Zero-hours Contracts

Debate between Tom Clarke and Paul Farrelly

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Farrelly]

The hon. Gentleman is correct; getting the right statistics is absolutely germane to implementing proper evidence-based policy. Coming from Dover, he will appreciate the example cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs Riordan) from her constituency, which sounded tantamount to some of the practices employed at ports in years gone by.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Like him, I have long been a trade unionist, in my case with the GMB, which shares his concerns. What he said about care workers was right, but will he also take on board the impact on their clients of the uncertainty that is created?

[Paul Farrelly]

My right hon. Friend is right to say that we must focus on the effects on not only the people themselves, but the services they provide. Only at the beginning of this week, on the “Today” programme, we had a vibrant discussion about what these employment practices mean on the ground for the amount of time that care workers are able to give to the people they are supposed to be looking after. That should be part and parcel of this continuing debate.

I welcome the Government’s call for consultation, but hope it is implemented properly, with a wide-ranging call for evidence. I wish to conclude with a few choice words for my own Front Benchers, too. I welcome my hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary’s opening remarks and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition’s commitment to remove some of the insecurity and vulnerability involved in these sorts of contracts, because taking advantage of vulnerability, a relationship where power resides all on one side, lies at the root of exploitation that a civilised society should simply not tolerate in the modern age.

I remind my hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary that fair treatment of agency workers was there in black and white in our 2005 manifesto. It was long before his time but he gets the point that I am coming on to, as he is nodding. In 2007, I and many of my hon. Friends sought to put that pledge into effect through a private Member’s Bill, the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill. The Government, though—and it was before my hon. Friend’s time—far from welcoming that with open arms fought us, bayonets fixed, in the trenches. It took our late colleague, the former Member for Crewe and Nantwich, Gwyneth Dunwoody, at her magisterial best to press a closure motion in the Chamber against Government filibustering even to give that Bill an airing.

The Bill was followed by another private Member’s Bill in 2008, sponsored by my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) and again contested. Eventually the Prime Minister—our Prime Minister—relented, the agency workers directive was implemented but the compromise, with a 12-week qualifying period open to all sorts of abuse, was not a happy one. I am not recounting this for old time’s sake or gratuitously to open old wounds. That measure was aimed at tackling the unfairness and insecurity, the fear of substitution by cheaper agency workers, people on cheaper contracts which, for example, lay at the root of many people’s support for parties such as the British National party and their fears about immigration. Business opposed that measure, as it opposed the minimum wage.

The Government were content to go along with and, frankly, acquiesce in what I would call economic growth on the cheap, but nothing comes cheap. Nothing comes for free. There is always a price to pay and we certainly saw the political effects with the rise of the British National party, and in many areas the UK Independence party. I am glad to see that we on the Opposition Benches have now got it fully, as is clear from everything that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said about levelling up, not levelling down, and not engaging in a doomed race to the bottom.

To conclude, I look forward to continuing to pursue the Government to have a proper consultation on zero-hours contracts and to look at wider aspects of the issue, such as short hours working and the use of agency workers. I look forward also to safeguards being included in our manifesto and being implemented by a Labour Government after 2015.