Good Work Plan

Debate between James Cleverly and Greg Clark

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and the Work and Pensions Committee for their proposals. He and the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, have suggested a Bill so that these measures could be enacted straightaway. We have acted in that spirit, and this day we have tabled a large number of statutory instruments to bring them into effect immediately.

My ambition is exactly as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) says, that the flexibility of the gig economy is offered rather than compelled, and that flexibility, in the words of Matthew Taylor, should be two-sided, rather than one way. That is the intention of this package of reforms. The Work and Pensions Committee will be rigorous in scrutinising the effects, but that is precisely the intention of the reforms.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) mentioned the Dickensian and Edwardian eras. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, when we consider the Mines and Collieries Act 1842 that took children out of mines and collieries, the Artisans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 that cleared the slums and paved the way for the Peabody Trust homes that are loved to this day, and the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1897 that imposed a duty on employers to compensate workers injured at work, this is the party—[Interruption.]

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[James Cleverly]

I will not start again from the beginning. The Conservative party, in government, has more than a century of tradition of protecting and enhancing workers’ right. The Secretary of State’s proposals are in a long tradition of looking to the future and realising the importance of the people whose work underpins our economic growth.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Continuing the historical theme, I would add Shaftesbury’s Factory Acts, which were foundational to ensuring that the industrial revolution could not trample on workers’ rights and that those rights were protected. To bring it further up to date, I pay tribute to Lord Hague’s Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which is also in this firm Conservative tradition that I am proud to be taking forward today.