Schedule 6 - Minor and consequential amendments
Employment Bill
9:30 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for outlining the purpose of the new clause. Notwithstanding our more acrimonious exchanges during the previous sitting of the Committee, I hope that we can consider how the new clause will work. At the Minister's suggestion, I shall make a couple of general remarks, and go through our detailed amendments, but not the ones that the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and for Weston-super-Mare (Brian Cotter) have tabled. I shall then make a few concluding remarks about the new clause, so that the Minister can respond to the issues raised by the amendments.
I would like to place on the record my support for flexible working. It helps all of us with what I prefer to call the work-family balance, rather than the work-life balance. It also recognises that life has become increasingly complex, and that patterns of work are less rigid. Fewer people work in jobs in which it is necessary for them to be regimented in the way they work. One hopes and expects that as the economy moves up the value-added curve, more people are involved in jobs that have a flexible pattern of work. I urge the Government to recognise the need for diversity in patterns of work.
What are rather pejoratively called unconventional work patterns will become the norm in the near future. That reflects current labour force dynamics. Most businesses in this country say that their biggest problem is not lack of demand, capital or finance but a lack of qualified, skilled staff. In those circumstances, it makes sense to structure work patterns to accommodate as many of the population as possible who want to, and are able to, work.
I will take some shaking from my belief that the Government's role should be to focus on the macroeconomic management of the economy to ensure buoyancy that creates tight labour market conditions and compels workers and management to move higher up the value-added curve, and attain better-paid, better value-added employment. That is in everyone's interest. Ultimately, although it may be a disappointing thought to Ministers and civil servants who toil over such matters, no amount of Government exhortation will create well-paid, secure and flexible employment. Only a vibrant, buoyant economy with intrinsic strength can do that.
I encourage the Government to focus on that aspect of their role, and to be a little humble about the extent to which they can influence the long-term structure of the labour market through legislation.
At the risk of boring the Committee, my views are coloured by what I saw when I worked in Germany in the 1980s. Everyone appeared to be wearing a nice pair of blinkers. They could see the wonderful package that was available and the marvellous in-work benefits that they received from their employers, but were oblivious to the fact that jobs were being exported. I will not say that they were being exported east, north, south and west because it was mainly east and south, but jobs were being exported at a phenomenal rate of knots. The consequences are evident in Germany now. That is just a word of warning to the Government.
I was disappointed by the drafting of the new clause. Following the pattern of the Bill to date, it should have been three new clauses. A new clause has been used each time that a different new section has been inserted into different pieces of legislation. New clause 2 has a curious architecture. The first subsection reads:
''The Employment Rights Act 1996 (c.18) is amended as follows.''
The next subsection simply states:
''After Part 8 there is inserted—''
That is completely out of line with the rest of the Bill. It should say something like ''After part 8 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 the following is inserted''. Some of the language in the new clause is very odd. On closer examination, it is clear that it has been taken verbatim from the Bain taskforce report, particularly new section 80G.
I accept that the Government are sensitive to the issue of balance and have sought to put into primary legislation the exact prescription of the taskforce, fearful, no doubt, that to change a single word or comma would lead to one side or the other saying that the compromise had been upset. The result is some unparliamentary language and certain things that appear to be frankly wrong.
I should like to draw the Minister on another issue. The flexible working measure introduces new statutory rights for workers with small children. They do not apply to those with a caring responsibility for a disabled relative over the age of 18 or those who are looking after an elderly parent rather than throwing that parent to the mercy of the local social services. The Committee must recognise what is happening. We are singling out one group, perhaps a very deserving group, for special treatment, and that will be at a cost to other groups.
Many employers operate flexible approaches to requests for variations to working conditions by employees. Some of them do so voluntarily because they think that it is good practice, others do so because they know that good staff are like gold dust and if they do not accede to the request, the employee will find another job that is more suited to their needs. There is a danger that employers who have juggled flexible arrangements for different employees, on the basis of employees' individual needs, and have perhaps prioritised in their own minds those who are the most deserving and in need of the flexible approach,
will now have no flexibility. That flexible approach will need to be available, if the business has the capacity to make it so, to all employed parents with small children. This may mean making it unavailable to some people to whom it would have been available otherwise. By virtue of this legislation, parents of small children will be privileged.
We also have to recognise that, as we move into this world of accommodating people's family requirements in the workplace, there will be winners and there will be losers. There have been some well-publicised cases over the past few months. For example, there a policewoman established that she did not have to work certain shifts because it interfered with her family life. Workers on the London underground have the same issue, not having to work unsocial hours because of interference with their family life. That is all fine.
That may, however, create is a very new and interesting form of indirect sex discrimination. Typically—it will not happen in every case, and I am sure that the Minister can quote examples—women will argue that, because they have small children or caring responsibilities, they cannot work night shifts or flexible shift patterns and need to work standard daily patterns or shortened daily hours.
One can fully sympathise with that, but the Bill does not come cost free. For every policewoman—and our police force increasingly comprises women; they are an ever-growing minority group of the total force—who does not work her routine rota of night shifts, a policeman will have to work additional night shifts. For every London underground worker who can work only during the day, another will have to do more than his or her fair share of the night shifts.
I invite the Committee to consider carefully the fact that when we grant privileges in the work place to one group, other groups will suffer as a consequence—women without children, men and older people who no longer have direct family responsibilities. The provision is not a cost-free option: it does not cost employers, but it will cost other employees in the workplace. We must be careful when we impose privileges by statute for certain people that we do not inadvertently cause undue distress and harm to other people.