Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Paul Scully

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

As the Minister knows, pay inequality is an intersectional issue—cutting across gender, ethnicity and disability. The Scottish Government are committed to requiring listed public authorities to extend gender pay gap reporting to disability and ethnicity pay reporting, and ensure that these are included in equal pay statements. They will also be required to develop an ethnicity pay strategy, alongside their existing strategies on closing the disability and gender pay gaps. Will the UK Government consider following suit?

[Paul Scully]

So much work has been done on the gender pay gap, as the hon. Lady says, but we are certainly looking at it, and we will report back on what we are doing about ethnicity pay reporting and disability pay reporting.

Ethnicity Pay Gap

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Paul Scully

Monday 20th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

This is the civil service as a whole. What I am saying to my right hon. Friend is that the figures are clearly skewed by that 22%. We want to get accurate reporting, but everybody, according to this, is above the average median pay. That cannot be the case; that is not possible. If the figures have been skewed, we cannot diagnose the problem from them, so we must work through those figures and work through a methodology, so that we can ensure that we have robust figures.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I am interested in what the Minister is saying. Can he clarify something: are the Government working through that methodology? What specifically are they doing, and when do they expect to have a system in place that does take account of the complexity that we all acknowledge but which absolutely must not get in the way of our making progress?

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for letting me progress with my speech, because that is exactly the point that I was coming to.

We have continued to work with businesses and other organisations better to understand the complexities identified through the consultation. More recently, we have been working with the Business in the Community app and race at work charter members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) spoke about people and businesses crying out for reporting. The number of charter members is currently 700, which is up from 300 this time last year, so there is clearly a big push of people signing up to the charter. One of the points in the charter is to collect data on ethnicity and the ethnicity pay gap. This work has looked particularly at action planning and what participating organisations believe to be the key drivers of the ethnicity pay gap: culture and leadership; recruitment; retention; and progression.

In parallel, earlier this year, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published its report, setting out a road map to racial fairness in the UK, which made an important contribution both to the national conversation about race and to the Government’s efforts to level up and unite the whole country. In the report, the commission pointed to the statistical and data issues that could affect ethnicity pay reporting and suggested a voluntary approach. It made a further recommendation:

“The Commission recommends that all employers that choose to publish their ethnicity pay figures should also publish a diagnosis and action plan to lay out the reasons for and the strategy to improve any disparities. Reported ethnicity pay data should also be disaggregated by different ethnicities to provide the best information possible to facilitate change. Account should also be taken of small sample sizes in particular regions and smaller organisations.

To support employers undertaking this exercise, the Commission recommends that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is tasked with producing guidance for employers to draw on.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Paul Scully

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

We believe that extending the MAPLE—Maternity and Parental Leave etc. Regulations 1999—provisions is a better way of doing it that goes with the grain of the tribunal system that we have within this country. That is why, after due consideration, we will be bringing that forward as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP) [V]]

Maternity Action highlights the fact that pregnant women and new mothers cannot devote their energy and finances to pursuing employment tribunal claims. The Minister says he wants to take steps to understand, but I can tell him that the thousands of women who have lost wages, entitlements or their job because of the pandemic, or the more who will unfortunately follow, need effective access now to justice and more time to enforce their rights. The Minister has also says he is committed to action. So what is the hold-up, and what does it say about this Government’s priorities?

[Paul Scully]

I said earlier that legislation can only ever be part of the answer. There are robust laws at the moment whereby employers have to maintain their duty of care to their workforce, but, as I say, we are taking a different approach rather than bringing in an almost outright ban on making pregnant women and new mothers redundant. We are working with the grain of the existing UK approach, and this will happen soon as parliamentary time allows.

Employment Rights

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Paul Scully

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need flexibility in the workplace, including so-called zero-hours contracts, for example. We know that the majority of people who work on zero-hours contracts like the flexibility. However, we want to ensure that we can clamp down on things like exclusivity contracts, which is why we banned those. It is important to get the balance right.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

The Minister just said that the UK Government will do whatever is needed to enhance and protect workers’ rights, but all he is doing on fire and rehire is to provide more guidance. That is shameful—guidance is not what is needed. We needed to hear about legislation to stop fire and rehire, to outlaw pregnancy and maternity discrimination, and to give flexible-working rights from day one to protect precarious workers, but the UK Government will plainly not do what is needed on employment. Does the Minister appreciate that what is needed now is to devolve this to the Scottish Parliament so that it can do what is needed?

