Part-Time Employees (Equal Rights to Sick Pay and Leave) (Hansard, 30 April 1996)

§ Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide that employers give the same entitlements to sick pay and leave to their part-time staff as they do to their full-time staff.

This is the second of three ten-minute Bills—each, I am pleased to say, with cross-party support—which argue for the principle of equal and fair treatment for part-time workers. Only with a level playing field of rights and entitlements between full-time and part-time work can we look forward to the economy finding the most efficient distribution between the two.

Ultimately, no economic good will come if part-time work is just a cheaper alternative. A deregulated labour market such as ours will tend to produce too much of it, at the expense of full-time work. Lower pay will remove spending power in local economies. Lack of national insurance benefit entitlements will lead to poverty in childbirth, sickness and retirement, and exploitation will lead to lower productivity and fewer skills in our work force. Ultimately, that will undermine our competitiveness, not enhance it.

There are plenty of signs that that is already happening. The Trades Union Congress has been collecting case studies of the exploitation of part-time workers going on in Britain. Diane, a coach driver from Cornwall, is classed as part-time by her employer because he does not guarantee her any hours. She works anything from 96 hours a week in summer to 10 hours a week in winter. She says: I get laid off for a fortnight over Christmas with no money and I don't get paid holidays or sick pay—I earn £3 an hour". Karen is employed by a video sales and rental business in Staffordshire. Part-timers aged over 25 are paid £2.75 an hour, and, if aged under 25, just—1.75 an hour. They work nine hours on Sundays and bank holidays for no extra money. Holidays and time off for sickness are unpaid.

Mr. D is employed as a part-timer by a privatised utility. He says: from day one, I have been working between 35 and 40 hours a week. Yet I'm not entitled to any of the usual benefits. Three weeks ago, me and all the other 'part timers' were told our services were no longer required. If companies can treat people like this, I hold out little hope for the future of our country. Those case studies are not unique. They are not even unusual. They are typical of the sort of exploitation and discrimination that part-time workers face the length and breadth of the country.

All too often, part-time workers are treated as second-class by their employers. That attitude has been condoned and encouraged by the deregulation mania on the Conservative Benches. We must remember that, behind every tale of exploitation, there is a human being with feelings and with a life to plan and to organise.

Part-time work is an increasing feature in Britain, rising from 12 per cent. of the work force in the 1950s to 25 per cent. in the 1990s, and it is expected to reach more than 30 per cent. by the turn of the century. Six million of our fellow citizens work part-time. Most part-timers are women. Many choose to work shorter hours because it best enables them to juggle their caring responsibilities with their need or desire to earn their own living. 909 Many such women, however, have found themselves full-time breadwinners as part-time service jobs have replaced full-time manufacturing jobs. As I have shown, many people classified by their employers as "part-time" are working full-time hours, but failing to qualify for full-time rights.

Part-time work is not a hobby. It is not done for pin money, although it often pays peanuts. It makes a vital contribution to the household budget. People who work part-time deserve dignity, rights and access to such things as holiday and sick pay. It is about time hon. Members took part-time workers' needs seriously. Most are happy to work part-time, but they are unhappy that they are treated differently from their full-time colleagues. They want equal and fair treatment. The Bill would help them to achieve it.

Until recently, part-time workers were actively discriminated against by official Government policy. The deregulators in the Government have made a virtue out of discrimination. They have systematically stripped away protections from all people at work, but especially from part-timers. They used to have to wait five years before they qualified for any employment rights at all, but, thanks to a House of Lords judgment, their treatment has been equalised with that of full-timers.

Now is the time to extend that principle to other areas, because discrimination is still rife. The pay gap between full-time and part-time workers is large and widening. More than 500, 000 part-timers earn less than £2.50 about hour. Low pay means that 2 million part-timers do not earn even the £57 a week needed to pay national insurance contributions. With no record of such payment, they are ineligible for any contributory benefits, so, if they fall ill, they have no access to statutory sick pay.

As the deregulators in the Government have declined to require employers who provide occupational sick pay schemes to ensure that they cover all their employees, those benefits do not plug the sick pay gap, either. One in every three part-timers is completely excluded from sick pay benefits by his or her employer.

