Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dhesi]

I thank my hon. Friend, including for his leadership on behalf of his constituents, many of whom suffered from immoral fire-and-rehire practices. Let us not forget that, when my hon. Friend and other Members of this House tried to have that immoral practice banned, the Government blocked that attempt.

In my own constituency of Slough, I have been approached by private hire drivers dismissed without reason, working parents unable to pay their bills and companies underpaying their workers’ agreed wages. That is despite the excellent and enduring work of trade unions—the GMB, Unison, Unite, the Communication Workers Union, the RMT, Transport Salaried Staffs Association, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, ASLEF and others—in fighting for the basic rights of their members to be upheld.

I appreciate that the modus operandi of the Government has historically been to under-deliver for working people, but, as Matthew Taylor noted, workers should be treated like human beings, not cogs in a machine. Work reflects the kind of society we want to live in, how we build our country’s future, what our priorities are, and the value we place on workers’ mental health. In this constantly evolving world, we cannot accept the status quo. People’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. No doubt the Minister today will hail Government successes on employment and will cite the growing numbers in work, but what we must not lose sight of is the quality of the jobs and not just the mere quantity. That is paramount. Having millions of people in insecure and damaging work is not a success.

Even prior to the pandemic, 4 million workers were in poverty—nearly half in full-time employment, but also in poverty. Will the Minister outline exactly how he plans to address the key issues already identified by the Taylor review?

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate. The Taylor review was a spectacular failure. We put a lot of store in the Government’s suggestion that it would be a panacea for workers’ rights, but it spectacularly failed. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that since 2017 the Government have shown huge disrespect to the 4 million working people in this country, who still, as my hon. Friend mentioned, live in poverty?

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend is right. What was considered by the Government to be a panacea has not transpired. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, the unions, the Trades Union Congress and others were not as amenable to what was proposed. Despite that, as I mentioned, 51 of the 53 recommendations were accepted by the Government, so why have so few been legislated for?

The review notes that the

“Government must take steps to ensure that flexibility does not benefit the employer, at the unreasonable expense of the worker, and that flexibility is genuinely a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Under current arrangements, employees often work sometimes double their contracted hours, yet can often be penalised for doing so. There are reports of workers being unable to get mortgages, asked to take holiday time for hours outside of their contracts and having to deal with vastly different weekly payslips.

The Low Pay Commission recommended that the Government ensure that employees have the right to switch to a contract that reflects their normal working hours, so what steps are the Government taking following that? There should be a baseline level of security and predictability for workers, not flexibility that benefits only the employer.

The second issue I want to raise is sick pay. In the UK, we hold the grim record of having the lowest statutory sick pay in Europe. The Government are yet to remove the lower earnings limit from statutory sick pay, and it is still not a basic employment right for all workers, as outlined in the Taylor review. Someone should not have to choose between health and financial hardship, so my question for the Minister is very straightforward: why is that still the case, even after a devastating pandemic?

It is clear that over the past two years the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected some key groups—especially the self-employed, many of whom fell through the gaps of Government support. I will be interested to hear from the shadow Employment Rights Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders); I am sure the Labour party would ensure that the self-employed could withdraw their labour due to immediate health and safety risks, would strengthen blacklisting protection and would enable a health and safety representative for those workers, ensuring that they have the same protections as the employed. Does the Minister not share those ambitions? Do the Government not want to empower workers’ entrepreneurial and independent spirit to create their own work?

Another group acutely impacted were those threatened with fire and rehire, including constituents of mine from Slough who worked for the one in 10 companies that used that abhorrent practice during the pandemic. Thousands of loyal workers were sidelined and at the mercy of inadequate working conditions and protections. We need transformational change, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) outlined in his green paper on employment rights: legally redefining the work relationship; ending the qualifying periods before certain rights are granted; tackling discriminatory working practices; and ensuring the safety and security of jobs.

[Ian Lavery]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a fully paid-up member of a number of trade unions. My hon. Friend mentioned fire and rehire. The Government had a great opportunity only weeks ago to support the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) regarding fire and rehire. The Government refused to allow that Bill to go forward. What does that say about the Government’s intentions for the rest of the Taylor review?

