HC Deb 13 December 1995 vol 268 cc932-46

11 am

Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham)

I have asked for a debate on this subject for some time because, since I entered the House last year, I have been struck by the extent to which working time in our country has become completely out of control. That lack of control over working time is having the most disastrous consequences on family life.

My concern stems from conversations that I have had with my constituents at my surgery in Rotherham. I think of a man who came in with his wife and two small children. He was a confident chap, not yet 30, and he clearly had a very happy family, who came to the surgery with him. He was working as a van driver for a Sheffield computer company, and his working hours were such that he was leaving home before 7 am and returning home a little after 7 pm, when he had to spend time working out his routes for the next day.

The man said that he was utterly exhausted. For that amount of work, he was earning £8,500 a year, which I remember because he had signed a contract for a yearly salary. There was no overtime or possibility of getting an increase. He wanted to know what he could do either to reduce his working time or to increase his pay. I suggested the normal methods, such as talking to the boss. He said, "He will fire me." I said, "Join a union." He said, "He will fire me." I said, "Go on strike"—because at times old Labour does resurface. He said, "If we go on strike, all the van drivers will be dismissed on the spot." I had to send him away from the surgery with absolutely no advice at all. I have since learnt that he has quit that job because he will be better off even on the meagre benefits that the state provides.

I can cite other examples, such as the engineering workers in my constituency who work six and seven-day weeks, 10 hours a day, who are not yet 30 but who have the physique of a 50-year-old. They are exhausted, trying to earn enough money to maintain a living income for their families, but they do not have any time to he with their families so that they can spend that money.

I think of my many friends from university who, after a quarter of a century of working in the professions, find that they are working longer hours than ever before. One of my oldest friends is the deputy head of a comprehensive school not far from the House of Commons. She gets up at 6 am, arrives at her school before 8 am, stays until 5.30, 6 pm or 7 pm, and then takes work home. She has a small child—her two older children are now teenagers. Her small son does not see enough of his mother.

I have an interest to declare because I have four children under the age of 10. I do not intend to discuss the problems of Members of Parliament, however, because I find many hon. Members' self-regard about their hours nauseating. They have extraordinary privileges, should they choose to exercise them, to control and allocate their working time.

The issue of working hours is a party political matter, although it is one that transcends the divisions between Members. The hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) yesterday expressed his regrets that he would he unable to participate in the debate, because he takes a great interest in this problem. If we examine time in our society, however, we find that the Government have not only abdicated responsibility in this sphere but have, in a sense, taken away what control we previously had over our time. The Prime Minister will go down in history as the man who reduced Sunday to the status of just another ordinary day.

I do not know how many Members still read the Bible, but today I saw that Mr. Matthew Parris, in his column in The Times, enjoins us to use the Bible if we wish to insult hon. Members on the other side of the House.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris)

Order. No hon. Member should insult any other hon. Member in this House.

Mr. MacShane

If we wish to tell the truth about another hon. Member, we will find that the Bible is a rich source of quotations. We should recall the moving words of Ecclesiastes:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven … A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance". In that marvellous quotation from the Bible, the author finds time for everything. We now find that we have time for nothing except to slave for the re-exalted god of mammon that the Conservatives have set above us. The making of money is now far more important than the making of a family or a community in which all may work hard, but should not do so to the exclusion of all else.

The new trend represents the values of the 1960s in a sense, which have come home to roost. In that regard, I commend to the House the elegantly penned, if vitriolic, denunciation of the baby-boomer generation by my friend Mr. Christopher Hitchen in the current issue of that underrated journal of comment, Vanity Fair. That generation fills almost all the Government posts, and it was sublimely understood by the former Prime Minister, Lady Thatcher. It is a generation that spoke only of its rights and never of its responsibilities: the right to buy, the right to hire, the right to fire, the right to manage, the right to wealth, the right to share options and the right to consume. It is an endless litany of rights, rights, and rights again. The values and limits of self-control, balance, equilibrium and responsibility were utterly forgotten. As we have created a society in which rights hold a higher place than responsibility, I fear that the responsibility that we have to our children has been lost in the wash.

