I shall speak to the amendments, but this debate is about zero-hours contracts, and it is interesting that we have even got to the point that there is a Bill addressing this issue. That is a good thing, because as this became an ever bigger issue for many people over the past two or three years, there was a lot of resistance from the Government. Initially, they said, “It isn’t really a problem. There aren’t more zero-hours contracts than ever before. People have the choice to work as they want, and we really don’t need to legislate.” The campaigns and the substantial criticisms have now got us to a place where the Bill includes a provision on zero-hours contracts.
The problem is that the provision is very narrow. Outlawing exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts deals with only one part of a much larger problem. The Government must have thought, “Well, we’ve come under sustained criticism about zero-hours contracts, so we’ll show that we’ve done something. What’s the least we could do? We will ban exclusivity clauses.” Many people realise that that is a minimal response.
For me, the major factor is the degree of choice that people really have in their workplace. I have heard several Members say on Second Reading and in Committee, where the issue was also debated, “It’s all right. People choose to work in this way. It gives them flexibility as well. It allows them to plan their lives.” Reference was made to people with child care responsibilities, for example. However, it is precisely those people who often find it hardest to cope with being in such a situation. Far from giving them the ability to juggle their various responsibilities, a zero-hours contract may well be the one thing that makes it very difficult to continue in their job while sustaining those responsibilities. People with child care or any other caring responsibilities need to know, day to day and week to week, when they will be working.
Most people cannot arrange child care at the drop of a hat. When my children were young, I used to say that my parents were the only people in the world whom I could phone at 8 o’clock in the morning and say, “My child’s ill. Could you come, please, now?” Not everyone has parents who can drop everything on that sort of warning. I would not want to do that for anything other than a real emergency—the school’s boiler is bust and there is no school, or a child is ill—because if people have to keep doing it, they will quickly lose the support of their friends and family. To fulfil their caring responsibilities, people have to know what is happening.
A lot of part-time jobs fit that bill well. It is not a great deal of help if part-time jobs are turned into jobs where people are told, “We’re not really sure which days it will be this week—we’ll let you know.”
Amendment 10 says that there should be compensation if people are called out to work but are not given work. We must understand that there are costs involved in that. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) mentioned transport. People might also incur child care costs to cover the hours they think they are being given, only to find that they are not there.
For many of the jobs where I have seen people on zero-hours contracts, there seems to be no compelling reason why there cannot be a much more organised set of working arrangements and why the arrangements have to be quite so flexible for the employer. In most businesses—even retail businesses—where there are ups and downs in the week, and indeed in the day, the patterns are knowable: they do not suddenly differ from one day to the next.
That is similarly true of caring. The point when I really began to lose patience with zero-hours contracts was when constituents of mine who work as carers found themselves getting texts early in the week telling them which days they would be working. The people they care for are there all the time. The number of people on the books who need care is well known. It should not be beyond the possibilities of management to work out fairly well in advance what the need will be and to allocate the staff accordingly.