Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), put it succinctly when he said that the Government are looking both ways. They have to produce different messages for different audiences. They are in hock to the trade union movement, but at the same time business organisations, to which they also try to be friendly these days, are telling them about the huge impact that the Bill will have. Looking both ways, which I thought that we left to the Liberal Democrats, is worse than the dithering that we have come to expect from the Government. Although the Minister has already spoken, I hope that he will at some stage—perhaps in an intervention on one of my hon. Friends who is lucky enough to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker—provide some of the answers to the questions about the time scale of the commission. If there are failures in the current agency system that should properly be repaired and if people are being badly done by by unscrupulous employers who are looking for all sorts of loopholes and are using the agency system as a way of hitting the rights of their workers, we clearly need to address them.