Zero-hours Contracts

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

It is a great honour to be speaking at the Dispatch Box on this, the first day of the new Parliament. I suspect that it will be the only time in my life when Her Majesty the Queen has the first word and I the last, although we can agree that her audience was somewhat larger and that she was a great deal better dressed.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing this debate on an important subject that thankfully, now that the election has passed, we can shed real light on. We can discover the facts and pursue the examples of bad practice that he outlined. He is right to say that zero-hours contracts are in and of themselves nothing new and that a relatively small proportion of the workforce are on such contracts. He also rightly referred to a recent study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which found that 60% of zero-hours workers were satisfied with their contracts and 65% of them were happier with their work-life balance because of those contracts. He described a number of situations involving individuals who actually welcomed these contracts because of the flexibility they gave them and the ability they provided to respond to other responsibilities, goals or ambitions that they had in their lives.

However, that should never be an excuse for complacency or for a belief that this is good for everyone and that every employer who makes use of these contracts is doing so responsibly. My hon. Friend gave a number of important examples of abuse. I hope he is pleased to know that one of my first decisions as Minister responsible for employment law was to implement the provision in an Act passed in the previous Parliament by my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), that banned exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts. Exclusivity clauses did something simply outrageous. The point of a zero-hours contract is that it does not guarantee a specific number of hours of work in any period of time. To then require that the person makes themselves available constantly, waiting for a phone call, preventing them from going out and earning income from other work, is simply outrageous. It was happening, I am glad to say, with a relatively small number and small percentage of zero-hours contracts, but it was quite intolerable and we were right to ban it. I am very glad that we have implemented that ban. We will be making sure that that ban is not simply symbolic but is enforced.

I am happy to look at examples of other abuses. My hon. Friend described very eloquently the case of a young man—the son of one of his constituents—who was called into work, kept on standby and not paid. My hon. Friend speculated that this practice was already illegal. While I do not know the full details of the case, if it is as he described I can reassure him that he is absolutely right—it is already illegal. If his constituent would like to approach him, and he would like to pass on to me the specific details of that employer and that young man, I will be very happy to get HMRC and any other enforcement authority to come down like a ton of bricks on that kind of abuse. It is against the law, it is inhuman, and it must not go on.

My hon. Friend has asked for some further, very specific commitments. He is always cheerful and affable, but he never gives up as a Member of Parliament, as I know both to my cost and my pleasure in my previous role as planning Minister. If, in this Parliament, we see a revolution in the number of people who are able to secure a plot of land to build their own home, it will be very largely thanks to his doggedness on that issue. I have no doubt that he will continue to be as dogged on the issue raised in tonight’s debate.

On my hon. Friend’s first request, without absolutely committing to a working group—because I would want to know what its composition was—I can promise him that I will keep a very close eye on this. I assure him that I have already asked officials to look into other kinds of abuse of zero-hours contracts to explore whether there is something further that we can do to root out such exploitation of working people.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

As a practical solution, would it be possible at some stage, not necessarily tonight, for the Minister’s Department, or for him, to say where people should email or telephone if they have a possible abuse to report, so that there is a central place to collect this information, not necessarily for action on every case but at least to gather it together?

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue, which was the subject of the third request from my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk. I was going to say that I do not know what the whistleblower arrangements are, but I will undertake to find out tomorrow and make sure that they are better publicised to citizens advice bureaux and to relevant charities that can make sure that people are able to report abuse.

My hon. Friend’s second request, which will give me great pleasure to fulfil, is to work closely with the Minister for Community and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He is one of the most popular Members of Parliament and former Ministers, who I am delighted to say will now be on the Front Bench again. He is a deeply humane man, and I know that he will want to make sure that the people looking after the most vulnerable in our society are not exploited by their employers.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister also look at firms that employ temporary agency staff and at their rights? Those I spoke to on the election trail told me that their rights have also been diminished.

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to look at that. If I may, I want to extend to the hon. Gentleman, as well as to hon. Members from all around the House, an invitation to bring me specific examples of bad practice—ideally with the identities of the employer, but if not, nevertheless with such examples—and I will try to find out what we can do about such practices if we have not already banned them, as was the case for the worker put on standby unpaid.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk asked me to get in touch with HMRC about the pursuit of breaches. He will be pleased to know that the previous Government, of which we formed a major part, introduced the idea of naming and shaming employers who breach national minimum wage laws. We will continue that, and I am very happy to direct officials to look specifically at breaches of national minimum wage laws in the care industry, where, as he has rightly highlighted and others have agreed with him, there is a problem.

On my hon. Friend’s fifth request, he is right that the whole question of the design of housing falls outside my ministerial portfolio. However, he knows that I share with him an absolute passion for the issue of housing—about how we must build more and better houses that work for modern families in all their shapes and sizes. I will continue to work with him as a private citizen and as a Member of this House to further that aim.

It has been a great pleasure to wind up this debate on the first day of Parliament. May I conclude by saying that today we have had a model of democracy and free speech? I know that all hon. Members from whatever party will be as dismayed as I was to learn that one of our number, the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), was attacked outside by a group of, frankly, hoodlums simply because they disapprove of his views. I think that that is shameful. The hon. Gentleman is a man I like and respect. I think he is hugely misguided and that he is in the wrong party—I think he is beginning to realise that—but he has the right to express himself freely and openly, as we all do, and this House must defend the rights of hon. Members to do just that.

Question put and agreed to.