Member for East Ham, North, being quicker than me, often arrive before I do at a point which I am just about to reach. I am coming to that point, which is a valid one, and I accept it at once. Member for Rochdale, whether consideration had been given to the position of some people who worked for fewer than twenty-one hours, but who relied to a substantial extent on their job for their livelihood.

We have discovered that this is the case with those who work what is known as the twilight shift—it was referred to by the hon. Member for Paisley Mr. Robertson —who number about 25, and are nearly all women with domestic responsibilities.

That is the position at the present time. We did not find any other large section of the community which works in a similar fashion. By his intervention from a sitting position the hon.

Member far Coatbridge and Airdrie Mr. Dempsey has helped my argument. Gentleman referred to shop assistants who are part-time. My case is that the provisions in the Bill should cover people who rely to a substantial extent on their job for their livelihood.

I was trying to emphasise that a number of people living north of the Border, who are part-time shop assistants, work on Friday or Saturday, or only at the weekends when there is an increased volume of trade.

Those are just the people whom I think it doubtful that we should cover by the provisions in this Bill. If we made the figure ten hours, we should include people with spare-time occupations and those who do weekend jobs, and I do not think that it would be right to apply the requirements in this Bill when the employment relationship is not of substantial importance to the parties concerned. Having considered this matter again, and looked for classes of people who work for fewer than twenty-one hours and yet rely to a substantial extent on their job for their livelihood, we have decided that a period of twenty-one hours is right at the present time.

I admit that this is a question of judgment about where the line should be drawn. But we believe that the figure of twenty-one is correct. Member for Southwark suggested that there is an increasing tendency for people to work for fewer than twenty-one hours and that this tendency may increase. Gentleman has a point. I believe it right to keep the figure of twenty-one hours at the present time.

But in order to meet his point, we will consider whether it would be right to take power to vary the period, if that proved necessary in the light of further developments regarding working hours. I think that is a sensible thing to do in view of any further developments. But I stick to my contention that at present the right place at which to draw the line is at twenty-one hours. There may be a difference of opinion on the matter, and that I accept. But having decided that, and although this is a matter of judgment, I think that that figure should remain.

In view of the Parliamentary Secretary's last remarks, are we to understand that it is the intention of the Government to support a hour week throughout industry? Member for Southwark is too old a hand to think that he can draw me one way or another into discussing wider issues than those relating to the provisions in this Bill.

I am saying that I believe that twenty-one hours is the correct figure and the right place at which to draw the line at the present time. But, in view of developments which could occur, it would be right to consider whether it is proper to take power to vary that provision. I beg to move, in page 3, line 11, to leave out "five" and to insert "thirteen". With this Amendment it would be convenient to discuss the next Amendment in the name of the hon.

Gunter : in page 3, line 11, leave out "five" and insert "two". Would it also be convenient, Mr. Speaker, to discuss at the same time the two Government Amendments in page 5, lines 17 and These Amendments concern the time limit by which written statements are to be given under Clause 4. There was considerable discussion on this point in Committee. The Committee had before it some Amendments which would have reduced the time limit, or even abolished it altogether, and other Amendments which proposed an extension of the time limit to fifteen or twenty-six weeks.

At the conclusion of the discussion, my right hon. Friend made clear that he had been convinced that it was no longer possible to retain the five-week period and that the period must be extended. He did not at that time commit himself to an exact period. Since then, as these Amendments show, he has decided that it would be right to make the period thirteen weeks. The arguments for lengthening the time limit was put powerfully by my hon.

Friends the Members for Aylesbury Sir S. Summers and for Derbyshire, West, Mr. Crawley and were fully discussed. I do not think it necessary to set out those arguments at great length now. The difficulty arises from casual and temporary employments. The most outstanding example is in agriculture. A very small proportion of farmers have any clerical work, yet a farmer with perhaps one or two permanent employees may engage large numbers of people on a casual basis to help at particular times of the year.

