The Future of Work

Seema Malhotra Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I join colleagues in congratulating the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing this debate on the future of work, and on her speech. The range of contributions that we have heard from hon. Members, and the thought that has gone into each, show that the issue should, increasingly, be on the parliamentary radar.

The hon. Member for East Renfrewshire was right: the status quo is not good enough, and we cannot go back to the past. Many issues have been raised. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) talked about the importance of effective employment programmes. My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) rightly said that technology is not destiny and that the future is far from certain. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) talked about how building back better cannot be left to the market, talking about a role for Government, communities and the unions. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—it is always a pleasure to speak in a debate with him—talked about worrying times for the nation. He is absolutely right. This is an issue that we must all face together, with the concerns of our constituents very much at the forefront of our minds. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked effectively about dignity, identity, self-worth, and the need to reshape our economy and to look at sector councils.

I want to build on some of those themes. The issue has many dimensions. Technological change is creating the future. To some extent, it might replace work but in truth it might also not replace work—it might create those new jobs. How we embrace and shape the technology and changes of the future is down to the choices that we make. Past mistakes cannot be allowed to continue. We should not come out of this period with greater division than we saw not just going into the crisis but before, and with a deeper digital divide creating those who are in and those who are out of prosperity in future.

The imperative that a decent society does not leave people behind must be our priority. Employment will be one of the key themes of 2021. What has to be critical is not just how we create good work and jobs for the future, but access to those jobs and fair and decent pay to go with them. Why is that? Because more than 1 million jobs have been lost during the crisis. Vacancies remain 30% below pre-crisis levels, and forecasts suggest that unemployment will remain substantially above its pre-pandemic level well into 2022.

Too many entered the pandemic in an already precarious position. More than 12 million households began the year with less than £1,500 in savings. They have been hit hard as jobs and income have been reduced. Jobs are becoming less resilient, not more. The latest ONS figures show that more than 1 million people are on zero-hours contracts, almost double the number in 2013. Ethnic minorities, young people, single mothers and the lowest paid have seen their employment hit the hardest, with a double hit on BAME communities disproportionately affected by the health crisis. As has been said, they are the least likely to be able to work at home and those who will struggle for access to the new jobs of the future.

Yesterday, the Government announced an additional £8 billion for green funding for the future. That is welcome, but it does not remotely meet the scale of what is needed to tackle the climate emergency and is far smaller than the €27 billion pledged by France or the €38 billion by Germany. That is why Labour has launched its own jobs-rich green recovery action plan, which includes action to recover jobs, and investment and co-ordination to secure up to 400,000 good, green additional jobs; to retrain workers by equipping them with the skills needed; to deploy the green technologies of the future; and to rebuild business with a stronger social contract between Government and businesses to tackle the climate crisis and ecological deterioration, while promoting prosperity and employment.

I will also make mention of co-operative strategies, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for York Central. A co-operative strategy for recovery that builds from the bottom up, looking at community resilience in our recovery, is an important part of our future. Indeed, those are themes to be discussed at the West London Business conference tomorrow on the future of aviation and communities.

The future of work must mean fair work, and a social security system fit for purpose. Too many workers have had inadequate employment rights and precious little bargaining power. The pandemic has highlighted that the social security system that should underpin those workers’ autonomy in the labour market is woefully inadequate.

It is also important for the Government urgently to conduct and publish an assessment of the financial barriers to self-isolation, including the level of statutory sick pay. If such gaps are not filled, a cohort of people will continue into the next period having to make an impossible choice between self-isolating and putting food on the table. We need to support people back into work, so I hope that the Minister will reconsider the punitive culture behind benefit sanctions, brought back by the Government in July.

The future of work—a resilient, inclusive future, with good work for all—is critical as we think about how we build back better. The theme is now international, reflected in recent reports on the future of work published by the World Economic Forum, the International Labour Organisation, the OECD, the RSA and, of course, the Institute for the Future of Work, which I thank for its work supporting the APPG and its briefing in advance of this debate. Many of these debates look at the acceleration of changes in workforce practices, including the advent of automation and AI.

As change comes, however, we must lead rather than lag. There is a need to review concerns around workers’ rights and protections as labour market structures change, and issues around the future of good work and of workplaces post-covid must be matters for debate and policy. It is not a new area: 30 November marks the fourth anniversary of the launch of the Taylor review, which looked at insecure and exploitative work, the quality of work, and modern workplace values. It is time to refresh that: the Government have only passed legislation on seven of the 53 recommendations to date, despite accepting much of that report. Furthermore, in an answer to a parliamentary question today Ministers were still not able to define when the Employment Bill will be coming to Parliament.

Many employers have sought to do the right thing by employees in the uncertain period in which we live, and unions have been working closely with many of them. Other employers have sought to take advantage of the pandemic to erode workers’ pay and terms and conditions, as discussed in the “fire and rehire” debates in the House. That has exposed the need to strengthen our offer to workers and to enhance the protection afforded them. It also raises how vital it is that we listen to workers and include their views in how we shape the future of work.

According to research by the Fabian Society, some 58% of workers say that they are given no opportunity to influence how technology is used in their workplace. Emerging technological change in workplace practices must look at improved transparency, accountability and involvement: that should be at the centre of any Government plan. That plan could include how the Government will work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people, as well as tackling insecure work and low pay, and transforming the training opportunities available to people at every stage of their lives, with schools, further education and higher education all part of that.

That is why it is so important to reconsider and rethink the proposed cuts to the union learning fund, which is so effective and vital to adult education. It is also important to take tough action to raise standards and root out exploitation in lower paid under-regulated sectors. An ambitious vision for how technology can be used to open up and improve opportunities for all workers should be core and part of a commitment to ensuring that the future of work is resilient and inclusive. Alongside that, we should also be looking to explore and review rights such as the right to disconnect, giving remote and electronically connected workers the tools to disconnect to ensure that their mental health and work-life balance are protected and respected. That issue was highlighted effectively by the union Prospect.

We must look at effective employment support. People must have access to work for the future. Opportunities for access must come through effective Government schemes; the latest figures show that the Government’s Kickstart scheme has so far created opportunities for around 3% of the 600,000 unemployed young people.

We also need to make sure that these are high-quality placements with built-in training opportunities for young people that provide a transition into longer-lasting employment, so that around the country opportunities for young people are sustained into a long-term future. That is important because effective support in work and out of work—including an effective social security system that supports workers—is vital. People will be looking to switch jobs following changes in the labour market perhaps 11 times, on average, in their lifetime. That is very different from the world in which past generations grew up.

In conclusion, future generations will judge us by the choices we make today to support livelihoods and businesses, tackle the unemployment crisis, and face up to the realities of the climate emergency. An economic plan needs a jobs plan, and a jobs plan needs a skills plan. A credible green recovery with sustainable jobs—something that people across the world are looking to—requires co-ordinated action across Government, harnessing investment and regulation, working alongside local government and the private and voluntary sectors to deliver system-wide change right across our country. We cannot let the failure to address pre-covid inequalities, laid bare by this crisis, now be an injustice that we allow to be passported into the future.