Opposition Day — [7th Allotted Day] — Zero-hours Contracts

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:19 pm on 16 October 2013.

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Photo of Sheila Gilmore Sheila Gilmore Labour, Edinburgh East 3:19, 16 October 2013

I visited a constituent who had initially presented with a problem about paying her rent. She was in arrears and was worried about what was happening. However, the reason for her problem—the kind of work she did—quickly emerged. She was a care worker on a zero-hours contracts, but did not get flexibility. She had to wait for a text message—this is a new form of having to go down to the docks and standing in a queue—to see if she was going to have work. In that week, she had been given two evenings of work at very short notice—this creates substantial problems for people’s ability to plan.

We have to address the underlying issues. Why is this happening in care, which is such an important area of work? There is knock-on effect to the quality of care. If people do not know until the last minute whether they are going to be working, the recipient of care has no idea who will be visiting them. That is important to the quality of care and to the security of those receiving care. Those who suffer from Alzheimer’s find it particularly disturbing and distressing for carers to be changed all the time. The issue is broader than the employment conditions of my constituents; it is about quality of care.

Why is this happening? It did not used to happen. It did not happen in my city when most home care was carried out by those directly employed by the council. A lot of home care was put out to tender in my city under the council run by the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National party. It decided to save money and boasted to the local newspapers about how it had saved the council tax payer £2 million, but at what cost and whose cost? Companies put in cheap bids to show how we could all save money and they now have to make up that money by how they employ their employees.

This is not an accident, nor is it abuse by bad employers; it is a structural issue. I am concentrating on care, but I am sure there are other areas where this is happening. If we want this to change, we have to be much more honest about the cost of care and how we are going to pay for it. It is not enough to provide care on a shoestring. I emphasise that I am talking about Scotland. People sometimes think we have cracked the care problem because we have free personal care, but councils such as mine have only been able to manage that process—they were given no extra money to help them do it—by contracting out. The contractors have set up these kinds of employment arrangements to make it work. It is not good for the people who need care, it is not good for employees and it is not good for the rest of us.

The situation is getting worse. It is easy to say that there were always some of these kinds of contracts, but a large department store in my city was employing one of my constituents on a part-time basis for many years. It was part time and that suited her. What did not suit her, however, was being told, “Sorry, we cannot offer you this kind of contract anymore; we can only offer you a zero-hours contract where you may have to work in the evening, at weekends or on Sundays.” That was not going to help her with her child care. When she argued the point and said, “I can’t do this,” the response was, “Well, go and find another job. There are plenty of people who can.”

This is a changing employment pattern that has been getting worse, and I do not think it is altogether accidental. It fits the narrative of the Government’s welfare reform programme. During the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill, there was much waxing lyrical from the Government Benches about the joys of mini-jobs—small jobs that people would be able to do because of the structure of the new benefit. That fits very well with zero-hours contracts, because the state will be subsidising employers by making it easier for them to give people mini-jobs with zero-hours contracts and they will hopefully be able to survive because their income will be topped up.

In the debate there has been an illusion about the choices that people are able to make. Self-employed contractors have the freedom to choose to work when they want to, usually on a pretty good hourly rate. There is a huge difference between choosing to work in that way and it being the only choice an employee has. Having control over working hours and a working pattern is very different from being forced to work. There is no choice if it is the only work on offer and it is the employer, not the individual, who decides when to work—that is a major difference. It can be very nice for individuals to be flexible if they have a choice about their working arrangements. That is not what so many of my constituents now face.