“Chapter 4A

Rosie Wrighting Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have said it before, and I will say it again: due to the virtue of my last name, I am the only legitimate union Barron in this place, and I am absolutely proud of it.

It is an honour to speak on this Bill again, and I commend this Government for bringing it forward. We made a commitment to working people before the election, and we are following that through. I welcome the Government’s new clause on agency workers. In Corby we have more employment agencies than any other town in Northamptonshire. We now see that those who work in agency jobs will receive fair treatment in pay, working hours and job security, which is to be welcomed as we aim to create a better local economy for the people of Corby and East Northants.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. He and I are constituency neighbours. As he will know, there has been a lot of growth in Northamptonshire and increased distribution in the area, so the Government new clause will make a massive difference to our constituents.

[Lee Barron]

It will indeed. I thank my hon. Friend for making that point so well.

This Bill has been a huge move in terms of sick pay, as far as the Government are concerned. It will bring 1.3 million people into getting sick pay for the first time, and we need to welcome that. We might need to have a look at some point in the future to see if there has been a drag downwards in terms of the people around the lower earnings limit, but we should certainly welcome this as a step in the right direction.

This is not just about legislation: we must change the jobs market and the perception of work that some people have in modern Britain. There are still some people who do not recognise the value that working people bring. I had a meeting last week with the parcel delivery company Evri, which operates in all our constituencies. It described the employer-employee relationship as a “master-servant” relationship. I turn around and say that that kind of view of working people is absolutely dated. Evri said that if it changed the status of its workers, it would want its “pound of flesh”—its words, not mine.

While we have those who treat and describe working people in such a way, we must bring in legislation to ensure that they cannot treat people like that. Working people are not servants, and they should be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. That is a fundamentally wrong, crass and outdated way to view employment in modern Britain, and as long as there are still those who think like that, we need to ensure that we change things for the better, and this Bill goes a long way towards doing that.

The question I often ask myself is this: why do those who want economic growth think that we make growth happen through insecure work, minimal wage rates and zero-hours contracts, under which people do not know what they will earn in order to support their family from one week to the next? Work should not mean a lifetime trapped in poverty; it should be the route out of poverty, and this Bill is a step in the right direction to ensure that is what it becomes once again.

I chair the all-party parliamentary group on modernising employment, and at our last meeting we heard from Zelda Perkins, of the Can’t Buy My Silence campaign, about non-disclosure agreements. Her testimony makes it absolutely clear that more needs to be done in that space, and if there is room to do so through this Bill, I urge the Government to accept the amendments that were described earlier. The APPG looks to the future of work and what good employment looks like. At the end of the month, the APPG is going to look at good work, the new deal and this Bill. We will look at the full effects of this Bill to see how we can take forward its benefits and transfer them into the modern world of work. In the 21st century, modern employment should look like security of work, well-paid and with progression opportunities, in order to keep families out of poverty. This Bill goes some way towards doing that.

In conclusion, I urge all Members to support this Bill, which bans exploitative zero-hours contracts. Saying that this will somehow stop flexible working is for the birds—it is not the case. We had flexible working long before we had zero-hours contracts. We survived then, we can survive now, and we will survive into the future.