Employment Law: Devolution to Scotland

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

It is great to have you in the Chair for this debate, Sir Edward. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for securing the debate. At the start of her contribution, she said she wanted the devolution of employment law, to get it away from the Tories. That has been the thrust of the debate.

If we look at the context of where we are since 2010—a long 12 years ago—we can see that in-work poverty, low pay and financial insecurity are up for workers across the country. Incomes have stagnated for over a decade and real-terms pay today is equal to, if not lower than, 2008 levels. Wages have suffered a decade of stagnation, and will continue to do so. It is the worst it has been in over a century. The latest figures show that the level of taxation for working people in this country is at its highest in 70 years, which will result in the largest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s—who knows when that goes back to? The Living Wage Foundation, one of the great organisations of this country, estimates that over 1 key million workers are in insecure work, lacking basic rights and protections, and that across the whole of the economy, one in nine workers is in insecure work and lacking basic rights.

This is a great debate in which to pay tribute to our trade union colleagues, particularly the Trades Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady, for driving a lot of the issues forward. One thing the Government tend to forget is that the most successful companies in this country are those that have good relations with the trade unions and with their employees, where Government, the trade unions, employees and employers work together as partners to create an environment that provides high-quality jobs and pay. It can be done; I say it can be done because the Labour Government that came in in 1997 transformed workers’ rights in this country. I was not in this place at the time, but many of my colleagues who were tell stories of sitting through the night, overnight—maybe you did this yourself, Sir Edward—two, three or four nights in a row, trying to get national minimum wage legislation on to the statute book. That legislation took security guards in this country, who were on the equivalent of 30p an hour, up to a national minimum wage. Of course, now, the difficulty with the national minimum wage is that for too many, it has become a national maximum wage. That is why we need to move on to something much more progressive, and we have committed to do so in the next Labour Government.

All that, alongside the cost of living squeeze—the cost of living crisis—means that things are only getting worse for working people and for the vast majority of the population. Inequality is rising, not just for the individual but across the nations and regions of the UK. When the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), spoke in Downing Street this morning, he did not even mention levelling up; maybe that was because it was always a slogan, and levelling up does not actually exist. The new Prime Minister, as we have heard already in many of today’s contributions, has promised to outlaw the ability to strike and to break strikes by bringing in agency workers. She has called workers lazy and said that they need to graft more. A new Prime Minister is supposed to come in with a fresh broom to resolve some of the problems in our economy, but it looks like she will make them considerably worse for working people everywhere in the UK, wherever they live.

Some of today’s contributions have been absolutely correct about the consequences of those problems for working people. Everybody in the Government—including, I am sure, the Minister—said with consternation that the P&O fire and rehire was a total disgrace. They were calling in chief executives; they were in the House of Commons at the Dispatch Box. The Secretary of State for Transport derided P&O for what it was doing, yet nothing has happened on the back of that. It is correct that the private Member’s Bill on banning fire and rehire was talked out by this Government. Any reasonable Government would have done what always happens with private Members’ Bills: talk it out because they do not want it to be anyone else’s idea, and then take it on themselves and bring forward something that they could live with. However, there has been nothing on fire and rehire.

As we come out of the covid pandemic, if we set aside all the big issues around the cost of living and insecure work and look at employees and workers themselves, we see something really stark in our economy. I will not give away any confidences, but I know a lot of the British Airways staff quite well because we Members from Scotland travel up and down to London regularly. BA treated its staff abysmally—not just over covid, but for the decade before, whether it be on pension rights, pay and conditions, moving their centres of employment from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London, or consolidating all that by banning them from flying home on commercial flights.

When covid came and BA got rid of a lot of those staff, they went and got other jobs. Some have been re-employed in the industry, and when I speak to them, they tell me that they are now having a much better time working for a different employer. When covid finished and BA was desperate for staff, it went back to ask those people if they would like to be re-employed, and every single one of them said no, as we would expect. Those loyal BA staff had made that company the great British product that it is—employees always drive great products, services and businesses—but they were treated so abysmally that when the company came calling and said, “The proverbial has hit the fan. Will you come and help us?”, they said that they would not. That is partly why our airline industry is in such a bad state at the moment.

British Gas did the same with fire and rehire, so there is a litany of issues for the Government to consider.

[David Linden]

It is absolutely right that we give BA and British Gas an absolute bashing, but one organisation that started using fire and rehire quite early on was Asda, a number of years ago. In considering that litany of employers who have indulged in fire and rehire, it would be remiss of us not to call Asda out on that shameful practice, too.

[Ian Murray]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Asda. We could probably spend the rest of the debate coming up with other companies that have done it. There is an argument to be had about whether we should criticise the companies directly, but they are operating within the legislation. If we do not want employers to use fire and rehire—they are looking after a different set of circumstances—we need to change the legislation to stop them doing so. That is why fire and rehire should have been banned.