Not only is the number large, but those people come and go and are replaced by others. It is impossible for the farmer to say which ones have been with him continuously for five weeks working twenty-one hours or more a week. These casual workers where they work on a succession of crops may stay with the same employer for a total of up to three months.

It would be quite impractical to require the farmer to give these casual workers written statements. There are many other industries where there is a fringe, small or great, of casual and temporary workers. It is very doubtful whether the labour put on the employer of producing written statements would be justified by the benefits to the employee.

Their employment often lasts more than five weeks, but many look on the job simply as a means of earning some extra spending money and not as a serious sort of livelihood. The other Amendments affect Clause 4 The change they would make is partly consequential on a decision to abandon the five-week limit which is referred to in Clause 4 It would also get rid of a weakness in the present wording which was pointed out in Committee by the hon.

Member for East Ham, North, who moved an Amendment for the hon. Rankin in his absence. The weakness is that under the present wording an employer commits no offence by giving his employee false particulars of his terms if the employee happens to leave before the time limit is up. This is clearly wrong, but it is put right in the Amendments that we now propose. I do not imagine that in moving this Amendment I am likely to carry the hon. Member for Gloucester Mr. Diamond or the hon. Prentice , with me on this occasion.

Nevertheless, having considered the discussion in Committee and the particular problems with which we are confronted, I think that this period of thirteen weeks is right. I am most grateful to the Parliamentary Secretary for one thing. In undertaking the formidable task of deputising for my hon.

Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan Mr. Rankin I seem to have secured a tactical victory in reference to the suggested Amendment to page 5, line The Parliamentary Secretary was right in saying that he would not carry us with him on the Amendment he has moved, for it is clearly a retrograde step.

Friend the Member for Southwark Mr. Gunter , when moving the previous Amendment, said that we did not feel that the statement provided for by this Clause would be of great value to a large number of workers. This is our view, but so far as it has value it would be more likely to be achieved for people whose type of employment is rather less secure than the average.

Anyone who goes to work in a large industry where there are written contracts and agreements is likely to find what his terms of employment are more easily than people who work for shorter periods in various types of employment which are not organised and subject to negotiations. Those people will be much more likely to benefit from a statement of this kind. Now we wish to resist the Government's intention of raising it to thirteen weeks. No real case has been made in favour of the thirteen-week period.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that the case was put powerfully by some of his hon. Friends in Committee. That powerful argument escapes my recollection and I do not think there has been powerful argument employed by the Parliamentary Secretary this evening. It seems to boil down to the position of the poor farmer struggling by the light of an oil lamp late at night trying to spell a statement out on the back of an envelope. Because he has no clerical help of any kind, this is a great burden to him.

I think that is nonsense. Inevitably the filling in of forms has become part of agricultural work. The very system of agricultural support which is welcomed keenly by farmers inevitably involves a lot of form filling. The amount of form filling provided under this Clause would be very modest. It comprises just a few particulars to be given to an employee. To suggest that that is a big clerical burden for the farmer or anyone is absolute nonsense.

The person who would go for a period of employment between five and thirteen weeks would be the very person who could be exploited. If I went to a farmer seeking work of that kind and he found—as he would find—that I am a timid and tongue-tied sort of chap, I might not be able to establish the terms on which I was employed.

I might not know what difference it would make whether I was working for a small number of hours because of bad weather or from dawn to dusk on a summer's day because the weather was good and advantage must be taken of it. I might not be quite clear about the amount of pay to which I was entitled.

It is just that type of person who ought to have a clear statement as a matter of right. The case is stronger for people employed for between five weeks and thirteen weeks than for people employed for longer periods. We therefore insist that this is not a good Amendment and we hope that we may get support from hon. Members opposite in that view. Anyone who hears an argument described as powerful and does not agree with that argument cannot, of course, accept that it is powerful.

