Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Stevens and Justin Madders

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of trends in passenger rail usage.

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment he has made of trends in passenger rail usage.

Carillion: TUPE

Debate between Jo Stevens and Justin Madders

Wednesday 21st February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders]

I absolutely agree. While there has been some progress in finding apprenticeships for some of those who have lost theirs, there are still a huge number who have yet to be found one. We should not underestimate how important it is to get people trained in those skills that we will need in the economy in the future. I hope that more effort goes into that.

On the other companies in the supply chain and subcontractors, is the Minister able to tell us what analysis he has made of the number of companies in these sectors at risk of insolvency and the number of employees whose employment is in jeopardy as a knock-on effect of the liquidation? Has he done any analysis of the numbers affected who are perhaps working in another capacity on Carillion contracts—either through agency arrangements or zero-hours contracts? They are really little more than bystanders in this process and are powerless to do anything but accept their fate. I hope we are able to do something to assist those individuals.

As we know, when a particular function transfers, it is normally the case that staff are transferred over under the TUPE regulations. No one is suggesting for a minute that that is not a preferable situation to redundancy, but it seems that there are questions to be answered about the exact basis on which people will transfer over to their new employers. There should be no ambiguity from the Government on this. People’s existing contracts should be honoured in full. We should not have state-sponsored watering down of terms and conditions. The Government should not be a willing partner in the chipping away of employee rights.

[Jo Stevens]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is an ideal opportunity for the Minister to confirm that TUPE, which obviously derives from the European Union’s acquired rights directive, will be maintained after Brexit, and that voluntary TUPE in these circumstances, to protect Carillion workers, could be offered as a commitment of that for the future?

[Justin Madders]

I certainly agree, and I would certainly like some clarity from the Government on a whole range of issues on the impact of Brexit. The acquired rights directive has been in place for some 30-plus years now. It is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it is particularly important in situations like this.

Even if there is a full TUPE transfer, we should not pretend that it will be happily ever after. The reality is that, in the majority of occasions when people transfer over to their new employers, sooner or later that employer will look to change the terms and conditions. When they say they are changing terms and conditions, they mean they are watering them down. We have already heard from some of my hon. Friends that there is considerable anxiety about that. It is a practice that has to stop.

The Government should stipulate that any company running a contract providing public services should respect agreed terms and conditions and look to adhere to the highest standards possible that a responsible employer could adopt—proper rates of pay that provide a living wage, trade union recognition and collective bargaining rights and an occupational pension that is not paid into only when the employer feels like it but is there, as it should be, as part of deferred pay and as an essential part of the contract.

So TUPE applies a certain level of protection. It is far from perfect and often misunderstood, but, contrary to what many people think, it does not provide unlimited protection against changes to terms and conditions. It certainly has more than enough loopholes in it to allow a determined employer to ultimately do as it wishes. Because of the way in which our employment rights system works in this country, changing the terms and conditions of employees is easier to do than finding savings elsewhere. However, in these circumstances it is preferable to redundancy. Let us protect the jobs and get as many transferred as we can, but let us not for a second think that that is the end of the matter. Let us not perpetuate the merry-go-round of misery. Let us take the opportunity to say to whoever ends up running the contracts, “Please respect and protect the terms and conditions of the people who do the day-to-day work.”

The Prime Minister has said that the Government are a customer of Carillion, which is of course true, but we should be much more than a customer. We should be the champion of public services, the defender of the highest employment standards and an exemplar for the private sector of the kinds of companies that we want to see succeed in the country. Perhaps people thought Carillion was a success story at some point, but it was a success built on sand, on deception and on avarice. We should be and we can be much better than that.

National Living Wage

Debate between Jo Stevens and Justin Madders

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Gentleman is missing the point, which is that we have a very dishonest settlement whereby the Government are saying, “You’re going to get more money in your pocket,” but again and again we are seeing employers use unscrupulous methods to take that money back. We want the Government to come up with a much more clear and transparent way of dealing with this, so that employers end up paying what the Government have decreed is the minimum that people can live on.

[Jo Stevens]

Specifically on the point about small businesses, we know that if the lowest-paid workers, who often work for small businesses, have a pay increase, they tend to spend it locally, so the local economy grows. In addition, the Government have given tax cuts to businesses, so small businesses are not being deprived of any benefit.

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We have heard examples today involving large national chains. We can all use our spending power to go elsewhere and support local businesses, which are the lifeblood of our communities.

We should not be surprised by the way this policy is panning out, because this is the way in which some employers have always operated—they see every issue that affects their business as an excuse to whittle away at the terms and conditions of their staff.

The Minister for Skills said in a written parliamentary answer, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) referred to earlier, that any changes to terms and conditions should be discussed and agreed with workers in advance. I am sure that that advice will come as a surprise to the Secretary of State for Health, given his approach to the junior doctors dispute. I am afraid that the idea that employers will wait for an agreement on these issues is fanciful and bears no relation to the reality on the ground.

Those who are represented by a trade union at least have a fighting chance, but the reality is that employers can and do change terms and conditions fairly frequently. When they do so, it is almost always to the detriment of the people they employ. Once an employer gives a notice of change, the employee has very little redress. If legal redress is an option, the introduction of employment tribunal fees has made that a most unlikely route, given the 80% drop in employment tribunal claims since fees were introduced.

