Allow me to welcome you, Mr. Olner. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I am delighted to introduce the debate, as this subject is of huge importance to thousands of people in this country—predominantly women—who carry out work on behalf of employers in their own homes either because they prefer to work at home, or, as in the majority of cases, because they have no option other than to work from home.

Almost 100 years ago, on 22 July 1908, the House of Commons Select Committee on Home Work published a report under the chairmanship of Sir Thomas Whittaker. It may be useful—it is certainly relevant to today’s debate—to quote some of the report’s recommendations and conclusions. The first recommendation was that

“there should be legislation with regard to the rates of payment made to Home Workers who are employed in the production or preparation of articles for sale by other persons.”

The fourth recommendation—I am sure that you will be grateful, Mr. Olner, for the fact that I shall not read the whole report, which is 286 pages long—was that

“it should be an offence to pay or offer lower rates of payment to Home Workers in those trades than the minimum rates which had been fixed for that district by the Wages Board.”

Recommendation 6 was that

“all Home Workers who are employed by other persons in producing or preparing articles for sale should be required to register their name, address and class of work at, and receive a certificate of such registration from, the offices of the Local Authority, and that the keeping of accurate outworkers’ lists by employers should be strictly enforced.”

Recommendation 7 was that

“it should be an offence for any person to employ any Home Worker to produce or prepare any articles for sale by another person unless the worker produce a certificate of registration.”

I thought that quoting from the 1908 Select Committee would give a context for today’s debate, 100 years later. The Committee spent a good deal of time and effort investigating the way in which workers were exploited by unscrupulous employers who used outworkers, working in their own homes, to lower wage costs and increase profits, usually at the expense of the home worker, who struggled to complete the piecework in the time allocated. For many home workers, little has changed in the past 100 years.

There remains, in 2008, a pressing need to bring home workers into line with other workers in our economy who, thanks to the Government, have seen their terms and conditions at work dramatically improve. Add to that the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, which was strongly opposed by the Opposition at the time, and it is clear that workers’ rights and wages for the majority who go to work in a workplace each day have been greatly enhanced. However, there remains a large group of workers who were clearly exploited in 1908 and remain in the same position today.

I wish not only to draw the Government’s attention to the plight of home workers, but to call for a further change in the law. Why does it matter? Thousands of workers in the United Kingdom are vulnerable to exploitation from unscrupulous employers. That continues either because they do not have full employee status, or because it is unclear whether they have employee status. Although uncertain employee status is a problem for all kinds of workers in the UK, it is a particular issue for home, agency and temporary workers. Home workers who have worked for a company for several years—often on low wages and taking on rushed orders at short notice at the company’s convenience—can discover, if they become pregnant or fall ill, or if their work simply stops, that they have no protection under the law, because they are not classed as employees.

There are three main types of employment status under current law: employees, workers and the self-employed. Qualifying hurdles and exclusions may apply, but in broad terms, employees are entitled to the full range of employment rights and protection in respect of unfair dismissal, redundancy, sick leave and pay, maternity leave and pay and the right to written terms and conditions. Workers, on the other hand, are entitled to a smaller range of basic protections, the most significant for home workers being the national minimum wage and holiday pay. The self-employed are free to negotiate their own terms with the people with whom they contract.

Many home workers do not receive full employment rights. If challenged, their employers can argue that they are workers and not technically employees. The only way in which that can be resolved is at an employment tribunal, which can be extremely stressful and highly unpredictable. Alternatively, home workers may be told by their employers that they are self-employed even when they do not have the independence or control over their work patterns that would enable them genuinely to negotiate terms. False self-employment is just another way for unscrupulous employers to avoid their obligations to employees.

In another life, as an accountant, I dealt with outworkers and self-employed people on some scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that the difficulties in defining the characteristics of self-employment that he describes need to be revisited by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and other Departments? Individual employees who are being coerced into self-employment feel very vulnerable and are unlikely to pursue their employers with any vigour. There is a pressing need for some kind of class action on behalf of a group of employees to get them designated as employees, so that they benefit from the protection that he describes.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As I shall describe, many of the more unscrupulous employers frequently force their workers to take on self-employed status, but their situation is clearly nothing like being self-employed. I have been self-employed and know that the self-employed have a lot of control over their lives. They may not have the benefits of being employees, or a lot of employment protection, but they have much more control over what they do, when they do it and how much they charge for their labour. The big difference for those who are really home workers but are designated as self-employed is that they have absolutely no control over what they charge, when they do their work, how quickly it must be done, or how or whether they advertise. I therefore think my hon. Friend’s proposal is very helpful.

If unscrupulous employers try to avoid their obligations to employees, they can be challenged only at tribunal. That uncertainty can make it difficult for home workers to assert even their most basic rights to the national minimum wage and holiday pay. Workers can be deterred from demanding those rights through the very real fear that they may lose their work as a consequence. Without employment contracts, they have little protection against that sort of victimisation.

In 2002, the Government conducted a consultation exercise, asking whether

“there are any categories of working people currently excluded from statutory employment rights who require the protection provided by some or all rights and how they would benefit.”

Amongst many others, the National Group on Homeworking responded. It argued for the extension of all existing employment rights to all workers, particularly home workers who are not genuinely self-employed. Unfortunately, although the consultation raised hopes that the Government were intending to take action, their response, which was delivered only on 30 March 2006, was extremely disappointing. In the “Success at Work” strategy paper, the Government rejected calls for a change in the law. Furthermore, that 58-page document, which was intended to protect so-called vulnerable workers, made no specific mention of home workers.

The current situation is hugely complex and confusing, and the unpredictability of tribunal rulings on status benefits no one. Home workers have to negotiate their way through a maze of legal arguments, tests and obstructions, simply for a chance to gain the rights to which other employees are automatically entitled. The Government need to take swift and decisive action to grant full employment status and rights to all UK home workers who are working for another person and not genuinely in business on their own account.

On 21 November last year, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer), I hosted in the House of Commons the launch of a report entitled, “Subject to Status”. It was written and researched by Nesta Holden and was published by the National Group on Homeworking, which is based in Leeds. It is the only national body that supports and helps home workers. Accompanying staff from the organisation and the author of the report were several home workers who came to Parliament to tell their stories in their own words to Members of both Houses.