I do not want to go over the ground very much again in supporting the Government on this thirteen weeks, which I think is not only nearly right but quite right as the period for this purpose. Prentice got a little confused about the farmer. It was not this particular exercise which it was thought would be likely to worry farmers—the calculation of the six months average pay for those who might have to have their wages assessed during notice.

Leaving aside the occasional workers, farmers hope that those who come to work for them will stay in their employment. For those people the farmer will have to write a document comprising the relevant conditions given in Clause 4. It is absurd to suggest that those who work for this magic period, described as particularly relevant—five to thirteen weeks—should have a document telling them of the holidays they will get, of the pay they will receive while on holiday, what will happen if they suffer sickness or injury, and to what sort of pensions they will be entitled in that period.

This document and the number of weeks which shall elapse before the man is entitled to receive it are intended to apply to people who will be in long-term employment, not those employed for a period anything like as short as two weeks. The change to two weeks from five would be infinitely worse than the five weeks. I hope that the Government will stick to the thirteen weeks.

I regard this Amendment as the most mischievous thing the Government have perpetrated in connection with the Bill. The hypothesis in which this matter is all the time considered is that some serious importance attaches to the passing of what has been described as a piece of paper. It is regarded as important that there should be available this statement of what the terms and conditions of service are.

If the document possesses that importance, it justifies the whole exercise. It is clearly desirable that it should pass as soon as reasonably practicable and that the employee should have it as early as may be.

It is derogatory of the importance of the document that so long a period as thirteen weeks could elapse before there is any need to hand it over. Many people in future times will notice this, will reflect that it is an extraordinarily long time to delay before the document is required to pass, and will want to know the reason for this delay, which is quite indefensible.

In nine cases out of ten it will serve no useful purpose. The reason why is apparent to us. The reason is that the Government have found it totally impossible to incorporate in the Bill a definition of the casual worker. There is no other reason. I think this will be recognised on both sides of the House. Workers who are not casual workers will have to wait longer than is necessary, and longer than is desirable, for the transmission of the document, because of the difficulty which was found in separating them as a matter of definition from casual workers.

I think that this is a disappointing step. It reveals the lack of enthusiasm amongst hon. Members opposite for their own Bill. I wish that the Bill would provide for the passing of the document after the shortest possible interval of time. To the extent that that would cause difficulty in the case of casual workers—I acknowledge that it might if the matter were left there—I wish that the difficulty had been overcome by a clear and crisp definition in the Bill of the workers who should not be expected to receive the statement so early because of the casual character of the employment in which they are engaged.

There should be a definition of the casual worker which would in this way make it not necessary in this case for the document to pass in the minimum period. I do not think this has been handled in a fashion which reveals any confidence in their own Bill on the part of hon.

Members opposite. The Parliamentary Secretary has great prescience. He was right in saying that he would not carry any of us, myself in particular, on this Amendment. It is, as my hon. Irvine said, a retrograde step and a most regrettable one. I want to approach the matter in a slightly different way. Summers has said that this thirteen weeks is not only about right but just right.

That was a powerful thing to say. It is something to lend oneself to an exact thirteen weeks. Twelve and a half would be wrong. Thirteen and a half equally would be wrong.

However, I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman has excellent reasons for saying this. If I am right, the hon. Gentleman also said in Committee that one of the great arguments for this period would be that it should coincide with the period which we have referred to earlier in the Bill after which a notice of one week has to be given. Gentleman was supported by other hon. Members opposite, who said that there was a considerable argument in favour of making these two provisions the same in point of time.

One of the particulars which has to be given on this paper after thirteen weeks is— the length of notice which the employee is obliged to give and entitled to receive … What is the length of notice after thirteen weeks? If the employer is relying on the statutory provisions, at the end of thirteen weeks under the Bill as it stands at present the length of notice is nothing. In three months' time it will be a week's notice. Immediately complications arise. The Parliamentary Secretary carefully avoided making any comment as to why this period would be a different period.

