Covid-19: Employment Rights

Paul Scully Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. Like everyone else, I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) on securing today’s important debate. This is a really important matter—a collective matter—and we have heard a number of excellent contributions from across the Chamber detailing individual issues within the overall, encompassing issue of workers’ rights.

Clearly, covid-19 has had a massive effect; it reaches deep into our economy and society. It has required us, as a country, to wrap our arms around the economy and around businesses and employees as well. The Government have acted decisively to provide an unprecedented package of support to protect people’s livelihoods.

[Grahame Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will briefly, but I do want to make progress.

[Grahame Morris]

I appreciate that the Minister is under siege, so I will just ask a simple question. If we are truly wrapping our arms around workers and employees, will he take steps to ensure that the awful practice of fire and rehire is outlawed, because it is unnecessary and is having an appalling effect?

[Paul Scully]

The reason why I am limiting interventions is that I want to leave the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North time at the end of the debate to sum up. I will clearly cover fire and rehire in a second.

Before doing so, I want to look at just some of the ways in which we have wrapped our arms around the economy and around businesses and employees. We have done that through the furlough scheme, which has allowed 1.2 million employers across the UK to furlough 9.6 million jobs. As we have heard, that scheme has been extended to the spring. With regard to the self-employment income support scheme, there is an increase under the third instalment of the grant, covering November to January.

It is also important that we help to get people, and particularly young people, back into work; we have heard about that from other hon. Members today. That is why, as we have announced, more than 19,000 jobs have been created so far through the kickstarter scheme, helping young people from across the country into the workplace and into a variety of sectors. In addition, 1.3 million businesses have had a Government-guaranteed loan to support their cash flow through the British Business Bank. That is delivering £8 billion to more than 98,000 SMEs—something close to my heart.

The hon. Gentleman talked about fire and rehire tactics. A key aspect of building back better is to continue championing a flexible and dynamic labour market, which gives employers the confidence to retain and hire staff, while maintaining a framework that protects individuals. For those who, sadly, lose their jobs, clear laws about unfair dismissal will ensure that their rights are protected. We have tightened the protections throughout the covid-19 pandemic. For example, we have made sure that statutory redundancy pay, statutory notice pay and unfair dismissal compensation are based on a furloughed employee’s normal pay rather than furlough pay. People who, sadly, are made redundant will receive the same level of financial compensation as they would if they had not been furloughed.

To understand better the issues in relation to fire and rehire, the Government are working with ACAS, and we are bringing together a number of roundtables with businesses, employee representatives and other bodies to discuss these issues in more detail. The House should be left in no doubt that this Government will always continue to stand behind workers and to stamp out unscrupulous practices where they occur.

We have responded swiftly and effectively to the pandemic.

[Gavin Newlands]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to some of the hon. Gentleman’s points, but, yes, I will give way now.

[Gavin Newlands]

I am grateful, and I will keep my intervention brief. Can the Minister confirm, if he is having roundtable discussions about the practice of firing and rehiring, whether something might be brought forward in the employment Bill, when that Bill is eventually brought forward? If that is the case, will he work with me and others across the House to ensure that those provisions are good enough for the workers of this country?

[Paul Scully]

I will gladly work with the hon. Gentleman in continuing to discuss workers’ rights in this area and other areas. It is important that the employment Bill, when it does come, not only extends workers’ rights in the way that we talked about in our manifesto, but does so in a way that fully reflects the situation we are going through and the lessons learned from the pandemic.

Some hon. Members talked about pregnancy and maternity discrimination. That is not acceptable under any circumstances. We have continued to remind employers of their existing responsibilities under current legislation. Equalities legislation requires that employers must not discriminate in the workplace based on gender, pregnancy or maternity. Following the Government’s consultation in 2019, we are extending the redundancy protection period afforded to mothers on maternity leave to six months, once the new mother has returned to work, and to those taking adoption leave and shared parental leave.

