Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Government also talk about extending the number of apprenticeships, but most people have the understanding that those employed on apprenticeships are not employed on the same basis as permanent staff who have been there for a long time. We all acknowledge that, if people are trying to get a foothold in the workplace, employers need concessions to be encouraged to take them on. It strikes me that the Bill flies in the face of everything that the Government say about trying to instil a work ethic and about getting people who have never worked into work for the first time. To be fair, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston said that the Bill was not designed to end agency working in itself but to ensure that agency workers are paid the rate for the job. The Bill does not clarify the period that agency workers must work before they qualify for equal treatment. Without any indication of the qualifying period, the Bill must appear to everybody—even those who support its thrust—as fatally flawed on that basis alone. I heard talk—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—of six months being mooted as a qualifying period. It is perfectly clear that most hon. Members who have turned up today do not believe that there should be a six-month qualifying period—they do not think that there should be a qualifying period at all. The unions that are behind the Bill are clearly against any six-month qualifying period.