It was open to him to make some comment on this, because both periods are being altered. If one was fixed and we were considering only one, that would be a different matter, but this afternoon we have considered both. He has not done so and he has not acceded to the argument strongly pressed on him by many of his hon. Friends in Committee that these two periods should be identical. As he has not done so, he has denied himself the only possible argument in support of thirteen weeks.

I share with my hon. It is a great pity that it is being taken, because throughout the Committee stage and to-day we have moved the Bill forward in a progressive sense. This is the one sense in which it is going backwards, and it is going backwards badly. I only wish that I had more than one vote in the Division Lobby. I beg to move, in page 3, line 22, at the end to insert: including any terms and conditions relating to normal working hours ,". The effect of this Amendment is to provide that when putting into writing any terms and conditions relating to hours of work the employer is to include any terms and conditions relating to normal working hours.

The Amendment serves a useful purpose in assisting the new rules for minimum pay during notice to be applied. As I explained earlier, different provisions are to apply to employees who have normal working hours and those, such as commercial travellers, who do not.

It will obviously help in the application of the provisions if it is clear from the written statement given to the employee under the Clause whether there are any normal working hours and, if so, what they are. The Amendment will draw attention to the point and I hope, therefore, that the House will agree that it is useful and should be adopted.

I beg to move, in page 3, line 38, at the end to insert: Provided further that anything contained in the written statement aforesaid purporting to derogate from an employer's duty or obligations by statute or common law shall have no effect in derogating from such duty or obligations.

This Amendment raises a point about which we received an assurance in Committee upstairs to the effect that the proposals made at that time would be considered by the Government. I infer from the fact that no Government Amendmnet has been tabled that they have received advice that it is not necessary to make provision in the Bill for the difficulty that this Amendment is designed to meet.

This does not altogether surprise me. Nevertheless, my hon. Friends and I still believe that it would be desirable for the Amendment to be accepted. We have been reminded time and again today that the written statement is not to be a contract. Member for Crosby Mr. Graham Page moved an Amendment to make this abundantly clear in the body of the Bill, and after that Amendment was rejected the House received abundant evidence from the confusion which arose on the benches opposite that there was force in the argument the hon.

Member for Crosby had deployed. Be that as it may, it is now understood that the written statement is not a contract. However, I do not believe that that concludes the matter, particularly when one considers the desirability of requiring there to be on the statement the kind of provision for which we are asking in the Amendment. Many an employee on receipt of the statement will, however mistakenly, think that it is a contract, or that it is conclusive evidence of the character of the contract under which he is working.

That being so, it is very desirable that no misunderstanding should arise. Our Amendment is designed to avoid the risk that in the particular circumstances, albeit they are likely to be rare, there will be incorporated in the written statement language that would purport … to derogate from an employer's duty or obligations by statute or common law … The fact that the written statement would have no legal effect is not conclusive, because the recipient might think that it had some enforceable effect—such cases might be rare, but this would be by no means the first time that we have provided for them—and might conceivably be discouraged, because of provisions in the written statement, from initiating proceedings on his own or courses designed to remedy what he regarded as a wrong.

If this proviso appeared in the Bill, it would be some discouragement to employers to resort to a course of action about which I have expressed anxiety, and it would diminish, although it would not altogether exclude, the risk that there might appear in the written statement words derogatory to common law and statutory rights purporting to be enforceable and which, although not enforceable, might be regarded by the employee recipient as being enforceable and, therefore, adversely affect the action he takes.

I fully appreciate why the hon. Irvine has moved this Amendment. He has rightly returned to a point which, in Standing Committee, we agreed to consider, without commitment. He has made it clear that he thinks it extremely unlikely that anything contained in the written statement might be presented in such a fashion as to derogate from either statute or common law.

I must tell him that the advice I have had on this point is perfectly clear and that, of course, is why nothing has been put down at this stage.

There is really no possibility that anything in a written statement could have this effect. The written statement merely reflects the terms of an already existing contract. It is quite clear that an employer does not have the power to use the written statement for any such purpose as evading obligations under statute or common law. Having said all that, I appreciate the hon.

