Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

Justin Madders Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Mrs Cummins. I start by referring to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding trade union membership. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing today’s debate and for his brilliant introduction. He quoted the TUC saying that Taylor was not the game changer it wanted, and we certainly agree with that. It goes nowhere near enough to tackle the workplace injustices that we have talked about today, but at least it was a step in the right direction. For it to be left on the shelf is simply not good enough.

I agree with my hon. Friend that the quality of work is as important as the quantity. That we have millions of people trapped in low-paid and insecure work, living in poverty, is not something the Government should be proud of. He was also right to raise the scandal of SSP being at one of the lowest levels in Europe. People should not be forced to choose between going in to work and financial hardship as a result of health conditions. He said that work should be fulfilling, paid fairly and with adequate benefits. Those are all things that we would like to see in any Bill or Green Paper that comes forward from the Government.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum). She made the important point that black, Asian and minority ethnic workers are often in these insecure jobs. Has the Minister undertaken any assessments of the impact of gig-economy working on those groups?

My hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) spoke very well. He knows more about this than most. I completely agree with him that trade union membership has been shown, time and again, to improve pay and working conditions. I know many of my constituents still benefit from good pay and working conditions as a result of his work as a trade union leader.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) for the fantastic work he has done on our Green Paper. It is a real pleasure to be able to take over a brief and have such a great set of policies already in place. He was right to mention the single status of workers as being a key part of that. That will transform the lives of millions of people. If the Minister wants to work with us to try to get that on the statute book as soon as possible, we are more than willing to discuss that because it is a game changer, far more than anything in the Taylor review.

My hon. Friend was right when he said that the pandemic shows the Government’s central role in improving workplace conditions. He was also right to mention the cuts to the Health and Safety Executive over the past decade, during austerity, and how the conviction rate for workplace infractions has gone down by 66%. Workplaces have certainly not become 66% safer in the last five years, so that shows where this Government’s priorities lie.

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who again knows more about this than many. He made an important point about the human side of this, and the dehumanising experience of people waiting for a text in the morning to know whether they are actually going to be in work, get paid and be able to put food on the table. Imagine how anxious people must be living with that uncertainty every single day, because of that working arrangement.

I want to pick up on what the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said. I thank her for being the one Conservative Back Bencher here today. She obviously has an interest in this area, and we welcome that. She was right to say that the pandemic has preoccupied much of the Government’s time, which might be a reason why we have not had legislation. However, in the last two years 64 Acts of Parliament have been put on the statute book, as well as over 2,300 statutory instruments, so it is a question of priority. I agree with her that workplace discrimination, which was not covered by the Taylor review, needs an awful lot more attention.

As various Members mentioned, the 2019 Queen’s Speech had the promise of an employment Bill, which we would have expected to deal with many of the remaining recommendations in the Taylor review. As has been mentioned several times, there was no such promise in the 2021 Queen’s Speech. Does that represent a downgrading of the Government’s commitment to tackle the issue? Why go to all the trouble of commissioning the review and then not doing anything about it? Surely, a Government committed to improving rights at work want to do that at the earliest opportunity.

Sadly, this is yet more evidence, if we needed it, that improving workers’ rights has never been, and will never be, a priority for a Conservative Government. The rise of the gig economy has been one of hallmarks of the era of austerity. At the heart of the Government response has been a false understanding that there must always be a trade-off between security and flexibility. Many self-employed people enjoy that flexibility, although those who proclaim the virtue of the arrangement are often directly employed themselves, usually at a senior level.

For many, flexibility comes at the cost of security. It cannot be right that in 2022 people are worried about the consequences of falling ill and whether they should go into work if they are unwell. The truth is that the Government have allowed the exploitative work model to grow unchecked. The Government’s own data demonstrates the scale of the problem.

The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke about zero-hours contracts. Recent data from the Office for National Statistics shows that approximately one million workers are on zero-hours contracts. It also revealed that workers feel underemployed, often have to work more than one job and are constantly searching for new work, with over a third of zero-hours workers having been in their current jobs for less than 12 months. The cycle of perpetual insecurity is bad not only for workers, but for the wider economy.

Let us consider what the Government’ s former employment tsar, Matthew Taylor, said about the Government’s progress, which is pretty damning. Last February, nearly a year ago now, he said:

“We have seen a gradual but unmistakable deceleration of the government reform agenda in relation to good work. There was an initial enthusiasm but that has waned, and waned, and waned.”

He said that nearly a year ago, and not a lot has happened since then, so it is hardly a glowing recommendation. Perhaps that is why the Government dragged their feet for nearly a year to appoint a replacement. Can the Minister explain why it took so long to replace him?

What about fire and rehire? How on earth can we still be talking about that now? The fact that the Government blocked the private Member’s Bill on that was an absolute disgrace and sums up a wider attitude to workplace justice. It will need, as it always does, a Labour Government to introduce the real reform that is needed to undo the damage of years of inaction that has allowed exploitative work models to go unchecked. How can people plan for the future if the labour market is so parasitic that it takes everything just to keep their heads above water, and if they are always fearful of what the day will bring because they are just one mishap away from disaster?

“Rights” is not a dirty word. Rights are about individual dignity and respect in the workplace. They bring important social and economic benefits for the whole country, as well as for the individual. They give people a stake in society, knowing that if they do a good job, and if their employer runs the business well, they will be rewarded with a good wage, decent working conditions and job security. Labour’s vision is of a country where everyone has security, prosperity and respect, especially in the workplace.

