Insecure Work and the Gig Economy

Debate between Liam Byrne and Steve McCabe

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I add my thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) on securing the debate.

I will just make three broad points. First, it is extraordinary that the Government have not got a grip on the debate. It are not a marginal issue. One in five workers in this country are now self-employed—a bigger proportion than public service workers. If public service workers in this country were confronting the kinds of conditions and suffering the kinds of stories we heard this afternoon, there would be a national scandal. Why are we not getting to grips with this challenge for the country’s self-employed?

If the present day is not bad enough, hon. Members should think about what is to come. Over the next 10 years this economy will be fundamentally transformed by automation, Brexit and the rise of China. Automation alone is likely to destroy five times more working-class jobs than the shutdowns of the coal and steel industries put together. We know that trend is coming; we know what happened when coal and steel were lost to communities across the country in the 1980s. What grew back were the kinds of insecure jobs we are debating now. Let us not make that mistake again. Let us put in place now a regime for good jobs in the years to come.

Secondly, we have to look again at why it is that basic laws, such as the right to trade union organising or the right to the national minimum wage, are not being enforced today. I commend James Bloodworth’s book on the scandals we have heard about. I had the honour of meeting him this afternoon. It beggars belief that some of the biggest firms on the planet, such as Amazon, are being caught not paying the national minimum wage. Where is the inspectorate? Where are the prosecutions? Where are the court cases? Is the Minister prepared to tell us what he is doing to ensure that justice is done?

We have had a useful debate this afternoon about the shortcomings of the Taylor review. The economy will inevitably grow in the years to come, so we have to try to equalise definitions of workers. We have to do away with the nonsense of the Swedish derogation and put in place the kind of action plan that the TUC has carefully and thoughtfully developed.

I will leave the Minister with this thought: there is a basic injustice in a marketplace where, over the course of a single morning, James Bloodworth can earn £29 working in an Amazon warehouse but the wealth of Jeff Bezos goes up by $1.4 billion. We had a long tradition in this country of entrepreneurs, such as George Cadbury, William Lever and John Spedan Lewis, who not only built great businesses, but changed society for the better. We need the Government to ensure that the entrepreneurs of today are doing a damn sight better job on that front.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Just before I call the Front-Benchers, the debate is scheduled to finish at 5.51 pm, so there should be enough time for the mover of the motion to make a brief reply, and for the Minister, if he is so minded, to take an intervention or two. That is, obviously, up to him.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Steve McCabe

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

I shall come on to that directly, but I agree with the hon. Lady on one important point. It is important to take local factors into account. If we take out the pension system, the housing benefit bill is something like a quarter of the overall benefits spending. It has been localised for something like 70 years. Admitting a degree of localisation in the way we set a cap sounds as though it could be perfectly consistent with her proposals, although I have not read her pamphlet.

Let me give the House one more illustration of why this is so important. Perhaps the problem of the five-child family in London is included in the hon. Lady’s pamphlet. Almost half the benefits received by that family will consist of housing benefit, as opposed to only about a third of the benefits received by a family in similar circumstances living in a different part of the country. Pretty often, incidentally, that money goes to the landlord rather than the family in question. I believe that we should have a cap that is different in different parts of the country, but takes account of differences in housing benefit.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Would not a much simpler and more cost-effective solution for London be to do something to control the excessive rents that landlords are pocketing? Then we would not have to transport pensioners halfway around the country.

[Mr Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right, and what has been noticeable by its absence this afternoon is any argument from any Government Member relating to what we should do about private landlords.