Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Nick Timothy and Sarah Russell

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Russell]

My primary concern is that those on the Conservative Benches talk about employees as if they are, as I said, unexploded bombs, and they talk about employers as if they are unlikely ever to recruit anyone ever again, and I just do not believe that to be true. Most employers will make a sensible assessment of whether having an additional member of staff will benefit their business and then they will recruit them. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you.

It is really important that we cut through the disinformation and scaremongering, and that when we take the legislation forward, ACAS has good information ready to go. It already has great information online— I encourage employers who are worried to look up ACAS information videos on YouTube and look at its factsheets. We must make it clear to people that they have access to sources of free advice, which is important for small businesses, so that they can see what is and is not required of them. The position being stated today is bluntly exaggerated and quite damaging as a result.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of my new clause 105. The labour abuse that it seeks to address is the wrongful use of substitution clauses by gig economy workers. To guarantee fairness and justice in the labour market, it is crucial that there be transparency, which can be delivered through the introduction of a comprehensive register of all dependent contractors. That will help to ensure that employment rights are upheld and pay is not suppressed through illegitimate competition, but it will also support the enforcement of right-to-work checks. The unlawful employment of migrants with no right to work here is not good for taxpayers, British workers or migrants who follow the rules, yet substitution clauses allow what have become known as “Deliveroo visas”—the industrial scale abuse of our immigration and labour laws.

Before addressing the substance of my new clause, I also commend new clause 30 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), which I have sponsored. It would give special constables the right to take time off to carry out their police duties. Other public service volunteers, such as magistrates and councillors, receive that right.

I turn to my new clause 105. Ministers have said that they will consult on employment status and moving towards a two-part legal framework that identifies people who are genuinely self-employed. I support that ambition, and I am grateful to the Minister for his warm words in Committee, but my new clause provides a way to resolve a particular abuse and hold big employers in the gig economy to account.

There are 4.7 million gig economy workers in the UK, including 120,000 official riders at Uber Eats and Deliveroo, two of the largest delivery companies in the country. For years we have heard stories of the rampant labour market fraud and visa abuse committed by contractors related to those companies. From late 2018 to early 2019, there were 14,000 fraudulent Uber journeys, according to Transport for London. In addition to Uber and Deliveroo, Amazon and Just Eat have been linked to labour market abuses. Much of that abuse has come through the legal loophole created by substitution clauses.

Amazon tells its couriers that it is their

“responsibility to pay your substitute…at any rate you agree with them”

and

“you must ensure that any substitute…has the right to work in the UK”.

It is a dereliction of duty to pass responsibility for compliance with criminal and right-to-work checks on to workers, but those companies clearly have an interest in maintaining a status quo in which undocumented migrants take the lowest fees in delivery apps.

Data from the Rodeo app shows the effect of that abuse on riders’ order fees. Just Eat riders saw their fees drop by 14.4%, from £6.53 in 2021 to £5.59 in 2023. There was a 3.4% drop for Uber Eats order fees—from £4.36 to £4.21—during the same period. Deliveroo has blocked its order fee data from being published. Those figures are not adjusted for inflation, but it is clear to see how pay and conditions have worsened for riders. By undercutting domestic workers—British workers—and exploiting those with no legal right to be here, companies are privatising profits and socialising costs. Promises from such companies to introduce tougher security checks have not made the problem go away. We should all be appalled by this state of affairs, because nobody should be above the law.

During random checks two years ago, the Home Office found that two in five delivery riders who were stopped were working illegally. In the same month, 60 riders from Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat were arrested in London for immigration offences, including working illegally and holding false documentation. Last month, Deliveroo sacked more than 100 riders who shared their accounts with illegal migrants. But that is only the tip of the iceberg: insurance companies report unauthorised riders involved in motor and personal injury cases.

That is happening because undocumented migrants are renting rider accounts for between £70 and £100 a week. Profiles have been bought for as much as £5,000. The i Paper found more than 100,000 people on Facebook groups where identities have been traded for years, including one group that gained around 28,000 members in less than 18 months.

Illegal migrants are using social media apps to rent accounts and share information on a significant scale. Today, we only have figures from press investigations, but we can find copious examples across the internet with ease. Legal workers have reported problems to the police and the Home Office, but that has fuelled tensions as they compete for orders and has even led to violent clashes between legal and illegal riders in Brighton and London, including physical beatings and damage to bikes.

People working illegally for these big companies are working longer hours round the clock for lower fees, never knowing when their last payday might be. They use group chats to share information and evade Home Office immigration raids. We do not even know how many substitute riders there are for these companies at any given time. A spokesman for the App Drivers and Couriers Union says:

“Unfortunately there is this loophole that allows some bad people to come through. They are not vetted so they could do anything.”