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[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

rose—

[Ian Lavery]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Miller]

I am looking at the Chair; I might give way one more time. I will give way to the hon. Lady, because the hon. Gentleman seemed to have a few—

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Mrs Miller]

Sorry; I said “the hon. Lady”. The hon. Gentleman should open his ears.

[Mrs Miller]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I share her frustration about not seeing an employment Bill, but given the restrictions that there have been on this place, in terms of debate and people being able to be here, I can sort of understand why. Also, there are the changes that we have seen in the economy, which, as I said, are a result of the pandemic and of leaving the EU.

I can give the Minister the benefit of the doubt as to why the Bill has been delayed, but I want to hear from him today that that delay will not be a moment longer than it has to be; the hon. Member for Slough is right that there are some really important issues that people want to be addressed in an employment Bill. However, before I get dragged down that rabbit-hole, I will gently get back to the topic that we are discussing today, which is, of course, the Taylor review—it is important in itself.

I want to make the context of this debate very clear. When we go back to the documents that the Government produced before the pandemic, it really is quite startling to see what is in them. We have the opening to the Good Work plan, putting forward the consultation on the single enforcement body. The introduction to that document, which of course became available only months or even weeks before we saw a significant lockdown of our economy, referred to the record levels of employment in the UK and wages

“growing at their fastest pace in almost a decade”.

It said that the UK labour market was thriving, which it was. However, we cannot ignore the impact of the pandemic, and we have to put that into the mix today as we consider this really important debate.

The way out of this pandemic is not just about vaccination and boosters, as important as they might be; it is also about getting our economy growing as it was prior to the pandemic, so that we can not only pay for the cost of the pandemic but get back on to the sort of track that the people of this country had become used to under this Government.

The skills of the Great British people are crucial to that economic growth. One of the great successes of this Government has been the ability to bounce back since the pandemic hit its height, but we need to be able to use the skills of the British people to get back once again to the levels of growth that I have referred to.

The Taylor review was all about tackling imperfections in the labour market, which is important not only in its own right but in terms of getting back to those levels of economic growth. Many of the sorts of imperfections that Taylor referred to in his review are, in many ways, being tackled already. I saw that for myself when I visited my local Jobcentre Plus office in Basingstoke. We are not known for high levels of unemployment in Basingstoke, but through the pandemic we saw our unemployment rate double, despite the very significant levels of furloughing that the Government had enabled.

I am delighted to say that as a result of the work of Jobcentre Plus, and the tenacity of the entrepreneurs who live in my constituency, those unemployment levels have halved. The work of organisations such as the M3 Job Club is helping to ensure that people in longer-term unemployment also have opportunities.

[Ian Lavery]

On that point, will the right hon. Member give way?

[Mrs Miller]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I think the Chair wants to make sure I do not use too much time.

Organisations such as the M3 Job Club can ensure that the long-term unemployed get back into work as quickly as possible, again dealing with some of the imperfections in the labour market. Of course, the Government have set up such schemes around apprenticeships, and on Friday I saw a number of apprentices at my local technical college—Basingstoke College of Technology—who are studying apprenticeships in anything from engineering in F1 motorsport to supply chains in the airline industry. It is extraordinary that the college has got back on track as quickly as it has.

So there are already successful plans in place to deal with some of the imperfections we see around training, age discrimination and worklessness, but we need to ensure we work better, and that is what the Taylor review was all about. The review referred to a number of areas of concern, and in the time available today it is impossible to go into all of them. The ones I will highlight, over and above the ones that the hon. Member for Slough referred to, are maternity discrimination and age discrimination.

The Minister will know my long-term interest in issues around maternity discrimination. The Taylor review rightly pointed out that three quarters of mothers have been subject to negative or discriminatory actions in the workplace. On age discrimination, far too many people, particularly over the age of 50, are not in work. Those issues were not tackled in the Taylor review; they need to be tackled in the Government’s response.

