Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he has taken to increase workers rights.

On 17 December 2018 we published the Good Work Plan, which sets out our vision for the future of the labour market and our ambitious plan for implementing the recommendations arising from the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices.

Since publishing the Good Work Plan, we have passed legislation that means:

• All workers receive a day one statement of rights setting out leave entitlements and pay;
• An maximum additional penalty that Employment Tribunals can use quadrupling from £5,000 to £20,000, helping ensure workers are protected from employers who show malice, spite or gross oversight;
• The ending of the Swedish Derogation, the legal loophole that enables some firms to pay agency workers on less than permanent staff, which will benefit up to 120,000 agency workers;
• New agency workers will receive a key facts page before signing up with an agency, providing them with greater clarity, particularly around their pay; and
• The threshold for an information and consultation request being reduced from 10% to 2% of employees, meaning a stronger voice in the workplace.

In delivering the Good Work Plan. we will also:

• Legislate to make improvements to the clarity of employment status tests to reflect the reality of modern working relationships;
• Bring forward proposals for consultation on creating a new, single labour market enforcement agency to better ensure that vulnerable workers are more aware of and can exercise their rights, and that businesses are more supported to comply with the law;
• Enforce holiday pay for vulnerable workers;
• Introduce a right to request a more predictable and stable contract;
• Launch a new scheme to name and shame, for the first time, employers who fail to pay employment tribunal awards.