Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I would have thought that hundreds of years of parliamentary sovereignty and a robust and independent judiciary are a very strong guarantee of the rights we have in this country.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Does the point made by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) not hammer home the fact that one moment the Opposition are saying that this House should be sovereign on article 50 and all matters to do with Brexit, and in another that this House should not be trusted with employment law? Is there not a deep irony there?

[Greg Clark]

I share my hon. Friend’s puzzlement at the lack of confidence in the institutions that we are very proud of in this country. I am astonished by it.

As we leave the European Union, the Prime Minister has indicated that it is our intention to give businesses and workers the certainty they should expect. When the great repeal Bill was announced in October, this Government clearly stated, and we reiterate today, that all EU law in this area will be brought into British law. I hope the House will agree that that will give certainty and continuity to employees and employers alike, creating a stability in which the UK can grow and thrive.

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[Greg Clark]

Opposition Members should attend with greater courtesy to my hon. Friend, who speaks with a great deal of experience and knowledge of rights for parents who have suffered bereavement. He has made excellent speeches about that in the House. His private Member’s Bill, which has a huge amount to commend it, would allow bereaved parents to have time off to deal with the consequences of an infant death in their family. I look forward to working with him to make use of his knowledge and wisdom, and to see whether, through the reforms that we will introduce, we can capture the spirit of what he says. I am grateful for his intervention today and his earlier contributions.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way again—he is being extremely generous in taking interventions. Does he recall as I do that, in the previous Parliament, many of us campaigned on the matter of zero-hours contracts? Nothing had been done about that for 13 long years under the Labour Government, and our Government, and campaigners on the Government side of the House, including me, made the case for legislation on exclusivity contracts, which was passed. We did not wait for Europe; we did it here.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we have not waited for Europe. Through many centuries the condition of working people has been an important responsibility of the House, and we have advanced that consistently, as we did on zero-hours contracts. When my hon. Friend says that I am being generous in taking interventions, I interpret it as a coded signal that I ought to make progress, so I will do precisely that.

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[Clive Lewis]

Shall we have a little history lesson? How many Acts of Parliament between 1980 and 1993 that attacked working people through anti-trade union legislation do you think your Government took part in? Was it one, two or three? No, it was six, so don’t lecture us on the history of workers’ rights. You have nothing to say on it.

[Charlie Elphicke]

rose—

[Clive Lewis]

I am going to make some progress.

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[Clive Lewis]

I shall make some more progress.

The Tories boast about the recovery of employment since 2008, but on every other criterion, our labour market is failing. Wages, which have been falling as a share of national income for decades, have stagnated under the Tories, creating nearly a decade of lost pay. Too many people are having their work-life balance undermined by rising workloads and suffering stress due to punitive performance reviews. Even those who are not in precarious employment worry about their future job security.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Lewis]

I am going to make some progress, if that is all right.

We cannot continue to prioritise quantity over quality in the belief that if we want to ensure that everyone has a job, we have to accept any job. From the millions of women who continue to be paid less than men to the growing number of involuntarily or bogusly self-employed, it is hard to escape the reality that, for most, conditions have become worse. What have the Tories done in the face of all that? They have frozen public sector pay for six years running; they have introduced fees for employment tribunals, making it harder for people to gain access to the rights to which the law entitles them; they have placed severe restrictions on the right to strike, and onerous burdens on the ability to organise. In the Trade Union Act 2016, they have pushed through the biggest attack on workers’ rights in a generation.

We are back to the issue of trust. The Government have recently taken to calling themselves the party of working people, but in their last six years in office, they have not acted like that; on the contrary. Is it any wonder that, for those of us who genuinely care about workers’ rights, the promises that the Secretary of State has made today provide only cold comfort and a heavy dose of wary scepticism? I do not intend to brand the Secretary of State a liar; he seems to me to be a decent guy. [Interruption.] I did not say that, and I do not intend to.

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[Clive Lewis]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Even if we take the Secretary of State at face value, he is surrounded by the kind of free-market fanatics who, past behaviour suggests, will always work to undermine workers’ rights rather than to bolster them.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way, on that point?

[Clive Lewis]

I am going to make some progress. I am conscious of time, and many other Members clearly want to have their say.

Last time I had the pleasure of facing the Secretary of State across the Dispatch Box, he reached out to me in the name of bipartisanship. One cannot help wondering if the opinion of some of his colleagues has forced him to consider whether he might find it more congenial to work with us on the Opposition side of the House. I sympathise: if he truly believes what he said to us today, no wonder he has reached out for allies on our Benches. So I say to him, “You’re on. “ If he is serious in his commitment to workers’ rights, let us work together towards three goals.

First, the Secretary of State must accept that given his Government’s record, a day one transfer of EU rights to UK law is simply not enough. Grant Shapps must not get his sunset clause.

[Clive Lewis]

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. It was a genuine error, for which I apologise.

The right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) must not get his sunset clause. Instead, workers need a cast-iron guarantee that rights will not be eroded over time, either by a failure to keep pace with new EU legislation or because UK courts interpret it more weakly.

Secondly, all EU citizens who are currently employed here must be guaranteed the right to remain. These are people who have built their lives in this country. To leave their future shrouded in uncertainty so that they can be used as a pawn in future negotiations with the EU is quite simply wrong. It is also bad for businesses. We know that many are already having to recruit and train replacement staff as EU workers up and leave before they are pushed.

If the Secretary of State would agree to work with us to achieve those two objectives, it would prevent us from going backwards, but we cannot afford to stand still when it comes to workers’ rights. The United Kingdom ranks 31st richest out of 34 on the OECD’s employment protection index. Among comparable economies, we already have one of the least regulated and least protected workforces in the world. That simply is not good enough.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Lewis]

No, I am going to press on. I do apologise.