Another area that the Taylor review did not tackle was family-related leave and pay. We know that the inability of fathers in the workplace to take parental leave can directly affect the way women can participate at work. Another area that was not referred to was the use of non-disclosure agreements to cover up wrongdoing in the workplace. Will the Minister be tackling those issues in an employment Bill, over and above anything that he wants to tackle from the Taylor review?

Before I close, I want to talk about the single enforcement body, on which the Government issued a consultation back in December 2019. The single enforcement body was at the heart of the Government’s response to the Taylor review. It has an important role in tackling the issues I have just outlined, which were not tackled in the way I feel they should have been in the Taylor review. In his response, will the Minister clarify the status of the single enforcement body? Does it remain at the core of the Government’s response? When will he look at extending the role of the single enforcement body to cover enforcement of the law that already exists, as well as new laws that might be required around NDAs?

I know that the Minister listens well—he has listened to me talk about these issues on many occasions—and I hope he finds this debate useful in refocusing the Government on what I agree with the hon. Members for Slough and for Poplar and Limehouse is an important issue that we need to tackle here and now.

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[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) has secured a really timely debate. I want to try and bring a human context to this, in the short time that I have to speak today. We are talking about human beings in the workplace; we are talking about people who go to work and rely on decent wages and terms and conditions in order to feed their families and support their communities. Everybody deserves the right to have decent working terms and conditions. They deserve the right to go out to work and come home safe, as well. They deserve the right to have decent wages that put food on the table and clothe their kids. We are not asking for anything revolutionary here—we are really not. We are just saying what should happen in a decent society, for heaven’s sake. Anyone would think we were trying to pull the back teeth out of Government with this! Where is the promised employment Bill? With the greatest respect to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), we cannot keep blaming the pandemic as the reason we are not addressing issues in the workplace for people who are suffering greatly.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Gentleman might reflect on the fact that the furlough scheme will have saved many thousands of jobs. That is a very real support, in a real-time crisis.

[Ian Lavery]

We should not try and rewrite history. I recall at the very beginning of the pandemic we had to pull the Government, kicking and screaming, to accept a furlough scheme. It was the TUC and the trade unions that put the pressure on the Government to come up with a decent scheme for furlough. I want to mention the sick pay scheme: it is £96 per week—that is for those who qualify, by the way. Hundreds of thousands of people in this country do not even qualify for £96 per week. For those who do, it is supposed to be fantastic. “You’ve got statutory sick pay. What are you crying about?” If someone lives on their own, what can they get for £96 per week. That needs to be addressed in an employment Bill.

We have a situation, with fire and rehire, where companies are firing individuals unless they accept, on occasion, up to a £10,000 reduction in wages and worse terms and conditions. That has got to be banned, it really has. I say to the Minister that it has to be banned. I give all credit to the zero hours justice campaign for highlighting that at every opportunity. In those zero-hour contracts, we have people sitting there on a Monday morning waiting for a text to say whether they are working that day—that is still happening. If they miss the text, they might not be able to go into work. Here is another statistic: GMB did a survey, prior to the Taylor review, in which 61% of employees went to work while unwell for fear of not being paid, losing their job or missing out on hours.

We have to put this in a more human context. The Taylor review was very weak, but better than nothing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Slough has said, the Government accepted 51 of the 53 recommendations, but they have only implemented seven of those recommendations to date. That is just not good enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) mentioned a new deal for working people and the employment rights green paper. He has put a lot of work into the green paper—and it is the answer. It actually addresses everything we need it to. I am sure the Minister has read it and taken some great hints from it, but this is what we need to be introducing: fairness in the work place. It mentions raising pay for all, ending in-work poverty, enabling secure and safe working and tackling discrimination and workplace inequalities. We are all in this place to try to help people in our communities. There is not any better way to do that than to increase protection for those in the workplace.

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[Paul Scully]

I will come to statutory sick pay in a second. We know that sick pay needs to be looked at, and we will look to do so. During the pandemic, rather than concentrating on a consultation on sick pay, we decided to look at welfare benefits to provide extra support. None the less, the hon. Gentleman is right. Sick pay needs to be worked on, and we will continue to do so.

