Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill now be read a Second time.

This Bill is about making Britain the best place to work. It is about levelling up and treating people fairly. It is about better regulation to govern fire and rehire. I am grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House. I know that Fridays are an important time for us all to be with our constituents. That so many Members have chosen to be here is, I hope, not simply testimony to the power of the Whips, although I have my doubts. I believe it is because Members of all parties recognise that the practice of fire and rehire is creating hardship and real distress for hundreds of thousands of families across Britain. We can end that misery, and we must. I will set out my remarks in answer to four key questions: what the problem is, how we can solve it, what my Bill does not do, and what it does do.

What is the problem? I believe that every Member of the House would do all they could to stop a key worker in their constituency having their wages cut by thousands of pounds. Each of us would want to prevent a constituent who has done nothing wrong and has given loyal service from being fired. If we could, we all would.

These people are workers who have kept us all going through the pandemic and are now being fired and rehired. They are loyal workers who have served their companies for years, such as bus drivers who risked covid to keep the economy going; gas workers who kept the heating on in our grandparents’ homes; and teachers who kept our schools going. They are being told, “You are fired, and you can only get your job back if you sign a new contract on worse terms and conditions.” That is wrong; it should not be happening in Britain today.

Over the past months, I have visited workplaces all over our country. In Loughborough, I met a man who told me that he was watching Saturday night TV at home with his son when his phone pinged. It was an email telling him he would be fired unless he accepted £15,000 off his annual salary.

In the village of Street in Somerset, I met a man at Clarks shoes who told me of his feelings. He has a two-bedroom flat because he is separated from his wife, and his children stay with him every second week. “If I have to sign that contract,” he told me, “I’ll not just lose my home; I’ll lose my family as well.” The man could not then have afforded that property and would have had to live in a bedsit. That is fire and rehire.

In Banbury, at Jacobs Douwe Egberts, one of the 291 workers who were threatened with the sack there told me that her family had given over 100 years’ service to the company. Her father had worked there, she had worked there for 34 years, her husband had worked there and now her son worked there. She felt that all of them had been treated with contempt.

The hon. Member is making some very important points and this is a very important debate. He set out right at the start of his speech that he wants the UK to be the “best place to work”, and I agree with that. Does he agree that the UK should also be the best place to start and grow a business, because that is what creates the opportunities for work?

I do agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is why I was very keen to say at the beginning that this is about making Britain the best place to work. It can only be the best place to work if our businesses are thriving, and I believe our businesses can only be thriving if they have a well motivated workforce.

Does my hon. Friend agree with me that if we do not end this abhorrent practice, we the taxpayers pay instead? If people end up on lower wages, they are going to have to claim more universal credit, so instead of the companies paying their tax bill, it ends up being the taxpayer.

I am not sure whether I am glad that my hon. Friend has made that point, because I was going to make it myself later on in my speech, but it is a really important point. It shows that this is not just a human cost; it is an economic cost to the whole country as well.

In Manchester, a former bus driver told me that he was on three separate forms of blood pressure medication. The emotional strain on that man was heartbreaking. He was going to lose thousands off his pay, and the managers actually sent someone to his doorstep with the new contract, pressurising him to sign. That gives a whole new meaning to doorstep selling.

In Livingston, I met a delivery driver who was called in and threatened with the sack. He said his mind was in turmoil, but Tesco expected him to go out in a 40-tonne lorry and drive through a snowstorm to Elgin after receiving that news.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will in just one moment, particularly because that is the hon. Lady’s constituency. This was a complete breach of health and safety protocol. When news like that is given to an employee, the regulations say that the person should be given the rest of the day off on full pay to think through what they have been told and to seek advice. That was Tesco.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for visiting my constituency and meeting these Tesco drivers. I have also met them, and they have told me stories about the brutal fire and rehire tactics that Tesco has used, including people who have predicated their mortgages and their whole life plans on contracts that were given to them and have now been pulled from under their feet at a time when, exactly as he says, they have been keeping this country running. I commend him, and I commend his Bill.

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady.

Fire and rehire is happening all over our country. We must act. Sainsbury’s, Argos, Asda, Tesco—they are all at it. Profitable companies are doing this to hard-working people. For me, the most upsetting of all was when a worker’s eyes welled up and he started to cry, as he recounted how he felt telling his family that he was to be fired. His voice faltered when he said, “It was just so humiliating.”

The hon. Gentleman is being characteristically open and generous in the way he presents his Bill, but he just said that, “They’re all doing it”, which creates the impression that this is a widespread practice and that it is focused entirely on the private sector. In his speech, could he also address what I would argue are the limited number of circumstances in which this occurs, a large of proportion of which occur in the public sector? What are his thoughts on that?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and let me tackle it head on. The survey by Britain Thinks, of 2,321 people, showed that 9% of workers said that in the previous nine months they had either been fired or rehired, or they had been threatened with being fired and rehired. If one were to extrapolate that 9% across the workplace, which I do not seek to do, it would be 3 million workers. Let us say it is half that number—we are still talking about 1.5 million workers. Let us quarter it—it is still three quarters of a million workers in this country. This is a serious problem.

I also want to address the other element of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. I have been on a demonstration picketing with workers outside a Labour council. A Labour council has done this in Tower Hamlets, and shame on it. Wherever this happens, it is wrong. It does not matter whether it is the private sector or the public sector, it is wrong and families are suffering because of it. That is why it is incumbent on us all not to play party politics with this, but to act.

I think we should do something in this area. It is an unacceptable practice, and a good employer would not resort to it. But on quantum, the poll in the ACAS document shows that less than 3% of HR professionals reported this. The figures quoted by the hon. Gentleman are across the entire working population. Most employers are not making redundancies or downsizing. So the quantum is far lower than the numbers he quoted.

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am sure he will also have noticed that that survey was sent out by the institute to 160,000 of its members, and it asked whether those members had ever engaged in fire and rehire, how they had used it, and how they had sacked people in the previous nine months. Does he recall how many people replied to the survey? It is there—

Two hundred and twenty-five HR professionals.

It was circulated to 160,000 members, and 225 wanted to reply. In my view, that says everything about the way this is being used by personnel departments.

Whether it is 1,000 workers, 20,000, 100,000 or a quarter of a million, in a sense it does not matter. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is a point of principle? No employee should ever see their terms and conditions ripped up under threat of menaces or losing a job they may have had for decades.

I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. It is a matter of principle. That is why I think Members across the House have said what they have about the evils of fire and rehire. The human cost of these tactics is acknowledged by everyone and every party in this House. I want to recognise the work and support of many colleagues who have long been battling against the inhumanity of the tactics.