On 10 October 2024, prime minister Keir Starmer announced a wide-ranging extension of employment rights.

It could see over seven million workers become eligible for sick pay from their first day of sickness – instead of having to wait until their fourth day of illness. Over eight million workers would get day-one protection from unfair dismissal. And one million workers on zero hours contracts would get the right to a contract that reflects their normal hours based on a 12-week reference period. 

By any measure, these reforms in the Employment Rights Bill are strong steps in the right direction.

But four days later the prime minister told a government-convened investment summit he would get “rid of regulation that needlessly holds back investment.”  The prime minister told the summit in London on 14 October 2024 it was “time to upgrade the regulatory regime.”

The Labour leader added he “will make sure that every regulator in this country take growth as seriously as this room does.” Setting out a path for a new wave of deregulation, Sir Keir said: “We’ve got to look at regulation where it is needlessly holding back the investment, to take our country forward.”

He also assured businesses that they could share any “frustrations” with the government, adding: “We’re united behind growth – our door is open.”

Rights and wrongs

The prime minister’s line on regulation was straight from the Conservative playbook (Hazards 122).

During his time as prime minister, David Cameron introduced a ‘growth duty’ on regulators and called for a ‘bonfire of regulation’.  The Conservatives said in 2013 “a ‘growth duty’ will ensure that enforcement activity of these regulators, including the Health and Safety Executive, Environment Agency and Highways Agency, imposes minimum burdens that could hold businesses back, while upholding the highest standards of public protection.”

But it took Cameron over three years to activate his deregulation plan. It took Starmer just over three months.

Labour’s plan will see the competition watchdog ordered to prioritise growth, investment and innovation in its work. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will also undertake a review of the remit of other major regulators – the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is one of the largest – to ensure they are focused on growth.

The CMA review comes just a year after Kemi Badenoch, then business secretary and now the leader of the Conservatives in opposition, had renewed her party’s deregulatory push with a review of regulators “to scrap unnecessary regulations that hold back firms and hamper growth.”

Labour’s growth plan and business pampering doesn’t just perpetuate the harm caused by the Tories; it risks building on it.

Its investment summit was hit by controversy after a key attendee, Dubai-based DP World, threatened to pull out over disparaging comments made by transport secretary Louise Haigh about its subsidiary P&O Ferries. Ms Haigh had called the firm a “rogue operator” and said it should be boycotted over its sudden sacking of 800 British seafarers in 2022, replacing them with cheaper, mainly overseas, staff.

GROWING EVIDENCE An October 2024 Department for Business and Trade impact assessment confirms that that government’s Employment Rights Bill will bring real and substantial benefits to workers, business and the wider economy. more

Concerns about the company extend beyond its employment practices. DP World’s Southampton operation was fined £1 million for a criminal health and safety offence and ordered to pay £11,664.59 in costs at Southampton Magistrates’ Court on 2 August 2024. Christopher Hooper, who was 29 at the time, suffered fractures to his skull, back, pelvis, arm, wrist and ankle after falling 11 metres at DP World Southampton’s terminal on 20 September 2022.

After a 24-hour scramble inside Downing Street which saw Sir Keir distance himself from Ms Haigh’s comments, DP World confirmed its chair Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem would attend the summit and a planned £1bn investment would go ahead.

Grave consequences

The Conservatives’ decade-long preoccupation with deregulation came at a cost. The rate of work-related ill-health rose by almost 40 per cent while the Tories were in power; prosecutions of those causing this harm plummeted. And the long-term disdain for regulation has seen the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) left without the resources to do its job (Hazards 163).

HSE’s ‘all inspectors’ count fell from 1,651 in 2010 to 974 in 2023, mirroring swingeing funding cuts. Inspections and investigations have become vanishingly rare, with the figures from HSE’s 2022/23 annual report indicating the average workplace enforced by HSE might expect a visit less than once every 50 years.

In April 2023, HSE inspectors’ union Prospect warned that almost 400 ‘mandatory’ inspections were cancelled last year because of insufficient resources (Hazards 162).