Advances in technology, the emergence of new challenges and a rise in new business models means how, when and where people work is adapting. That is why, in October 2016, the Government commissioned Matthew Taylor to lead the independent review of modern working practices. The review considered a range of topics relating to the labour market of 2016. It played an important role in shaping our understanding of how the labour market worked and how employment legislation could be upgraded to take account of the rise in modern employment models and new forms of work.

As the Minister for Business and Labour Markets, understanding those trends in the economy is key to shaping my priorities for reform to the employment rights framework. Independent reviews such as the Taylor review played an important role in laying the groundwork for our ambitious programme to make the UK the best place to work and grow a business and ensure that the UK labour market continues to thrive in the future.

As I am sure the hon. Member for Slough will agree, the 2017 review was comprehensive and wide-ranging, as we have heard today, although it did not go far enough for some on the Opposition Benches. It included topics covering a broad spectrum of employment law and employment practice, including the enforcement of workers’ rights, labour market flexibility and support for vulnerable workers; looked at ways that we can improve our regulatory framework around employment rights to make sure that the support provided to businesses and workers was keeping pace with changes in the labour market and the economy; and considered the impact of labour market changes, and how best to ensure we can retain flexibility in the future, while equally ensuring workers have access to the rights and protections they deserve.

I am grateful to Matthew Taylor for his work in providing valuable evidence for shaping our ambitious programme to build a high-skilled, high-productivity, high-wage economy that delivers on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work and grow a business.

[Ian Lavery]

The Minister is praising the Taylor review and its recommendations, so why have the Government only legislated for seven of the 53 recommendations since 2017?

[Paul Scully]

I will come to what we have done and what we intend to do in just a second. I highlight the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller): quite a lot has happened since. She is right to say that the Government have been busy and that parliamentary time has been precious, but the nature of work itself has significantly changed since that point.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) spoke about the right to request flexible working from day one. She is right to focus in on that. It is a key area, not just for the idea of flexible working, but for people who have caring and parental responsibilities and other pressures on their life outside work, so it can have a significant impact on other areas that we want to tackle. We have been able to take the opportunity throughout the pandemic to reflect on the changing nature of work, which will extend beyond the pandemic, as we move towards endemic covid and a sense of normality, and being able to reflect on what flexible working might look like at that stage, rather than what it did look like and what our ambitions were, back in 2016. We want to make sure that we can take the necessary steps for our labour market.

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[Paul Scully]

I will come to that.

Another core part of the Taylor review was to find new ways of opening up the labour market, so that more people can enter it and then remain in work. That is exactly what our vision is: to continue to level up across the country and allow more individuals to participate in work than ever before.

That is why we committed in our manifesto to bring forward new rights for parents of babies who require neonatal care and new rights for carers’ leave for the 5 million people across the UK who provide unpaid care by looking after an elderly or disabled family member, relative or friend.

However, as the review itself notes, the themes it covers are complex and the regulatory framework is based on decades of case law. Its recommendations therefore cover a wide range of proposals, from relatively small changes that can be made immediately, such as the key facts page for agency workers, to recognising longer-term strategic shifts in the labour market, for example by establishing the single enforcement body. We have always made it clear that it is important to consult as widely as possible and to take time to consider how best to achieve the change that works for everyone in the labour market, including employers. But clearly we want employees to be in good work; that is at the heart of that process.

We have consulted on a number of proposals for reform and on themes raised in the review. Wherever possible, we have worked closely with stakeholders so that they have an opportunity to share their views. I am proud to say that we have continued to take decisive action since the publication of the review, in order to implement many important changes to the labour market.

Our record speaks for itself. We have closed the loophole whereby agency workers were employed on cheaper rates than permanent workers. We have quadrupled the maximum fine for employers who treat their workers badly. We gave all workers the right to receive a statement of their rights from day one. We have increased pay for around 2 million workers. We have introduced key information documents to ensure that those seeking temporary work have all the facts that they need up front. We also brought into force Jack’s law, a world-first piece of legislation that provides statutory leave for parents who suffer the devastating loss of a child.

Those actions have made a real difference to the lives of workers up and down this country. We have benefited from expert input from stakeholders, and great consideration was given to ensure that those actions work for employers and workers across all sectors in our economy. Those actions have also given individuals and employers the freedom to agree the terms and conditions that suit them best, while also enabling businesses to respond to changing market conditions.

