Employment Rights Bill (Third sitting)

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I call Michael Wheeler to ask a very brief question, which should receive a brief answer.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

Q Thank you to the panel for your evidence so far.

I will just circle back to guaranteed hours. Although I appreciate that flexibility is of value in the sector, if the hours are there in the business and regularly being worked, would you not agree that that demonstrates there is a need for those hours in the business to be worked, and therefore, in the interests of fairness and financial security for workers, should those hours not be guaranteed for them?

Helen Dickinson: Again, it comes back to how. A lot of people who work flexibly want to vary their hours because they have other commitments, either family commitments or caring commitments. From an employee perspective, they should absolutely have the right to request flexibility, or to be able to have future hours that reflect something that they have over whatever reference period it is, whether it is 12 weeks or longer. If the regulations end up requiring that reference period—and, by definition, requiring employer to offer whatever that period is to the employee, just by process—peaks and troughs around peak trading periods and employees’ other commitments will cause the company to end up in a continual process of changing people’s hourly patterns, all the time and for a lot of people. When a company has multiple locations, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of employees, it could be quite difficult.

I think we are absolutely agreed on the principle. The question is how you implement it, and whether there is a way to implement it that gives the employee the right to request, rather than putting the onus on the company to put in a whole load of process that actually, at the end of the day, might not be what the employee wants.

[The Chair]

Order. I have to bring this session to an end. We have run out of the allotted time, and sadly, there are some Members of the Committee who did not get the opportunity to ask the questions that they wanted to ask. However, I thank the witnesses for the time they have spent with the Committee.

Examination of Witnesses

Joanne Cairns and Liron Velleman gave evidence.

Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting)

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 28th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Law]

Q Can I press a little bit further on that, Mike? I understand that there should be some room for employers who are under extreme financial stress, but the employers we have looked at so far—British Airways, P&O, British Gas, Douwe Egberts and Tesco—are not small companies. They have deep, deep pockets. They could exploit this loophole in the Bill. I wonder what you think about the language and whether it needs to be tightened or removed completely.

Mike Clancy: We will be going through clause by clause, will we not? We will have to look at where there is potential for employers to exploit these sorts of loopholes. What you have to understand is that often in employment relations, sensible employers read the writing on the wall. The rights of access may or may not come in for some time, but employers will think, “Right, we are moving into an environment where we need to engage with our workforce differently.” Other employers will say, “Look, that sort of behaviour is frowned upon in public policy. We are not going to go near it.” I do not think we should lose sight of the direction that the Bill sets on these matters. Let us be clear about the context. This is a big endeavour, and there will be detail to work through for both employers and trade unions. I think we should set out on this in the way that we mean to go forward. Let us do it co-operatively where we can.

Andy Prendergast: Just following up on fire and rehire, I was involved in resolving the British Gas dispute, where close to 500 members of ours got fired because they would not sign a new contract. At the time, it was roundly condemned across the House. The Prime Minister at the time got up and said that it was dishonourable, and that has very much been our view.

The real concern for us, as Mike says, is that, as trade unions, we sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. Following 2008, I would go into factories to negotiate pay cuts to keep people in work. It was heartbreaking, but we had to do it because it was the right thing to do. Overwhelmingly, we had those conversations not because of fire and rehire, but because, ultimately, we could convince our members that that was the best way of securing their jobs. We did something similar during covid.

The big issue for us is that if you look at British Gas, it is a highly profitable company and it went down a route that was, frankly, disastrous for it as a business and that it is still recovering from. We need to stop that behaviour happening. A contract is a contract. In this country it is almost your word, and if you are willing to break that it asks questions about whether you went into it honourably in the first place.

Some of the points you make are right. We have seen lots of financial engineering. We see inter-company debt. I think there is a concern long term that we may find cases where companies have engineered a financial position that allows them to do something they otherwise would not. That will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Where we have collective rights, we can still take action on that when we need to. This Bill takes a significant step in the right direction towards a point where the expectation is that contracts are honoured and that companies are prevented from boosting profits at the cost of their workforce.

