UK Parliament / Open data

Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Proceeding contribution from John McDonnell (Labour) in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 16 April 2013. It occurred during Debate on bills on Growth and Infrastructure Bill.

That leads on to my second point—I do not want to delay the House. This measure opens up the process of recruitment, retention and promotion to potential victimisation and abuse. Despite the formal protections that the Government assure us will be put in place, the reality is that informal pressures will be put

on those who wish to be recruited, retained or promoted and these will override the formal protections. Those who have represented people at tribunals and elsewhere will know that it is extremely difficult to prove victimisation and bullying in the work force. Those informal pressures will eventually undermine the credibility of the scheme. My fear is that they will also undermine the credibility of employee share ownership schemes overall.

Thirdly, I look forward to reading the draft regulations and guidance on protections for jobseeker’s allowance. However, ministerial statements on JSA protections in recent months, as recorded in Hansard, have proved not to be worth the paper they are written on. I refer to assurance after assurance we were given that there were no targets for sanctions in individual jobcentres, when we now have concrete evidence that that is the case. Ministerial assurances on the operation of JSA have so far not proved to be effective. I believe that, at the end of the day, they will prove not to be effective in this case either, because the same informal pressures will be put on jobcentre workers to meet targets for sanctions overall.

Finally, this measure sets an extremely dangerous precedent. The idea of selling rights could creep into other areas of policy making. For example, will landlords in future be able to offer reduced rents for reductions in security of tenure? Will consumer rights be sold for a reduction in the price of particular goods? That is much more significant than the scheme being proposed in this debate. The idea that rights can be sold in any sphere of government activity sets a dangerous precedent for the future development of rights in this country.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
561 cc182-3 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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