Paid holiday entitlement is an equally important issue. Most full-time workers have it, but it is often denied to part-timers. Britain is unique in the European Union in having no statutory right to paid holidays at all, yet most full-time workers have managed to preserve their entitlements, despite deregulation mania, and 84 per cent. of them get at least 20 days a year. Yet 1.7 million part-timers get no paid holiday at all, despite the fact that, as the House has heard, some of them work long hours.

All that would change if Britain were to adopt the working time directive due to come into force in November. Far from welcoming that modest civilising measure, the Government have pulled out all the stops to defeat it. First they tried to veto the directive. They failed. Now they are spending lots of taxpayers' money at the European Court arguing for the constitutional principle that national Governments should be allowed to condone whatever exploitation of their citizens they see fit, without interference from nasty foreigners. The European Court, by the way, is the institution that 77 Conservative Members last week voted to have nothing to do with.

It is not an edifying spectacle to see the party of Macleod and Macmillan, and even of Disraeli, reduced to that slavish devotion to a cruel and out-of-date economic dogma. Of course the ideological gurus of Thatcherism will oppose my Bill. The deregulators who have taken their Adam Smith a bit too literally will be lining up to denounce it.

910 Those people have a dream for Britain: they see us as the sweatshop of Europe, and in their delusion, they fondly imagine that we can compete and earn our way in the world by having labour costs lower than those in places such as Albania—and presumably, lower even then those in the Chinese gulag. They have a simple mantra, and we shall probably hear it chanted at us again today. They say that lower wages and worse conditions mean more jobs, while higher wages and better conditions destroy jobs—unless, of course, one happens to be Cedric Brown.

Logically, that means that no wages and no conditions would create an infinite number of jobs. Why do those people not take their policy to its logical conclusion, and reinstate slavery to solve the unemployment problem? Even Adam Smith did not think that things were that simple—but why let reality intrude on a good piece of economic dogma, even if it did cause widespread starvation and misery when it was first tried during the industrial revolution?

The classical economic dogmas that were used to oppress starving weavers and to justify the workhouse are now being applied, albeit more subtly, to the 6 million of our fellow citizens who work part-time. The ever present prospect of arbitrary treatment at work with no redress is one of the major causes of the fear and insecurity now stalking the land. It explains the non-appearance of the feel-good factor, it is unfair and inefficient, and ultimately it will destroy our competitiveness.

We can compete in a global market only on the basis of education, skill, and the real flexibility that comes from having a stake at work and in society. Rights and entitlements for all workers are a part of that, and it is time for the House to recognise the contribution of part-time workers, by granting them full-time rights.

§ Mr. Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton)

I am grateful for the opportunity to oppose the Bill, because I maintain strongly that it is really an Unemployment (Increase) Bill. In many ways, the debate is timely, because last week the German Government announced a package of public spending cuts totalling £22 billion, and admitted that economic growth in Germany would be worse than previously expected.

One of the main objectives cited by the federal Government was a cut in non-wage labour costs. As the Financial Times reported last Friday, the German Government hope to make a big dent in their 4 million army of the unemployed by exempting many small companies from employment rules and from compulsory sick pay.

The Bill would simply add to Britain's non-wage labour costs, at a time when our competitors are fast realising that their costs are too high, and that we are at a competitive advantage because ours are lower. One look at youth unemployment proves that. In Spain, it stands at 38.2 per cent., and in France at 27.7 per cent., but in the United Kingdom it is below 14 per cent. As the hon. Lady pointed out somewhat ironically, we have one of the highest participation rates in the labour market, and the Bill would destroy that.

Like so much of what purports to be Labour party policy, the Bill is born of the mistaken notion that passing legislation can improve life just like that, without any 911 adverse effects. It is born of a lack of experience of how the world works. It shows no understanding of the world of work or of the world of business decision making.

It is like saying that, if I were to introduce a ten-minute Bill to make everyone a millionaire, I could in one fell swoop abolish poverty and make everyone rich. It looks at only one side of the equation, and conveniently ignores the basic truth, that anyone who wants to employ someone has to count the cost of doing so. That cost involves not only the weekly pay cheque but all the other costs, risks and obligations that legislation and commercial reality add to the basic pay packet.

