Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for a valuable intervention. I agree totally. I spoke to the citizens advice bureaux yesterday. They would like the enforcement commission to enforce action on abuses of existing legislation, rather as Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs enforces the minimum wage. I am glad to hear from the Minister's remarks that the Government have been discussing enforcement with the CABs, and I hope that he will say whether the Government support an enforcement commission of that sort. Agency workers have contracts, but those contracts are with the agencies. It is totally impractical to have to produce a new and different set of terms and conditions every time a worker goes to work for a different company for a few days. That would result in huge additional bureaucracy that neither agencies nor companies, especially small companies, could afford. As has been mentioned, agency workers already enjoy many of the same rights as employed workers: four weeks' paid holiday, rest breaks, the national minimum wage, statutory paternity and maternity pay and statutory sick pay if they have worked for the agency for more than three months.