Zero Hours Contracts Bill

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns]

As a matter of fact, I have. I would ask colleagues engaged in public service provision up and down the country to think very deeply about their employment practices. I do not condone it, but I know that for some workers zero-hours contracts are a handy way of gaining part-time employment, but only part-time employment. Many find it very difficult to sustain an ordinary family life on a zero-hours contract.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Is not the fact of the matter that the Bill, if we manage to pass it, would prevent anyone, whether a Labour council, a Tory council or even a Tory MP, from employing people on zero-hours contracts? They would be abolished entirely.

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Bill seeks to curtail the use of zero-hours contracts severely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Mearns]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point.

With regard to people working in the adult social care sector, it is right that we want the very best quality of care for the most vulnerable people in society—the elderly, the frail, the disabled and so on—who rely on these social care contracts, yet we expect people who are being paid next to nothing to conduct that high-quality care. I find that bizarre.

[Ian Lavery]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the situation at HMP Northumberland, where Sodexo, a French catering company, has privatised the prison and sacked or made redundant more than a third of the work force? It does not have enough people to make the prison safe, but it is bringing in people on banked-hours and zero-hours contracts. That is an outrage.

[Ian Mearns]

I could not agree more.

I was talking about the hospitality sector. Whether we allow this exploitation and abuse to continue is a question not just of whether these contracts are fair on the employee but of what type of society we want to live in and what type of economy we want to work in. Do we really expect our sick and elderly to get the care they deserve when those we trust to care for them live in fear and trepidation, not knowing whether they will earn enough to keep the heating on or buy the weekly shop? Do we really think that we will reduce the benefits bill—the frequently stated intention of the Government—when only state subsidies for employers paying poverty wages are keeping our work force’s heads above water?

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame M. Morris]

rose—

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I will give way in a second.

However, I think what we have safely also found out today is that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North has much better powers of persuasion than the leader of his party. If only he were leader of his party the party might not be in the dire straits that it is in at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

We are getting nearer. I fear that if we go much further, we will get a full confession at some point.

[Ian Lavery]

This is a really serious debate, but we seem to be trivialising it, suggesting that the problem is perhaps the fault of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) hit the nail on the head. I think it was in 2000 that only 200,000 people in this country were on zero-hours contracts. As we sit in the Chamber today, there are 1.4 million people on zero-hours contracts. That is the real problem. I stand for the total abolition of zero-hours contracts for every single person, regardless of where they work.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There is a certain amount of dispute over the actual number of people who are on zero-hours contracts. The labour force survey, which collects data on individual workers, not on the number of contracts, and asks employees and not workers for the information, has an estimate for the fourth quarter of 2013 of 583,000 people on zero-hours contracts. There is clearly a dispute over the figures. I am not necessarily saying that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends are wrong in their figures; they have obviously sourced those figures from somewhere. Those who compile the labour force survey have different figures.

I genuinely do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s logic. He seems to be saying that it is absolutely fine for 200,000 people to be on zero-hours contracts, but that it is an absolute scandal for 1.4 million people to be on those contracts. Either zero-hours contracts are a good thing or they are a bad thing. Surely it cannot be a question of, “Because there were only 200,000 people on zero-hours contracts when Labour was in office, that was fine; that was a reason to do absolutely nothing about it and bury our heads in the sand, but now there are a few more of them, it is a massive scandal and we need to do something about it.” Either zero-hours contracts are right or they are wrong. The number of people who are on them cannot be the determining factor.