Growth and Infrastructure Bill

The Minister has just said that it is not clear whether an employee shareholder is an employee. I remind him of the advice that we have received from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which looked at this situation in some detail. It came to the view that an individual who is an employee shareholder was nevertheless a worker, so workers’ rights would normally be applied to that individual. The Government have tried to get over that by saying that because this is all voluntary, the employee voluntarily gives up their rights. During the course of our recent discussion, it has become clear that that is certainly not voluntary. In a situation in which people face either unemployment or the possibility of loss of employment support from the state, it is not really very voluntary, is it?