One home worker’s story concerning her status amply illustrates the issues, which the report so ably highlights. Pamela James took her employer to a tribunal to establish that she is not self-employed nor does she have the rights and benefits of an employed worker—she falls between the two. But let her speak in her own words:

“I have nothing to advertise, I have no customers, I have no trade name, I am provided with work and I am told how to do it. I work as a courier by delivering parcels on behalf of a multinational company. The company tells me that I am self employed and that I need to use my own car and phone. Because of these costs I receive less than the minimum wage and I have never received an increase in my pay rates since I started with them, over five years ago.

I have tried looking for other work but being a lone parent I need some flexibility especially during school holidays. It’s not easy to find a job when you live some distance from the city, there are limitations, and I could never afford a childminder. Yet at present I feel that something is better than nothing.

According to an article in a national newspaper the company whom I work on behalf of made a one billion pound profit”—

£1 billion—

“in 2004. That year I earned comfortably less than £3 per hour, if not £2 per hour, yet the company kept telling me that I am self employed and it hurts because I am struggling and they won’t listen.

Recently I took the company to the Employment Tribunal. There was a preliminary hearing to discuss my status. This hearing lasted 5 hours. In the courtroom the clerk put the Bible in my hand, I became distressed. I thought, does this mean that everyone in my position has to go to court to seek something so basic as the minimum wage? Other people have an automatic right to this, why can’t I?

If I was genuinely self employed I would have my own control, I could negotiate rates, I could advertise, I would have my own customers and my own profit and loss account. Despite all of this I lost the court case. This was mainly because of a small clause in the contract. Presently I am making an appeal to the courts because accordingly the clause is not genuine. I feel that the clause was a false label with the intention to save the company costs. A clause to enable them to offload their obligations onto others.

Even though I felt shut out the NGH have been of much valued support to me throughout all of this and they are still doing everything they can to help. I truly can’t imagine how I could have otherwise coped on my own.

An email response from the DTI”—

the Department of Trade and Industry, as it was then called—

“with regards to the loophole in the law, states that a change to the legal framework could damage labour market flexibility and result in a reduction in overall employment. I am wondering if they mean that if everybody paid as much money as the minimum wage would there be no employment? It is not consoling for myself or others like me who are locked out because of this loophole. It is also not consoling when the company whom I work on behalf of wrote a letter to the Inland Revenue which stated, ‘We do not believe that the minimum wage is appropriate for this population of workers.’

I assume they mean this population of workers are the loyal homeworkers whom do work on their behalf. My children are important to me, I believe that it is unfair that the minimum wage is not considered appropriate for us, and I know there are thousands out there like me who feel the same as I do. If I do belong to this population of workers, then I wish them to know that we are real people and I ask you to please help us and support our campaign to close this loophole in the law. I believe that every single homeworker deserves at least the basic employment rights.”

That powerful plea was made before Pamela’s most recent tribunal hearing, which took place at the end of May last year. Eight months later, she is still waiting for a decision. It would be helpful if the Minister, who I know cannot interfere with tribunal decisions, used his influence to get that decision, whatever it may be, as soon as possible.

I put it to my hon. Friend that it would be a public service if he placed on the record the name of the firm that has benefited in that disgraceful way from exploitation on that scale. Is he able to do that?

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Unfortunately, I am unable to name the firm. We managed to get the testimony from Pamela James, but she does not want to reveal who the employer is, and I can understand the reasons for that. However, my hon. Friend is right: it would be helpful to know. There cannot be that many firms that do courier and delivery work and earn a £1 billion profit, so it might be easy to find out.

I am sure that the Minister will agree that eight months is far too long to wait to find out whether Pamela is a worker or not. It is two years since she started her campaign for a minimum wage, during which time she has lost her job and suffered real financial hardship.

I wish to illustrate one or two more cases through the words of home workers themselves. Gemma works from home sewing novelty items for retail to sports fans. She did various types of sewing work over the years in a factory before her son was born and now works from home. She is an experienced, multi-skilled machinist but has struggled to find decent work that uses her skills fully. Her problems include low pay—she is currently earning about £3 an hour—and the fact that the supply of work is irregular. She states:

“The times I have been out of work we do struggle with things like paying the bills and buying food. It is hard.”

When work is available, her boss expects it back very quickly. She says that it is

“sometimes impossible to get it done when they drop it off and expect it to be done yesterday. They (the suppliers) get it in the neck and it is always passed on to us even if the delay was at the printers or cutter before it reaches the homeworker, the buck always stops with us.”

Another home worker, Shazia, works from home sewing trousers. She is Pakistani and came to the UK more than 20 years ago. She speaks Punjabi and Urdu. Her main reason for working from home is that she looks after her children, but she also says that she does not like to work outside the home. She states:

“I feel we should get proper rates of pay with employment rights and regular work. We are contributing to the local economy and should be valued and recognised for it.”

Shazia is paid by piece rate and earns approximately £2.10 an hour. She has been working for the same employer for three years and has never had a pay rise. She says that, when she asked for an increase in the piece rate,

“he told me that it was up to me to work and if I was not happy with the work I could stop working.”

Zoe works at home packing small items, such as screws, into blister packs. She has two children—one below school age and one at school. She has been doing home work for four years. Although she received a pay increase when the minimum wage compliance unit visited the company that she works for, Zoe is still earning only £3.10 an hour. She receives no sick pay and has continued working throughout a serious health problem, because she could not afford to stop. She states:

“I had an eye infection which lasted for three months. Everything was blurry but I had to work through it because I could not get sick pay or income support. I did the work by feel, never any sympathy, I was always expected to get the work done.”

Of course, not all employers are exploitative and unscrupulous. Madison Hosiery of Leeds has shown that home workers can be treated ethically without the company going bankrupt. It made a conscious decision to treat its home workers as employees with the same rights and rates of pay as those who come to work at its premises in the city. As a packing company, home workers are key to its business, and it uses proper systems for calculating piece rates. That results in far greater loyalty and, of course, better quality, as well as a decent wage for the home workers. However, Madison is an exception and, sadly, faces unfair competition from companies that do not actually break the law but certainly exploit its ambiguities.