DIFFERENT PICTURE  This image dominated the website of the US safety regulator OSHA in Labor Rights Week in August 2024. But in the UK, HSE has been told to stay business friendly and focused on ‘growth’. And unlike OSHA, the UK’s attention shy regulator HSE only wants you to phone after a fatality or major injury.

At the TUC conference in September 2024, delegates passed a Prospect motion calling on the TUC to campaign for a new approach to regulation, abandoning deregulation, with regulators instead putting the public interest first.

Mike Clancy, general secretary of Prospect, said: “For too long regulation has been seen as a dirty word with notional costs to business carrying far more weight than the actual impact of regulation on the public more widely.

“Regulation is not an economic drag, if introduced properly and with properly funded regulators it can drive growth and benefit society.

“Deregulation by contrast, if done with the level of ideological zeal we have seen in recent years, can lead us to a position where profit is a higher concern than public safety. As we have recently seen in the Grenfell Inquiry report, at the most extreme this can lead to disastrous failures and serious loss of life.”

The final Grenfell report, released on 4 September 2024, found a government drive for deregulation meant concerns about the safety of life were “ignored, delayed or disregarded” in the years before the 14 June 2017 fire in which 72 people died.

The seven-year inquiry said civil servants had felt unable to raise concerns about fire safety due to a focus on deregulation, and accused ministers and senior officials of a “serious failure of leadership” in allowing such a culture to develop.

STARMER HARMER?  Prime minister Keir Starmer eagerness to court business and prioritise growth could undermine his attempts to improve employment rights and could replace red tape with bloody bandages, unions have warned.

The Conservative approach included a “one in, two out” policy for new regulations that the inquiry said put civil servants under pressure to reduce red tape.

Hazards Campaign chair Janet Newsham said the new Labour government should heed these warnings, asserting “red tape is better than bloody bandages.”

“Grenfell is a good example of where self-regulation was adopted, being taken from the independent fire regulators, and the consequences were that no-one regulated, no-one checked that safety was being taken seriously and dozens died because there was no-one taking a precautionary approach to the risks and no-one as yet has been prosecuted either.”

You want growth? Give workers rights!

An impact assessment published on 21 October 2024 by the Department for Business and Trade confirms that that government’s Employment Rights Bill will bring real and substantial benefits to workers, business, and the wider economy.

The government assessment sets out that ten million working people across the country will directly benefit from the overhaul of workers’ rights. Their jobs will become more secure, the quality of their work will improve and they will directly gain as their incomes rise. The impact assessment sets out the positive economic impacts the package will deliver, recognising it will be “significantly positive for society” and that it is likely to have net positive impacts for growth. 

The analysis suggests these include improved workforce health and wellbeing; increased economic activity rates; improving equality; improved industrial relations; and higher productivity. The impact assessment adds “improved wellbeing and health” should be welcomed as 17.1 million working days were lost due to stress, depression or anxiety in 2022/23 – the equivalent to over £5 billion of lost output.

It calculates costs to business will represent just under 0.4 per cent of total employment costs across the economy, which are more than offset by substantial wider economic and social gains. 

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “This impact assessment confirms that the Employment Rights Bill is good for workers, good for business and good for the wider economy. Driving up employment standards will boost living standards, productivity, and growth. That’s why the vast majority of managers support these plans.

“Most employers in this country treat their staff well and do not use exploitative practices like zero hours contracts and fire and rehire. 

“By levelling the playing field on workers’ rights and protections this bill will give people more predictability and control over their lives. And it will stop decent firms from being undercut by the bad. These reforms will improve the health of our workforce, bring real economic gains and ensure working people share fairly in the gains of growth.”

The Labour government says the new Bill includes measures to protect workers from unfair dismissal from day one, end exploitative zero hour contracts and fire and rehire and fire and replace practices, and strengthen statutory sick pay.

Top of the page

GROWING PAINS

Removing Conservative anti-union laws, extending employment rights. It was a good start from Keir Starmer and the new Labour government. But Hazards editor Rory O’Neill warns that the prime minister’s promises to do away with red tape in the pursuit of growth could dangerously undermine workers’ rights and safety.