Treasury and Work and Pensions

It is the role of the Government to protect people from exploitation and to look after their health. Such a provision works in the rest of Europe. Many Opposition Members have intervened today to tell us about what is working well in other parts of Europe. In my view, a 48-hour week is a very long week, and a 65-hour week is not acceptable. Because we did not name the day when we will implement the 48-hour regulation, we could not get agreement on the Jaeger ruling. People who have stood down from their duties but who are on call have to be paid; however, 23 of the 25 EU countries are breaking that rule because we could not reach agreement on the Jaeger ruling. We could not do so because we would not accept a date for the introduction of the 48-hour regulation. The temporary workers directive protects people who work for agencies. Currently, British workers are being laid off and taken back on as agency workers, with no right to holidays, sickness pay or a pension, or they are being replaced by agency workers from the eight countries who joined the EU during the last round of enlargement. An agency worker is not an employee: they are not employed by the agency or by the company in question. Sixteen EU countries already have a rule that recognises that those who are ““employed”” by an agency are indeed that agency’s employee, and they get proper sickness benefit, holiday pay and pension. It is us, along with three other EU countries, who are holding back implementation of this directive. I do not have to tell the Minister—he used to work for the TUC—about the Warwick agreement. We—this Labour party and Government—said that we would speedily implement that agreement, but it has been held up for four years. I was distressed to read in ““Success at Work: Protecting Vulnerable Workers, Supporting Good Employers””—it is the Government’s own document—that the Government believe that the labour market’s current needs are being met, and that there is no need for further legislation in this area. How does that fit in with the Warwick agreement, which said that we would help to implement the temporary workers directive? As Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, I know that we are one of the four countries in the EU preventing implementation of that directive. It is time that we did something about this issue. I turn to the treatment of UK pensioners overseas. There are 970,000 ex-pat pensioners, 520,000 of whom had their pensions frozen at the level that applied when they left the UK, or when they received their pension, if they were of pensionable age. The other 450,000 had fully contributed, fully paid-up, index-linked pensions. The situation that I am describing arises only in certain countries: Australia, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe and most other Commonwealth countries. People who have moved to the USA, Israel, the Philippines—people often go to such places because they are regarded as tax havens— Austria, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Turkey and what was Yugoslavia get their uprating. However, those who have moved to the Commonwealth countries that I named do not. That is intolerable. The complaint is that we cannot afford to pay that uprating—that it would cost £400 million per annum. According to analysis by the British Australian Pensioner Association, conducted through the Government Actuary, in 2005-06 the national insurance fund had received overpayments in excess of £4.34 billion. According to the forecast, in 2020 the surplus will be £60.64 billion.