The results speak for themselves. We have seen high employment rates, reaching a record high of 76.6% in February 2020, and workers enjoying real pay increases month after month. We have seen a wealth of job opportunities, which is a testament to the excellence of UK businesses’ ability to grow, innovate and create jobs. We have also increased participation across groups who had typically been under-represented in the labour market, with women and workers from ethnic minority backgrounds now making up a larger proportion of the workforce than ever before.

However, as I have said already, we need to take stock of how the pandemic has affected businesses and workers up and down the country before continuing to build on that record, because the past two years has seen a level of disruption to the economy that the Taylor review just could not have predicted. However, we have acted decisively to provide an unprecedented package of support to protect people’s livelihoods.

The coronavirus job retention scheme has helped 1.3 million employers across the UK to furlough 11.6 million jobs, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke highlighted, and more than £27 billion has been spent on helping the self-employed through five self-employment income support scheme grants, supporting nearly 3 million self-employed individuals.

I absolutely take the point that we have not been able to protect every business and every job or livelihood. There are certainly people—including some who I have spoken to and heard from, and who I continue to listen to—who have not been able to be supported throughout the pandemic as they would have liked to have been.

However, as I have said, in April last year we again raised the national minimum wage and the national living wage, giving around 2 million people a pay rise. We have also lowered the age threshold for the national living wage to 23, ensuring that even more people have the security of a decent wage, and we plan to reduce it further to 21, in order to tackle the barrier that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North talked about, by 2024 to support younger workers.

We continue to adapt our employment framework to keep pace with the needs of today. We legislated so that parents benefiting from the job retention scheme do not lose out on statutory maternity pay or other forms of parental pay. That has meant that new parents could take time off to spend with their babies without losing out financially just because they had been furloughed.

We have enabled workers to carry over more annual leave during the pandemic and we conducted a review of how victims of domestic abuse can be supported in the workplace, setting out the impact that domestic abuse has on victims, the challenges that it raises for employers, and what best practice to deal with domestic abuse looks like. At every step of the pandemic, the Government’s aim has been to protect jobs and livelihoods and to support workers’ rights.

[Ian Lavery]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not, just for a second.

As our economic recovery gathers momentum, I am determined to continue with our work to build back better from the pandemic, and to build the high-skilled, high-productive, high-wage economy that will deliver on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work and grow a business. We will do that by continuing to champion a flexible and dynamic labour market while maintaining the UK’s excellent record on workers’ rights.

Future reforms will continue to open up the labour market so that more people can enter and remain in work, and will continue to protect those most in need, including those in low-paid work and the gig economies. Future reforms will take a smarter approach to the enforcement of employment law: we want to make it easier for good businesses to comply with their obligations, while ensuring a level playing field through effective enforcement against those who cut corners and exploit workers. Future reforms will also continue to support the UK’s dynamic labour market by increasing flexibility, creating the conditions for new jobs, and building on our wider record on the national living wage and national minimum wage.

A number of issues have been raised today, which I will address quickly. I have talked about sick pay; we still need to retain flexibility within the economy, so we will not place a blanket ban on zero-hours contracts. However, we have done a lot of work on exclusivity, and will do what we can about the issue of people not having predictable hours. We want to allow people to change to a predictable contract along the way in their employment, when that should be the case. Turning to employment status, we believe that the status that we have at the moment is the right way to go forward. However, we recognise that there are employments outside of that status, and want to make it easier for individuals and businesses to understand what rights and tax obligations apply to them. We are considering options to improve clarity around employment status.

Obviously, the end of this Session is coming up—in a couple of months’ time, I am guessing—and we will see when parliamentary time will allow us to bring forward employment measures to tackle all these issues and more, in a way that will address the Taylor review and the changing flexible work market that continues to develop beyond the pandemic. We must make sure that we continue to make this country the best place to be able to work. I thank the right hon. and hon. Members who have put forward constructive ideas today for how we can continue our record of establishing an employment framework that is fit for purpose and keeps place with the needs of modern workplaces.