Clause 1
Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill
11:15 am
Adam Price (Spokesperson (Communities and Local Government; Culture, Media and Sport; Defence; Transport; Ministry of Justice); Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Plaid Cymru)
I am suitably admonished. I was trying to tempt the hon. Lady in my direction, but it did not work.
Nevertheless, the amendment has raised some interesting issues, and some of us may not be as far from each other as we appear to be. I cannot speak on behalf of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston, but those of us who support the Bill did not intend, for example, recruitment consultancies working for investment banks in the City of London to be caught in the net of the Bill. Although the workers they deal with might now be vulnerable, given the way the economy is, they are not vulnerable in the sense meant in the Bill.
The fear expressed by several hon. Members—we are not lapsing into a conspiracy theory—is that if the Bill were passed, some employment businesses could reinvent themselves as employment agencies or mask their employment business-related activities so that we ended up with exactly the same circumstances. For example, there is the construction industry scheme under which groups of workers are recruited by employment agencies. They are technically self-employed, and that allows the end-user to avoid giving them the same set of rights and conditions that they would enjoy as direct employees.
Philip Davies rose—