Proposals to give zero hours contract workers the right to request regular hours have moved a step closer to becoming law.
Conservative MP Scott Benton's Workers (Predictable Terms and Conditions) Bill cleared the Commons after receiving support from across the House. The Bill would introduce a new statutory right for workers to request a predictable working pattern from their bosses, with the aim of helping those on zero hours contracts.
Blackpool South MP Mr Benton told the Commons: "While zero hours contracts are an important part of the UK's flexible labour market, the 2017 Taylor review of modern working practices found that workers on zero hours contracts, as well as agency workers and temporary workers, struggle where flexibility is one-sided in an employer's favour."
He added: "The new rights will boost workers' satisfaction and productivity and allow employers to retain skilled staff. It is vital that we maintain the flexibility that zero hours contracts facilitate for both businesses and workers, which is why workers will be able to choose to continue working on a zero hours contract, or in another form of less predictable work, if indeed that is what works best for them."
Conservative MP for Newbury Laura Farris gave her support to the Bill. She claimed that zero hours contracts "exist in a grey zone between full employment rights and the status of an independent contractor".
The former employment law barrister said: "It can't be right that we allow even in this grey zone with all the flexibility that I otherwise support, a system to exist where people literally have no idea from week to week, day to day, whether they are going to be required and if so, how much."
She added: "It seems right to me that where it is reasonably possible for them to do so, a worker should have the right to request predictability, and that the burden should be on the employer either to say 'yes, we can offer you some predictability, here is what it looks like, something that would come pretty close to a standard contract of employment', or to say 'such is the nature of our work that predictability is impossible in any circumstance'."
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Labour shadow minister Imran Hussain reiterated Labour's commitment to ban zero hours contracts, saying: "The reality is the advantages of these contracts that were asserted by the Government are frankly alien to the people on them. And what they face is no utopia of flexibility, but a prison of exploitation by bad bosses at worst or a world of uncertainty at best."
He added: "We support the Government's support in ensuring the Bill and Bills like this get on to the statute books, because long overdue as it is, it is a step in the right direction."
Business and trade minister Kevin Hollinrake said the Government supported the Bill.
He said: "This Bill forms part of a wider package of six Private Members' Bills on employment rights which the Government is supporting. Taken as a package, these Bills will deliver on our 2019 manifesto commitments to enhance workers' rights and support people to stay in work."
Responding to Labour, he said: "Sixty-four percent of people who were surveyed don't want more hours, yet he is going to ban zero hours contracts, even though 64% of people want them. Where is the sense in that?"
The Bill received an unopposed third reading from MPs, and will now be considered by the House of Lords.
