourage the Minister—and, indeed, the hon. Member for Hexham—to read it and to look at the case studies and the conclusions about what is happening in the labour market. She gave us a lesson today when she said that no one should tell their boss that they had done nothing, and they should instead say that they had not done enough. I am sure that that is a lesson we will all be taking to the Leader of the Opposition the next time we speak to him.
The hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) has spoken in the Chamber about employment rights on a number of occasions since I have been in this post. His description of Burnley conjured up a utopian dream, and I might even move there myself. He seemed to suggest that zero-hours contracts were working wonderfully there, and that they offered the solution to all evils. His contribution on the way in which the contracts are affecting the people of Burnley was slightly strange, given that they are seen in many other constituencies as having precisely the opposite effect.
The hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) suggested that zero-hours contracts gave managers an excuse to be lazy about proper planning, and he was absolutely right. When I ran my own business, I spent an extraordinary amount of time creating rotas to ensure that every member of staff had the hours that they were contracted to do. That was a major part of running my own business, and if I was able to do it, I do not see why other organisations should not be able to do it too. Zero-hours contracts are bad for business. I spent a lot of time ensuring that people were paid properly, and were doing their contracted hours so that they could pay their rent or their mortgage, but premises not far from me that had 15 people on zero-hours contracts were taking on only eight or nine of them to work on any particular day. That lack of a level playing field makes the economy uncompetitive.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) led a marvellous debate in Westminster Hall just before the summer recess. Everybody talked in it about the devastation that these contracts can inflict on our constituencies, particularly in respect of mortgage and rental agreements. Instead of slashing employee rights and making it easier for employers to fire rather than hire, as this Government have done, we should be looking at putting together a framework to make people more secure at work, which would indeed help the economy.
I ran out of having anything to note about the speech of the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). He is not in his place, so I shall not mention it any more.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) is a passionate advocate for her own constituency, and she reminded us all of the disgrace whereby the Red Cross has had to feed people through food banks—for the first time in this country in 70 years. If that is not an indictment of the current Government, showing how bad they are, I do not know what is. She posed the interesting question of why anyone would want to be in a zero-hours contract, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said exactly the same thing. If someone has an employment contract, why would they want it to say zero hours? My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan also raised the issue of job progression—a subject we do not talk about enough. People on zero-hours contracts cannot get the skills, training and job progression up to the next level that they need.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham told us about his constituents’ fear of losing their job if they raised issues about these contracts. When people in the workplace are deciding whether to bring up such issues with their employers, their fear of doing so is widespread. My hon. Friend talked, too, about the demolition of people’s rights and the critical role of the partnership between trade unions and employers in this country. He reflected on the Secretary of State’s examples from the car industry, which show where that partnership has worked exceptionally well. The recent success of the car industry is a testament to the workers, the trade unions, the Government and, indeed, the employers all working together to achieve it.
The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) suggested no action, but said that the recent exploitation of these contracts is the real issue. We agree. There is no dispute between us on that—it is the exploitation rather than zero-hours contracts themselves that must be dealt with.
My close neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), mentioned what is happening in the care sector in Edinburgh. I think we are all going to have to deal with this issue in future if people are to get the quality of care that they deserve.