I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) and the hon. Member for Watford (Dean Russell) on all their work on this Bill. It will make such a difference to so many people across the country, and I declare an interest, because it will make a difference for two of my older children who are working in and out of the hospitality industry and are very interested in the progress of the Bill.
The Bill is righting a wrong of many decades. When I was a waitress in a hotel, I had to drive home at the end of my shift. I was the most junior member of staff, and all the other staff lived in the hotel and would drink the tips at the end of every night, so I would not get any of those tips. I was not able to ask my employer for a written copy of the policy on tips, and I was not able to find out what my share of the tips would be. I have felt for quite a long time that that was an injustice, and I am glad that the Bill will right the many injustices that are happening on a daily basis across the country.
I support rewarding customer service and transparency and confidence for businesses, customers and employees alike. This is fairer for businesses that do the right thing. It is fairer for people who tip and expect it to go to the worker; as many Members have said, lots of things are not clear about that at the moment, and I hope it will be much clearer in future. It is also fairer for the employee, who will get the money that has been given by customers for the work they have done. Labour supports the Bill, and I am pleased to see that the Government are behind it as well. It also has the support of unions—especially the GMB, which has been campaigning on this for a long time—and UKHospitality.
Like other Members, I am surprised that there is no law on tips at the moment. However, as I said in the previous debate, this measure should have been in a comprehensive employment Bill, which has been promised time and again by Government. It is disgraceful that all this time, hospitality workers and workers in the beauty industry have been cheated out of their money. It is clear that some hospitality workers are not getting their tips, with companies instead using them to subsidise other workers’ wages, to pay for accidents such as unpaid customer bills or to pay for so-called administration costs that are very opaque. In 2015, evidence was found that two thirds of employers in hospitality were making deductions from staff tips, in some cases of 10%. With the pandemic and more people paying by card not cash, there are well-founded concerns that workers not receiving tips in full is becoming standard practice, so this law is very timely.
The Government have repeatedly promised to tackle this issue but failed to do so until now. They published a call for evidence in 2013, which showed broad support for action on fair tipping. They then promised this measure at the Conservative party conference in 2018 and in the 2019 Conservative party manifesto, and they committed to include it in the employment Bill in
December 2019, but that was dropped from the last two Queen’s Speeches. In the meantime, the latest figures suggest that staff may have lost over £1 billion of tips while waiting for this legislation over the last five years.
Frontline workers in pubs, bars, cafés, restaurants, hairdressers and beauty salons are often the lowest paid. With the Tories’ cost of living crisis worsening by the week, every penny counts, and we desperately need this legislation. In 2020, members of Unite the union at the Ivy tried to lodge a collective grievance against their employer on a number of issues, including withholding tips, but with no formally legally backed process to take the complaint forward, this was dismissed.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for his speech highlighting how important the Bill will be for so many of his constituents, especially for the hospitality sector and for students, and I agree with him. I am proud that it was a Labour Government who, in 2009, first intervened in this issue to make it illegal for tips to contribute to the national minimum wage, just as I am proud that, some years earlier, it was the Labour Government who introduced the national minimum wage itself.