Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

The Government's view has been that there should be a qualifying period before those rights apply. I shall come to that later. When we established the minimum wage, we wanted to develop a consensus about it among not just employees but employers. That was why we set up the Low Pay Commission—to recommend rates, after consulting both business and workplace representatives and taking into account wider economic factors. That model has been successful, and the minimum wage has not had the adverse consequences that the Opposition predicted. This year is no exception: the Government estimate that more than 1 million workers have benefited from the uprating last October. In this Session, we will also introduce our Employment Bill, which is intended to improve the effectiveness of dispute resolution in the workplace and of the application of employment law more widely. It will strengthen the enforcement framework for the national minimum wage, give workers better recourse to arrears if they are underpaid and stiffen penalties for the minority of employers who do not comply with the law and thereby undermine the efforts of legitimate employers. The Employment Bill will also give greater investigative powers to agency inspectors, increase the potential fines for breaching work regulations and reform the system of dispute resolution. That is all driven by a desire to have proper protections in the workplace while continuing policies that foster high employment and low barriers to entry to the job market.