As I said, the Government have done a great deal to make the lot of workers in the United Kingdom considerably better, but there is growing concern about vulnerable workers. Many are being denied rights to which they are legally entitled, while others are vulnerable because the existing legal framework does not provide them with adequate protections. The Government have acknowledged that there is a need to address the problems faced by vulnerable workers and have established the vulnerable worker pilots and vulnerable worker enforcement forum. The Government define a vulnerable worker as

“someone working in an environment where the risk of being denied employment rights is high and who does not have the capacity or means to protect themselves from…abuse. Both factors have to be present.”

By that definition, home workers are clearly vulnerable workers. The Trades Union Congress is highlighting the plight of vulnerable workers through the establishment of the Commission on Vulnerable Employment, which defines vulnerable workers as

“workers whose participation in the labour market places them at risk of ongoing and often extreme suffering, uncertainty and injustice resulting from an imbalance of power in the employer/worker relationship.”

The commission specifically and explicitly identifies home workers as a vulnerable group.

As we have said, home workers are vulnerable in a number of ways. They may need to work from home because of their caring responsibilities—often child care—or their language, disability or long-term health problems. They are isolated. Very few home workers join trade unions, and trade unions rarely recruit them. By the very nature of their job and the way that they work, home workers do not enjoy the company of fellow workers. Work is irregular and they live in fear of losing their jobs. When there is a problem, home workers are frightened to complain because the employer will probably just take the work elsewhere. Home workers also have an uncertain employment status, and addressing that issue would tackle one of the core problems of vulnerability.

In the Minister’s reply to a letter from Nesta Holden, the author of the report “Subject to Status”, he stressed that the Government are keen to ensure that

“homeworkers have appropriate rights and protections.”

Yet on the wider question of employment status and distinctions between workers and employees, the Government’s position remains that the present legal framework should not be changed. However, I commend the Government for the fair piece rates legislation of 2005, which should ensure that home workers who do piece work receive the national minimum wage when paid by piece rates. That is a great leap forward, although, like all such legislation, it will succeed only if properly enforced—something that the Minister is working hard to achieve and that the Shipley office of the national minimum wage team of HMRC has been set up to do.

Since 1997, the Government have introduced and extended a number of rights to protect people at work, including employee rights, such as the right to request flexible working; maternity and paternity leave; and most recently, making age discrimination illegal. Other rights that also apply to workers include the national minimum wage, working time regulations, including those on holiday pay, and the part-time workers directive. Some of those rights, most notably the national minimum wage, have been introduced in the face of intense opposition from business and dramatic warnings of a devastating impact on employment. In practice, those warnings have been exposed as scaremongering. The Government’s economic record demonstrates that protections for workers do not have to come at the expense of jobs. Although the rights that workers and employees can benefit from may have increased under this Government, a growing grey area of atypical workers now find themselves with few protections.

Home workers miss out on employment rights, because they lack employee status or because their status is unclear. Home workers who have worked for a company for several years, often on low wages, find that they have no protection under the law, because they are not employees. Many of them are deemed by their employers to be self-employed, leaving them ineligible even for the minimum wage. The law is unclear: short of taking the employer to a tribunal, it is virtually impossible for home workers to be certain of their rights under the law. As the case of Pamela James shows, going to a tribunal can be extremely traumatic, as well as very expensive. It is deeply unjust that the home workers, who are among some of the lowest paid workers in the country, are also those with the fewest rights.

In a recent strategy paper, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, formerly the Department of Trade and Industry, rejected calls to extend employment rights to any group of workers who are not currently covered. It stated that

“changes to the legal framework would not prevent instances of abuse or lack of awareness. It could however damage labour market flexibility and result in a reduction in overall employment... The government believes that it meets the labour market’s current needs and there is no need for further legislation in this area.”

The Department’s argument against extending rights seems precisely the same as that used by the employers who opposed the national minimum wage. It is an argument that the Government have discredited through the success of their own national minimum wage policy. It is an anomaly that, while introducing much valued rights for employees, the Government are turning a blind eye to the exploitation of thousands of workers. The welcome extension of employment rights and protections under this Government needs to be accompanied by an extension of those rights to all home workers who are not in business on their own account.

Finally, I should like to thank Nesta Holden and Linda Devereux of the National Group on Homeworking who wrote and published the report “Subject to Status” and who organised the launch and reception in the House of Commons on 21 November. I should also like to thank some of my colleagues from Leeds, my hon. Friends the Members for Elmet (Colin Burgon) and for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie), who have done far more than I have over the years to draw attention to the plight of home workers, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) whose work over 30 years or more fighting poverty in this country and overseas is legendary. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who asked me to co-sponsor his private Member’s Bill, the Outworking Bill, and who introduced me to the issues and problems facing home workers. I also thank Sharon Jandu who has done a great deal to publicise the NGH and helped to launch the report in Parliament on 21 November.

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. Going back to the Outworking Bill, he will remember that it focused very much on home working scams and proposed a prohibition on companies demanding money upfront from home workers before they supplied them with the goods that they would make, pass on, produce and so on. Does he agree that there is still a need for such a simple measure, as well as the employment rights, to tackle some of the injustices that home workers face?

I thank my hon. Friend for that. There is no doubt that the work that he did on the Outworking Bill drew national attention to those so-called scams. It is a disgrace that that kind of fraudulent activity, which is effectively what it is, should deprive some of the most vulnerable and poorest workers in the country of what little savings and money they have, to enrich people in a criminal way. Very simple legislation to outlaw that kind of upfront payment and the other so-called scams to which my hon. Friend drew attention in 2001 is still lacking and could be easily put in place.

Thank you very much, Mr. Olner, for the chance to illustrate the plight of home workers, and I hope that the Minister is listening and that the Government will finally close the loopholes that allow this most vulnerable group of workers to be exploited in the way that they have been.

May I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) for raising this debate again? I also pay tribute to the National Group on Homeworking, which for years has championed home workers and insisted that they should not leave our agenda. I congratulate my hon. Friend on his research. He dug up reports that were compiled some 100 years ago. I am reminded again of how much unfinished business there is in the House that we have to return to again and again. In his first manifesto, Keir Hardie, the first Labour MP, said that his main aims were to tackle unemployment, introduce a minimum wage and do something about housing conditions. Those issues are still on our agenda.

