Job done, then, Ange? There is one respect in which deputy PM Angela Rayner’s business agenda has proved a resounding success. What’s that? you may ask, given the gloom evident in the business community ever since the Chancellor’s “growth” Budget.
Well, it turns out that Britain is now Europe’s “working from home” economy. Figures from LinkedIn suggest that 40 per cent of all jobs advertised in November entailed flexible working. That’s a striking contrast to France and Germany where that’s true of one in three jobs.
But when the Deputy PM’s employment rights legislation comes into effect, we can expect that figure to increase still further. Because one element of that package is to establish that flexible working is the “default” option from the outset. So, where the last government gave everyone the right to request flexible working – one sign it was already going off the rails – under Ange, the onus will be on business to show good reasons why it can’t oblige.
There are of course other elements in the rights package which should deter business from ever taking on another employee, such as the right to claim unfair dismissal from a job from day one in employment. As Tina McKenzie from the Federation of Small Businesses observed, “The day-one dismissal proposals in the bill need to be changed, to match the one-year qualification period in place under the last Labour Government. The Government needs to listen to small firms’ concerns on this point, as not doing so could have devastating consequences for employment levels in small firms without the in-house resource to handle a much greater volume of HR admin.”
Good luck with that, Tina. Meanwhile, the Deputy PM is confident that Working from Home for everyone will be fabulous: “There is loads of evidence that a secure workforce is a more confident, more productive workforce and also more confident to spend in the economy,” she said last week. Well, that doesn’t seem to be what business thinks. Barclays is the latest company to ask its workers could they possibly come into the office for three days a week or more. Amazon and Boots have already gone that way. But obviously the one redoubt of not WFH is the Civil Service. The Office for National Statistics has threatened strikes if ministers take away this particular perk.
The Government is pulling in two directions: the rights agenda is going one way; the growth agenda in another
Is there a possibility that the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, could listen to business when they tell her that the employment rights agenda is anti-jobs and anti-growth? The increase in National Insurance contributions from employers is already making companies like Brompton Bikes put investment and jobs on hold and the home products retailer Lakeland (my favourite) is thinking simply of selling up. But if you add to that these new hurdles to employers taking people on to see if they fit, they may go for the safe option, and not employ human beings at all.
An employee who has the right to work from home from day one and who is going to be hard to dismiss from the off without jumping through hoops, is that bit less attractive. Oh and he or she will have the right to parental leave from day one too. The Chancellor’s genius growth ideas — sucking up to the Chinese, the third runway at Heathrow and requiring regulators to stimulate growth rather than simply look after consumer interests — do not compensate for the harm done by the new employment rights. There is, as it happens, scope for consultation on some of the agenda (thereby distracting companies still further from making and selling things) but the flexible working element isn’t up for negotiation.
In other words, the Government is pulling in two directions. The rights agenda is going one way; the growth agenda in another. You can’t simultaneously make it more difficult and expensive to employ people and expect business to take on more staff. Take your pick. And if you add to all this the really worrying element for manufacturing, the increase in energy costs, well, about the only growth element of the economy will be in the public sector.
Now I work quite often from home. But let me put my head on the block here: for much of it, I work much less well from home. There, you can’t discuss ideas with colleagues, you can’t badger people to remember who did what when, you can’t make eye contact with the boss, you can’t nobble people in passing. Zoom is absolutely fine for brisk engagement with others but that’s about it.
It may be time for those two top women in government, Rachel and Angela, to compare notes. Right now, they’re the exciting creature in the Dr Doolittle household, the pushmipullyu — going in quite separate directions. Perhaps the man who is notionally in charge, Sir Keir Starmer, could make clear that if it’s growth they all want, this isn’t the way to go.
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist
