I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) on bringing forward this very important Bill. I apologise: I may have mistakenly referred to him as the hon. Member for Blackpool North earlier; I know that can cause serious issues on occasion.
I will endeavour to keep my remarks brief as I am sure that Members across the House will wish to wrap up this debate and move the Bill on to the next stage of the legislative process as soon as possible. This appears to be a welcome piece of legislation, as measures to give workers the right to request more predictable terms and conditions of work are long overdue. Indeed, over the past decade we have seen an explosion in the use of unpredictable and exploitative zero-hours contracts that fail to guarantee for working people a set number of hours of work on set work schedules.
In 2010, just over 150,000 workers were employed on a zero-hours contract, but that number has risen dramatically, with more than 1 million now employed on such contracts, according to the latest release from the Office for National Statistics. As the hon. Member for Blackpool South highlighted, it does not reflect a rise in the number of people wanting flexible work, as such contracts offer flexibility only for employers, not for working people. It is a rise in the number of people who are being exploited in a dire employment market by bad bosses.
Under these contracts, working people feel pressured into accepting shifts, knowing that if they turn them down, they may not get any hours at all in future. Many are given hours at short notice: a TUC poll found that four in five were offered shifts with less than 24 hours’ notice, leaving them scrambling for childcare cover or transport to work, often at great cost. They are left entirely at the whim of the employer and, as a result, zero-hours contract workers find it next to impossible to plan their finances on time, thereby holding them back and holding back our economy. Is it really any wonder why our productivity is so poor compared with other countries when working people are exploited in this way? Women and those from an ethnic minority background are more likely to be exploited by zero-hours contracts, entrenching the discrimination they already face in the workplace.
I was, then, pleased that in their December 2018 good work plan the Government accepted that this is an issue that faces our economy in the 21st century and that action is needed to protect people’s rights in the modern world of work. However, as for many other pieces of legislation to address the injustices faced by working people, we have been waiting for far too long to see a Bill like this on the Floor of the House. Matthew Taylor published his review of modern working practices in July 2017 and it took another year and a half for the Government to publish their good work plan in December 2018. Although they accepted the recommendation to create a right to request a contract that guarantees hours for those on zero-hours contracts, it is not until now—more than four years later—that we are seeing legislation to give effect to it.
Why did the Government not include this legislation in the employment Bill that they have repeatedly promised from the Dispatch Box but appear now to have dropped? Such a Bill offered a clear opportunity to introduce the statutory right to request more predictable terms and conditions, as well as the opportunity to strengthen protections for pregnant women and new parents, to introduce a statutory right to carer’s leave and to protect people from harassment in the workplace—today alone we have considered Bills on all those things.
I want to be absolutely clear that the next Labour Government will, within the first 100 days of our taking office, move to put on the statute book our new deal for working people, which will ban zero-hours contracts and contracts without a minimum number of guaranteed hours. It will ensure that everyone working regular hours for 12 weeks or more will gain a right to a regular contract that will reflect the hours normally worked. It will ensure that all workers get reasonable notice of any change in shifts or working time, with wages for any shift cancelled without appropriate notice being paid to workers in full.
We will, of course, support this Bill. I look forward to seeing it progress to Committee very soon, so that we waste no more time to enhance much-needed rights for working people.
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