Employment Rights

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

In terms of fire and rehire, that guidance will be there. As I have said, fire and rehire in itself is not a binary view. Clearly we need a dynamic labour market. We need to protect businesses from making redundancies and losing those jobs, and we need to save businesses. That is why we are progressing along the way by charging ACAS with strengthening the guidance in this area. We will be working throughout the next few months to make sure, when we have parliamentary time to bring the employment Bill through and create the single employment body, that the guidance will be there and the prep work will have been done.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The best form of employment protection is a thriving entrepreneurial business sector open to innovation and creativity. The Minister has already outlined that the UK has an enviable flexible labour market with the highest participation rate of people in work, the highest levels of employment we have seen for many years, the fastest ever increases in the minimum wage and the highest take for the minimum wage as a proportion of average earnings. Rather than going back to the ideological arguments of the Opposition, will my hon. Friend join me in praising the Biggleswade branch of the Department for Work and Pensions, which I was in a conversation with today? It is embarking on promoting the kickstart programme to get more people into work, particularly young people.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend speaks in his usual eloquent way, talking up the dynamic, flexible economy that makes the UK fantastic and the envy of the world in terms not only of its workers’ rights but its flexibility, which is why we are attracting so much inward investment. I am glad to hear about the Biggleswade jobcentre promoting the kickstart scheme, because it is such initiatives and the extra money we are giving to employers to take on more apprentices that will create levelling-up potential and give people opportunity.