We have made some great progress in the last 10 years on the first two issues. We have introduced a minimum wage and we are working very hard to ensure that we have high levels of employment in Britain. Keir Hardie also warned that if we do not understand the relationship between trade and international solidarity, all our efforts will be doomed—and that was before the new world of economic globalisation.

Eighteen years ago, I raised the issue in the House of home workers in my own constituency, in Bramley. Those home workers were mainly women who worked wrapping Christmas cards in cellophane and threading the little strings on to gift cards. How did it work? A company in Bradford employed an agent on the estate, who took the packages around in a van, dropped them off in the house and told the women to have them finished by Friday. The women worked and worked to finish them, but more work was always piled on them than they could actually complete. Wage rates at the time worked out at less than 50p an hour—well below the average in the low-paid market. Then, as usual, the van failed to turn up on Friday with the money to pay the women and their families who had helped to meet the deadline, so the boxes were left stacked in their hallways and front rooms for ages as we tried to sort out the problem. It was a mess. Eventually, we managed, through the supply chain, to track down the employer and we had a real go at them, saying that they had to act responsibly towards those people.

It must be remembered that that was the age when people thought that home working was a good thing. We should distinguish between types of home worker. People who worked in an office might be told, “Please go home and work from your computer there—that will be much more relaxed.” That was 10 years ago. Today, we read reports of people wanting to get back into the office and do hot desking because working at home is so stressful.

There are not only office workers. I like the expression that some of my hon. Friends have used: outreach workers. That refers to people who have work pushed out on to them, who are in a different position from those in the middle income brackets who are working at home on computers, because if they complain, they lose the work altogether and lose the vital income that is propping up their family budget. I was told, “Please, John, don’t take the issue up with the company, because it might just cut off the supply line.” It is true that the company in Bradford employed some of the people, but others lost their jobs altogether.

One million people in Britain are still doing home working. Some are packing Christmas cards and tags; some are knitting and sewing; some are doing inspections of industrial seals; and others are making souvenirs for sports shops. When I learned of that last one, I was tempted to wonder whether, in the supply chain of life, when we buy our products, we think about who in the chain is paying the highest price for those goods. Home workers are still right at the bottom of the pile.

I would like to add another dimension. In the search and struggle for what we now gloriously call joined-up government, which I believe is incredibly difficult, we must bridge across Departments. The global is now local, and the local is global. We are in an interdependent world writ large, particularly economically. In the past five years, people have thought that home working has gone offshore: it is done in China, India and the Philippines, where the footballs, football shirts and so on are made; it is not a British issue. Well, it is. Of course it is a two-thirds world issue, in the poor countries of the world, as a result of globalisation, but I say to the Minister that we need to tackle poverty worldwide as well.

I serve on the Select Committee on International Development, which is a great privilege. We all know of the millennium development goals. Which one is missing? We can work on health care, HIV/AIDS and education, but the issue that is missing is employment and wages. There is no MDG to ensure fuller employment or decent wages. That is a big lacuna in the international system. In Oxfam’s 2004 report on home working entitled “Trading away our rights”, for which it surveyed 12 countries, it demonstrated that if the poor are paying the highest price in one country and a campaign is started to do something about that, the company is shut down and people are out of work and the practice moves across the world to another country. We cannot do that; we have to join things up.

In this country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East said, a million workers are without proper remuneration or employment rights, which has something to do with the fudge of the definitions of an employee, a worker and the self-employed. He spelled that out eloquently, so I need not repeat it. Our employment law provides different levels of protection for those different categories. Those who are classified as employees have a range of employment rights, which we have been strengthening: protection against unfair dismissal, sick pay, some maternity rights and the right to redundancy pay. We are even encouraging people to take up resources to get child care so they have some space to work. However, all those rights fall away from a person who is not an employee and works from home. They fall down the gap between the different categories. We have never properly resolved that issue.

The present Government introduced the national minimum wage. That was not my personal responsibility, although I was in the Department of Trade and Industry when it was introduced. At that time, we were saying, “Well, we can’t introduce it for home workers. That would be too complicated.” Why? Because we had not sorted out their employment status. We cannot give them the wage if we have not clarified their status. That is unfinished business.

One part of the problem is that many different Government agencies deal with the issue. There are agencies that deal with legal definitions of employment—that involves the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. There are rights that relate to health and safety at work that are not covered there. Even rights relating to child care come through a different Department. I simply suggest that, even with all our best intentions for the legislation in this place, home workers are falling between the frameworks of different Departments. I am making a plea to my hon. Friend the Minister: the sub-committee that draws together different Ministers in different Departments should take this small issue seriously, put together a working party on it and crack it. It should drive through a means of joining up the agendas.

I would like international and national law to be brought together with good practice. There is a home workers code. That has something to do with the whole business of checking sourcing. If we could regularise legislation and sort out where home workers fit in the piece so that they have protection, that would be a start.

In 2004, a report entitled “Made at Home” was published by, interestingly, the TUC, the National Group on Homeworking and Oxfam. At the ground floor level, people are joining together the agendas: the TUC for workers’ rights, Oxfam, which works internationally as well in Britain, and the NGH. That group could be a means of demonstrating how such joining up can be done. The general secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, said at the time:

“The main problem is that homeworkers are often isolated, without the support of workmates or a union to speak up for them. Many are not ‘employees’ and so lack even the most basic employment rights including protection against unfair dismissal and maternity leave. Legally all homeworkers should be getting the minimum wage and holiday pay, but the reality is that many employers prey upon and exploit their vulnerable position for their own ends.

The situation is made worse because the law covering homeworkers is unclear. If they complain, it’s likely that their supply of work will stop without notice, so many homeworkers stay silent and abuses go unreported. Homeworkers should get the same employment rights as all other employees—their status as third class workers cannot be allowed to continue.”

I absolutely agree. That is why it is unfinished business.

If that is the legal framework, we need to do more. How should I put this? It is in the light of the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) about the company referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East. We need to do much more as a society—by which I mean civil society, campaigning organisations, Members of Parliament and Departments—in tracking where company profits come from. We are not doing enough to track the sourcing. Who pays the highest price? I have been quite shocked. In the International Development Committee we have been considering the ethical trading initiative, but if people go through the reports, they will find that the companies in Britain that are signed up to the ETI are the very companies that, through the chain of supply, are employing home workers and hoping that no one notices. We need to track them and say, “You can’t sign up to ethical trading initiatives and claim the moral high ground when at the same time, four layers down, you are exploiting workers in the most atrocious way because you are exploiting gaps in the law.” Tracking supply chains is a job that still needs to be done.