It is often small companies that employ people part-time. What is paid by the employer and what is achieved by the employee are often matched penny for penny, with little room for movement. Anything that might put financial obligations on the employer that went beyond the wealth-creating, productive effort of the employee could destroy the business, and would certainly destroy the job opportunity.

At the very least, the imposition of higher non-wage labour costs would put downward pressure on the level of wages paid in hard cash by the employer to the employee in the first place. Many employers and small businesses count their pennies closely. The last thing they want as they get off the ground and struggle to grow is legal obligations such as this, that may hit them in a way they cannot predict or afford.

It was astonishing that the hon. Lady went on about slave labour, while showing no understanding of what creates job opportunities and underpins their survival. But perhaps we should not be so surprised. The Labour party's entire economic programme, such as it is, is a well-crafted platform of deceit. It talks about creating jobs, while intending to do everything in practice to destroy them. It talks about low pay, yet it would tax jobs with further burdens such as this Bill, which would lead to lower pay or joblessness. It talks of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, while wanting to introduce measures such as this, which would end up making the poor poorer still. It talks about financing mass unemployment, yet this Bill would create more unemployment and require even greater Government finance to pay for it.

The Bill is designed—and cunningly designed—to make people feel that they would be better off under Labour, when the cruel truth is that they would be thrown out of work by a party that remains anti-business and largely ignorant of it.

Where do Labour Members acquire their experience of business? From the trade unions? From their council work? From their work in the media or as lecturers? It rarely comes from the real work of wealth creation.[Interruption.] Let us consider, in the face of this barracking from Opposition Members, Labour's Front-Bench Department of Trade and Industry team. It comprises Members who at one time or another have been a policy researcher, a poverty lobbyist, a journalist, a welfare rights officer, a lecturer, a radio presenter, a National Association of Local Government Officers official, and a local authority adviser.

912 That those hon. Members have had no experience of government is at least explicable, but that they have had no experience of anything very much at all leaves them insultingly ill-equipped to understand the interests and mechanisms of Britain's wealth-creating sector. Take their leader, their shadow Chancellor and their absent spokesman on trade and industry; take the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle); take almost all of them—the only thing they have ever run in their lives is a bath.

The extension of full employment rights to all part-time, temporary and casual workers—a commitment included in the Labour document, "A New Economic Future for Britain"—would cost British firms an estimated £1.5 billion. That is a punitively high tax on jobs. It is a massive bill with which to saddle some of the most vulnerable, smallest and newest businesses. That is a foretaste of what would happen if there were ever to be a Labour Government.

I must say one thing to the hon. Lady and those on the Opposition Front Bench. If she and others want to make a spending commitment, let them do so honestly and openly, instead of disguising it in a Bill of this sort. It is part of the Labour party's sly attempt to raise expectations of what various groups would enjoy under Labour. It is a ploy born partly of wilful deceit and partly of staggering naivety on how the real world of business works. Those hopes would be raised only to be cruelly and cynically dashed.

Who on earth would employ a student part-time? Who would bother to take on youngsters whose opportunity in life might already have been blighted by a Labour Government's £1, 000 tax on their study for A-levels? Let us be absolutely clear about the effects of the hon. Lady's legislation. On behalf of all those whose jobs she would destroy, having first manoeuvred to buy their votes, let me make it absolutely clear that we will hound her and remind her until kingdom come that her Bill, if it ever becomes law, and the policy of the Labour party, are a comprehensive job destruction package, which would achieve the very opposite of what I hope she genuinely wants.

I urge the hon. Lady to forget the Bill, and to drop it. It is no more than a misguided act of wishful thinking that would destroy the job prospects of thousands, who deserve a far better opportunity in life than that on offer from the hon. Lady today.

Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 19 (Motions for leave to bring in Bills and nomination of Select Committees at commencement of public business), and agreed to

Bill ordered to be brought in by Ms Angela Eagle, Ms Jean Corston, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Ms Roseanna Cunningham, Mr. Elfyn Llwyd, Miss Emma Nicholson and Mr. Hugh Dykes.