An employer who attempted to do anything of the kind that the hon. He then asked why, if it would help the people who might have doubts, such a proviso should not be added. There is always a temptation to say that if a provision cannot do any harm it might as well be added as it can only do good, but declaratory provisions can do harm—as I need hardly tell the hon.

Clause 4 is already heavily enough burdened without the addition of anything that I think might be superfluous. I take the hon. In line 18, leave out from first "of" to end of line 19 and insert: the failure to give the statement". I beg to move in page 5, line 37, at the end to insert: and without prejudice to the generalities of the foregoing such further particulars may be particulars of the amount of the severance payment to be made by the employer to the employee in respect of the termination of employment".

I think that with this Amendment we can also take the Amendment in page 7, line 10, at end insert: severance payment" means a payment, whether contractual or not, which is made by an employer to an employee and which is in respect of this termination of his employment and not by way of commutation of any right which the employee would have had if his employment had been continued.

At last we come to an Amendment which the Government will be prepared to accept, notwithstanding that it comes from the Opposition—for the first time during the course of today. I say that because this Amendment has been put down entirely to meet their convenience.

I do not expect the House to accept the Amendment in these precise words, because a misprint appears to have crept in. The word "generalities" should read "generality," but I feel sure that the error can be dealt with either by a manuscript Amendment or, possibly, without any Amendment but by an adjustment in the usual way.

Severance pay was mentioned in the Bill in the first place and the definition was there incorporated, so that all I need say about the second Amendment is that it copies, word for word, the definition appearing in the Bill in the first place. However, the way the matter was dealt with in Committee was to suggest, in a new Clause, that at the same point of time at which the notice was given there should be given to the employee information as to the amount of severance pay to which he was entitled.

This suggestion was based on the very solid ground that it is at that point of time that the employee is particularly interested in the amount of severance pay he will get. Indeed, it is not until he is declared redundant that any right to receive severance pay will arise. The Minister was then good enough to say, not only that, in general terms, he was in favour of some redundancy scheme providing for severance payment—in principle, although not in any particular detail—but that he would consider the matter if the new Clause was withdrawn.

The new Clause was withdrawn so that consideration could take place, and the Parliamentary Secretary has been courteous enough to address a letter to me, for which I am very grateful, explaining why it was not thought right for the Government to introduce the same new Clause, or words having the same effect.

I do not want to embarrass the hon. Gentleman, but I share his view that the matter could have been dealt with even more efficiently than we dealt with it in the Standing Committee, but before receipt of his letter we had put down this Amendment.

Although an Amendment to deal with this matter at a point of time when notice is given is a good idea, an even better idea is to deal with it right at the start when a man is employed. Therefore, if when a man is employed one of the particulars referring to his employment which is to be notified under the Clause we are now discussing is one dealing with severance pay, it means that from the point of time when those particulars are reduced to writing there is complete clarity about the terms of his employment and, in particular, the severance pay to which he is entitled.

The first idea was good. To do what is now proposed would be better, but the best idea of all is the one on the Order Paper, because it leaves complete flexibility to the Minister and leaves it to his discretion whether reference to severance pay is included or not in particulars of employment.

We are discussing an Amendment to subsection 14 by which the Minister has power by order to provide for additional particulars to be included in the statement to which the Clause refers. You can find out more about our legitimate interest activity in our Privacy Policy. A link has been emailed to you - check your inbox. Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer. Home News Politics. In Brief. Would you like to receive The WeekDay newsletter?

If you wish to object to the use of your data in this way, please tick here. What was clause IV? For the first time, the party officially stated its socialist element in an official document. To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

Press at the time wrote of how significant the new constitution of the post-war political party was. Yet the belief in this core principle began to be challenged within the party. He proposed to amend clause IV. The left fought back, however, and defeated moves for change: symbolically, in fact, it was agreed that the clause was to be included on party membership cards.