Zero-hours Contracts

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

That depends on what the hon. Gentleman means. I think he is merely saying what is obvious, although it may need restating—that we are dealing in the wake of the financial crisis with very weak labour markets, and not just in the UK. This has had impacts on wages and on the nature of contracts. The question for the Government and legislators is whether the problems around zero-hours contracts are the symptom or the cause. The hon. Gentleman is right that the problem interacts quite powerfully with the minimum wage issue. I have made it clear that I want the Low Pay Commission to look at the minimum wage in a more positive way, but it is, of course, an independent commission and it is not my job to tell or prescribe to it how the minimum wage could evolve. I want to respect the institution that the hon. Gentleman and his Government set up.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Let me take the right hon. Gentleman back to his earlier point when he was, as ever, berating Labour for not taking action. Has he not chosen his own priorities? If he thinks that the previous Government were dilatory on the issue, why has he not taken it up sooner? Other legislation, including to take away people’s employment rights, has been passed, so he has had time to do this if he wanted to.

[Vince Cable]

To help us move on from this point, let me say that I am the first Business Secretary out of the last seven or eight—I cannot remember exactly when the issue first came to the surface—who is actually taking action on the issue. Action will emerge from the consultation. We recognise that there is a problem and we recognise that there are some abusive situations, but we also recognise some positive things about zero-hours contracts, which I shall come to in a moment. We have determined to take action, and I am the first Secretary of State to have done so for a long time, after a whole series of Labour predecessors who, for whatever reason, decided not to.

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[Vince Cable]

I will finish my list of points.

Another group is students, some of whom are looking for work experience, and most of whom want to be in a flexible arrangement that reflects the fact that their timetable varies. Another group—a very important one—is people with family and caring responsibilities. For someone in that position, the most important attraction of a job is to be able to say no when work is offered, without facing disciplinary procedures, and to be on a contract that explicitly acknowledges that work can be declined.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does the Secretary of State not realise that there is a huge difference between someone who wants to work part-time and to know what part-time hours they have, and a situation where they do not know and have no control over the hours they work? The notion that it is easy for people on such contracts to say, “I won’t take those hours because they do not suit my child care arrangements this week” is not the reality that many people are facing.

[Vince Cable]

I am going on to explain some of the problems and, sometimes, abuses that we encounter, some of which are of the kind that the hon. Lady describes. I am trying to set out both sides of the argument. The arguments are quite complex, and the more we dig into the evidence, the more it becomes clear that there is not a simple black-and-white approach to these problems. Let me take her challenge. Clearly, there are abusive situations, and I will go through some of the most obvious ones.

The first was mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State: exclusivity arrangements, where people are bound into a contract with one employer and are not offered any hours, but cannot take employment from someone else. At first sight, that is a very unsatisfactory arrangement. We discovered that that kind of arrangement operated, for example, with the staff at Buckingham palace. When we pursued it, we discovered that one reason is security vetting, as the arrangement prevents people from being able to pop in and out of different firms. I do not know whether that is the justification in the case of Buckingham palace; there is some complexity to the argument. In general terms, however, I would accept that exclusivity is a very, very undesirable practice.

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[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I visited a constituent who had initially presented with a problem about paying her rent. She was in arrears and was worried about what was happening. However, the reason for her problem—the kind of work she did—quickly emerged. She was a care worker on a zero-hours contract, but did not get flexibility. She had to wait for a text message—this is a new form of having to go down to the docks and standing in a queue—to see if she was going to have work. In that week, she had been given two evenings of work at very short notice—this creates substantial problems for people’s ability to plan.

We have to address the underlying issues. Why is this happening in care, which is such an important area of work? There is a knock-on effect on the quality of care. If people do not know until the last minute whether they are going to be working, the recipient of care has no idea who will be visiting them. That is important to the quality of care and to the security of those receiving care. Those who suffer from Alzheimer’s find it particularly disturbing and distressing for carers to be changed all the time. The issue is broader than the employment conditions of my constituents; it is about quality of care.

Why is this happening? It did not use to happen. It did not happen in my city when most home care was carried out by those directly employed by the council. A lot of home care was put out to tender in my city under the council run by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party. It decided to save money and boasted to the local newspapers about how it had saved the council tax payer £2 million, but at what cost and whose cost? Companies put in cheap bids to show how we could all save money and they now have to make up that money in how they employ their employees.

This is not an accident, nor is it abuse by bad employers; it is a structural issue. I am concentrating on care, but I am sure there are other areas where this is happening. If we want this to change, we have to be much more honest about the cost of care and how we are going to pay for it. It is not enough to provide care on a shoestring. I emphasise that I am talking about Scotland. People sometimes think we have cracked the care problem because we have free personal care, but councils such as mine have only been able to manage that process—they were given no extra money to help them do it—by contracting out. The contractors have set up these kinds of employment arrangements to make it work. It is not good for the people who need care, it is not good for employees and it is not good for the rest of us.

The situation is getting worse. It is easy to say that there were always some of these kinds of contracts, but a large department store in my city was employing one of my constituents on a part-time basis for many years. It was part time and that suited her. What did not suit her, however, was being told, “Sorry, we cannot offer you this kind of contract anymore; we can only offer you a zero-hours contract where you may have to work in the evening, at weekends or on Sundays.” That was not going to help her with her child care. When she argued the point and said, “I can’t do this,” the response was, “Well, go and find another job. There are plenty of people who can.”

This is a changing employment pattern that has been getting worse, and I do not think it is altogether accidental. It fits the narrative of the Government’s welfare reform programme. During the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, there was much waxing lyrical from the Government Benches about the joys of mini-jobs—small jobs that people would be able to do because of the structure of the new benefit. That fits very well with zero-hours contracts, because the state will be subsidising employers by making it easier for them to give people mini-jobs with zero-hours contracts and they will hopefully be able to survive because their income will be topped up.

In the debate there has been an illusion about the choices that people are able to make. Self-employed contractors have the freedom to choose to work when they want to, usually on a pretty good hourly rate. There is a huge difference between choosing to work in that way and it being the only choice an employee has. Having control over working hours and a working pattern is very different from being forced to work. There is no choice if it is the only work on offer and it is the employer, not the individual, who decides when to work—that is a major difference. It can be very nice for individuals to be flexible if they have a choice about their working arrangements. That is not what so many of my constituents now face.