We know that the Government are not family-friendly. There has been a 20 per cent. increase in divorce since the Tories took over in 1979, and the number of single-parent families has increased by almost 50 per cent. This morning, we read in our newspapers that Mr. Archie Norman, the quintessential would-be Conservative Member of Parliament and the head of Asda, has said that women who take maternity leave this year will not receive a Christmas bonus. Mr. Norman combines the Christmas generosity of Scrooge with the love of babies that was expressed by Herod.

The debate should focus on families. It is about children, not about divorce, nor it is particularly about the legal institution of marriage. Some of the happiest couples and families I know have not tied the civil knot of marriage.

I pay tribute to the excellent contribution that has been made by the Parents at Work campaign, the National Council of Women, the women's institutes and the Demos Foundation. The Parents at Work campaign commissioned the Gulbenkian Foundation to carry out a survey of the employment conditions of working mothers, which was published last month. It found that almost a quarter of all working mums work for more than 50 hours a week. Five per cent., which is still a significant number, work for more than 60 hours a week. The survey also found that three quarters of our working mothers report coming home exhausted, and almost two thirds say that they do not see enough of their children. A fifth say that their relationship with their partners has been put at risk by long hours.

Britain has the longest working hours in Europe: one in three British men work a six or seven-day week, according to the labour force survey of 1990-91. The Institute of Management—again, not a trade union-friendly organisation—reported in March 1995, on the basis of a survey of its members, that individual work loads had increased greatly for nearly half its respondents in the past two years. One in five are working an extra 15 hours a week, virtually two working days.

Overtime is the new British disease. According to information supplied to me by the House of Commons Library and taken from the labour force survey, last year we worked nearly 69 million hours of overtime a week. Divided by the 37 hours of the normal working week—I think that I can do it without a calculator—that is equivalent to nearly 2 million jobs.

It is, of course, not possible to construct a simple equation relating excessive overtime to the mass unemployment that still disfigures our society, but until overtime is under control, and until employees' wages and salaries are not merely sufficient unto their needs but sufficient without necessitating reliance on massive overtime, we shall continue to live in a society in which there is far too much working time for many and no working time at all for all too many others—the unemployed.

I must declare an interest as a trade union-sponsored Member of Parliament and a strong supporter of trade unionism here and abroad. I must, however, also appeal to my friends in the trade unions to accept responsibility for an unpopular task—that of persuading, cajoling and ultimately instructing their members that overtime must be severely limited. There are examples of work forces that have shared overtime to safeguard jobs, but if we are to develop a working-time policy as part of a new labour market, unions and the workers themselves must he empowered to limit overtime.

Saturday's edition of The Guardian featured a letter from a member of my former profession, journalism. Sue Watkinson of Aberporth, Dyfed, writes:

As the hard-pressed deputy editor of a local newspaper and the mother of three children aged five, three and 20 months, a job share would seem the perfect solution. Her problem was not seeing enough of her children. But who would pay the bills? As a professional journalist—a deputy editor—she earns £14,000. Half that amount will not bring home the bacon, or finance help with looking after the children.

That brings us back to the need for fair wages, and to Labour's advocacy of a minimum wage. In Asia, wage differentials are much narrower and more compressed than they are in this country. In my constituency—

The Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs (Mr. John M. Taylor)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. MacShane

May I just finish what I am saying?

In my constituency a cashier at the National Westminster bank earns about £7,000 a year, while his or her chief executive officer in London earns 100 times that amount. In countries such as Taiwan, Singapore and Japan the narrower differentials mean that people have a living wage.

Mr. Taylor

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman so clumsily at the wrong moment.

The hon. Gentleman referred to Labour's espousal of a minimum wage. Would he care to tell us how much that wage might be?

Mr. MacShane

I can tell the House that Labour proposes a new model of partnership. The minimum wage will be arrived at after discussions between those directly concerned: employers, workers and their representatives—the trade unions—and Government. I believe that that will allow us to develop a wages and incomes profile that will ease the tensions that are so damaging to stable family life and community harmony.

One of the arguments against any control of working time is that it militates against economic efficiency, but we must draw a sharp distinction between hard work and long working hours, however. When I went to work in Switzerland 15 years ago, I found to my horror that I was expected to start work at 7.30 am. I had been used to more gentle office hours in England in the 1970s, and at first this was a shock to the system, but I subsequently found that finishing work at 4 pm gave me time for friendship and family life. No one there worked after 4 pm: the obsessive "yuppie" need to stay for hour after hour in banks, consultancies and legal firms was unknown in what is, after all, one of the most prosperous countries in western Europe. We need smart, efficient work; we need quality output rather than quantity input.

According to a recent survey by the Health and Safety Executive, 80 million days a year are lost through work-related stress. The International Labour Organisation says that stress at work costs up to 10 per cent. of Britain's gross national product. That amounts to roughly $100 billion—about a third of total Government expenditure. The loss of that money is a direct result of the amount of time that we take off. We work inefficiently, we work long hours and we have work-related illnesses, which, according to the ILO, have increased by 500 per cent since the 1950s.

As for our dynamic competitor partners, Japan's Government say that the number of annual working hours must be reduced. The Government of China, which many Conservative Members now pray in aid as the model economy, are legislating for a two-day weekend. In Germany, the dominant economy in Europe, working hours were reduced substantially in the 1980s. That was followed by an increase in engineering employment and a boom for the German economy, along with outflows of investment—some of which have saved industries in this country.

Britain is now internationally isolated. We have opted out of the European and world debate on working time. Let us take the example of Sweden—and here I cite not the Social Democratic party or the trade unions, but the leader of one of the conservative parties that were in alliance during the period of Swedish conservative rule in the early 1980s. He insisted on the passing of a new law allowing a man to take a month of paid leave when his child was born. He also insisted that only the father could take that leave.

As many hon. Members may know, Sweden already has generous laws relating to parental leave: parents can jointly take up to a year off. That arrangement has significantly increased the birth rate in Sweden. It appears that parental leave makes not only for happy families, but for bigger families.

In France—I leave aside the current travails of one of my favourite countries, after my own—the employers federation, the Confédération National du Patronat Francais, and the trade unions are discussing the possibility of a four-day week and a reduction in working time, with the full backing of the Government. Once the current troubles have calmed down, the idea will once more be a major item on the French economic agenda, promoted by employers and management.

In Germany, the president of the 3 million-strong German engineering workers union, Klaus Zwickel, has launched a Bündnis für Arbeit, which means an alliance for jobs, in which the unions agreed to hold back on wage increases in exchange for a reduction in working time. That has been taken up by German employers and Chancellor Kohl—another Conservative; I am stressing what Conservative Governments are doing throughout the world, especially in Europe—is discussing the issue with Mr. Zwickel and the employers, so his Conservative Government is taking this issue extremely seriously.

My interest in this subject was sparked by a remark made by the Minister for Industry and Energy, the right hon. Member for Enfield, North (Mr. Eggar), who is currently in Committee doing doughty business for British Steel workers. I wish him well in those discussions. He said that he had visited a factory in Essex where people were working 60 or 70 hours a week. As an historian, my ears pricked up. In 1876, Benjamin Disraeli passed legislation limiting the working week to 56 hours. That Minister, 120 years later, was boasting, proclaiming, relishing and wallowing in the 60-hour week worked by people in that Essex factory. What time do they have for family life?

Conservative Members talk of returning to Victorian values. I would welcome a return to some Victorian values, notably the long-sustained campaign by Victorian social reformers to bring working time under control. From Lord Shaftesbury to Benjamin Disraeli, political leaders of that era accepted the responsibility to limit working hours. The Shops and Factories Acts of the 1930s controlled working time, and further legislation was passed in the 1950s. I cite Conservative Administrations who accepted their responsibility because it is necessary to stress that the control of working time is not a demand of the Opposition Benches, the left, the trade unions or the Labour movement. Today, big organisations such as the Women's Institute and the Institute of Management are taking the lead in demanding that working hours be reduced. They echo the great Victorian reformers in saying that the main victims of long working hours are children.

What are the alternatives and how do we deal with the matter? We have an excellent proposal from Europe. As a former Member of the European Parliament, the Minister knows full well what is happening in Europe. In 1993, Brussels proposed a directive on parental leave and leave for family reasons. It would allow, first, three months' parental leave for fathers and mothers, to be exercised by both full and part-time workers; secondly, family leave for up to six months; and, thirdly, the right to up to 10 working days' leave a year for pressing family reasons. Those 10 working days' leave are vital when a child suddenly falls ill or, at the other end of the age scale, when an aging parent needs urgent care.

