Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

I agree. I am unable to clarify for sure, but I suspect that it is the cost to the agency, not the nurse, and then the agency will top-slice whatever the amount in order to provide the service. After all, the service of agencies is to provide the people, which comes at a cost as well. I rather hope—I have tabled a parliamentary question on this matter—that the £120 figure was somehow or other a one-off anomaly and that there are not substantial numbers of agency nurses being paid that incredible sum of money, which, as I said, could be better and more properly used employing full-time staff so that the money saved could be put into front-line services in hospitals up and down the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that we should take into account what it is like running businesses these days and the wider implications of employing people, including all the paperwork and the fact that advice has to be sought on the ever-changing rules and regulations that pertain to the rights of people working in the company. There is often a plethora of such stuff and many people simply do not have the time to read much of the information that comes through the letterbox or to fill in the questionnaires that the Government send out. Such things take up a substantial amount of time, but we should remember that many businesses are small businesses, possibly comprising two or three people or are even a one-man band. Let us take the example of digital switchover. Many more aerials and satellite dishes may need to be installed in only a short space of time and it may well be that more workers will need to be taken on for a short period to deal with pressure points in certain areas. Employers may not want to go through the rigmarole of issuing full-time contracts, given the short space of time involved. That is why they may want to employ agency workers. It is important to appreciate the mindset of people who own businesses and the costs to them if the Bill becomes an Act. It is all very well to dismiss what the CBI and the Institute of Directors—I declare my interest as a member of the IOD—say, but we should not do so too easily because they represent a lot of people who employ a lot of people, including agency workers. They have the relevant experience, so it cannot be right for us simply to ignore it and say that because everyone said that the minimum wage would be a disaster, but it was not, the outcome will be the same with the Bill. We should not operate according to such guidelines. We need properly to take into account the Bill's full implications.