On the SSP point, as a trade union we are used to negotiating improvements. Occasionally we cannot let perfect get in the way of good. I am pleased that we are talking about an improvement on SSP. Does it go far enough? I do not believe it does. I think that will have to be looked at long term. There are huge areas, such as care, where it is catastrophic that people do not feel that they can take time off, and, as I said before, that has a real impact, but at the moment I am happy that, for once, we are talking about an improvement to this. Personally, I am always of the view that we bank it and move forward.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

Q This is a question particularly for Mr Prendergast. What do you think will be the impact of reinstating the school support staff negotiating body—a measure that your union has long called for—on your members in schools?

Andy Prendergast: When you look at the school support staff negotiating body, this is something that has been on the agenda for about the last 25 years. We have found overwhelmingly in schools that teachers have national bargaining and very clear terms and conditions that are vigorously enforced, but unfortunately for the support staff, it is almost like the soft underbelly. So often when schools enter financial difficulties, heads—when you read the school returns, they have often given themselves quite large pay rises—end up cutting hours and pay from some of the lower-paid people.

Over the last quarter of a century, we have seen a transformation in what schools are like. Most of us remember schools having one teacher and that was it. Now, we see increasingly more pupils with special educational needs go into mainstream education, and they need that additional support. People from vulnerable backgrounds get the support of teaching assistants, and we have seen educational outcomes really improve off the back of that.

For us, particularly as we see more and more academisation and more and more fragmentation, we often find that there is an undercut-and-poach approach from different schools, which ultimately means that one benefits at the expense of another. It is not helpful when we get into that situation. The school support staff negotiating body allows for minimum standards and the extra professionalisation of roles, which really have changed over the last 25 years. Originally, there was a little bit of a stereotype that teaching assistants were there to clean paint pots and tidy up. Now, they do very detailed work on things like phonics and supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and they really help to deliver classes. I think it is time that professionalism was recognised and rewarded.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Q I think that you, like all the other witnesses from the trade unions, were quite pleased with the Bill, and understandably so. I know you said that you felt shut out over the 14 years of government until the general election. I want to ask about your engagement with the Department and with Ministers, and indeed with No. 10. How many meetings have your organisations had with officials, special advisers and Ministers, and were you involved in any of the drafting of the clauses of the Bill? Did you see any in advance before publication, and that kind of thing?

Andy Prendergast: Personally, I was involved in two meetings, and they were tripartite ones. They were quite robust exchanges where we had Ministers, civil servants, people from the employers’ associations and large employers, and also people from trade unions. I think those meetings were really quite helpful. We were raising points that sometimes they would argue with or agree with, and they raised points that sometimes made us look at things differently.

In the wider sense of the union, we have had quite a lot of engagement, but I would expect a union to be engaged over a Bill that has a huge amount of clauses about trade unions. In terms of whether we saw any of it in advance, no. We were very much holding our breath when the Bill came through. Part of my job is to tell people things and make cases, and to be told that they have heard, and then something comes out that is the complete antithesis of everything that we talked about.

As I said, we did not see the Bill in advance. When it turned up, there were some things we liked an awful lot. Some things, as we said beforehand, did not go far enough. The majority of engagement was tripartite, and I think both ourselves and the business organisations that have taken part in that process have helped understand it, and we have got to something we can all live with. That is certainly our impression.

Mike Clancy: I would just emphasise that Prospect is not affiliated with a political party, so any comments I make are based on evidence of the past and the present. We have had proportionate engagement. We have not kept a count or a register in that regard. Frankly, probably trade unions and business would want more and more time on this, and I am sure that will be a challenge going forward.

What I think was most positive, and something I had not seen in my career before, was a tripartite meeting with a range of very senior business representatives, trade unions and civic society with officials, the Business Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister back in August. That is important because it demonstrates that we can get in a room, we can talk to each other and we can resolve problems. That, for me, is the absolute core of this Bill and the “Next Steps to Make Work Pay” agenda. I hope that we can do more of that. I have talked a lot—I have had the privilege of doing this job for a long time—about how we have lost convening spaces in the economy in the past period, so we may be shouting over fences or making our cases separately to Government. Government is difficult, and it is about problem solving. The more that business, trade unions and civic society can come together and say, “Look, we’ve got our differences at the edges, but we can do this together. This is how we would fashion an outcome within the public policy you set,” the better. We will always want more, but to be fair, with their strong pace and intensity, the Government and their supporting officials have done an admirable job in convening us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Timothy]

Q Indeed. With not just the Bill, but the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions and things like the equalisation of the national living wage for young people—you also mentioned energy prices, Mr Johnson, which are a particular concern of mine—you sound very worried about the future of innovation, investment and ultimately jobs in this country. You have a platform today to send a message to the Prime Minister and all the Ministers who are involved in this legislation. What would that message be?