All the countries of Europe, from impoverished Greece to the rich Netherlands, supported that proposal, but it fell to the veto of the English Minister. How brave, magnificent, determined, triumphant and very English that a right hon. Secretary of State for excessive working hours slammed his little fist on the table in Brussels and said "No" to a modest measure to help shore up the crumbling pillars of family life in Britain.

We can shape proposals not by inventing new laws but by drawing on our traditions. When the Minister replies, I invite him to consider whether that could be done on a bipartisan, all-party basis. We must look to our British sources. I agree that we must retain flexibility, as the demand for part-time work is huge, but the old 1950s model of a 40-hour week, worked mainly by men, has gone for ever. We must adapt our work force to the new challenges of globalisation but must not allow the challenges of globalisation to undermine and destroy family life and children's right to see their parents. We must go beyond debate because willing the end but refusing to discuss and legislate the means is the ultimate hypocrisy as we seek to remedy the present ills, of which uncontrolled working time is the most potent.

We should consider a family-and-work law, which would outlaw excessive hours worked involuntarily; provide adequate parental leave, including paternity leave—in my case, I would not mind if it were retrospective—give all employees, full and part time, individual rights to be consulted and to agree to hours beyond those laid down in a legally enforceable contract; and provide creche, kindergarten and nursery facilities to give under-fives a start, instead of the absurd and almost laughable nursery voucher scheme, which does not even begin to tackle the problem.

Ms Jean Corston (Bristol, East)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the measures that he suggests would benefit families and society as a whole? At the beginning of a conference in Sweden that I attended in 1988, a preliminary discussion of the agenda was held. People agreed happily to alter the agenda to allow a young man who was scheduled to speak late in the afternoon to leave early to pick up his children from kindergarten. That was accepted as completely normal and it showed that children were not just the responsibility of mothers.

Mr. MacShane

My hon. Friend makes a fundamental point. Fathers must accept their share of the responsibility for creating a stable family life. In this country, fathers are pressured into working long hours, bringing work home and doing excessive paid or unpaid overtime, so taking their share of the responsibility becomes extremely difficult. The institution of social partnership measures would help to introduce agreed flexible working time and would prevent unions from permitting excessive overtime. In many other European countries, works councils within firms must give permission for overtime above a certain limited amount each week.

We must alter the tax regime, so that the financial burden of bringing up children is no longer penalised fiscally. Our tax regime is one of the most anti-family and anti-marriage in Europe and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. Family and working time law or arrangements should require public offices to be open at times that suit parents rather than bureaucrats. I welcome the flexible approach to shopping hours, but we need to go further so that other services, especially important public services, are available when people need them.

Those measures will require legislation. Let us not have the wishy-washy hope that they can be brought about by market forces, discussion or give and take. Legislation has a big impact and was the great reformer of working time and working life in the 19th century. It will require partnership, so that once again Britain becomes one nation—a young nation, if I may invoke Benjamin Disraeli again, in which the youngest of all our future citizens are allowed to see their parents and in which work, which is vital for us all, resumes its proper place. It must be something that we do to make a living and no longer a tyranny of long hours over which we have no control, which damages family life.

11.29 am
Ms Tessa Jowell (Dulwich)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) on securing this important debate, focusing parliamentary attention on a revolution that is taking place in households throughout the country.

Research published last week by the Equal Opportunities Commission found that the move towards flexible working has

improved the opportunities for some women to work. The benefits of flexible working are becoming available to increasing numbers of people.

Opportunity 2000 reports that its 293 member companies now have, on average, eight "family-friendly" initiatives, and more than half offer flexible working hours. Other initiatives include job sharing, homeworking and paternity leave, subjects to which I shall return later.

The danger is that all the fine talk about flexible working can, as my hon. Friend made so clear, easily obscure the fact that attitudes in the workplace are not changing as quickly as they need to in order to enable parents to reconcile their roles as parents, carers and employees.

Juggling the demands of home and work is simply not an option for many people, who continue to be forced to make a straight choice between the two. An industrial tribunal recently heard how Sue Edwards, a woman tube driver, was told by her employer, London Transport, that she had no choice but to work the late shift. When she drew attention to the fact that she had a young son and would find it difficult, she was told that she could

drive a train or be a mum". She won her case, but it took her three years to do so. Not every working parent is presented with such a stark choice between work and home, but nevertheless, many parents are realising that they must make that choice. The lack of affordable, reliable and sufficiently flexible child care and the inevitability of low pay and long working hours all make it difficult for parents who would otherwise wish to work—especially working mothers—to strike the right balance between home and work, to achieve their aim of being both good parents and conscientious and reliable employees. The fact that Britain lags behind the rest of Europe on all those things, as my hon. Friend made so clear, should be a source of the most serious concern, and indeed shame, to the Government.