We need to regularise and fuse together at national level legal protections such as the minimum wage, employment law and those relating to health and safety and child care. We need to track supply chains and to push for more international action with regard to the work of the International Labour Organisation to get the standards in place so that we are not simply saying, “Well, if you’re a home worker here and your job has moved elsewhere in the world, those workers will be exploited.” What are we doing about building this issue into the framework of the World Trade Organisation, for example, and fusing the ILO and WTO together to ensure that workers do not continue to be exploited anywhere?

My view in this saga of unfinished business is that, at the end of the day, as usual, it is the most vulnerable, the poorest, who subsidise the economy, the growth and the profits and prop up the rich and the better-off. Furthermore, the poor always pay the highest price, whether that relates to energy costs, borrowing money from loan sharks, or indeed doing the work at basic level. We owe them the responsibility of saying that they should not pay the highest personal and family price. We should take legislative and practical action as a society, locally, nationally and internationally, to ensure that they get the same employment rights and protection as everyone else. That is part of the campaign to make poverty history and the campaign for fairer trade; but it is also part of the campaign for treating human beings decently. Sadly, after 100 years, we still have quite a way to go.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Olner, for this extremely important debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) on introducing this subject for discussion.

It is interesting to look at the wider perspective on home working. There is a spectrum, from home working that has the potential to be liberating, through to home working that is enslaving—we have heard descriptions of the sorry state of some home workers. There are a great number of people involved in home working. The Economic and Social Research Institute says that 8.4 per cent. of people regularly work from home; the Department of Trade and Industry says that 3.1 million people work at home; and the National Group on Homeworking talks about 1 million people who are home workers. The discrepancy in the figures is because the National Group on Homeworking focuses on women, and on the least powerful and the most exploited people. Their situation was eloquently described by both the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East and the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle).

On the happier end of the spectrum—the flexible working end—I introduced a private Member’s Bill last year to extend the age of the children for whom an employee can request flexible working to 18. I am delighted that the Government will introduce such a measure—I see it as greatly enlightening. At some stage, I should like everyone to have the opportunity to request flexible working. However, it is important that such a right is protected. For the vast majority of workers, greater working flexibility would greatly increase equality in our society. I would love to see the end of the culture of presentism, whereby when a child is born, one parent must make the economic sacrifice. It is usually the woman, which contributes to the economic inequality of the work unit and to women’s lack of ability to catch up when they return to work.

More flexible working would bring benefits to the environment. Savings in carbon emissions would come because people would no longer travel to work. People would have more time, so there would be an improvement in work-life balance. A growing number of mothers are turning to self-employment—true female entrepreneurship —because it fits in to their work-life balance. It has become a lifestyle choice. If as many women as men turned to an entrepreneurial lifestyle, 500,000 additional companies would be set up in this country. That would make a difference to our balance of payments and prosperity.

That is the good side of home working, which definitely has benefits: for the employer, it can mean a motivated work force, and reduced staff turnover, sick days and infrastructure costs. There is a social responsibility aspect: carers and people with disabilities have much more flexibility for their work. Although it can be liberating, it can also be enslaving—at least it can be where irresponsible companies are concerned.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for expanding the debate. She is absolutely right on work for women: they could have what I believe is called a better work-life balance, and there would perhaps be a better gender balance. However, I am thinking particularly about people who are not self-employed, even those who are more mobile in the labour market, if I may put it that way, who have decent jobs and qualifications and who work in offices but who sometimes go home to work. In a sense, it is about the attitude of employers to home workers. They do not see home working as a way of helping people to be liberated; rather, they are looking at how to reduce their costs. There are now rows about who pays for the lighting and the electricity, and people are pleading to go back into a workplace because on-costs are being pushed on to them. More than a million people who are at the behest of an employer rather than self-employed are picking up hidden costs for the employer. That is the real exploitation. Such people are paying a high price. Not only do they not receive a wage, but by paying their lighting bill and other on-costs they are subsidising their employer.

I am grateful for that point—it gives another perspective on the matter. However, I have recently been through the trauma of completing my tax return. I have been advised that a proportion—one eighth for a Member of Parliament—of one’s lighting and heating costs can be claimed against one’s final tax Bill, so the Government try to make allowances for employees who work at home—[Laughter.] It was news to me too, but I am assured that that is the case—a House of Commons approved company told me. In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s important and significant point, there are circumstances in which those costs can be offset.

Of course, thousands of people are missing out on basic employment rights because of the ambiguity of their employment status, as was admirably outlined by the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East and the right hon. Member for Leeds, West. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, in a leaflet entitled “Contracts of Employment”, summarises the difference between employed and self-employed as follows:

“If the employer has a duty to provide work, controls when and how it is done, supplies the tools or other equipment needed to do it and pays tax and national insurance contributions on the worker’s behalf, then it is likely that the worker is an employee. If, on the other hand, the worker can decide whether or not to accept work and how to carry it out, makes his or her own arrangements for holidays or sickness absences, pays his or her own tax and national insurance contributions and is free to do the same type of work for more than one employer at the same time, this points towards the person being self-employed.”

The leaflet goes on to state:

“The important question is whether or not the worker is genuinely in business on his or her own account.”

That is the important distinction. The Government say that self-employed people can refuse work and work for more than one employer. How can home workers do that if they have only one major source of work? We have heard this morning how home workers are afraid to turn work down, because they are worried that if they do so, they will not be offered more work. They are isolated and powerless.

Does the hon. Lady agree that in addition to that clear description she gave—it was extremely helpful—sometimes, the home worker is expected to provide their own machinery, especially in the sewing industry? I cannot think of a better description of that than the one in Monica Ali’s book “Brick Lane”. The machinery is supplied, serviced and looked after by the home worker. The home work can only be done with the right equipment, but the employer pays nothing towards its costs. Does she agree that that is another abuse of home workers?

