Employment Rights Bill

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

Carers UK’s research also tells us that almost half of all those who left employment early to fulfil a caring responsibility say that they would have stayed in employment longer, had carer’s leave on a paid basis existed. It seems clear that paid carer’s leave helps carers and those they care for, and it is good for our economy. I hope the Government can see that with the same clarity and do the right thing in supporting these vital Liberal Democrat amendments.

[Mrs Russell]

I need to highlight to the House that I am a member of the Community and USDAW trade unions, and I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I would like to speak to various bits of this legislation today. There is so much in it, and I know that so many of us on the Government Back Benches are really pleased with what we are bringing forward.

The first part of the legislation that I want to address is clause 22, which will bring forward in future legislation more protections for women who are pregnant, on maternity leave and in the period immediately following their maternity leave. I have spent the past 13 years representing large numbers of women who were either made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave or trying to come back from maternity leave, or whose employer suddenly woke up one morning and decided that they were underperforming, often within 24 hours of their announcing their pregnancy. I had a client who had been headhunted and brought into the company, was totally stellar, doing incredibly well and got promoted, but then announced her pregnancy and within a week she was on a performance plan. HR explained to her that because they were, you know, kind and did not want to do that to her while she was pregnant, they were very generously offering her a settlement agreement so that she did not have to go through that.

Lots of perfectly decent people do not understand why they are losing their jobs, and it is because they are pregnant. Pregnant Then Screwed found that 12.3% of women who have had a baby have either been sacked, constructively dismissed or made redundant while pregnant, on maternity leave or within a year of their maternity leave ending. It is a widespread problem, so it is fantastic that the Bill contains clause 22, which will allow the Minister to bring forward steps to expand the available protections. I would like to know how quickly we can do that, because pregnant women out there need that protection literally today.

[Lola McEvoy]

My hon. Friend, who has great expertise in this area, is making an eloquent speech. Does she agree that dismissals of pregnant women or new mothers are dramatically under-reported because of the use of non-disclosure agreements in a lot of companies while they are taking action against them?

[Mrs Russell]

I could talk about NDAs at some length, but I do not have time to today. They are definitely problematic, and they are definitely concealing the extent of the problems that women suffer when they announce their pregnancies.

The second element I like in the legislation is the improvements to the right to request flexible working. Those on the Conservative Benches have questioned why we would do this. The answer is that the term “part-timer” is still a term of abuse in this country. While that is still something that people say fairly regularly within workplaces and popular parlance, we still have a problem, so this legislation should help to improve that.

Conservative Members have talked a lot about clause 17 and the third-party harassment elements, and it is worth getting into some of the detail. The defence for an employer for failing to protect their staff from third-party harassment is taking all reasonable steps to prevent that harassment from occurring. Employment tribunals have been interpreting the meaning of “reasonable” for a long time, and in a discrimination claim there is essentially a three-part judiciary: a judge with legal experience, someone with employer experience, and someone with employee experience—sometimes from a trade union, but sometimes from elsewhere. When they talk about “all reasonable steps”, it is only reasonable steps; it is not every single step in the entire history of the universe that anyone could ever dream up or imagine.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The hon. Member is speaking powerfully. Does she agree that this amendment is being used by the Conservative party to condone something offensive and despicable, and that they are trying to defend the indefensible?

[Mrs Russell]

I completely and utterly agree with the hon. Member. Actually, a lot of what is coming from Conservative Members is scaremongering. A lot of those discussing this behave as if employees with unfair dismissal rights were unexploded bombs. All the people I represented did not want to bring tribunal claims; they just wanted to have been treated fairly and reasonably in the first place. They were typically extremely destressed by their experiences, and for quite a lot of them, their mental health had deteriorated substantially in the course of what they had gone through. I do not think that when people have unfair dismissal rights a little bit sooner, they will all be rushing to employment tribunals the moment that something goes slightly wrong in their workplace. What most people want to do every morning is get up, go to work, do a decent job, get paid for it and go home. That is what we will continue to see after this legislation passes: that most employers want to look after their employees perfectly reasonably, and most employees want to do a perfectly decent job.

[Joe Robertson]

I have been rather unsuccessful this afternoon in finding someone on the Government Benches who has concerns about the £5 billion cost to businesses that this Bill will bring. Will the hon. Member express concern over the £5 billion cost and the downward pressure on growth that this Bill brings, according to the Government’s own assessment?