We seek evidence that the Government are taking that seriously, and that they recognise that there is an important role for Government in starting to promote a proper partnership between the responsibilities of home and work and a proper partnership between employers and Government in order to achieve that important end.

The problem is that we hear too much about the Government's good intentions, especially overseas. At the Beijing conference, the Government signing up to the platform for action was a good example of the huge discrepancy between the rhetoric that we hear abroad and the actions that we witness at home. In practice, it leaves all Opposition Members sceptical that the Government have any real practical determination to deliver policies that would make a real difference to men and women's lives.

At the fourth world women's conference in Beijing, the Minister for Overseas Development, Baroness Chalker, said:

a more equal sharing, between women and men, of parental and household responsibilities, is fundamental for women's … access to education, jobs and politics". All Opposition Members would agree with that.

Why, one might ask, have the Government in which Baroness Chalker is a Minister so consistently blocked the measures that would make that possible? Affordable child care and the availability of parental and paternity leave would give families a genuine opportunity to bring about a more equal sharing of parental responsibilities. That more equal sharing is impossible if those sources of support are not in place.

Consistently, the Government have denied British families that opportunity. They blocked the directive on parental leave from the moment that it was introduced, and eventually opted out of it as part of the Maastricht protocol. They have allowed a position to develop in which the United Kingdom has the lowest level of publicly funded child care in Europe. They have constantly undermined efforts to introduce proper paternity leave.

As long ago as 1979, when I was chair of the staff committee in the London borough of Camden, I introduced the first paternity leave scheme in the country. That was 16 years ago, and we have made precious little consistent progress since that time.

It is hard to understand why the Government are so complacent. If proof were needed that women, who bear the principal responsibility for managing the conflicting demands of home and work, continue to bear the responsibilities for juggling home and work, one need look no further than the Institute of Management's 1995 survey, which revealed that women account for 11 per cent. of all managers and only 3 per cent. of directors. For women working in low-paid jobs, frequently doing more than one part-time job to make ends meet, the problems of juggling the demands of home and work can be even more difficult.

The Government will no doubt be quick to proclaim the EOC's finding that flexible working has improved the opportunities for women as evidence of the success of the Government policy of deregulation of the labour force. Can we therefore presume that they will also take responsibility for the negative aspects of flexible working, which emerged from the EOC's survey?

Britain's unique long hours culture represents possibly the biggest threat to maintaining the right balance between work and family life. The EOC's report, "Flexible Employment in Britain", found that the long hours culture is having a destructive effect on the career development of women and on family life. It concluded:

Even in higher status jobs, the 'long hours culture' stops women from getting promoted and in lower status jobs, women have to work long hours to make ends meet. British men work the longest hours in Europe and have less time to spend with their families. British families are quickly finding out that there is little that is "family-friendly" about the Government's definition of "flexible". Flexibility is synonymous with insecurity in the workplace, and has increasingly come to mean being prepared to work all hours. As women continue to bear the main responsibility for caring for children and for elderly relatives, they are less able to put in the long hours that are increasingly being expected of them, or, when they do so, it is at great cost to themselves and their children.

There is no one reason for the emergence of the long hours culture, but there can he no doubt that the Government's mismanagement of the economy has played a large part. Low pay and job insecurity have led to people working longer hours to build up their pay packet to a reasonable level, or they do so because they fear for their job and do not want to appear less dedicated than their colleagues. The EOC's research concluded:

the restructuring of organisations, by 'downsizing' or 'delayering', has meant that more work is being done by fewer staff. British families now find it harder than previously to combine the responsibilities of work and home. Until recently, it was widely believed that employees would continue to enjoy increasing leisure time. That is holding true for the rest of Europe, but not for the United Kingdom. In the past 10 years, while the average working week has been decreasing in many other European countries, it has increased by about two hours in the United Kingdom. Last week's conference on the long hours culture, which was organised by the Women's National Commission, heard how employees in the United Kingdom work, on average, far longer each week than their European counterparts. Almost 28 per cent. of full-time employees in the United Kingdom work more than 46 hours a week—that is roughly double the figure in any other European Union country.