We have taken steps to support new parents by passing emergency legislation that ensures that parents who are furloughed during the period, and are determined to be entitled to maternity, adoption and other family related statutory pay, do not lose out.

[Rachael Maskell]

Will the Minister give greater clarity about what rights women in the third trimester of pregnancy have to protect themselves and their children?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

I am happy to write to the hon. Lady fully to outline those details. The legislation entitles parents to a rate of pay based on their normal earnings, not their furlough pay.

Employment rights enforcement is as important as ever during this pandemic. We already spend £33 million a year on state enforcement of employment rights. Enforcement bodies continue to protect vulnerable workers and have worked with businesses to promote compliance throughout the pandemic. As has been mentioned, we have committed to go further and establish a single enforcement body for employment rights, to better protect vulnerable workers and create a level playing field for the majority of employers that comply with the law.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not because I want to leave time for the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North to respond.

The Government have acted decisively to protect the health and safety of workers who cannot work from home during the pandemic, including by providing tailored guidance on social distancing in the workplace to enable sectors to reopen and, where exemptions apply, to trade through the new English national restrictions. To date, the guides have been viewed over 3 million times. Where the Health and Safety Executive identifies employers that are not taking action to comply with the relevant public health legislation and guidance to control public health risks, it will consider taking a range of actions to improve the control of workplace risks.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North made a powerful argument about fire and rehire. When I spoke in the Chamber recently, I was absolutely clear that it is not acceptable to use that as a bargaining or negotiating tactic. When I talked about flexibility for firing people, I was not talking about adding any extra power to Goliath over David. Indeed, it is clear that we must have a level playing field.

Small businesses need to be able to thrive, but when employees in big businesses are concerned about collective bargaining and the power of the large employers, that shows that we need to strengthen workers’ rights and not weaken them in any way. We will continue to work with hon. Members across the House. Any sensible employer should know that investing in and working with their people is the biggest strength that they have. I say that as someone who ran small businesses for 25 years.

We have talked about bereavement. I am glad that we introduced the right to bereavement pay for people who have lost a child. There is day-one right for unpaid leave to respond to other forms of bereavement.

The Low Pay Commission recommends the national minimum wage and the national living wage to Government. We will always respond to the collective view of that body, which encompasses union, independent and employer representation, rather than just taking a Government view, to come up with what is best for the economy, but not on the basis of the lowest paid in this country. We want to make sure we include our manifesto commitment to allow people to benefit as we level the playing field for people aged 23-plus as well.

The hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) talked about retailer abuse, on which USDAW, with whom I have had regular discussions, has had a good campaign. The retailers themselves have raised issues most recently about the closure of pubs and restaurants. In Nottinghamshire, for example, there has been an increase in reported abuse of retailers around the sale of alcohol, so we need to reflect and act on that quickly.

We have heard about zero-hours contracts from a few speakers. Some 3.2% of workers are on zero-hours contracts, and they work an average of 25 hours a week. The Taylor review recommended not scrapping zero-hours contracts. We have got rid of exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts, but he said that banning such contracts

“would negatively impact…more people than it helped.”

To conclude, I thank the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North once again for securing this important debate. I want to reassure workers across the country that we will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with them throughout the crisis as we build back better. As soon as parliamentary time allows, we will introduce an employment Bill to reflect everything that we have learnt, and we will deliver the Government’s manifesto commitments. The legislation will make workplaces fairer by providing better support for working families and new protections for those in low-paid work, and will encourage flexible working. It will balance the needs of both employers and workers, ensuring that everybody benefits from flexibility. It will also create a new enforcement body for labour market abuses and give greater protections to vulnerable workers.

The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) talked about the situation in Leicester, which is so important for us all. The taskforce set up in Leicester has visited 140 premises. There are a significant number of live investigations, and we want to do more to make sure we get to the bottom of any reports of abuse in Leicester and beyond. The Government have a proud history of protecting and enhancing workers’ rights. We are committed to making the UK the best place in the world in which to work.