Employment Rights: Government Plans

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

There is a clear and active discussion about working time and the quality of life for working people. Since time immemorial, that discussion has taken place. I have no doubt that it will be a subject for debate and consideration between now and the next election, and way beyond. It is a perfectly proper area of debate.

The Secretary of State has spent a career calling for employment protections to be weakened, so he has a lot of ground to cover if he is to persuade the country’s 30 million-plus workers that he is on their side.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hard workers my hon. Friend is talking about includes the many British Gas workers in my constituency, GMB members I met last week. I was very surprised to be told by them that the chief executive of British Gas had called personally to put pressure on them to accept new, worse terms. Bizarrely, he suggested that senior Labour figures had endorsed that. Will my hon. Friend confirm that that is absolute nonsense, that we stand in solidarity with them and that British Gas should get back around the table for serious negotiations? Of course, I draw attention to my membership of the GMB and the support that it has provided me.

[Andy McDonald]

I am more than happy and delighted to confirm that that is utter and complete nonsense. Is it likely? I just ask people: is that really likely? Of course it is not.

If the Secretary of State now wants to say that the 48-hour cap, holiday pay entitlements and rest breaks will be protected, and that he will scrap the planned consultation, perhaps he can say so in unequivocal terms here today and vote for our motion.

Today’s motion also calls on the Government to set a timetable to introduce legislation to end “fire and rehire” tactics. It is not a new phenomenon, but it has gained prominence because of the conduct of major employers such as British Airways, Heathrow and British Gas—some in circumstances that they claim to be justified by the covid pandemic. It is about sacking workers and hiring them back on lower wages and worse terms and conditions, including 20,000 British Gas employees who kept working through the pandemic to keep customers’ homes warm and worked with the Trussell Trust to deliver food parcels. I think of the engineer who explained that he was often the only face that people living in isolation were seeing. This is how they are repaid.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

I just want to make something very clear and unequivocal at the outset: we will not reduce workers’ rights. There is no Government plan to reduce workers’ rights. As the new Secretary of State, I have been extremely clear that I do not want to diminish workers’ rights, and on my watch there will be no reduction in workers’ rights. I do not want there to be any doubt about my or the Government’s intentions in this area. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) were kind enough to send me a letter in my first week in the job asking for reassurances on this matter. I am happy to report that I have provided those reassurances, and I am very willing to provide them every time.

We will not row back on the 48-hour weekly working limit derived from the working time directive. We will not reduce the UK annual leave entitlement, which is already much more generous than the EU minimum standard. We will not row back on legal rights to breaks at work. I will say it again: there is no Government plan to reduce workers’ rights.

The Government have managed to have a record that is unimpeachable on this subject. Our manifesto promised, among other things, to get Brexit done and to maintain the existing level of protections for workers provided by our laws and regulations. We have delivered Brexit, and we will not use this new-found freedom to reduce workers’ rights. In any case, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough said, our higher standards were never dependent on our membership of the EU. The UK has one of the best employment rights records in the world. It is well known that in many areas the UK goes further than the EU on workers’ protections. We have one of the highest minimum wages in the world, and the Government are increasing this again for workers on 1 April, but in the EU there is no requirement to offer a minimum wage or sick pay. In the UK, people get over five weeks of annual leave, minimum; the EU requires only four weeks. In the UK, people get a year of maternity leave; the EU minimum is just 14 weeks. The EU has only just agreed rights to flexible working, over 15 years behind the UK. The Opposition are simply wrong to hold the EU up as the gold standard. Our equalities legislation, and our maternity and paternity entitlements, are already considerably better than the EU’s. Now we have left the EU, our Government and Parliament are able to decide what rules should apply and make improvements where we believe there is a need to do so.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have to make progress because lots of people want to speak in this debate.

We have already set out plans to make workplaces fairer. Our manifesto contains commitments to create a new single enforcement body for labour market abuses to give greater protections for workers, as well as plans to encourage greater flexible working. It is totally disingenuous for Labour to claim that we do not stand on the side of workers when our manifesto clearly says the direct opposite.

We will not take lectures on employment rights from Labour, because, as I said, our track record speaks for itself. It was a Conservative-led Government who introduced shared parental leave and pay in 2014, giving parents flexibility in who takes time away from work in the first year of their child’s life. It was a Conservative Government who introduced the national living wage in 2016, giving the lowest-paid workers the security of a higher wage to provide for themselves and their families. Ten years of progressive Conservative reforms pushed unemployment to a 45-year low. Before coronavirus hit, our employment rate was at a record high, with over 33 million people in work. By March last year, workers across the UK had enjoyed 26 consecutive months of real pay increases, and women and workers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds made up a larger proportion of the workforce than ever before.

[Stephen Doughty]

On fire and rehire specifically, will the Secretary of State give way?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have to make progress.

I know at first hand through my work as Energy Minister the importance of making sure that we have a high-wage, high-protection, high-skilled labour market to ensure that we can deliver the net zero transition and seize the opportunities of the green industrial revolution. The times have moved on. We have a new net zero focus, and clearly high wages and high skills are really at the centre of what we are trying to do as a Government.

That will be more crucial than ever as we rebuild our economy from the devastating impact of coronavirus. From the outset, the Government have acted decisively to provide an unprecedented package of support to protect our workers’ and our people’s livelihoods. The coronavirus job retention scheme, the first intervention of its kind in UK history, delivers countrywide support to protect millions of British workers. The scheme has helped 1.2 million employers across the UK to furlough 9.9 million jobs and has now been extended until April 2021.

Enforcement bodies are continuing to protect vulnerable workers and to work with businesses to promote compliance throughout the epidemic. We are concerned about reports suggesting that threats about firing and rehiring are being used as a negotiating tactic. We have been clear—

[Stephen Doughty]

The Secretary of State is speaking about fire and rehire, and his colleague the Chief Secretary to the Treasury told me that those tactics were completely unacceptable. Does the Secretary of State agree with those comments and does he share my concern? In September of last year, I met the chief executive of British Gas about that specific dispute and he tried to suggest that they were not using those tactics, despite having written to members in July to do just that. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is completely unacceptable in our labour market?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think it is unacceptable. I will go further—as a constituency MP, I have a large number of constituents in Spelthorne who work for British Airways and I spoke directly to the old CEO, Alex Cruz, who has since left the company, and made exactly the points that the hon. Gentleman has just made to me. It is not acceptable.