Chris Expresses Concern That It Will Be Illegal To Work More Than 32 Hours
Christopher Chope Conservative, Christchurch 1:26 pm, 18th October 2022
I thank Peter Dowd for presenting a measure that should single-handedly unite all on these Benches in their belief that there is a real, continuing threat from the prospect of a Labour Government who will be intent on destroying our economy. The hon. Gentleman has articulated one way in which that would happen, and I am delighted to see that he has John McDonnell here to support him this afternoon. The hon. Member for Bootle himself, of course, is a former shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
In his speech, the hon. Gentleman suggested that there were virtues, or could be virtues, in a four-day working week. I do not think anyone disputes that, and there is already a freedom—which the hon. Gentleman recognised—for employers, or other individuals, to work four days a week to limit their working time to 32 hours. Unfortunately, however, that is not what his Bill says. It is described as a
“Bill to amend the Working Time Regulations 1998 to reduce the maximum working week from 48 hours…to 32 hours per week”
—in other words, to prevent people from being able to work for more than 32 hours a week—
“and to provide for overtime pay;
and for connected purposes.”
Effectively, what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that everyone who is currently working more than 32 hours a week will be prevented from so doing in the future under the provisions of his Bill. If ever one could think of a hand grenade being thrown into the economy, preventing people from being able to work longer hours and forcing them to reduce their hours at a time when we have very high levels of employment and very low levels of unemployment is probably a good example. When someone is forced to be able to work only four days a week, who is going to fill the gap? Who is going to work during the time in which that person is not working? We are told that there is a crisis in the health service relating to the number of people working in it. If the Bill were passed, the junior doctors to whom the working time regulations were applied in, I think, 2004 would not be allowed to work for more than 32 hours a week. How will that help the national health service? It will not help it at all; in fact, it will undermine its effectiveness.
However, the hon. Gentleman has done us a great service because he has reminded us that the working time directive upon which the 1998 regulations were based emanated from the European Union and that it was implemented in this country under duress because the EU interpreted the working time directive as being a health and safety measure for which there was no veto and it could therefore be proceeded with under qualified majority voting. The present Government are quite rightly committed to supply-side reforms and removing unnecessary regulations upon our workforce, and this is a timely reminder that they could, and in my view should, get to grips with the issue of the working time directive and the working time regulations.
My basis for saying this is that in the period between 1993 and 1997, when the working time directive and the implications flowing from it were being discussed in this country, I was a member of the Health and Safety Commission. The commission produced a series of papers in which it was made quite clear that the working time directive had nothing whatsoever to do with health and safety and that it was all to do with employment protection on the continent of Europe. It was a specious justification of the introduction of these regulations to label them as health and safety regulations merely so that they could be imposed on this country under the qualified majority voting that applied at the time.
So the working time directive has nothing whatsoever to do with health and safety. It is a legitimate issue in relation to employers and employees, and it is certainly an important issue in relation to productivity. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right in saying that some of the organisations that have reduced the length of time that their workers work have benefited from more productivity from the workforce, but there is no evidence that making this compulsory would result in higher productivity. All it would do is result in much higher and unbearable costs for employers in the private sector and, significantly, in the public sector.
Once again I say that this is a timely intervention by the hon. Gentleman and his allies on the Labour Benches. I am sure that if his Bill were to be put to a vote today, he would receive overwhelming support from his parliamentary colleagues, but it would not receive any support at all from our side. I am not going to divide the House on this because I am a believer that everybody should have the right to bring in whatever Bill they want to, and I have exercised that right on many occasions. However, it is important to put on record that, were such a Bill to be drafted and brought forward for debate by the hon. Gentleman, it would be hotly opposed by everybody on this side, although we would enjoy the spectacle of seeing many on his own side having to eat their words. They talk the talk on high growth but obviously a compulsory measure such as this applying to all employers up and down the country would be damaging to growth. It would undermine the right of people to be able to work hard to look after their families and to spend their money as they wish. It would be an impoverishing exercise for so much of our economy and so many of the people engaged in it.
It is also important in a debate such as this that we remind colleagues on our own Front Bench that there is a lot more to be done to deregulate the labour market. The working time directive is now completely surplus to our requirements, and I would like to see a Bill brought forward to repeal the working time regulations and all that flows from them. They have been developed insidiously over the years since 1998. Originally it was said that the directive should deal only with matters such as drivers’ hours, for example, and with the mobile people employed in the transport industry. It was then extended to cover almost everybody with a sedentary occupation in any of those industries and in the early 2000s it was extended to cover doctors as well. The working time directive is in itself responsible for an enormous lack of productivity and potential among our workforce in this country, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to try to goad our Government into action on this point. In the meantime I put on record my strong opposition to everything contained in the Bill.
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