I totally agree that it is an abuse in such circumstances. There might be another perspective; I want to understand it from the other side. For instance, someone may want to start up in business for themselves, buying their own equipment to produce clothing—perhaps bespoke clothing. It is not simply that the person has to buy their own equipment, it is the relationship between that individual and the employer—the power balance between the two—that is so out of kilter in the examples that the hon. Gentleman cited.

The problems of home workers have been described; they include long hours, a lot of stress, repetitive strain injury, and the fear of complaining about the volume of work and pay rates. The National Group on Homeworking estimates that 48 per cent. of home workers are denied basic employment rates.

Wages are an important subject. The fair estimate agreements for output work were replaced in October 2004 by the four-fifths rule for rated output work. If employers do not pay an hourly rate, they have to pay 120 per cent. of the average work rate times the national minimum wage. For those employers who adhere to the Government’s guidelines, that represents good progress. However, the thread constantly running through this is the fact that unscrupulous employers do not adhere to those guidelines.

The Government have legislated to protect home workers, but should they go further? In our desire to protect one class of worker, we must not threaten another. People such as professional contractors, who work as outside consultants but often from home, have a completely different status, which must also be protected within the law. It is important that we do not throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater; people who are genuinely self-employed should not be incorporated in the definition of employee, as they would lose their exclusive status and their earning ability.

I am open to suggestions on additional legislation, but I believe that it is not so much the legislation itself that is important as the enforcement of existing law. The chance of a company’s being inspected on its payment of the minimum wage is low; on average it happens only once in over 200 years. Enforcement is paramount here. Will the Minister say whether the Government have plans to strengthen the hand of the enforcement agencies, which can do only what they have the resources for? There is nothing better that the Government could do than putting resources into these areas of concern and looking at those companies at the low end of the market.

The right hon. Member for Leeds, West spoke about ethical trading through the supply chain. It occurs to me that we could encourage companies, and especially large companies—the company I am thinking of must be large, as it has made more than £1 billion—to include how they pay their workers and how they look after them in their corporate social responsibility reporting. We are developing such a culture in all sorts of areas. I have been talking to the Minister about supply side diversity, and companies can be encouraged to take that step.

The hon. Lady has been most generous in giving way. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East, who is an accountant, could clarify the rules of company accounting, but it would help if companies, including major household names, were not allowed to use corporate accounting methods to be what I would call absentee landlords, not being forced to reveal their suppliers further down the chain. If that was put into company and accounting law, it would make things much more transparent.

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion. I shall certainly consider it as a potential way forward. His earlier suggestion of putting together a policy group to consider the loophole in employment law would be extremely helpful, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on that.

In conclusion, I am interested to know why the Government are not prepared to legislate for this group of exploited workers, and to work out a way in which they can be specifically targeted—not only in employment legislation but, which is even more important, in its enforcement.

Before I call Eleanor Laing, I thank the previous speaker for enlightening us all on the tax rules.

I join in your thanks, Mr. Olner; we shall all check up on that point.

I heartily commend the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) for seeking to debate this extremely important aspect of employment law. It is an important subject, as we are dealing not with a few hundred or even a few thousand people but with a substantial number of some of the most vulnerable people. I shall return to that subject in a moment, but that is why I am so pleased to be debating the subject this morning. The debate is long overdue. I also commend the right hon. Member for Leeds, West (John Battle) for his passionate support. Both Members have been dealing with the subject for a long time, and it is through their hard work that people are now paying attention.

It is interesting to note the historical perspective: the subject was first raised in the House of Commons exactly 100 years ago. It is true that there is much unfinished business. The more we think that we are continuing to improve the way in which our society works—that we are becoming more equal, more fair, more reasonable, and reaching a better work-life balance—the more we uncover the fact that much is yet to be done.

It is somewhat ironic that the Prime Minister should now be in India and that he was previously in China—the more time he spends in India and China, the happier some of us will be. However, I commend him for undertaking the tour because our economy will depend enormously on the emerging economies of China and India in future. Although press commentators and many of those engaged in the political process are quick to recognise the importance of improving employment rights and human rights in China and India, low-paid workers in Britain are doing work in competition with work being outsourced—particularly to India and the subcontinent—and it is those back home in the United Kingdom who still need to be looked after. I do not blame the Prime Minister; I commend him for what he is doing on the international stage, but will the Government please recognise that there is still work to be done here at home?

While we are adopting the historical perspective, it is interesting that the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East said that, once upon a time, the Conservative party was opposed to the national minimum wage. That, too, is history. We are not opposed to the national minimum wage. Personally, I think that it is an extremely important rung of the ladder towards achieving equality and fairness in the labour market.

We have waited 10 years to hear that.

I think that some of my colleagues have also said what I said about the minimum wage. I certainly believe it.

I met the National Group on Homeworking some time ago, when they brought a large delegation of people to the House of Commons. In all truth, not only was I interested in the issues that arose from that meeting but I was genuinely shocked to discover the employment conditions under which large numbers of people work in Britain today. They are not the type of bad employment conditions that existed 100 years ago, or indeed those found in India and China at present—I am not being insulting to those countries, but we must recognise the reality and truth of the situation there. However, although the current employment conditions of large numbers of home workers are not as bad as low-paid workers once had to endure, they are still bad enough to require our attention and the Government’s attention as soon as possible.

The hon. Member for Leeds, North-East highlighted the heart-rending stories of some people who were brave enough to put their heads above the parapet and allow their circumstances to be used as important examples. It is quite unacceptable that a tribunal decision should take more than eight months to come out. That is simply unfair and I hope that somebody somewhere will take note of that fact this morning and deal with it.

In general, however, we must recognise that people do not usually work from home, or want to work part-time or need flexibility in their working environment because they choose to; nor is it because, as some employers and some other people would have us believe, they are housewives earning a bit of pin money. That view is an insult—an absolute insult. The reason why people work from home, or need flexibility in employment or to work part-time, is that they have other family duties, whether it be looking after children or looking after elderly or sick relatives.