By contrast, slightly more than 7 per cent. of French employees and 6.7 per cent. of German employees work longer than 46 hours a week. Some 3.5 million people in the United Kingdom—15 per cent. of the work force—worked more than 48 hours a week in 1991. That was an increase of more than 12 per cent. over the figure for 1984.

The worst part is that the gap between the British and the European working week is widening. In 1993, British employees worked on average 1,952 hours a year—a rise of 48 hours since 1983. By contrast, German workers worked 1,739 hours a year—69 hours fewer than in 1983. The long hours culture is made worse by the fact that the United Kingdom is the only country in the European Union where employees do not have a statutory entitlement to paid annual leave. One out of 10 employees in this country has no holiday entitlement.

Working mothers are hit hardest by the emergence of the long hours culture. Research by Opportunity 2000 found that long working hours are a significant factor in preventing women from reaching the top levels of management. The long hours culture is not only preventing women from breaking into higher positions, but beginning to take a very heavy toll on the life of their children and on family life in general.

Two surveys carried out by the organisation Parents at Work, to which my hon. Friend referred, examined the effects of the long hours culture and found that it is putting many people under intense pressure and affecting both their health and their relationships. One of the surveys by Parents at Work concentrated on the plight of working mothers with children under the age of four. Two thirds of respondents said that they felt that they spent too little time with their children and experienced continuing problems with child care. They spent, on average, between two and four hours with their children each day. Parents at Work said:

A picture emerged of women doing a good job, taking little sick leave, working to give their families economic security and rushing home to care for children at the end of the day. Fathers who in general worked even longer hours than their partners were able to spend even less time with their children, putting extra pressure on mothers. It is in everyone's interests that working parents are supported in their efforts to strike the right balance between work and family life. Companies may derive short-term benefits from employees working long hours, but there are long-term costs such as a reduction in productivity, an increase in mistakes, loss of skilled employees who drop out of the work force, sickness, absenteeism and the burgeoning cost of stress-related ill health. The more responsible employers have realised that, but the danger of the Government's laissez faire approach is that, if the long hours culture is allowed to go unchecked, it will continue to spiral upwards, placing an even greater strain on family life.

We want the Government to do more than simply wring their hands. Industry needs stability, and it is in the best interests of business and industry to forge a partnership that enables men and women up and down the country to discharge their responsibilities in the workplace as well as their obligations to their children and families at home.

11.43 am
The Minister for Competition and Consumer Affairs (Mr. John M. Taylor)

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) on securing the debate and on choosing to discuss these subjects this morning. They are important and topical subjects and I welcome the chance to debate them properly. However, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman will be surprised when I say that the Government disagree with much of his analysis and with that of his hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell).

We are dealing with complex matters. Employers and employees in the United Kingdom face a multitude of different circumstances. Simplistic approaches may hold a superficial attraction for Labour Members, but in reality they would cause more harm than good to both businesses and jobs. That is why the Government have consistently opposed such nostrums.

There have been some generalised and rather laboured assertions that employees in the United Kingdom work longer hours than employees in other countries. In fact, the average number of hours worked weekly in the United Kingdom is 38.1. The average number of hours worked weekly throughout the 12 countries of the European Union—when the Union comprised 12 countries—is 38.6. The average hours worked weekly in France, Italy and Spain are greater than those worked in this country, and only Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands have a lower average figure.

That is why the Government have consistently opposed the simplistic approach. We are very close to the European average, but we have a much wider spread of hours worked. More employees in the United Kingdom work more hours and, in the nature of an average, there are more who work fewer. For every person who works more hours than the average, there is another who works fewer.

Those differences exist because that is what many people want. Employees want the opportunity to work part time or full time on standard shifts or on flexitime. They want to work the hours that best suit their circumstances. The Government or Brussels should not dictate to employers and to workers the length of the working week or on what days they may or may not work.

There are proper protections for employees against working hours that are genuinely excessive and that could be injurious to their health. Employers have a general duty under section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare of their employees at work. Factors such as hours of work, rest breaks and holidays must be considered when planning the safe organisation of work.