This a similar debate to one we had maybe five or 10 years ago about zero-hours contracts. I remember when I was in the shadow team for Business, Innovation and Skills back in 2012, we commissioned Norman Pickavance, who had been the HR director at Morrisons—the supermarkets—to write a report on zero-hours contracts. His report said quite clearly that there were ways to ban zero-hours contracts in their entirety without affecting all the issues that the Government hid behind as excuses for not doing so. Ten years later, zero-hours contracts, the gig economy and forced self-employment are rampant, and there is no employment Bill to deal with them.

Will the Minister address the Government’s objection to the Taylor review? What is their objection? Why is there no Bill to enact its recommendations, and why is the new Prime Minister not introducing one? During a cost of living crisis, workers should not be sacked; they should be made more secure, because people should have confidence that a wage will come in so that they can at least partially pay their energy bills and other bills. We will see what happens on Thursday with the cost of living crisis and energy bills, but I suspect that the responsibility for paying energy bill debt will be passed from the Government to the consumer, which is certainly not something that we support.

I agree with the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), who said that there are inconsistencies in devolution. Nobody ever said that devolution was perfect; it was never going to be perfect. Asymmetric devolution is, by its very nature, imperfect, but we have to find mechanisms to run through some of those issues. Devolution has always been a journey, as the hon. Gentleman himself admitted in mentioning Calman, Smith and others, and it will continue to be a journey, particularly for those who are committed to devolution—I am not sure that many in this Chamber are committed to it, with the exception perhaps of myself.

[David Linden]

And your colleague.

[Ian Murray]

Maybe. Well, I am not so sure if the Minister is—maybe she will tell us.

I do not want to get into the issue of bin strikes and so on—the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentioned the strikes—but they go to the heart of something that is infecting our politics at the moment. Our refuse collectors worked all through covid and did a marvellous job, but decided—quite rightly—to strike on the basis that they had been offered a 2% pay rise. People need fair pay rises, particularly the lowest paid. In all our councils across Scotland—it might be the same across England—we have probably the lowest-paid public sector workers out there. They are striking on the basis of pay rates.

We then had an unholy argument in Scotland about who was responsible for the strikes. Then, a few weeks later—one might reflect on adding one and one and getting maybe four, five or two—the First Minister put a funded deal on the table and the strikes were lifted. How can that not be the responsibility of the Scottish Government rather than of the Labour party in Edinburgh? That is beyond my comprehension. That is the kind of debate that we have had, rather than a sensible debate about whether employment law should be devolved to Scotland.

I know that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) has been back a while, but I have not had the opportunity to welcome her back. I wish her well in her continued recovery. Her speech showed that less is more, because she hit the nail on the head with regard to what we should be doing in employment law and getting it away from the Tories. My contention is that the best way to get it away from the Tories is to vote for a UK Labour Government, because it would be better to have a Labour Minister sitting on that side of the Chamber and putting forward Labour policies for workers’ rights.

Can I directly address the hon. Member for Glasgow East? I may misquote him here, but he said that the Scottish Labour party will have to explain why they oppose the devolution of employment law. We do not. The Scottish Labour party’s policy is to devolve employment law. I am not sure if the hon. Member for East Lothian was on the Smith Commission or whether it was his former colleague John Swinney, however, the reason employment law was not devolved was because the UK trade unions did not want that. They were concerned about devolving it without thinking through—

[David Linden]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ian Murray]

If the hon. Member will let me finish the point. This is the fact of the Smith Commission. They did not think through the consequences of cross-border employment and cross-border companies and whether it would make at that particular time a much more difficult framework to operate on.

[David Linden]

Can I confirm on the record that the manifesto from the British Labour party for the next general election will have a clear, cast-iron commitment to devolve employment law to the Scottish Parliament?

[Ian Murray]

It will have a clear commitment to implement what we are currently doing in terms of the Labour party’s commission. I am not going to discuss what is in the commission in a Westminster Hall debate because it is being finalised and will be launched in the early part of November. However, the hon. Gentleman will not be disappointed with some of the outcomes of that detailed work.

The commission is not about Scotland as such; it is about all the nations and regions that come under the umbrella of the UK. I know the hon. Gentleman does not believe in the UK, but we do and some of that is in there on devolution. That is the reason the Scottish Labour party, of which I am a member, is entitled to have a different set of policy perspectives from the UK party on a whole host of issues. Gordon Brown’s commission, which will be launched in November, will do some of that.

[Chris Stephens]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. His history is a wee bit wobbly. I gently say to him that not all the UK trade unions were opposed to the devolution of employment law, Unite being one of them. If I remember the exchanges I had with them during that debate, the hon. Gentleman was quoting the Trades Union Congress and not necessarily all the UK trade unions.

[Ian Murray]

I cannot recall who was and who was not, but the conversations that went on through the conduit of the TUC, which was responsible for taking those conversations forward, had come to the conclusion by speaking to their members that the UK trade unions would not want to devolve. Those positions may have moved since; in fact, I think the GMB’s position has moved since, which is hardly unsurprising given the state we have.

