Meeting of the Parliament 01 March 2016
I thank the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee for an important and timely report that builds on the work that the committee did previously on underemployment. Just how necessary the report is was brought home by the rather alarming extract from the cabinet secretary’s evidence. The report states:
“The Cabinet Secretary for Fair Work, Skills and Training said that she did ‘not like’ any of the definitions she had seen of fair work, and felt it was a highly subjective area. She suggested that it is ‘much easier to see a bad job than provide a hard and fast definition of a good job or fair work’”.
The cabinet secretary for fair work admits that she is unsure what fair work is. There is a temptation to go down the rhetorical route and ask whether the cabinet secretary for education knows what education is or the Cabinet Secretary for Justice has any idea about justice. However, that would be a bit unfair, because the cabinet secretary for fair work was showing some welcome honesty about the complexities of fair work.
It would be good if the Government demonstrated the same honesty when it comes to the monthly reporting of labour market statistics. When those statistics come out, we often see hyperbolic claims about a return to pre-recession employment levels or record employment rates in particular areas, but the committee’s report makes it clear that there is rather less to that than meets the eye. It says:
“The majority of evidence suggested a deterioration in job quality. In particular, we heard of an increase in poor-quality, low-paid and insecure work, and a worrying prevalence of the use of exploitative zero-hours contracts.”
In other words, there might be more jobs, but the quality of those jobs leaves a great deal to be desired.
For a long time, we in the Labour Party have been saying that, when it comes to labour market statistics, we have to look behind the headlines. That is not just because the numbers tell us something different but because behind those headlines are the real-life lived experiences of many people who are struggling to get by in low-quality, poorly paid jobs.
I was struck by one example in the report that comes from my constituency of East Lothian. A legal secretary explained:
“I was taken on in 2008 with the promise of being trained as a paralegal, then the recession hit and 7 years later I’m still an unqualified secretary, can’t get a job elsewhere but haven’t progressed in this one. I am given too much responsibility but no reward, paid just enough to not be entitled to ANY tax credits but not enough to actually live off, or work towards a mortgage, or pay off any debt. The Company I work for takes full advantage of the fact the people are terrified to leave but there is no future in the role.”
That is the reality behind the statistics. We should not lose sight of the report’s recommendations about improving the quality of the labour market statistics. The cabinet secretary is quoted in the report as accepting that the data is broad brush and that
“it could be hard to break data down to a useful level, noting for instance that even working one or two hours a week would see someone classed as being in employment.”