Employment Rights Bill (Eighth sitting)

Jon Pearce Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Alex McIntyre (Gloucester) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I want to refer to a couple of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield. I appreciate that this is a probing amendment and that, as the MP for Gloucester, I perhaps have a vested interest, given that a number of my constituents work over the constituency border in Cheltenham.

Flexible working will not be available in every role, for some of the reasons listed in the Bill, but for many roles there would be the ability to start half an hour later and finish half an hour earlier, perhaps, or to work different hours over the course of a week. Those are results of flexible working requests. I think that, sometimes, there is a haste from the Conservative party to equate flexible working with working from home—and to put little notes on people’s desks saying that they are not working hard enough. It is really important that we look at flexible working as a whole.

In my experience as an employment solicitor, the Bill is welcome, because the “reasonable” test is important in making sure that we are encouraging employers to think properly about flexible working requests. This measure is also very business friendly, because there is a long list of exemptions that will allow an employer to say, “Because of x, y and z, flexible working is not appropriate.” There is no requirement to accept a request; there is only a requirement to think about it, and to think about those exemptions reasonably. In the context of what we are trying to do, and that balancing act between rights for employees and rights for businesses, I think this lands in about the right place.

The shadow Minister is right that this change will not apply evenly in every sector; it cannot in every business, because of the reasons listed in the exemptions. Each business will have different requirements regarding customer demands, performance and quality. It would be quite difficult for a dentist to work from home, I suggest, but it might be quite easy for them to come in at half-past 9 two days a week. Again, that is a flexible working request. The reasonableness test deals with the purpose of the shadow Minister’s amendment, which is to look at how different sectors might approach the change rather than having a one-size-fits-all approach.

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and my membership of GMB.

I will apologise now if I have an out-of-date amendment paper; the one that I have is dated Tuesday 3 December. Very early on in our discussions, we had the strange definition of a small or medium-sized businesses as one employing 500 people or more. I just want to check whether the proposed amendment is indeed accurate, because it refers to

“the test of reasonableness in subsection (2)(b)(ii)”.

I do not think that any such subsection exists—I think it should be (3)(b)(ii)—but I appreciate that that might be my misunderstanding.

[The Minister for Equalities (Dame Nia Griffith)]

I draw the Committee’s attention to my interests, and to my membership of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the National Education Union.

The hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire seeks to amend clause 7 in order to commit the Government to exempting the security services from the requirement to refuse a flexible working request only when it is reasonable to do so against one of the eight reasons set out in legislation. His amendment would also exempt the security services from having to explain to an employee why their request for flexible working could not be met. My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham Northfield, for Worsley and Eccles and for Gloucester have pointed out many good reasons why that is unnecessary, and I will explain why I think the same.

The grounds for refusing a flexible working request are intentionally broad, so that they capture all the business reasons that may make such a request unfeasible. That applies to the security services as it does to any other employer. I will not read out all eight reasons, but I will give some examples. The work may not be able to be reorganised among other staff, or quality or performance may be negatively affected. There may be a lack of work at a particular proposed time, or the business’s ability to meet the demand of customers—we have mentioned the Home Office—may be negatively affected. There is a huge range of reasons that could be used, and they would surely cover—