Employment Rights: Government Plans

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend in that respect and I will come on to deal with many of those issues later on in my speech.

Against this backdrop, it is shocking that the Government would even consider embarking on a review to rip up the hard-won rights of working people. As revealed in the Financial Times, the Government have drawn up plans to end the 48-hour working week, weaken rules around rest breaks and exclude overtime when calculating holiday and pay entitlement. If the Government have their way, these changes would have a devastating impact on working people. Quite simply, it will mean longer hours, lower wages and less safe work.

The 48-hour working week limit is a vital protection of work-life balance. It is also a crucial health and safety protection, without which the physical and mental wellbeing of workers and the general public is at risk. But let us not beat around the bush: working longer hours leads to more deaths and more serious injuries. Nobody wants their loved ones cared for by our fantastic, but exhausted and overworked, nurses or ambulance staff, or for buses and trains to be operated by tired-out drivers. After the sacrifices of the past year, it is unconscionable for the Government to plot changes that would endanger workers and the public.

It is not just about making work less safe; the Government are proposing to exclude overtime from holiday pay entitlements, which would be a hammer blow to the finances of the country’s lowest paid and most insecure workers. Under current rules, regular overtime is included when calculating holiday pay entitlement, ensuring that it reflects the hours that are actually worked. Scrapping those rules would mean that the holiday pay that workers get would be lower. The average full-time care worker would lose out on £240 a year, a police officer more than £300, an HGV driver more than £400 and a worker in food and drink processing more than £500.

The losses, however, will be even more severe for those who work irregular hours, such as retail workers, who work lots of overtime. USDAW, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, described the case of Leon, a warehouse worker who works night shifts for a major parcel delivery company. Employed on an 8.5-hour contract, but working 36.5 hours in an average week, Leon would lose £2,149.22 per year.

All of that is at the start of the stewardship of a new Secretary of State for Business, who wrote in “Britannia Unchained” in 2012 that the British are

“among the worst idlers in the world”.

The Secretary of State is wrong: far from being lazy, British workers work some of the longest hours of workers in any mature economy, yet our economy still suffers from poor productivity.

The solution is to strengthen employment rights, not to strip them away in a bid to make working people work even longer hours. The Secretary of State excused his comments as being made a long time ago, but in 2015 the right hon. Gentleman wrote and edited another pamphlet, called “A Time for Choosing”, in which he said:

“Over the last three decades, the burden of employment regulation has swollen six times in size”,

before singling out protections on working time, declaring that the UK

“should do whatever we can to cut the burden of employment regulation.”

Does he stand by that?

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

On recent writings, Labour had a manifesto in December 2019 that committed to a four-day week. Is that still its position?

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

May I begin by associating myself with the remarks of the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), about those workers who continue to go to their physical workplace during the pandemic? We should all pay tribute to them and share that noble sentiment. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his promotion to the Cabinet—it is well deserved. I know he will champion business in these challenging times and, in particular, the principles and practice of free enterprise.

We may not be moving the amendment, but I am particularly proud that it contains two words that we did not hear at all from the Opposition: job creation. Let us be clear: no matter what anyone says, there is broad consensus now across the House and the country about keeping the fundamental employment rights we have. Employers are familiar with them, employees understand them and the country generally supports them. However, it would be quite extraordinary, facing the economic pressures that we do, if a Conservative Government did not look at what supply-side reform, including deregulation and cutting red tape, could be brought forward so that we can strengthen our recovery as we eventually come out of lockdown, and there are two key reasons why they should do that.

The first is obviously the strength of the challenge. I am very proud that, as the Secretary of State said, we had the lowest unemployment since I was born in 1974 before we went into the pandemic. However, covid and the action that we have had to take have created inevitable economic pressure, and the impact on jobs will be seismic. In that context, the Government should use every lever at their disposal to strengthen the recovery as we move out of lockdown. That must include looking at what areas can be deregulated, while keeping fundamental employment rights in place.

The second reason is that we have to understand one of the most important assets of our economy. One of the key strengths of UK plc is that we have a flexible labour market. The World Economic Forum and others have recognised that. It is a key factor in why huge multinationals like to invest in the UK, and inward investment will be a crucial part of our recovery. It would therefore be deeply unwise if we were now to send a message to the rest of the world that we were going to unwind our flexible labour market.

This is about the message we send. If we had a four-day week—it seems that the Labour party is still considering that—there are many who would support it, but the message that that would send is that we were not going to be pro-business or to drive a strong recovery. Instead, the message we should send is that we will look at every single action we can take across Government, in every Department, to prioritise jobs, jobs, jobs and to achieve the two outcomes we must achieve above all else: reducing the risk of long-term scarring from covid to the economy and, most important of all, maximising those two great words—job creation.