Luke Johnson: I think there is a complacency about our current prosperity. There is this belief that jobs will always appear, that businesses will always invest and that living standards will naturally rise. It sometimes feels as if Britain is a nation running on fumes at the moment. We have large amounts of debt, certainly at Government levels. We have public spending projected to take, I think, 45% of GDP—a very high level compared with 10 years ago—and that crowds out the private sector. Interest rates, especially if you have to borrow from the bank, are pretty punitive.

As for the idea that we can continue to occupy the role in the world that we used to occupy decades ago, it is a dramatically more competitive place. There are dozens and dozens more countries where money can be invested, factories can be sited and jobs can be created. Many of them are much lower-cost than we are. They might argue that they have a hungrier workforce, or whatever it may be. No country has ever taxed and regulated its way to a higher standard of living. It feels as if that is what this Government are about. They need to get real about how prosperous economies are actually created.

Michael Lorimer: If I were speaking to him, I would say, “Listen well to those who matter most.” To go back to the White Paper, you simply cannot create jobs without the private sector on board. You can listen to all sorts of people who will give you incredibly important stakeholder advice, but if you want to create jobs and grow the economy, the business community has to be on board. If we want to create prosperity, the private sector is where it is going to happen. I would say, “Listen well to those who matter most.”

Secondly, I would say, “Take your time and consult widely on this.” I feel that at the minute the consultation is not wide enough. We are here today: there are two of us speaking, broadly on the same message. Take time and do not rush it through for the sake of meeting a timescale. Take time and speak to business. Go out to the country and speak to small and medium-sized businesses and employer groups.

A lot of this stuff is not controversial. It is tick-box and—to go back to the first question—it is reinforcing a lot of stuff we do in the business anyway. We have 600 employees; at the minute I think we have three people in total on long-term sick, so we do not have a lot of problems. We have an engaged workforce and we are delighted to pay people well, at above the national living wage. All that stuff is about us trying not only to help our people to prosper, but to help our customers and the Banbury community to prosper. All this feels quite counterproductive and could have a lot of unforeseen consequences.

[Michael Wheeler]

Q As the Minister says, we have heard from businesses and their representative groups, which have said that good employers have nothing to fear from the measures in the Bill; in fact, they welcome the level playing field to prevent undercutting. Given that the purpose of the Bill is to promote good-quality employment, what are the specific measures in it that you think do not contribute to that aim?

Luke Johnson: It has already been raised, but if you introduce lots of rights like paternity rights and flexible working rights from day one, you risk having more problems, and that will be a cost. For example, there is a new obligation to protect employees from harassment. That sounds wonderful, but if you are in the licensed trade, as I am, that means that a single remark from a single customer could lead to a harassment claim for which you are responsible. How on earth are we to police that?

I do not know whether you are at all familiar with the state of the hospitality trade, but it is pretty dismal. We had two years where we were barely allowed to open; we have had unprecedented energy costs; we have higher rates; we obviously have all the costs for NIC and so forth from the Budget; and we have at best flat, if not declining, sales. I fear that hundreds more—if not thousands more—hospitality businesses will shut next year for good. That is obviously not the fault of this legislation, but it is petrol on the flames.

I suspect that a lot of the organisations you are hearing from are very large corporates with huge HR departments. In a way, they want to keep out new, young and innovative competition, because that is how big companies often behave. Building walls of regulation suits them, but that is not how you get a growing, vibrant and innovative economy. You get that through lots of smaller, younger businesses growing, coming up with new ideas and challenging the incumbents.

[Michael Wheeler]

Q Michael, let me ask you the same question: given that the purpose of the Bill is to promote good-quality employment, what are the specific measures in it that you think do not contribute to that aim?