Furthermore, we as a society not only recognise that that situation exists; we encourage it. We need people to do two jobs, especially women—let us not forget that more than 80 per cent. of home workers are women—but also men in some circumstances. We need them to bring up families and look after the elderly and sick but we also need them to be economically active, because we need their input in the economy. Our economy would not work without people doing those part-time jobs. Such work is not a luxury or an add-on, nor is it about pin money; it is absolutely essential. Given that we expect people, especially women, to organise their lives so that they can work, be economically active and pay taxes, and look after their children and elderly relatives at the same time, we ought to recognise their work and give them the respect they deserve for doing lots of different jobs at once.

Bringing up children is not an add-on luxury; it is an absolute necessity. Looking after the elderly is not an add-on luxury; it is the most difficult job there is. Where people are also trying to earn money at the same time, they ought to be given respect and support.

Flexibility is absolutely vital. I see from Hansard that I had an interesting exchange with the then Minister for Women, now the Secretary of State for Transport in the House of Commons on 8 June 2006, when I was shadow Minister for Women. We agreed with one another about the importance of encouraging flexibility. I was arguing that the right to request flexibility should be extended, a point to which the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) alluded a few moments ago in her excellent speech. At present, the right to request flexible working is extended only to some people in the working population; like the hon. Member for Solihull, I argue that it should be extended far more widely.

I say that because children do not stop being an enormous responsibility when they reach the age of six or seven; actually, they become more difficult then. Sometimes, people do not understand that. A baby can be put in a corner to sleep, but that is not possible with an eight-year-old child. Children of eight, nine or 10 and especially teenagers need their parents even more than small children do.

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of flexibility in the household, in domestic circumstances and support work; we must move in that direction. However, ambivalence exists because employers interpret the word “flexibility” very differently and can see it as a means of avoiding health and safety regulations and employment law. Until they start to understand flexibility more positively and not as a negative way of just squeezing out more profit, we will have a problem with the concept.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I do not have time to go into that aspect in great detail right now, but I am sure that the Minister will be well aware that when one studies the effects of flexible working one finds that many of the best, most profitable and most employee-friendly companies in Britain have introduced flexible working or have experimented with it, and the vast majority of them have evidence that not only has flexibility improved the morale of their work force but, as a result, their profitability and the general well-being of the company, in economic as well as social terms, has improved, too.

Not so long ago, when people made an excuse to be away from the workplace it would be anything but, “I have had to go and pick up my child from school.” I have done it myself. I have not dared to say that I could not be at such and such a meeting because I had to go to school; I did not dare to say that because I thought that I would be looked down on. However, in the last few years, since we have brought the subject right to the front of the political agenda, I am no longer afraid to give that reason.

The important issue is that many men in the political world have come to respect the position of women who are looking after children. I honestly pay tribute to the men who dared to stand up for the employment rights of women who have to look after children. I do not know whether that means that there are lots of “new men” in the House of Commons. I do not really care what they are called; all I care about is that we are addressing the issue.

My son, who is aged six, saw me on television asking a question about the issue at one point; he had seen me say something about it. The following day, I explained to him that I could not be there at bedtime because I had to vote at 7 pm. He said, “Well, Mummy, I want David Cameron to become Prime Minister, because he said that mummies should spend more time with their boys.” I was very proud of my little son for having the political message so neatly wrapped up.

It is true that the Leader of the Opposition gave that message, but the real point to be made right now is that when we address the general issue of the gender pay gap the end of the market that we should concentrate on is not where we see glamorous, City executives earning hundreds of thousands of pounds per year; it is the other end of the market, where the gender pay gap between part-time workers is more than 40 per cent. It is the fact that most part-time workers and home workers are women that causes that enormous gender pay gap.

When we talk about the importance of bringing equality to the labour market, we must not ignore the position of home workers, because the gender pay gap would probably become much smaller if they were taken out of the statistics. I am not saying that they should be, but that somebody somewhere should examine what the gender pay gap would be if home workers were not in the picture. I do not have the resources to do so, but somebody somewhere has, and that would let us see how difficult the position of home workers is.

I shall conclude without saying all the other things that I could say about this important and wide subject because I want to give the Minister plenty of time to reply to the debate. Given that the Government have taken great steps forward on the minimum wage, equality and flexible working, I am genuinely surprised by their attitude to home workers. Of course, I recognise the difficulties in current employment law, which affect employers, employees and home workers alike, but I am genuinely surprised that the Government have not tackled the issue, so along with everyone else who has spoken, I want to hear what the Minister has to say.

I begin by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) for introducing the debate. He spoke with great expertise and passion, particularly about the individual examples that he raised, some of which are summarised in the NGH report “Subject to Status”, to which he referred. He raised several issues relating to piece rates, the minimum wage and employment status, and I shall deal with those in more detail later.

I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (John Battle). I hope I will not embarrass him when I say that I have regarded him as something of an inspiration for many years because of the depth of his passion on issues relating to poverty, because of his belief in empowering people and because of the international reach of his thinking on these important issues, as we have seen today. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) raised important points, including questions about flexibility and enforcement, and I shall come to those later.

In a sense, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) began where my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East began—100 years ago, which is when the report with which my hon. Friend began his speech was published. In a sense, 100 years ago is a good place to start because we are currently experiencing a great wave of globalisation. However, it is not the first, and there was another great wave of globalisation in the years before the first world war; indeed, the 1908 report would have been written in the middle of that phenomenon. The hon. Member for Epping Forest is therefore right to draw attention to the Prime Minister’s visits to India and China and the powerful international economic changes that we have seen. I appreciate that you will not want me to veer too far from the subject, Mr. Olner, but history shows that the first wave of globalisation did not continue and was brought to an end by world war and then cold war. It is only since the end of the cold war that we have experienced a second great wave of globalisation.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West raised some important questions about employment rights in an era of globalisation, which is a difficult issue, particularly for those of us in the richer west. It is sometimes argued that globalisation exploits people in newly developing countries and that we would not tolerate their working conditions and wages. Looked at from our end of the telescope, that might be true, but it might also be true that such conditions and wages are better than those offered by local employers. Indeed, if we look at the impact of globalisation, particularly in the two countries mentioned by the hon. Member for Epping Forest, we see that the number of people living on less than $1 a day has declined rapidly in recent years.

