Employment Rights Bill

Sarah Owen Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 15th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

And some people do not, as the hon. Gentleman quite rightly says.

When I was working at the Department for Work and Pensions, the issue of zero-hours contracts became a totemic issue under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the immediate predecessor of the current leader of the Labour party. There was this idea that there had been a huge increase in the number of people in the country on a zero-hours contract. We discovered that less than 3% of people had a zero-hours contract as their primary source of income, and the average number of hours those people worked was not zero or close to zero, but 25. Even more unexpectedly—this was the bit that really got people—the average job satisfaction of people on a zero-hours contract was higher than it was for the rest of the workforce.

I think we understand why the Labour Government wish to legislate in this way. It is something for Labour MPs to bring home. When so much else in their manifesto is falling apart before our eyes, they can say, “At least we’ve killed off this modern scourge, this huge growth in zero-hours contracts.” As I say, the number of those contracts is not nearly as big as most people think. If you think about it, we have always had zero-hours contracts in all sorts of forms, whether it be piecework, commission-only sales, agency catalogue work or casual labour. In fact, it is possible that today, there are fewer people on a zero-hours contract than ever before in the history of the labour market. Many colleagues might reflect on their first job. Mine was washing dishes in a restaurant. We did not have the phrase at that time, but it certainly would have been a zero-hours contract, apart from the fact that there was no contract at all.

If the Government wish to reform this area, as they may, I ask them to consider the situation in sectors with great seasonality, including hospitality, tourism and retail, and to please look again at the concept of a 12-week reference period, which does not reflect the reality of seasonality. I know that this will be introduced through regulations, not the primary legislation, and I welcome what the Secretary of State said; I think he indicated that the Government were open to looking at a more sensible length of time. The Government could also do things differentially by sector; there could be one period for employers in general, and another for sectors or sub-sectors that have particularly strong patterns of seasonality.

I also ask the Government to reconsider the requirement to not just offer guaranteed hours once, but keep on doing it. That is introducing unnecessary bureaucracy. If the Government want to make changes in this area, I encourage them to at least ensure that once an employer has made the offer once, the right can become an opt-in right.

The Government think that these provisions are something for Back-Bench Labour MPs to take home, but I ask Labour colleagues whether they really want to take them home. Do they want to take home higher unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment? Do they want to take home fewer opportunities for people returning to the workplace after many years away? Do they want to take home fewer opportunities for ex-offenders—those furthest from the labour market? Do they want to take home—because this will come as well, as night follows day—a further trend away from permanent employment and towards fixed-term temporary employment? Do they want to take home a shift from waged or salaried work to more self-employment? Is that really what Labour wants to deliver?

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

I start by saying a massive thank you to the new ministerial team and the new Secretary of State, who I welcome to his role, for keeping in clauses 14 to 18 of the Bill, as well as for their warm words at the Dispatch Box. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), but we heard all those arguments before from Conservative Members when they opposed the minimum wage, which did none of the things they warned about.

I turn to my declaration of interests. It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), is not in his place, because he asked all Labour Members to declare our trade union affiliations. I will proudly do so—they are in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—but my interest in this Bill does not stop there. I have worked a zero-hours contract, and I would have benefited from this Bill. I have been a care worker who would have benefited from the collective bargaining that this Bill will introduce, and the Bill would also have meant that I was paid for time spent travelling between the jobs I had to travel to. I am proud to stand by my declaration of interests. It is a real shame that the shadow Secretary of State did not mention that he used to be a non-executive director for Just Eat, a company that has faced a number of claims for giving employees bogus self-employed status. Perhaps that would have been of interest to everybody in the Chamber.

The Employment Rights Bill has been called lots of things by lots of critics, but to me, it is about ensuring that all people can work safely, with respect and dignity, and have security in their work. For the past 15 years, we have seen people at the sharp end. We have heard stories of businesses struggling, and nobody wants that, but we have not heard the stories of what the previous Government subjected working people to. They called it a living wage, when actually it was a minimum wage, which ensured that people were stuck in in-work poverty. A woman is 34% more likely to be stuck in a zero-hours contract than a man. If we are talking about black and Asian minority people, that figure reaches 103%. Disabled workers are 49% more likely to be stuck on such a contract. This Bill is about protecting all workers, not just some.

On the right to sick pay, no one chooses to be sick. There are 1.3 million people without the right to any sick pay whatever. That is the difference that this Bill will make, and the difference that a Labour Government will make to working people’s rights. As has been mentioned, where are the grifters who sit on the Opposition Benches? They pretend that they care about the ordinary working man—not often mentioning women; often they talk only about the working man—but where are they? They probably have their hand out for some more of Elon Musk’s bitcoin, shall we say.

I will talk about clauses that touch on our work on the Women and Equalities Committee. The parental leave review, although not specifically in this Bill, will impact on so many workers. It is a pleasure to hear that being talked about under a Labour Government. We know that parental leave is also a problem for self-employed people. We have heard a lot about the impact of bogus self-employment and rogue bosses, but we have not heard enough about the protections for self-employed people. In the course of our Committee’s parental leave review, we heard that 31% of self-employed people do not take a single day off after their child is born. That is a shocking statistic. It is damaging not just for our economy, but for individuals and families.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) and all the campaigners for their work on misogyny in music and on banning non-disclosure agreements following sexual harassment and bullying. We heard loud and clear how many people in the music industry are self-employed, and many have been subjected to NDAs. That goes unreported and is unknown. The measure before us will make such a difference for so many people in many sectors, and it is so important that we get it through. The Conservatives and the Lib Dems talk about bits of the Bill that they do not like, and they list things that will be problems, but I ask them to think of the people we are trying to protect, because there will be a real impact.

Lords amendments 14 to 18 concern an issue that has a special place in my heart, and the hearts of many people, both in this Chamber and outside it. I am pleased that in spring the Government accepted the principle of two weeks of bereavement leave for parents who lose a pregnancy before 24 weeks. There is no sliding scale on pain for bereavement and loss, particularly for expecting parents. As a result of this change, grieving parents will no longer need to push through their pain to carry on working. Women who experience baby loss will not need to use sick leave, which implies that their body had something wrong with it. Arguments against the measure were founded on, “Well, you can always just take sick leave,” but a person who has lost a child blames themselves. It is natural instinct. Your first reaction is, “Did I do something wrong? Could I have done something differently? Should I have not eaten that? Should I have not done this? Should I have not jumped? Should I not have gone to an exercise class?” You think of all the things that you could have done to prevent it. For someone to go to their employer and say, “I need to take sick leave”, as if there is something wrong with them, is fundamentally different from how society sees pregnancy loss and miscarriage now, and I am grateful for that.