[Mrs Russell]

My primary concern is that those on the Conservative Benches talk about employees as if they are, as I said, unexploded bombs, and they talk about employers as if they are unlikely ever to recruit anyone ever again, and I just do not believe that to be true. Most employers will make a sensible assessment of whether having an additional member of staff will benefit their business and then they will recruit them. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Thank you.

It is really important that we cut through the disinformation and scaremongering, and that when we take the legislation forward, ACAS has good information ready to go. It already has great information online— I encourage employers who are worried to look up ACAS information videos on YouTube and look at its factsheets. We must make it clear to people that they have access to sources of free advice, which is important for small businesses, so that they can see what is and is not required of them. The position being stated today is bluntly exaggerated and quite damaging as a result.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of my new clause 105. The labour abuse that it seeks to address is the wrongful use of substitution clauses by gig economy workers. To guarantee fairness and justice in the labour market, it is crucial that there be transparency, which can be delivered through the introduction of a comprehensive register of all dependent contractors. That will help to ensure that employment rights are upheld and pay is not suppressed through illegitimate competition, but it will also support the enforcement of right-to-work checks. The unlawful employment of migrants with no right to work here is not good for taxpayers, British workers or migrants who follow the rules, yet substitution clauses allow what have become known as “Deliveroo visas”—the industrial scale abuse of our immigration and labour laws.

Before addressing the substance of my new clause, I also commend new clause 30 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox), which I have sponsored. It would give special constables the right to take time off to carry out their police duties. Other public service volunteers, such as magistrates and councillors, receive that right.

I turn to my new clause 105. Ministers have said that they will consult on employment status and moving towards a two-part legal framework that identifies people who are genuinely self-employed. I support that ambition, and I am grateful to the Minister for his warm words in Committee, but my new clause provides a way to resolve a particular abuse and hold big employers in the gig economy to account.

There are 4.7 million gig economy workers in the UK, including 120,000 official riders at Uber Eats and Deliveroo, two of the largest delivery companies in the country. For years we have heard stories of the rampant labour market fraud and visa abuse committed by contractors related to those companies. From late 2018 to early 2019, there were 14,000 fraudulent Uber journeys, according to Transport for London. In addition to Uber and Deliveroo, Amazon and Just Eat have been linked to labour market abuses. Much of that abuse has come through the legal loophole created by substitution clauses.

Amazon tells its couriers that it is their

“responsibility to pay your substitute…at any rate you agree with them”

and

“you must ensure that any substitute…has the right to work in the UK”.

It is a dereliction of duty to pass responsibility for compliance with criminal and right-to-work checks on to workers, but those companies clearly have an interest in maintaining a status quo in which undocumented migrants take the lowest fees in delivery apps.

Data from the Rodeo app shows the effect of that abuse on riders’ order fees. Just Eat riders saw their fees drop by 14.4%, from £6.53 in 2021 to £5.59 in 2023. There was a 3.4% drop for Uber Eats order fees—from £4.36 to £4.21—during the same period. Deliveroo has blocked its order fee data from being published. Those figures are not adjusted for inflation, but it is clear to see how pay and conditions have worsened for riders. By undercutting domestic workers—British workers—and exploiting those with no legal right to be here, companies are privatising profits and socialising costs. Promises from such companies to introduce tougher security checks have not made the problem go away. We should all be appalled by this state of affairs, because nobody should be above the law.

During random checks two years ago, the Home Office found that two in five delivery riders who were stopped were working illegally. In the same month, 60 riders from Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat were arrested in London for immigration offences, including working illegally and holding false documentation. Last month, Deliveroo sacked more than 100 riders who shared their accounts with illegal migrants. But that is only the tip of the iceberg: insurance companies report unauthorised riders involved in motor and personal injury cases.

That is happening because undocumented migrants are renting rider accounts for between £70 and £100 a week. Profiles have been bought for as much as £5,000. The i Paper found more than 100,000 people on Facebook groups where identities have been traded for years, including one group that gained around 28,000 members in less than 18 months.

Illegal migrants are using social media apps to rent accounts and share information on a significant scale. Today, we only have figures from press investigations, but we can find copious examples across the internet with ease. Legal workers have reported problems to the police and the Home Office, but that has fuelled tensions as they compete for orders and has even led to violent clashes between legal and illegal riders in Brighton and London, including physical beatings and damage to bikes.

People working illegally for these big companies are working longer hours round the clock for lower fees, never knowing when their last payday might be. They use group chats to share information and evade Home Office immigration raids. We do not even know how many substitute riders there are for these companies at any given time. A spokesman for the App Drivers and Couriers Union says:

“Unfortunately there is this loophole that allows some bad people to come through. They are not vetted so they could do anything.”