Michael Lorimer: It goes back to what Luke said about a lot of this day one stuff. I do not want to paint a picture that we do not do a lot of this stuff already, because we work on the basis that if you recruit well and you train and develop well, you will not have as many problems down the line. But it is easy for us because we have an HR department and legal advice, so if we do hit the buffers we can deal with it. For smaller businesses—the entrepreneurial businesses that Luke mentioned—the perception, which of course is always stronger than the reality, is that it will create a lot of fear and concern.

I was in a shop recently and it took a long time for me to pay for a pair of Wellington boots. I said, “Are you busy?” He said, “No, but so-and-so left and we are not replacing him, because we’re very fearful. We’re a small business with two or three employees, and we’re anxious about what’s coming down the line.” You just need to be very mindful. That is where wide consultation comes in: you need to speak to people and see where the sore points are going to be.

[The Chair]

I am afraid that that brings us to the end of this panel, because we are not allowed to go beyond 3.40 pm. Thank you both very much for sharing with us your knowledge and experience, based on your work as employers.

Examination of Witnesses

John Kirkpatrick and Margaret Beels OBE gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Uma Kumaran]

Q We heard from two business voices today that were not perhaps entirely reflective of the rest of our views. I have more than 12,500 businesses in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, of which more than 5,500 are small and medium-sized businesses. I have met lots of them over the course of the last year. I have certainly not heard similar views. We also heard from legal experts, who said that the Bill brings us closer to OECD norms than perhaps was said. Can you tell us how businesses will benefit from the Bill?

Justin Madders: There is generally an acceptance, both in the economic analysis we have heard from some of the witnesses today and from businesses themselves, that getting a motivated, engaged and retained workforce is good for productivity and the business overall. Having a more engaged and well-remunerated workforce has been shown to actually boost profits. The fact that the OECD was referred to by the Resolution Foundation as a body that believes that greater workers’ rights actually improve the economic outcome of the country is a really important factor that we need to emphasise.

[Michael Wheeler]

Q Picking up from the last question, we have heard how the Bill will benefit employers; what other groups of people in the country do you think it will benefit?

Justin Madders: There are an awful lot of people who will benefit if we get this right. I am talking about people who do not know from one week to the next how many hours they will have or whether they will be paid enough to put food on the table. Our reforms on zero-hours contracts will really help with that. People who can be arbitrarily sacked for no reason for the first two years of their employment—about 9 million people—will benefit from that. The 1.6 million people in the social care sector will benefit. There are 900,000 people a year who will benefit from bereavement leave entitlements. Overall, as ACAS has suggested, the cost of disputes to the economy can be up to £30 billion a year. Just imagine what a difference it would make if we could shave a fraction off that. I think that the Bill is setting a new culture in our country about how we do workplace relations. It is putting the value of the worker/employee relationship with businesses at the heart of everything we do.

Employment Rights Bill (First sitting)

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. It looks like we have a host of interests.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I also refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and my membership of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and GMB.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I also refer to my declaration of interests. I am member of Unite and GMB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Darling]

Q In my constituency, there are a lot of small and medium-sized businesses. Will the two witnesses be kind enough to share whether they have seen any sectors that are particularly hard hit by the proposals, or any ameliorations to take account of that?

David Hale: That is a slightly difficult question. You could think of Torbay and pick out hospitality, which might well have particular issues with the proposal. But you could also pick out larger businesses that recruit people when they are young and allow them to gain worthwhile skills in hospitality; they will miss out from the proposal. So it is a difficult question.

It is easier to identify the workers, or potential workers, who are most likely to miss out—that is, people who will present as a risk in a recruitment scenario. Certain businesses are more likely to recruit people who will present as a risk in a recruitment scenario. Such businesses tend to be smaller and will probably—more than usual, if not overwhelmingly—include sectors like hospitality.

The other businesses that will struggle are those that are mainly paid by the Government—the Government set their prices, in effect—such as social care and childcare. Those businesses will struggle because other businesses can put up costs, but they can only put up costs if the Government and Parliament agree to put up how much they pay and, in particular, the way they pay it—the way in which social care tariffs work very much encourages a zero-hours model. As a consequence, that would probably have to be changed to make the proposal work. But this is across the board for recruiters—there are different impacts for different businesses.

Dom Hallas: Speaking as a tech start-up and scale-up ecosystem organisation, in practice this proposal does not disproportionately affect any individual part of the ecosystem. Broadly speaking, it has the same impact.