The proper way forward, as advocated by the Health and Safety Executive, is to carry out risk assessment, taking account of the actual factors experienced by workers rather than hypothetical concerns. It is not feasible only to set maximum levels for working time in order to prevent stress or fatigue. The organisation of working time—length of shift, rest breaks, intervals between shifts and shift rotation—must be considered in conjunction with the type of work performed, its physical and mental demands and the individuals concerned.

Mr. MacShane

I put to the Minister an historical, hypothetical question. In view of his recent comments, I assume that he would have voted against Benjamin Disraeli's control of the working week in 1876.

Mr. Taylor

That is certainly an historical and a hypothetical question. I take refuge in the general proposition that Benjamin Disraeli was a most enlightened leader of this nation who took the decisions that were right according to the culture of the time. That approach is incumbent upon us all: if circumstances change, solutions and responses must change as well.

Less hypothetically, reference is made from time to time to the findings of recent research conducted by Parents at Work, the recruitment agency Austin Knight and the Equal Opportunities Commission in an attempt to show that family life is suffering under the Government. The widespread view is that, in the past 30 years or so, family life has become more pressured. But that view must be set against a background of people's changing aspirations.

Many women feel, quite correctly, that it is important to have both a family life and a full working life outside the home, with the increased benefits that that may bring. The flexible labour market that the Government have brought about has benefited employees as well as companies. It means that more women than ever before have the opportunity to continue to work after they have chosen to have a family. Some 48.6 per cent. of women in the United Kingdom are in paid employment. That is not true of much of the rest of Europe, where more regulated labour markets mean that women who wish to work part time are often excluded from the job market.

The United Kingdom has the second highest participation rate for women in the European Union. Only Denmark outranks us. We compare favourably with Germany, where only 43 per cent. of women have paid work, and France, where only 41 per cent. of women have jobs. If we were to follow the European model and impose unnecessary regulations, many women who now work part time would be denied the opportunity to combine work and family.

The larger percentage of women at work in the United Kingdom arises precisely because our flexible labour market gives people the opportunity to work the hours that suit their circumstances. I recognise that individuals may have to make difficult choices to balance the responsibilities of bringing up children with paid employment, but unlike the Labour party, the Government believe that such matters are best decided by parents, not Brussels or Westminster. What suits one family will be unacceptable to another.

There can be no question of the Government's commitment to stable and harmonious family life. The Parents at Work survey points out that many people are happy to work full hours. They value the extra opportunities and wages that those increased hours bring. The hon. Member for Rotherham pointed out that recent surveys suggest that some people who work longer hours feel that it is detrimental to their relationships with their partners and children.

However, the survey by Parents at Work shows that 80 per cent. of the women surveyed enjoyed the financial security that work brings, 48 per cent. said that it enabled them to enjoy the time that they spent together as a family and 45 per cent. said that it made their children more independent, which they saw as a positive advantage. Their children also benefited from a higher standard of living. We must not blind ourselves to the positive results of women choosing to go out to work. For many women, jobs and careers, even including some long hours at work, have enhanced their lives and those of their families, not detracted from them.

The Parents at Work survey identified action that could help reduce the strain on family life. It included flexible working hours and help with child care. The recent Austin Knight survey showed how employers were beginning to address those issues in order to retain their expensively skilled work force. It found that three quarters of employers now have some form of "family-friendly" policy, a third provide some child care facilities, and more than 50 per cent. of staff are able to work flexible hours. In addition, more than half the employees surveyed received paternity and maternity leave above the statutory minimum.

Our flexible approach to the labour market brings positive results. The number of people unemployed in the United Kingdom has been on a consistent downward trend for the past two years. In percentage terms, only 8 per cent. of the potential work force is unemployed. That is well below the European Union average of 10.6 per cent. The total number unemployed is nearly 600,000 less than in October 1993. The numbers employed in manufacturing are increasing. There were 53,000 extra jobs in the year to June 1995. The numbers employed in services are increasing, with 260,000 extra jobs in the year to June 1995.

Unlike some Opposition Members, I welcome the fact that increasing numbers of people are in part-time employment. There are now some 2.2 million more part-time workers than in 1979, the vast majority of whom prefer the flexibility that such work gives them.

