Employment Bill [HL]

During Second Reading, many noble Lords referred to the need to provide employment rights for agency workers, many of whom are vulnerable and often extremely exploited. The TUC briefing drew attention to the need to provide such protection. A Private Member’s Bill, the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, has had its Second Reading in the Commons. It proposes to give the 1.4 million temporary and agency workers the same protection that applies to permanent staff. Workers of this type have existed for a long time, particularly in the construction industry, where they have been viewed as being employed on individual contracts and therefore as self-employed, thus exempting the employer from providing the sort of employment rights and protection, including health and safety, that would otherwise be necessary. Nowadays, many are immigrant workers, as has already been explained by my noble friend Lord Wedderburn. Often employed via an agency, they are frequently very anxious to secure work and willing to accept lower pay and conditions, thus undermining the pay and conditions established in the relevant industry. There has been a growth in casualisation, which has now become quite a business in itself. The unions backing the Private Member’s Bill, which include my union, Unite, have undertaken substantial research into the conditions suffered by such workers. The results indicate a truly appalling level of exploitation. Many such workers had been promised reasonable rates of pay and decent accommodation but they actually got neither. The accommodation is often very crowded and, in some instances, unsafe, without proper fire protection. The agency will often claim to stay on the right side of the minimum wage provision by deducting charges from the pay towards the unsatisfactory and inadequate accommodation or for the minibus which takes the workers to and from work. If they get ill, they get sacked immediately. All report a deep sense of insecurity. This is an extremely insecure and exploited workforce. As I understand it, the Bill in the Commons has a double purpose: to protect non-agency workers being undercut by cheaper, temporary labour and to prevent vulnerable workers being exploited by unscrupulous agencies. Agency staff are employed systematically across the public sector, in the NHS and in education, as well as in agriculture and the food and drink industries. The unions believed that the Government had committed themselves to introducing protection for such workers as a result of the Warwick agreement, but they appear to have backed away from the full protection which would be accorded by the Bill and now, I understand, are talking about a commission including both sides of industry. I cannot help feeling that this is a kind of long-grass solution. There seems to be a feeling that the flexibility which the Government think is so important would be threatened by giving agency and temporary workers the same protection as permanent staff. I am sure that most people would support flexibility for people with young children and particularly for those with caring responsibilities, but what we now have for these 1.4 million people would appear to be disposability rather than flexibility. It enables unscrupulous employers to get work done on the cheap—to the great disadvantage of the employees, including permanent employees, whose rates of pay can be undermined by the existence of such a workforce. It is flexible from the employer’s point of view but exploitable from the view of the workforce. I should like to see the Government accept the argument that my noble friend Lord Wedderburn and I have set out this afternoon and move the situation forward. I support the amendment.