[Michael Wheeler]

Q So far, we have heard an awful lot about flexibility and risk, from you and from previous panels. Would the panel accept that, currently, flexibility is too far in favour of the employer, that the risk is borne by the employee and that this Bill seeks to rebalance that? In which areas do you believe that the measures in the Bill do not work towards that?

Dom Hallas: I think that cuts to the question that Steve asked, which was about the different sectors and impacts. I can only speak for the tech start-ups and scale-ups that we work with. In practice, as I said, you have a very highly paid and mostly highly skilled sector, where the benefits and rights afforded to employees way outweigh any current statutory requirements. It is a highly competitive labour market, but that comes with the trade-off of flexibility. These businesses scale and they fail very frequently; that is part of the nature of the business. I think that, in truth, both employers and employees go into that relationship in our particular space with their eyes pretty open to that. So in our particular part of the world, I would challenge that assertion a little bit.

What I would say more broadly though—I think this is important and cuts to an area where we think the Bill could be improved for our space from both an employer perspective and an employee perspective—is that one area where we see potential further progress is banning non-compete agreements. In California, where really successful technology ecosystems have been built in silicon valley, one of the cornerstones of that has been that there are no non-compete agreements allowed in law. That offers more flexibility from a labour market perspective in many cases, but it also benefits employees significantly, because that flexibility comes to their benefit as well.

From our point of view, employers are, frankly, scrambling like hell to try and find the employees to fill these tech jobs, and the employees are very highly paid. If those businesses fail, or their needs change, that is, in our view, part of the trade-off with those kinds of businesses. I appreciate that that might not be the case across every sector, but providing that flexibility is a core part of that trade-off.

David Hale: Typically, flexibility is a demand from employees rather than a demand from employers. Most employers would love the same people to turn up each week for the same shift; most employees would like to be able to work their shifts around their day-to-day lives. Most workplaces come to an accommodation on that, with things like shift-swapping.

What I am not clear on is where there is gain. Take zero hours and the scenario where this Bill ends up meaning that somebody who has worked the same hours for 12 weeks in a row is offered a contract. Somebody who an employer has employed for the same hours for 12 weeks in a row is likely to be either somebody they would like to give a contract to or somebody who has worked in a seasonal role. Those are the two scenarios. That employee is unlikely to be the employee who wants more hours or regular hours, because the employer is already giving them that. So there is not really a gain that is very obvious. What there is, is a lack of flexibility, because the response to the legal risk will be for employers to say to employees, “Actually, I need to keep an eye on precisely how many hours you are working each week for a reference period. So, no, you are not allowed to swap shifts.” That is a damage to flexibility, with no obvious gain for people who have been working 12 weeks in a row, who, frankly, the employer probably wants to agree a permanent contract for, but does not.

[Laurence Turner]

Q We heard quite a balanced account from the previous panel; there were measures in the Bill that they welcomed, alongside measures that they wanted to see changes to. Mr Hallas, I notice that you have said that gaps in employment law are becoming an increasing challenge. So I want to ask the same question to both of you: are there individual measures in the Bill that you welcome and, if so, what are they?

Dom Hallas: When I talked about employment law in that context, it was as part of a broader range of work we do with what we call platform businesses. They might be traditionally known as gig economy platforms, sharing economy platforms or online marketplaces that have two sides—someone who wants to sell something and someone wants to buy something, whether that is services or goods. The gaps in law that exist there are an increasing problem, because many of these platforms want to be able to offer support to the people who leverage them, but they are not able to do so because of the restrictive nature of employment law.

The challenge at the moment is that the Bill does not necessarily address that. There is clearly a way of potentially having further conversations on that. Obviously, some of that is being discussed down the line, including whether there is a single status for workers. We are not sure whether that is exactly the right approach, but there is a conversation to be had with Government about what is the right approach.

In the meantime, what we have is a structure built by court case, which I do not think is helpful for anyone concerned. It is frustrating for a number of unions and workers’ rights organisations that have been campaigning on this issue, but also for a wide variety of platforms—they are not the very biggest ones that are taking things all the way to court. They would prefer some clarity so that they could potentially offer additional benefits to people who leverage their platforms. That is the first thing to say.

A significant portion of the Bill is made up of things that we either have no view on or that, broadly speaking, would be fine. The reality is that I am not going to sit here and say that it is going to be catastrophic for the tech start-up community. In truth, it is not going to be.

