Job Insecurity

Russell Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

It is a current problem, but it is a declining problem. The trend over the past year is striking: the new jobs being created are full-time jobs and part-time employment is declining. Of course, there are a lot of people who took part-time employment under very difficult conditions who now want full-time work. If the recovery is sustained, as it must be, then this problem will resolve itself, but I accept that there are a lot of people in unsatisfactory employment situations.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

We have now had nearly four years of talking about the numbers of people who are unemployed and the number who are employed. Does the Secretary of State have the figures for the number of hours worked on a weekly basis? Is he able to track that over the past three or four years?

[Vince Cable]

I do not have those figures, but I am sure we could get them. I am sure my colleague the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will dig them out for him. I am sure that they reflect the pattern I describe that, certainly over the last year, full-time employment is rising relative to part-time employment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I want to begin by reminding colleagues of exactly where we have come from over the last couple of decades. When I entered the House in 1997, in my communities there were many households where families were working flat-out. Many women in particular were holding down two, and sometimes three, jobs in order to make ends meet. Frankly, for many families there was little or no quality family time as parents operated like ships that passed in the night; as one parent came in the door from work, the other was quite often leaving, or at least soon thereafter, to go out and do their job. Work-life balance was not even a thought for many households.

The then Labour Opposition gave a commitment to introduce a national minimum wage, which the then Conservative Government laughed at saying it would lead to the loss of about 1 million jobs. The evidence showed that if we took £1 million and gave it to the poorest-paid workers, it had the potential to create between 35 and 40 jobs. I served on the national minimum wage Committee stage, as did you, Mr Speaker. I distinctly remember two or three long nights when we sat through the night to get that legislation passed.

What effect did that national minimum wage have? In my area we depend very much on small and medium-sized businesses, but there was a recognition that by paying the poorest people additional income, that money “washed around” in the local economy, giving local businesses the confidence perhaps to take on another member of staff as prospects looked brighter. If every small business had taken on one new member of staff at that time, there would have been no unemployment, and that is still the position today. If every small and medium-sized enterprise took on one additional member of staff, we would have no unemployment. The big issue, however, is whether businesses feel confident enough to do that. They are looking for a degree of certainty, and a glimmer of hope that there will be a brighter future.

I put it to the Secretary of State that there might well be a recovery going on out there, but it is pretty patchy across the various parts of the United Kingdom. Any economic recovery that has taken place under this Government has involved a race to the bottom for those who earn the lowest wages and have the fewest rights at work. People at work are being hit by rising insecurity, as Ministers have made it easier for employers to fire rather than easier to hire, watered down people’s rights at work and compounded the cost of living crisis for many families. The Opposition have made it clear that we plan to ban zero-hours contracts when they exploit people, to end the scandal of false self-employment, to strengthen the national minimum wage and its enforcement and to incentivise employers to pay a living wage through “make work pay” contracts.

I want to finish by mentioning a couple of issues that have arisen in my own area. As I have said on many occasions, it is an area with a low-wage economy. I am not, however, one of those individuals who is constantly moaning, and we are now, thankfully, seeing a slight increase in the average wage in rural south-west Scotland. It has moved from being around 24% below the UK national average to being between 18% and 19% below it. One of the big crises in our area is youth unemployment, which remains stubbornly high at 6.1%, compared with the UK average of 4.9%. It has remained at that high level for many years. It is all very well for us in this House to talk about young people being our future; those young people are there today. They are the future, but that is what is happening today.

A major ferry company operating in my area is now considering exploiting a loophole that would enable it to get rid of its UK crews and bring in crews from non-European economic area countries. That could involve seafarers who, in some parts of the world, are being paid as little as £2.41 an hour. I put it to the Secretary of State that that is a disgrace. It represents the sheer, naked exploitation of a loophole that exists in this country, and I would have expected much more of the company involved. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will look seriously at what can be done to close that loophole.

The other issue came to light in my office towards the end of last week. I have a young constituent who is a single parent. She has been on a zero-hours contract for some time. She wants to establish a business, but her contract states that if she leaves her employment, she cannot go on to do similar work elsewhere within three months. She wants to develop her own business, but she is being told not only that she cannot take on similar work or run a business within three months of leaving that company, but that she cannot work within a 10-mile radius of where she is currently working. Her employers have pulled her in and told her that they are prepared to sack her and take her to court. The terms of that contract are unbelievable, and I sincerely hope that the Secretary of State will look at some of the contracts that people such as my constituent are having to tolerate in 2014. Finally, I thank him for the figures that he has given the House to illustrate the number of hours being worked per month, but I would like to see the figures for the past four years, if possible.