Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights — House of Commons, 2016-11-07
Topic: Labor
Neil Charles Gray (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I refer the hon. Gentleman to the recently passed Trade Union Act 2016 and hope that he will consider his comments in those terms In these challenging times, we have seen moves to zero-hours contracts across many industries, and conditions where workers are vulnerable to exploitation and being trapped in a cycle of low pay. EU TUPE rights introduced important protections for workers affected by contracting out, company buy-outs and even the privatisation of public services. Without those rights, employees in permanent, secure jobs could be placed into more uncertain contracts or have their terms and conditions reduced The UK must continue to comply with EU employment law in full, including new rights adopted within the EU, meaning that future Governments cannot remove rights at work. UK workers should not be denied any of the rights enjoyed by working people across Europe. New rights are already under discussion within the EU, such as protections for posted workers, improved rights for working parents and the European pillar of social rights, so UK workers could be excluded from these protections post-Brexit. The TUC has said that "workers should benefit from the highest level of protection in the EU. It should not be possible for future governments to take the opportunity to compete with other countries on the basis of a race to the bottom on rights at work." It is female workers who stand to lose the most from Brexit. Alongside the European working time directive, we also now have protections over maternity leave and equal pay, and better protection from sexual harassment and from pregnancy or maternity discrimination. Women in the UK secured the right to equal pay for work of equal value thanks to the EU, and although there is still a long way to go to close the gender pay gap, the protections from the EU push the agenda forward, rather than backward. We have no idea of what is to come post-Brexit. Pregnant women and new mothers have been protected by day one rights and unfair dismissal rights, and by protection from discrimination. The right to paid time off to attend antenatal appointments is also now secure for pregnant women, keeping them in work. The parental leave directive allows parents to take up to 18 weeks’ unpaid leave to care for a child and protects workers who need to deal with family or domestic emergencies. A staggering 8.3 million working parents qualify for these rights in the UK Perhaps one opportunity I can see from Brexit is to discuss where the powers and responsibilities currently held at EU level will reside when the UK leaves. Obviously, we would expect the areas of devolved responsibility, such as agriculture and fisheries, to be automatically devolved, along with their substantial budgets, but I would like this to go further. Last year, during the Scotland Bill debates, we were told that we could not devolve employment law, but it makes perfect sense to do it post-Brexit. It is not just the rights currently enjoyed by workers that we can see being eroded; current and future events are likely to have a detrimental impact on working conditions and the quality of life of working families We have a perfect storm approaching for working families. We see the report from the Resolution Foundation today on the devastating impact of the benefit cap, but we also have cuts to universal credit work allowances coming down the line, a potentially devastating spike in inflation predicted to arrive next year, a massive drop in the pound and the potential threat to employment law post-Brexit. Employers and employees alike are demanding information, details and plans from this Government to provide security where there is currently significant insecurity and uncertainty This evening we are going to hear, as we have indeed already heard, Tory after Tory trump up—that pun was intended—that somehow they speak for workers in these isles and that somehow because it was Conservative Governments that brought in factories Acts in the 19th century, that absolves them of their most recent disastrous history. So let me remind the House that it was a Conservative Prime Minister who destroyed the lives and livelihoods of mineworkers with generations of unemployment; that it was a Conservative Chancellor who said at that Dispatch Box in 1991 that unemployment was a price "worth paying" for bringing down inflation; and it was those Government Members sitting opposite now who forced through the worst legislative attack on workers’ rights in living memory, in the form of the Trade Union Bill. So forgive me if my party and the people of Scotland do not trust any Tory government with workers’ rights.