A Labour Government would tackle the problems that we have talked about through our Green Paper, which explains a fantastic vision of how we would create protection, stability and fairness, and would legally redefine the work relationship by getting rid of qualifying periods before rights kick in. A Labour Government would give all workers equal rights on day one and ban zero-hours contracts so that every worker gets a guaranteed number of hours each week with an on-call payment for the hours the employer might want the employee to work.

A Labour Government would create a presumption, as we have heard, that everyone will be a worker unless they are clearly self-employed. We would see an end to the gaming of the system by tech-savvy companies who have exploitation baked into their business models, which have grown and grown. Are the Government content for this scandal to continue? If they are, they should step aside and let a Government in that will actually do something about it.

In conclusion, I hope that when the Minister responds he can tell us whether the Government have any intention of implementing the 40-odd outstanding recommendations from Taylor. Will he also tell us whether we should take the removal of the employment Bill from the Queen’s Speech as an indication that the Government have downgraded the importance of workers’ rights? If he disagrees with that analysis, can he at least give us a date by which he expects all the outstanding recommendations from Taylor to be implemented? We have had enough of the rhetoric. It is time for some action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Actually, what we are saying about flexible working is not about blaming the pandemic. Work has changed. The hon. Gentleman talks about zero-hours contracts—they have changed somewhat as well. The flexibility of the workforce—the people who have been feeding us, caring for us and moving us around—has really shone a light on that.

[Justin Madders]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is getting intervened on a lot this morning, which shows the level of interest. His comments on how work has changed during the pandemic are interesting. It is true that people have been working from home for years and years—it is just that there has been a lot more of it. What we want from the Minister is a date by which the rest of the recommendations will be implemented.

[Paul Scully]

I will come to that.

Another core part of the Taylor review was to find new ways of opening up the labour market, so that more people can enter it and then remain in work. That is exactly what our vision is: to continue to level up across the country and allow more individuals to participate in work than ever before.

That is why we committed in our manifesto to bring forward new rights for parents of babies who require neonatal care and new rights for carers’ leave for the 5 million people across the UK who provide unpaid care by looking after an elderly or disabled family member, relative or friend.

However, as the review itself notes, the themes it covers are complex and the regulatory framework is based on decades of case law. Its recommendations therefore cover a wide range of proposals, from relatively small changes that can be made immediately, such as the key facts page for agency workers, to recognising longer-term strategic shifts in the labour market, for example by establishing the single enforcement body. We have always made it clear that it is important to consult as widely as possible and to take time to consider how best to achieve the change that works for everyone in the labour market, including employers. But clearly we want employees to be in good work; that is at the heart of that process.

We have consulted on a number of proposals for reform and on themes raised in the review. Wherever possible, we have worked closely with stakeholders so that they have an opportunity to share their views. I am proud to say that we have continued to take decisive action since the publication of the review, in order to implement many important changes to the labour market.

Our record speaks for itself. We have closed the loophole whereby agency workers were employed on cheaper rates than permanent workers. We have quadrupled the maximum fine for employers who treat their workers badly. We gave all workers the right to receive a statement of their rights from day one. We have increased pay for around 2 million workers. We have introduced key information documents to ensure that those seeking temporary work have all the facts that they need up front. We also brought into force Jack’s law, a world-first piece of legislation that provides statutory leave for parents who suffer the devastating loss of a child.

Those actions have made a real difference to the lives of workers up and down this country. We have benefited from expert input from stakeholders, and great consideration was given to ensure that those actions work for employers and workers across all sectors in our economy. Those actions have also given individuals and employers the freedom to agree the terms and conditions that suit them best, while also enabling businesses to respond to changing market conditions.

The results speak for themselves. We have seen high employment rates, reaching a record high of 76.6% in February 2020, and workers enjoying real pay increases month after month. We have seen a wealth of job opportunities, which is a testament to the excellence of UK businesses’ ability to grow, innovate and create jobs. We have also increased participation across groups who had typically been under-represented in the labour market, with women and workers from ethnic minority backgrounds now making up a larger proportion of the workforce than ever before.

However, as I have said already, we need to take stock of how the pandemic has affected businesses and workers up and down the country before continuing to build on that record, because the past two years has seen a level of disruption to the economy that the Taylor review just could not have predicted. However, we have acted decisively to provide an unprecedented package of support to protect people’s livelihoods.

The coronavirus job retention scheme has helped 1.3 million employers across the UK to furlough 11.6 million jobs, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke highlighted, and more than £27 billion has been spent on helping the self-employed through five self-employment income support scheme grants, supporting nearly 3 million self-employed individuals.

I absolutely take the point that we have not been able to protect every business and every job or livelihood. There are certainly people—including some who I have spoken to and heard from, and who I continue to listen to—who have not been able to be supported throughout the pandemic as they would have liked to have been.

However, as I have said, in April last year we again raised the national minimum wage and the national living wage, giving around 2 million people a pay rise. We have also lowered the age threshold for the national living wage to 23, ensuring that even more people have the security of a decent wage, and we plan to reduce it further to 21, in order to tackle the barrier that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North talked about, by 2024 to support younger workers.

We continue to adapt our employment framework to keep pace with the needs of today. We legislated so that parents benefiting from the job retention scheme do not lose out on statutory maternity pay or other forms of parental pay. That has meant that new parents could take time off to spend with their babies without losing out financially just because they had been furloughed.

We have enabled workers to carry over more annual leave during the pandemic and we conducted a review of how victims of domestic abuse can be supported in the workplace, setting out the impact that domestic abuse has on victims, the challenges that it raises for employers, and what best practice to deal with domestic abuse looks like. At every step of the pandemic, the Government’s aim has been to protect jobs and livelihoods and to support workers’ rights.