Employment Rights

Mary Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman talks about enforcement issues and funding. We have more than doubled the budget for minimum wage enforcement and compliance, which is now over £27 million annually, up from £13.2 million in 2015. There are more than 400 HMRC staff involved in enforcement of the minimum wage. We concluded over 2,700 investigations on the minimum wage and returned more than £16.7 million in arrears to over 155,000 workers. We are determined that people should get a fair wage for a fair day’s work. As we build back better, we will build back fairer, and it will not be on the backs of the lowest paid. That is why we will continue to increase the national minimum wage and the national living wage and also to enforce action on transgressions in that area.

On the Health and Safety Executive and what has happened with covid, the HSE has received £14.4 million in extra funding and has conducted 274,000 spot checks in the past year.

Worker status is clearly complicated when we have three issues of the worker, the employer and the self-employed, but that allows us to have a flexible, dynamic labour market that enabled us, after the last recession, to build back better by delivering more jobs than the rest of the EU put together.

On fire and rehire, we hear a lot in this place about a binary choice, but in reality the situation is far more complicated. As we build back better, we want to make sure that we can protect people’s jobs as well as their working conditions. That is why we have to get that balance right. Only we on the Government Benches will deal with the economy and with businesses, but most importantly with workers who are subject to transgression of their workers’ rights by irresponsible employers, yet not just painting all employers with the same brush.

The hon. Gentleman talked about changes to the certification officer’s duties being ideological. Actually, it is adhering to the law, as it is what we said we would do in the Trade Union Act. All we are doing is implementing what was debated properly and agreed in this place under that Act.

We will protect workers’ rights, protect jobs, and create more jobs, and it will be through a flexible, dynamic labour market, getting that balance right. Rather than just having a 1970s-style binary debate, we want to work for 21st-century working conditions.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his statement. Many of my constituents work at Manchester airport and will welcome action to address fire and rehire in the aviation sector. A single body for employment rights is also welcome, but I would encourage the Government to go further and establish a single body for whistleblowers to ensure that they are protected from retaliation and blacklisting and that their concerns are properly investigated. Unfortunately, the current legal framework does not tackle these issues, and the recourse for whistleblowers is the heavily backlogged employment tribunal system, where the average wait for whistleblowing cases is more than two years and the success rate is low. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree with me that it is time for an office of the whistleblower to uphold the right to speak up and strengthen these employment rights even further?

[Paul Scully]

I am glad that my hon. Friend had the opportunity to meet the Secretary of State recently, and we continue to want to work closely with her and other colleagues on this basis, including my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who also raises the issue on a regular basis with great knowledge from his constituents. We do recognise how valuable it is that whistleblowers are prepared to shine a light on wrongdoing and believe that they should be able to do so without fear of recriminations. It is right and proper that we review the whistleblowing framework, and we will do that once we have sufficient time to build the necessary evidence of the impact of the most recent reforms, so we will consider the scope and timing of a review.