My constituency of Ellesmere Port and Neston is one of the top five living wage blackspots for women working part time across the north-west, according to the TUC, with 66% earning less than the living wage. Any increase in basic pay has to be a step in the right direction for that group of workers, as long as it does not come at the expense of other elements of the pay package.

It would be a mistake to claim that simply increasing basic pay means that there is now a fair workplace settlement. We know that many ruses and mechanisms are used to stop effective workplace protection, such as bogus self-employment and zero-hours contracts. This policy could even see the development of other scams. Some unscrupulous employers might sack people just before their 25th birthday just so that they can get someone on a cheaper rate. More apprenticeships that are apprenticeships in name only might pop up because they offer the chance for an employer to pay someone a lower rate for the same job. What will be done to tackle that?

Nearly half of all minimum wage jobs are in hospitality and retail—sectors that are both major employers in my constituency. I have conducted my own research into the practices of many of the national restaurant and fast food chains, which has revealed widespread abuse that the Government do not appear to be interested in tackling. The research, which was conducted at the end of last year, showed that 90% of the 9,000 outlets surveyed did not pay the real living wage. It also highlighted the widespread practice of what is known colloquially as “shift shafting”, whereby staff are sent home at the start or in the middle of a shift if the outlet is not busy, without any pay or compensation. More than 80% of respondents to the survey admitted that they would do that. It means that people can end up out of pocket simply by going to work, through being made to wait around without pay and then being sent home without even having their travel costs reimbursed. I hear a lot about the Government wanting to get everyone into work who is able to work, but I hear no condemnation from them of the blatant exploitation of people who are trying to do the right thing, and find themselves out of pocket through the very act of going to work.

Let us make every job reward people with a wage that they can actually live on, but at the same time let us put in place a proper system of workplace protection so that a Government policy is not allowed to be undermined by unscrupulous employment practices that take away other benefits so that people end up no better off, and in some cases actually end up worse off. To achieve that, we need a fundamental change in the Government’s approach, starting with the recognition that trade unions and collective bargaining have a significant role to play in the future prosperity of our nation. We need a fundamental change not only in the Government’s attitude but in the attitude of many employers, with a move away from the bean-counting philosophy that views the worker as a disposable item ready to be replaced by a machine that does not question, expect to be paid or belong to a union. For many people, being in work means vulnerability and uncertainty about their future. How can we tolerate a situation in which people in work can routinely not know whether they will have earned enough to put food on their family’s table at the end of the day?

We should not be fooled into thinking that this policy is a panacea. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that even with the new minimum wage, people with children will be £700 a year worse off thanks to other changes introduced by the Government. The reality is that we are having this debate because the law and culture in this country place far too little emphasis on employment rights. Until this place resolves to do something about that, the kind of injustices that we have heard about today will continue.

Employment Tribunal Fees

Debate between Jo Stevens and Justin Madders

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and I understand the passion that led her to speak for slightly longer than is the norm. She is absolutely right that pregnancy discrimination is still rife in the workplace. Figures that I have seen suggest that of the 54,000 women who are dismissed on the grounds of pregnancy each year, only 1.5% proceed with a tribunal claim. Is that not a damning indictment of the difficulty that people have in accessing justice?

We need to examine the supposed reasons that the Minister may put forward for why the number of claims has dropped. I am sure that the Government would like to claim that the success of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service early conciliation scheme is part of the explanation, but we should remember that the scheme was not in place for the period immediately after fees were introduced, so that cannot explain the number of claims dropping so dramatically immediately after fees were introduced. The figures that we have seen on early conciliation provide little comfort for those seeking to explain the reduction; indeed, as I will argue, the fee system can be seen as an impediment to effective early conciliation.

The figures on early conciliation tell us that of the 60,800 notifications made to ACAS in April to December 2014 as part of the early conciliation scheme, 15% were formally settled by ACAS and 22% progressed to an employment tribunal claim. That leaves a massive 63% that were not formally settled through ACAS but did not progress to an employment tribunal. Of course, it is not possible to identify how many of those claims had merits, but it is too large a figure to ignore, and the similarity between that figure of 63% and the figures that I have already referred to is too much of a coincidence for us to ignore.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Interestingly, if we look at employers taking up early conciliation through ACAS, we find that Government Departments are some of the worst offenders for not participating in early conciliation; that includes the National Offender Management Service, which is very poor at engaging. Does my hon. Friend have any comments on that?

[Justin Madders]

My hon. Friend, of course, has great experience in this area. The Government should be setting an example. They should be leading from the front and be seen to be engaging in the processes that promote and encourage good workplace relations. Is it not really something when we have a Government Department potentially discriminating against someone or impinging on their workplace rights, then refusing to engage with the systems that that Government have set up to try to resolve that dispute? And then the Government charge that person to force their rights. What kind of situation is that? It is not a fair, equitable or just way of dealing with matters.

Let me turn to the significant amount of evidence submitted to the Justice Committee. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) has referred to evidence that was given to the Justice Committee in respect of NOMS, and I recommend anyone who has not read those transcripts that look at that evidence. In it, multiple witnesses demonstrate the deterrent effect that fees have had; that evidence goes well beyond the data that have been referred to.