I beg to move,
That this House has considered the potential merits of devolving employment law to Scotland.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward.
The Minister will recall that I have spent many hours in this place calling for reform to employment law. She will also be aware of the backlash from unions at an employment Bill being nowhere to be seen in the most recent Queen’s Speech. Indeed, Frances O’Grady of the Trades Union Congress highlighted that vital rights that Ministers have promised, such as flexible working, fair tips and protection from pregnancy discrimination, are at risk of being ditched for good. The fact is that this Government need to get a grip on workers’ rights. If they refuse to do so, then now is the time to devolve employment law powers to Scotland to allow the Scottish Government to enact our own reforms.
The SNP Scottish Government are doing everything in their power to improve workers’ rights where they have devolved competence. Throughout the pandemic, the Scottish Government have worked to prioritise workers’ rights, calling on employers, trade unions and workers to work together during this challenging time to ensure that workers are treated fairly. The SNP Government refreshed their Scottish business pledge to align with the fair work principles, and they established a new learning network and an international fair work summit. They also published a fair work action plan in February 2019, which set out a range of measures to support employers to embed fairer working practices. That is supported by trade unions across Scotland.
Additionally, the Scottish Government published a gender pay gap action plan in 2019, bringing together a cross-Government group to approach the gendered impact of inequality in the labour market. The Scottish Government are also a champion of the real living wage, which is of the utmost importance during the cost of living crisis. There are nearly 1,500 living wage-accredited employers in Scotland, giving Scotland the highest rate of workers in the UK earning a real living wage.
With the limited powers that they currently hold, the Scottish Government have worked hard to tackle in-work poverty and support those on low incomes and, ultimately, to condemn exploitative zero-hours contracts by establishing a fair work convention to support the fair pay and conditions agenda. However, with employment law reserved to the UK Government, Scotland can only go so far; it is only able to address part of the problem. Full devolution of employment law would allow Scotland to go even further by creating fairer workplaces, increasing wages, reducing insecure work and fundamentally tackling in-work poverty head on. Shifting that power to the Scottish Government would allow them to stop the race to the bottom on workers’ rights that we are seeing in the post-Brexit UK.
Last December, the European Union delivered employee status to gig economy workers, untying them from the constraints of self-employment status and allowing them
basic employment rights, such as minimum wage, holidays and sick leave. That reform of workers’ rights in the EU may well have been one of the most ambitious extensions of workers’ rights from Brussels since Britain left the EU, and we are missing out. Since leaving the EU, the UK Government have been complacent on updating employment law to tackle the injustices faced by the UK workforce.
Scotland overwhelmingly supported retaining EU membership, in no small part due to its commitment to the extension and promotion of workers’ rights. Instead, the UK Government’s approach appears to be to leave workers to appeal to the courts where they cannot access justice, as in the Uber and Addison Lee cases. Without reform of existing legislation, workers are left at the mercy of rogue employers. In 2019, this UK Government were elected on a manifesto that promised to introduce measures to protect those in low-paid work and the gig economy. That was embodied in the promise of an employment Bill that would protect and enhance workers’ rights, with the tagline, “Making Britain the best place in the world to work”.