I am sorry the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) is not here after that rather difficult and strange intervention. In the time that I was the shadow Minister responsible for employment law, I sat across from the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, who was a predecessor, successor and then predecessor again to the Scottish National party in East Dunbartonshire. She was the Minister at the time and took that Bill through the House of Commons, which not only did a whole host of anti-trade union things but extended the qualifying period for employment rights from one to two years. The Liberal Democrats are not sitting on the fence; they are quite clearly on the other side and trying desperately to climb back across the right side. I am disappointed that the hon. Lady came out with that because it undermines her arguments about what she needs to do.

I conclude with a canter through the question of what the Labour party would do. Our deputy leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), launched our fair work policies at conference last year for a new deal for working people. Launching that, she said it was an attempt to make Britain the best place in the world to work. I think it is an attempt to do that. We did not develop those policies in a vacuum of ideology, which is essentially what the previous Government have operated on—I hope the new Government will be slightly better—but by working with our trade union colleagues and employers, and working together to come up with something that can be implemented for the benefit of the economy and workers.

We would strengthen workers’ rights from day one. We would take away that two-year qualifying period and take it down to day one. That is the right thing to do and it gives people security. It cannot be right to be able to sack someone without a reason at one year and 364 days. In fact, the argument I have always made on that is that if we wait until one year and 364 days to find out if someone is good enough, the manager should be sacked for not doing their job properly. They could find out much earlier in the process if someone is good enough for the job they have been employed to do.

We would ban fire and rehire; that is a fairly straightforward thing to do, which would protect workers in this country and create good businesses. I went on holiday by ferry this year, but I just could not travel on P&O; I used another ferry company. When I saw that big P&O sign as I approached Dover, I just felt disgusted that a firm would do what P&O did to its employees at a time when they require their jobs and their wages more than at any time in the past.

Banning fire and rehire would also make work more family-friendly by helping to balance home, community and family life. We have done that before, through the maternity and paternity pay brought in during the last Labour Government. We would extend statutory maternity and paternity pay now that we are out of the European Union. Shared parental leave is a big issue. In fact, I agree with the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) regarding the uptake of shared parental leave, but I do not think it is a legal thing. I think it is a cultural thing and also about equal pay, because all the analysis shows that there is such a low uptake of shared parental leave because it is still the father who is the main or highest earner in a family, and sharing parental leave may be a cultural thing in terms of employers and employees asking for it. Those are some of the cultural barriers that we have to break down.

We would ban zero-hours contracts. All workers have the right to regular contracts and predictable hours, reasonable notice of changes in shifts, and wages paid in full for cancelled shifts. We would strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and conditions, and—crucially—we would use fair pay agreements to drive up the pay and conditions of all workers.

I did not want to be political in this debate, but some of my colleagues from the Scottish National party could not resist being political earlier, so I cannot resist now. One of the key things that a Government can use to drive up standards is procurement, and one of the biggest levers that the Scottish Government could pull, given the powers of the Scottish Parliament, is procurement, using it to drive up standards.

However, we have just seen £700 million of licences for ScotWind being issued to companies with no procurement specifications on wages, local employment, apprenticeships and all those kinds of workers’ rights. So, yes, devolving these matters might be the right thing to do, but my challenge to the SNP is not about the principle of devolution but to tell us what it would with it.

[David Linden]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman missed the point made in a number of our speeches when we talked precisely about the Scottish Government’s business pledge, which has baked within it various levers regarding how we use procurement. Which parts of the Scottish business pledge does he object to that the Scottish Government have already got in place?

[Ian Murray]

The main thing that I object to about the Scottish Government’s pledges and strategies and documents is that they tend to be launched with huge fanfare, including big front pages in the newspapers and pictures of the First Minister plastered all over the television, and then those pledges and documents go on to some shelf somewhere and sit there until they are relaunched again, about one or two years later. The proof is always in the pudding, but I am not sure that the Scottish Government even attempt to make the pudding; they just bring the recipe out now and again. That is my biggest criticism, because it happens on climate, on procurement and in other areas. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to answer the question directly, that is my objection.

There is no objection from Labour to the principle of the devolution of employment law. However, there are lots of issues to work through regarding what it would be like in practice. I want to hear what the Minister has to say about the employment practices of this country, her objection to the Taylor review and bringing its recommendations forward in a piece of legislation, and what the Government—the new Government—will do. Who knows? The Minister might be in the new Government. I see she has her phone on the table; perhaps it will ring shortly and she will have to excuse herself to run away and take a call.

Whatever the Minister’s answer to such a call is, the Government really have to look at what is happening now in the country—with the low growth, high inflation, high tax and stagnation that we have—and find a way to break out of that real problem in the economy. The best way to do that is to have a highly skilled, highly productive, highly stable workforce with career progression. Otherwise, we will end up in 20 years’ time still having the same arguments about why we have a problem in this country with productivity and why we also have a problem in this country with low pay and insecure work.