Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill

Rob Butler Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on bringing her Bill to this stage of the parliamentary process. Having introduced a private Member’s Bill myself and, thankfully, succeeded in getting it on to the statute book last year, I know what a difficult job it is, and that it only works with the co-operation of many other people.

Like every other Member, I experienced flexible working myself during the pandemic. As many will attest, it was not without its challenges and required a degree of getting used to. It is fair to say some people enjoyed the experience rather more than others. Perhaps I am showing my age when I say that I struggled a little more than some of them! From a practical perspective, however, although many people thought it would be a difficult scramble to enable the majority of the nation to begin working from home for the first time, what we actually saw was a much smoother transition than had been expected. According to a report published following the pandemic by Buckinghamshire Business First and Chandler Garvey, a firm of commercial property consultants in my constituency, more than three-quarters of those surveyed in Buckinghamshire found the transition to remote working simple; so it can be done.

The fact is that working practices change over time. The incredibly late nights and unpaid overtime that I considered entirely normal when I started my career are today roundly rejected. Indeed, many people embarking on their careers, often fresh from university, see the work-life balance and the ability to work flexibly as a top priority, and in surveys it is frequently placed above salary expectations. The Bill will help in that regard. In particular, requiring employers to consult employees before refusing a flexible working arrangement will allow greater transparency in the working environment, and will hopefully result in an outcome that suits both parties. I emphasise the words “both parties”, because employers’ needs and businesses’ requirements must of course be properly recognised, and I think that the Bill achieves the balance that is necessary for that to happen.

As we know and as has been pointed out today, individual circumstances can change at any moment, and the Bill provides a framework to accommodate that. It will doubtless be helpful that staff will be able to make two flexible working requests in a 12-month period, as opposed to the one that is currently permitted. It would be rather odd if someone’s circumstances changed immediately after they had been refused permission and they were then not even entitled to ask for a reconsideration, so I think that this measure is entirely reasonable. Employees will also benefit from the reduction in the deadline for an employer to make the decision on requests from three months to two.

As the hon. Member for Bolton South East has said during earlier debates on the Bill, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to flexible working. On Second Reading, many Members spoke about the importance of flexible working arrangements in helping to remove some of the invisible barriers that can hold people back in the more traditional working environments. They could include living in high-cost accommodation close to the centre of cities—flexible working might well enable people to live further away from work if they come in less often—or suffering in increasingly crowded commuter trains, an experience that I know my constituents in Aylesbury would be grateful to avoid. However, I agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) when he emphasised that the impact of working from home can be broader than the impact on the individual employer’s business. Aylesbury town centre is undoubtedly seeing much less footfall and lower spending now that fewer people are required to go there to work. It is important for us to consider that in the round as the economy grows and develops in the years to come.

When flexible arrangements are agreed between employees and employers, the benefits can work both ways. From a business perspective it can be an opportunity to retain the skills and expertise of experienced workers. Hon. Members have already suggested that there are some people, perhaps in their 70s, who could perhaps spend a little less time on the golf course and more in the office, boardroom, or potentially on the production line. I am not expressing exactly where any particular arrangement should work in an organisation, and it is important that there is that flexibility. We know that at the moment there is a challenge with the over-50s having perhaps left the workforce, and we must do everything we can to get them back into the workplace. If I may stray a little from the narrow confines of the Bill, we may want to look at pension arrangements to encourage them to do so. Flexible working practices can also lead to a more diverse and senior leadership team, which again can be welcome. There are societal benefits in other circumstances, such as parents spending more time with their children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) highlighted. Having met his three children I can well understand why he would want to spend as much time with them as he can.

One point that bears repeating is that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell), which is that flexible working does not mean purely working from home. It can mean doing a week’s hours in four days rather than five, or starting and ending the working day at times that allow an employee to fulfil other commitments such as caring for an elderly relative. I welcome that type of flexibility and look forward to its being appropriately used, hopefully as a result of the Bill making its way to the statute book.

It is important to strike the right balance between the rights of employees and employers. There will always be some businesses and organisations where it is much more difficult to work flexibly. Much has been said about parents needing to pick up their children from school, but for teachers in that school flexible working will be much tougher, and it will require a good deal more imagination to enable that when they need to be in front of their class during the day. Both employers and employees need to approach this challenge with a flexible mindset so that there can be benefit to all—a win-win, if you like, Madam Deputy Speaker. In conclusion, I again congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East, and wish her well as the Bill continues its passage to the statute book.