Clause 1
Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill
10:30 am
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but elsewhere in the Bill there is talk of joint and several liability between end-users and employment agencies for infringements of the Bill. Although he is right to say that our normal understanding would be that there is no ongoing relationship between the head-hunter and the person that they place in a permanent post, I am not sure that the Bill clearly excludes those head-hunters from its reach. Whatever other differences there are between us, I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that we should focus the discussion on people who are placed in temporary posts, however they are defined.
It is surely not our intention to start legislating for equal pay, perhaps unintentionally, in the field of head-hunters and permanent placements. Whether the amendment is the right way to deal with that, or whether my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston wishes to table his own amendment is a matter for him to consider. Both the draft European directive, which serves as the backdrop to the Bill, and any discussions around it have always focused on temporary agency workers. It has never been the intention to legislate in a way that would affect the recruitment industry as a whole when it places people in permanent posts.
Definitions are important, but I am not sure that they are clear at the moment. At the least we should ensure that the Bill focuses on temporary agency workers, which I believe is its intent given what it says in its long title. Whether the definitions do that is at least open to question.