David Hale: There are steps in the Bill on strengthening paternity and maternity protection, and that is one of the reasons why I talk about splitting the Bill up. Those seem like good things that probably have a positive impact on the workforce as a whole. As I said, because of the overwhelm, we are still going through the detail, but those seem like good measures. Would it not be better to focus on good measures, and things where the risks, costs and trade-offs are understood, and to make a decision to proceed positively with those?

Compared to the last speakers, we are less likely to have a particular view on the trade union aspects of the legislation. On the trade union aspects, it is fairly well understood what the measures are and what their impact will be—that is decision-ready. The bits that are not decision-ready are the proposals around unfair dismissal and zero-hours contracts. The bit that could be decision-ready but is not is probably around SSP and the question of a rebate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Q Employment standards are obviously important and can contribute to higher productivity, but also, if you guarantee and legislate for certain standards, there will be trade-offs, because that brings cost and opportunity costs through lost time. Real improvements to productivity come from things like investment in tech and training.

May we explore the trade-offs a little? With this kind of legal framework, to what extent will managers be able to focus properly on the core purpose of their businesses, as opposed to compliance with the law? To what extent will managers be able to invest properly in training and new technologies to aid productivity, rather than have the costs set out in the impact assessment?

Ben Willmott: That is a really important point. I alluded to it earlier. We know that one of the things that will drive productivity will be looking at how businesses can identify and address skills gaps, which will require thinking about how we train and develop our staff and managers. We know that responsible technology adoption will, to a large degree, depend on the people element—things like job design, or making sure that people are trained and have the right skills to use technology, and that we are consulting employees in advance so that their views help shape how the technology is implemented.

Businesses only have so much bandwidth, so I think that there is a real challenge there, particularly for our members, who are on the frontline of trying to ensure compliance. At the same time, the business will be asking them to help improve workplace productivity through those other activities. That needs to be thought about when we think about how regulation interacts with other factors that might support workplace productivity.

Carly Cannings: You are right—there is an inevitable trade-off. Even employers who are now broadly compliant or doing good things will have some costs associated with bringing in changes to policies that reflect the actual detail of the Bill, for example. They might be broadly doing something good in that space, but it might not quite align with the provisions of the Bill. It is important to make the point that it is going to have an impact on employers, even those that are doing good things in that space already. But the way to offset that is by phasing the changes through—not dumping them all on employers all in one go, but helping them to navigate the changes. This has already been alluded to, but it is making sure that they have that support through the implementation phase.

Cathryn Moses-Stone: I am pretty much in agreement with Carly. Obviously, there will be an initial trade-off, and investment will be required, but I guess our point is that it is for longer-term gain. Once we have got those happier and more supported managers, and therefore workplaces, these things will become elements that save the business money in the long run. Understanding that broader piece is important, and making sure that the process is there in order to upskill and train people in the right ways. It will be about a clear understanding of, “Will this agency be there to support them in the right ways?”, rather than just being a place to go as a last resort, assuming a slap on the wrist and ill intent. What is the support package alongside this to manage some of those trade-offs?

[Michael Wheeler]

Q I want to drill down into something Ben talked about earlier: how can the Bill best meet its aims while supporting smaller businesses that might not have dedicated HR support? Carly, the Happy Business School describes itself as being

“on a mission to help organisations build people-centric workplace cultures, where happy people can thrive.”

Which measures in the Bill will be most transformative and help you in that mission?

Carly Cannings: Not to labour the point further, but this is about setting minimum standards, and creating happy, thriving workplace cultures is far broader than employment legislation. On the stuff around flexibility, some of which has already come in through previous legislation, a common theme with organisations I work with is that having good, flexible working policies generally goes down very well with employers. As with everything, there is a balance to be struck, but some of the firming up of the flexibility rights is good. But as I said, lots of the businesses I work with are already doing good things in that space. It is more about bringing up the standards for the others. This is just a small part in that bigger picture, but a move in the right direction. I suppose it is raising the profile of those rights and broadening them.

[Alison Hume]

Q Carly, you have experience in supporting businesses, including SMEs, to transform their processes and culture to become happy workplaces. How do you see the measures in the Bill making happier workplaces for people with disabilities and health conditions?