I come now to parental leave. Let me make it absolutely clear that the Government strongly welcome voluntary agreements that help people reconcile their working and family lives, but the key word is "voluntary". Leave is just one aspect of an employee's terms and conditions and cannot be taken in isolation. Terms and conditions are a matter for negotiation between individual employers and their employees. Each business must be free to develop arrangements that fit its particular circumstances and best suit the needs of its workers.

The Government do not believe in dictating to employers and workers how they should arrange their affairs; we believe that they can do that better themselves. In other words, we believe in a flexible labour market. Of course, a flexible labour market helps to improve the quality of life for individuals. It offers them greater access to jobs and greater choice in their working arrangements. For example, if the workers in a company attach importance to parental leave, they can negotiate it. If they prefer a shorter period of paid leave to three months without pay, they are free to bargain for it. That would be prohibited by European legislation. Most importantly, they would be free to argue for their priorities, not those imposed on them by the Government or Brussels.

Fathers are directly benefiting from the United Kingdom's flexible and voluntary framework. There is plenty of evidence that increasing numbers of employers are voluntarily offering their employees some level of paternity leave. The Confederation of British Industry surveyed 584 of its members in 1992 and found that 31 per cent. of them offered paternity leave on a discretionary basis and 12 per cent. offered it as a contractual entitlement. Those figures had increased from 26 per cent. and 6 per cent. respectively in 1987.

A survey of 356 United Kingdom companies conducted by Industrial Relations Services in 1994 found that more than two thirds offered paternity leave, all but two of them with pay. Some three quarters of respondents offered such leave as a contractual entitlement. As one would expect, the amount of leave varied widely—from one day right up to 46 weeks—but I doubt whether it was retrospective, as the hon. Member for Rotherham was hoping.

Mr. MacShane

Does the Minister accept that CBI and other surveys tend to cover the more advanced and stable British firms, but the problem arises in the great mass of firms that are not surveyed, in which parental leave is not part of contractual relationships? In particular, how does he address the problem of moving from good will or lack of it on the part of the employer to giving the employee the right to assert parental leave if he or she needs it?

Mr. Taylor

Maternity leave is provided for in law. I was intending to show in that passage of my speech that there is an increasing trend towards paternity leave schemes, but they are voluntary. The Government believe that they should be developed on a voluntary basis at present.

An article published this October by Industrial Relations Services states that the lack of legislation in these matters

has not diminished the incidence, scope and growth of contractual agreements providing such arrangements in this country. Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the incidence of paternity leave, in particular, is growing in the United Kingdom. I welcome that, and I dare say that the hon. Gentleman does, too.

We certainly do not want that success to be put in jeopardy by possibly well-meaning, but potentially calamitous, interference from Brussels. The European agreement on parental leave is likely to become another piece of burdensome and unnecessary European legislation.

When that happens, many British businesses will breathe a sigh of relief that the United Kingdom has opted out of the social chapter and its damaging consequences for jobs and the economy, just as they did when we blocked the proposed directive on parental leave last year. That directive would have had truly horrendous implications for employers in the United Kingdom and across the Community. It would have forced employers to give employees at least three months' leave following the birth or adoption of a child. It would also have stipulated minimum leave entitlements for other family reasons.

Mr. MacShane

Hear, hear.

Mr. Taylor

The hon. Gentleman may favour it, but the proposed directive could have meant an annual bill of £200 million for British firms—expenditure that many of them could ill afford. In his previous intervention, the hon. Gentleman asked me whether the surveys had reached smaller firms. Those smaller firms would bear the brunt of the £200 million that they could ill afford.

The new agreement is not much better, except in one important respect: it will not apply in the United Kingdom. It means that we are free to continue the existing voluntary approach that is delivering what workers want and what businesses can afford, rather than what people in Brussels or Opposition Members think they should have.

These are indeed important matters, and I am glad that we have had the chance to debate them. I thank the hon. Gentleman for providing the opportunity. The Government are sympathetic to all initiatives to help people reconcile their working and family lives, but I think that I have shown that simplistic legislation does not hold out a panacea and is certainly not a cost-free remedy. Rather, it would cause more ills than it would relieve, because it would increase the cost of employing people in an arbitrary way, taking no account whatever of businesses' ability to pay. Ultimately, it would harm the very people it was intended to help. The most generous statutory provisions on parental leave, paid holidays, rest breaks and so forth are useless to the man or woman unable to find a job. The Government do not forget that simple message.