Lest I go too far down that road, however, Mr. Olner, I return to the issue of home workers in the UK labour market. I agree that it is an important subject, which raises important issues about the Government’s role in securing a flexible labour market that offers people decent rights—one that both contributes to the success of our economy and is good for people to work in. That is what we are trying to achieve, and I would not want people to think that home workers have not been part of our agenda or of the work that we have done in the little over a decade that we have been in power.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East referred to the national minimum wage, which is important, because it was designed to put a basic floor under the labour market, beneath which no one should fall. My hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West also mentioned the distinction between workers and employees, and we will come back to that. However, section 35 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 ensures that those who fall outside the usual definition of a worker—for example, because they may not be obliged to do all their work personally—are still covered by the Act, and it is important that the legislation tried to reach out beyond employees to cover workers.

That was the first thing that was done to ensure that legislation reached home workers and those outside the normal definition of an employee. The second thing was to amend piece rates, to which the hon. Member for Solihull referred, and that was done through the fair piece rates legislation introduced in 2005, which addressed the fact that the bar was set at such a level that it seemed to justify payment beneath the national minimum wage. The way piece rates were calculated was changed to address that problem, and the fair piece rate was amended to ensure that people working at an average rate would get the national minimum wage. Those were important gains for home workers, and I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East acknowledged them.

The Government also supply guidance on fair piece rates by means of the national minimum wage helpline, which anyone who is in doubt about their rights under the legislation can phone in confidence. My hon. Friend also referred to the fact that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has a specific enforcement team dedicated to enforcing the minimum wage in that regard.

My hon. Friend rightly said that there is a difference between passing a law and enforcing it. Although passing a law may be the first necessary and important step, we must all be aware of the fact that the law must be properly enforced. I therefore want directly to address the question raised by the hon. Member for Solihull about action on enforcement, because we have been very active on the issue recently. In fact, only last week, I was with the national minimum wage bus, which is sponsored by my Department. It is visiting 30 towns and cities, distributing information to people in town centres and shopping centres. On Friday we were outside St. Andrews football ground in Birmingham. I also visited the bus in Newham, and it is going on to other areas. It is part of an effort to make sure of two things: first, that people are aware of national minimum wage rates. The bus’s route number is 552, and if one thinks about it that is the right name for it. People can go on the bus and find out directly whether they are being paid the minimum wage, as well as finding out about youth rates. They can also phone the helpline to report in confidence if they are not being paid the correct rate.

We have taken out advertising on local radio stations and in bus stops. There is an online campaign aimed at young people and I have written articles for newspapers—particularly those more likely to be read by migrant workers, who are often exploited and not paid the minimum wage.

Awareness is important to our work, and so are resources. The hon. Member for Solihull was quite right when she asked about resources. The Prime Minister, in his final Budget as Chancellor, announced a significant increase in resources for enforcement of the national minimum wage—an extra £3 million or so per year over the next few years. That will allow Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which does the work of enforcement, to hire more staff to ensure that that important legislation is properly enforced.

As well as awareness and enforcement, there is a third arm to the relevant work, and that is changing the law, which we are doing in two respects. The Employment Bill received its Second Reading in the other place recently, and will eventually find its way to the House for discussion. It will change the law in two important ways: first, by increasing the arrears of minimum wage payable to anyone who has been underpaid, to give people a better deal on arrears and, secondly, by increasing the penalties for employers who pay less than the minimum wage. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West talked about employers and unscrupulous practice. We want to change the law so that employers who underpay the minimum wage will receive stiffer penalties than they do now. I do not think that legitimate business has a problem in that regard. In fact, at the TUC a few months ago, the director general of the CBI said that employers who behave in such a way “should get clobbered.” He rightly sees that illegal exploitation of workers through not paying the minimum wage undercuts legitimate businesses, the vast majority of which want to treat their workers decently and fairly. On those fronts—awareness, enforcement through resources, and changes to the law—it is important to make the Act we passed seven or eight years ago even better suited to today’s circumstances.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East also raised the issue of employment status and the employment status review. It was an exhaustive review, which took about four years. The ship of state did not move particularly quickly in that respect, and did not come out with overnight, knee-jerk conclusions. I think that my hon. Friend said that the work lasted from 2002 until 2006. I know that he does not agree with the conclusions he read out, but on the basic distinction between employees, workers and the self-employed, the Government decided not to change the legal framework. I have referred already to new law affecting the minimum wage, which is on the way and will also cover other issues, such as those concerned with employment agencies. It will be debated fully in the House. However, I must be candid with my hon. Friend and tell him that I shall not today announce a shift away from the conclusion reached by the Government in the employment status review, which, as I have said, took four years and concluded just two years ago. Nevertheless I should not want right hon. and hon. Members to conclude that workers are without rights and protections. That is not the case. Workers are entitled to the minimum wage and paid leave and they have redress for the enforcement of those rights. We do not want a labour market in which some people enjoy the kind of progress that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West spoke about, while others are abandoned.

If I remember rightly, the relevant response did not mention the expression “home workers” and I think that part of the point of the debate that my hon. Friend has initiated this morning is whether, when the Government consider the issue, home workers can be positively and explicitly included.

The review was concluded two years ago and there is no plan to start that piece of work again, now that it has been decided that there should not be a basic change in the legal status of the self-employed, workers and employees. That is not to say that suggestions that the National Group on Homeworking and hon. Members who support the campaigns may make with regard to home workers will be swept aside and not listened to. I do not mean that at all. Home workers deserve the protection of the law. They have it with respect to the national minimum wage and rights under working-time protections, as well as, for example, rights under discrimination legislation and entitlement to statutory maternity pay. They are not a group that should be without protection and it is important that their legal protections should be properly enforced, as the hon. Member for Solihull said.

We have made important advances in the labour market in recent years. The hon. Member for Epping Forest referred to the right to request flexible working, which is another change that we have made. It is intended to recognise the twin responsibilities of family and work, and to help employees and employers cope with them. We have worked step by step, through granting the right first to parents of younger children and to carers. Hon. Members will know that the Government recently announced a review of the arrangements, with a view to extending the right to the parents of older children. The review is being carried out by Imelda Walsh of Sainsbury’s, a senior and experienced business woman. We are trying to establish a labour market that helps families to cope with the twin responsibilities of family and work and supports them in a way that business can accommodate.

Today’s debate has raised important issues. We want a labour market with flexibility, but we also want it to have decency and dignity. That is the core philosophy behind the changes in the labour market that the Government have made in the past decade.