Carly Cannings: That is a good point. Arguably, from my reading of the Bill, there is not a lot of specific focus on those rights. It is about standards across the board. There are already some protections, particularly unfair dismissal rules. Even though the qualifying period is likely to change, there are still the protected characteristic rights—the day one rights that already exist.

I have to say that, from my reading, the Bill does not scream out that there is lots in there that will help specifically those with disabilities and long-term health conditions. Flexible working is definitely part of that picture, but the big change was making it a day one right, which has already been done. The legislation is just tightening that up further. Being able to have flexibility is a big issue for people in terms of accessing work, so that is probably the biggest one. But as I say, a lot of that work has been done in making it a day one right.

Employment Rights Bill (Second sitting)

Michael Wheeler Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Public Bill Committees

[The Minister for Equalities (Dame Nia Griffith)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of USDAW, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers.

[Michael Wheeler (Worsley and Eccles) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB and USDAW.

[Anneliese Midgley (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I refer to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unite and the GMB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Darling]

Q My second question is to you, Neil, although I do not know whether you will be able to answer it—I listen with interest. How could the legislation impact on employment opportunities for individuals who have a disability, whether that is a sensory, physical or learning disability?

Neil Carberry: I regret that we are not at the end of the session, because it would have been lovely to meet Jennie.

Let me reflect on the REC’s experience. Over the past two years, we have placed 3,200 people into work from long-term unemployment through the Government’s restart scheme, and many of those people have faced barriers associated with disability. Allen reflected earlier on the flexibility offered by hospitality. Agency work also gives us a chance to do things a bit differently; it is not nine-to-five in the office. Access to Work is obviously an excellent scheme, but it only goes so far.

I will give you an example from Birmingham, where we have placed a single father into work. His challenge was not his own disability; he has a severely disabled child. The school to which one child goes is on one side of the city and the mainstream school the other child goes to is on the other side of the city, so he cannot do a nine-to-five. We have been able to place him into work on a flexible contract—when he can work, on a zero-hours contract. That is creating some opportunity.

What is really important in the whole Bill is to meet the workforce where they are, and they are somewhere different from where they were 10 or 15 years ago. This need for flexibility is how people manage. Let me round off with my favourite example. We have a member which fills Christmas shifts for John Lewis up at Magna Park in Milton Keynes. That is 3,000 jobs every day between August and Christmas, making sure that you get your Christmas presents. Ten years ago, they needed 3,500 candidates to fill those jobs because people got sick, had a week off, and obviously did not work seven days a week. Now they need 12,000 candidates, because people have greater choice: they are sitting at home, signed up to five or six of my members, and they are taking the shifts they want. For instance—this is an example that we have used in our own “temp work works” campaign—we have a temp worker who is managing a chronic illness, and they are working in the ways that they can work. If we think about the Government’s agenda today, I think embracing flexible work and agency work on that front, as an enabler for people, is really important.

[Michael Wheeler]

Q This question is primarily for Allen and UKHospitality. How big of a challenge is retention in the hospitality sector? Do you agree with the Nationwide Caterers Association that one benefit of the measures in the Bill around guaranteed hours will be reduced staff turnover?

Allen Simpson: Turnover is higher in hospitality than in many other sectors. Part of that is what you might call non-regretted turnover—that is, people who are in hospitality for a period and move on to their wider career, people who were students, or people with caring responsibilities. There are also people who move on for other reasons.

For people who want to be on a fixed-hours contract and are currently on a flexible contract, I absolutely agree that the ability to move from one to the other should help with retention—that seems absolutely true, yes. Equally, there are other elements of the Bill that provide a really suitable balance towards the worker and that will have exactly the same effect. The question is balancing that real value, which is absolutely there, against the unintended consequences of, as Neil has indicated, creating a hurdle rate, which means that it is hard to bring people into the workforce.

We saw, I think today, that there are 2.8 million people in the UK who are unemployed for health reasons. This is a sector able to bring those people in, and we need to make sure that we are both retaining and giving opportunities to people already in the sector and providing access to the sector for those 2.8 million people.

[The Chair]

Before I call Nick Timothy, we do not have long left now, and other Members are indicating that they want to speak. Could questions be quick and answers be slightly shorter, too?