Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Penn (Con)
My noble friend makes a very important point. It is incumbent on all of us to see life through not just our own experience but that of others. As I said, at the moment the majority of people do not work from home at all, and we need to understand that too.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord McLoughlin, is it not true in so many respects that the people who cannot work from home are the people on whom society depends most? You cannot be a nurse, a bus driver or a plumber and work from home. There is a whole range of people who cannot do so, and if there are tremendous benefits from flexible working, maybe we ought to be looking at ways of reducing the length of their working week as compensation for the fact that they simply cannot ever work from home.
Baroness Penn (Con)
Where I do agree with the noble Lord is that flexible working encompasses a whole range of different working practices, not just working from home or hybrid working; it might also include part-time working or job shares. There are huge opportunities in this space, including for people for whom working from home is not an option at all. The Government will continue to take forward work in that area.