[Paul Scully]

If the hon. Lady reads the ACAS report, she will see that there is a divergence and a variety of opinions, as well as a wider evidence base about the extent of use and how that is used. That is why we are coming up with a proportionate response. Clearly, the other issues she raises will be in the employment Bill when parliamentary time allows.

Non-EU Citizens: Income Threshold

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Paul Scully

Monday 7th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kirsten Oswald]

I do. The measures could cause difficulties in many sectors, including the one that my hon. Friend mentions.

This policy seems to be more about portraying an image than the effect that it will have. Even its proponents admit that it will have little, if any, effect on the actual level of immigration to the UK. In its initial report on this topic, the Migration Advisory Committee said that

“it is likely that, to some extent, migrants prevented from staying beyond five years will be replaced by new migrants.”

[Paul Scully]

Does the hon. Lady not consider 40,000 fewer people coming to the UK to be a reasonably significant reduction?

[Kirsten Oswald]

I point the hon. Gentleman to what I said before; there will be churn, with people coming in and out of the UK.

The Migration Advisory Committee went on to say that

“the impact on the UK migrant stock of applying a pay criterion will probably be lower than…estimates suggest.”

Indeed, the Home Office’s own impact assessment talks of the policy potentially leading to a “churn of migrant inflows”.

Many commentators have expressed reservations about applying such a simplistic measure as a single pay benchmark to the granting of settlement. Many of the consultees see the need for greater flexibility than is reflected in the Government’s policy. Perhaps not surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with the Scottish Government, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said, have criticised the crude use of wage levels, because many essential occupations are not necessarily well paid. In addition, as the Scottish Government and others have pointed out, there are significantly different wage levels across the UK. In most cases, people with the same occupation and the same skill level are paid different amounts in London, for instance, compared with other parts of the UK.

The Migration Advisory Committee report on the impact of the policy highlights the fact that only London has a mean wage for graduate occupations that is higher than the UK average. All other nations and regions are below the average—in some cases considerably so. The spread from the mean graduate wage in London to that in Wales is more than £15,000, and it is difficult to see how a standard wage requirement of £35,000 for tier 2 applicants for residence can meet the needs of all areas. The notion that there is a single UK economy and demography, which can be managed by one-size-fits-all policies, is a fiction that should have been abandoned long ago. Of course, it is possible to construct models and reports that treat the UK as a single economic entity, but that does not make the whole UK the appropriate level at which to apply policy change. It is a long hard struggle to get this House to recognise that.

Since devolution, Scottish Administrations, regardless of party, have highlighted that our demographic experience does not match that of the rest of the UK. No country with which Scotland shares either a land or sea border has seen such low population growth, but as with other issues of particular interest to Scotland, this place has shown a long-term lack of interest in the causes of that relative decline. In 2000, Scotland’s population was lower than it had been in 1970. By contrast, the rest of the UK, Ireland, Norway and Iceland had all experienced significant population growth over that period. The coincidence of a booming oil industry off Scotland’s shores with population stagnation represented gross mismanagement of Scotland’s economic potential. Other parts of the UK, outwith London and the south-east, have experienced similar problems.

It was disappointing to see just how little consideration the Migration Advisory Committee gave to the regional impact of the policy. When we see that the committee contains seven members, none of whom are based north of Birmingham, we perhaps get some idea of their perspective. With three of the committee members either currently working at the London School of Economics or having studied there, it begins to look like a committee with a particular outlook and remit. With the growing level of devolution of economic decision making across the nations, regions and even the cities of the UK, there is no justification for such an influential committee reflecting so narrow a perspective on such a vital topic as immigration policy.

Given the importance of demography, and particularly the impact of work-related migration on the economic future of all parts of the UK, it is vital that a wider perspective is brought to bear on this issue. Perhaps the UK Government will live up to their promise of treating devolved Administrations with respect and put the question of immigration rules and the make-up of the Migration Advisory Committee on the agenda of the Joint Ministerial Committee. I would welcome confirmation from the Minister that he and his colleagues in the Department will consider that.