Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

Mark Eastwood Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a practising solicitor and a partner in a firm of solicitors, which may be relevant to some of the comments I make.

I remember those halcyon days when the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and I were in Bury magistrates court together. I tended to be defending the cases, and she tended to be prosecuting. How time goes by, because that is well over 10 years ago now. One of the things I have always known about her is that everything she does, as she has in the Bill she has put before the House and in the speech she made today, comes from a desire to change things for the better, and I congratulate her on that.

The reason I support the Bill—and I think any employer must accept the deficiencies within the system we have at the moment—is that, since before coming into this House, I have had an interest in young people on the autistic spectrum. One of the great scandals, apart from generally the support and treatment for young people who have conditions and challenges in their life, is lack of access to the labour market. Certainly, people on the autistic spectrum, who have so much to offer, not only have challenges getting into the labour market, but in many cases will need flexible working to be able to contribute by working.

[Mark Eastwood (Dewsbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned young people with autism and employment opportunities. Would he agree with me that, before employment, there needs to be a significant improvement in educational standards from primary right through to secondary?

[James Daly]

Absolutely; that is clearly correct. We have to recognise that there are individuals in our country who are being excluded from the labour market, and ways have to be found to ensure that they have an equal opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) for what he has just said, which I will build on. I will restrict my comments to those sectors that are unable to offer the level of flexibility that this Bill might suggest.

Stoke-on-Trent Central has a very large manufacturing base, a very large logistics base and engineering works, and these are sectors in which it is quite difficult to provide the flexibility for homeworking. As is the case across the country, they also have a challenge with recruitment. I welcome the Bill and the work that has been done by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), because flexibility is not just about hybrid working and homeworking; it is also about looking at working patterns. With manufacturing, for instance, shifts may have been established a long time ago, when the circumstances for employees were different. In order to attract new talent to those industries now, sometimes flexibility is hugely important.

There is a slight concern that we may be creating a two-tier system, whereby some people can work flexibly and some cannot. Analysis during the pandemic showed that more than 38% of workers earning £40,000 or more had hybrid working arrangements during a week in 2022, and that people in higher income brackets were more likely than those in other income brackets to work from home exclusively. Financial managers, directors and programmers were able to work from home, whereas those in occupations with lower average earnings, such as gardeners, carpenters and mechanics, were far less able to do so.

There is also something else to be aware of. I am not saying that we should be less flexible, but young people need to have the ability to learn from more experienced workers when they come into the workplace—the water cooler moment, the sharing of ideas and the innovation. If we have too many people working from home for too long, we run the risk that our ability to learn on the job and to innovate might be somewhat reduced.

[Mark Eastwood]

My hon. Friend mentions the ability to learn on the job. I suggest that what we have learned from the pandemic is how to use technology such as Zoom and Teams meetings. Does that not compensate for the lack of face-to-face contact?

[Jo Gideon]

During the pandemic, we all experienced the fantastic tools that are Zoom and Teams. We in this place continued to work, with some of us dressed appropriately all the way down and some of us maybe only from the waist up—I hear rumours. It showed a more human face to many people, because we saw babies, dogs and all sorts of things in the background. It rendered people much more than their profession, which was good.

For apprentices, however, nothing beats the ability to be next to somebody who has done the job for a long time and who can show them and help them. I agree with the point raised by many that the impact on disabled people, with the flexibilities they require in the workplace, will be enormously helpful. Only 52.3% of disabled people are in employment, compared with 82% of the general population, and this legislation surely will be an enormous help.

The other benefit of flexibility is that if people have less time in the workplace, they can spend more time on education. In areas like mine, the importance of upskilling to get the new high-tech jobs that we hope to have in the future cannot be overstated. I fully back the Bill; we need to reflect on some of the issues that may come up incidentally, but that is not a reason not to be more flexible.