The fact that we have relied on the EU for so many of our protections reflects badly on all of us in this place. How can we interpret the referendum results other than as an expression of dissatisfaction with the status quo—a demand for a better deal? Labour wants to give the people a better deal, and where better to start than in the workplace? Labour markets are changing, and technological progress is opening up new possibilities for the way in which we organise our workplaces and working lives, but for too many workers, new technology has meant not new freedoms, but new forms of exploitation.

Brexit Britain faces a choice. We can enter a race to the bottom, steadily eroding workplace protections in an attempt to attract investment and custom away from low-wage countries, or we can lead the way in ensuring that workplace rights and protections keep pace with changes in labour markets, and developing new business models that harness the benefits of new technology for the many and not just the few, as part of a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy. We cannot win the former, and in truth we would not want to; but we can do the latter, and that is the only way in which to ensure that the people of this country get the better deal that they deserve.

I call on the Secretary of State to sign up to a new social settlement: one that places workers’ rights at its centre, and recognises and rewards everyone’s contribution; one that empowers people to take more control over their workplaces and their lives. That will require more than just rhetoric. For the Government, it will require a drastic change of direction. It will mean repealing the Trade Union Act and embracing, and working with, trade unions, rather than attacking them. It will mean leading the way on workers’ rights across Europe, rather than digging their heels in and resisting every advance. It sounds far-fetched, but it is time for the Government to put their money where their mouth is. You say you want to be the party of workers, Mr Secretary of State.

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[John Redwood]

That is by no means proven. As my right hon. Friend says, Wokingham borough had a modest majority in favour of remain, but Wokingham borough comprises parts of four different constituencies. My own constituency contains bits of Wokingham borough as well as parts of West Berkshire. According to my canvass returns, I think it was roughly 50:50 in my constituency. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] Anyway, it does not really matter—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend must listen, because I think she actually agrees with me on this, although she will not admit it.

Members from both sides of the House trooped solemnly through the Lobby to put through the European Union Referendum Act 2015, and it was crystal clear from what Ministers and others were saying at the time that we were passing the decision to the British people. We were not asking their advice. We were not giving them a rather grand and expensive opinion poll. Ministers said, “You, the British people, will make this decision.” And just to ram it home, a leaflet was sent to every household in the country—at the taxpayers’ expense, which some of us were a bit worried about—repeating that message. A solemn promise was made by the Government. The Opposition were involved with this, because they did not object and they helped to vote through the money for that promise to be sent to every household. That promise was crystal clear. I feel, and I think my right hon. Friend agrees with me, that we are now under a duty to expedite the decision of the British people.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I backed remain, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), but a majority of the people of Dover voted to leave. Is it not incumbent on all of us to listen to our electors and to act on the instructions that we have been given?

[John Redwood]

I think it is incumbent on this Parliament to accept the verdict of the referendum that we gave to the British people and to understand that we are all under a duty now. Democracy is on trial. What would the public think if their Parliament gave them a decision to make and then tried to stop that decision being implemented? That would put us in an impossible position, and anyone who followed that course would have a very miserable time when they next faced the electors.

Once the referendum is over, we have a duty to represent all our constituents. I have to represent the remain constituents of Wokingham just as much as the leave constituents. I cannot possibly vote on both sides of the issue, but I can ensure that the legitimate concerns of my remain voters are taken into account. I can assure the House that I will be very active in lobbying Ministers when remain voters identify real problems. The main problem that they are identifying at the moment is the uncertainty. They want us to speed up, and the more Members think that delay is a good idea, the more the uncertainty will build and the more damage could conceivably be done. We all have a duty now to speak for all our constituents, but we can only have one vote. Surely MPs must now vote for the settled will of the British people, having offered them that referendum.

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[John Redwood]

I am very much on the hon. Gentleman’s side on that issue but, as he knows, that will not be possible given the delays that are now being built in as a result of various issues and processes.

This House must now rise to the challenge of ensuring workers’ rights and removing the senior powers of the European Union in the way that the British people voted for. Of course, we want to take back control of the money and, once we have, the Government will have considerably more to spend on their priorities. The Vote Leave campaign recommended health as a priority, but it will be for the Government of the day, as Vote Leave always made clear, to decide exactly how to spend the money.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way again. On workers’ rights, did he hear the shadow Minister talking about the importance of making it easier to strike and his intention and desire to roll back trade union legislation? Does he share my concern that that would not help workers’ rights but simply reduce the number of workers?

[John Redwood]

I think that goes beyond the issue of European workers’ rights. All I want to say today on workers’ rights is that we must guarantee all of them as promised. I am strongly in support of the Minister.

In conclusion, we have a brave public who decided, despite the odds and the advice, that they wished to leave the European Union. They were not only brave but right. They are fed up with a Parliament that cannot do their bidding, that cannot even choose the taxes to impose on them, that cannot spend the money that all the taxes raise, and that cannot choose laws for them or amend them in the way that they wish. The issue today and in the weeks ahead is whether the MPs in this House can rise to the challenge. Can MPs at least follow the public and realise that they want a sovereign Parliament to represent a sovereign people? Where are the peace-loving Pyms and Hampdens of the modern era? Where are the champions of our liberties? Where are those who say, “Yes, we will support that great repeal Bill. Yes, we will give those powers back to this Parliament. Yes, we will make it easier to achieve Brexit, not more difficult”? That is what the public want and the Opposition should join us, welcome that view and get on with it.