One step forward, two steps back. Angela Rayner’s employment rights bill is back in the Commons this week, stuffed with ideas for improving everyday working life: that’s the big step forward for a government that was elected on a promise of radical change. The weekend headlines, however, were all about what won’t be changing after all. The so-called right to switch off – an early Rayner idea about legislating to prevent employees being pestered by out-of-hours calls and emails, which was already presumed dead due to not being in the bill – was ritually killed off once again for the Sunday papers, with a briefing that it still won’t be in the bill after fresh amendments are tabled on Tuesday.
Presumably the idea was to reassure businesses fearful of extra regulatory burdens, on top of the looming April hike in employers’ national insurance. But since it’s the tax rise they’re really worried about, in practice it offers minimal reassurance while generating hostile headlines about a supposed humiliation for Rayner (despite Downing Street’s best efforts to convey that the prime minister has never been closer to his deputy, a former care worker who is one of vanishingly few senior politicians to have done low-paid, insecure work herself in the past). The wary, almost apologetic way the government keeps approaching this admittedly complex bill suggests it’s still not entirely sure of its ground – and that makes its opponents scent blood.
