Fighting for the rights of exploited temporary workers

Once a year backbench MPs are given the opportunity to promote a bill of their own if they are successful in a ballot. In recent years I have been lucky twice.

In 2001 I introduced the Copyright, etc and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Bill, which at the second time of asking is now established in law.

I came up again in the ballot this year and on this occasion I decided to pick up where my colleague, Paul Farrelly, left off when he tried to pilot a bill last year governing agency workers.

My bill, the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, seeks to establish the principle of equal treatment for up 1.4 million agency workers in the key areas of:

• Pay and holiday entitlements
• Working time arrangements, including overtime, breaks and night work.
• Working conditions for young people, pregnant women and nursing mothers.
• Protection against sex, age, race, disability or religious discrimination.

You would not believe the enormous number of letters and emails I have received on this subject from professional engineers and IT consultants.

But the drive for equality affects all workers, including those in the IT industry.

And as chairman of the biggest IT committee in the House, Pitcom, (www.pitcom.org.uk) I was conscious that I did not want the bill to include within its scope providers of professional expertise who offer their services through agencies or who undertake temporary contract work by other means.

That is also the government’s position. Some aspects of the definition of this category are more complex than it first seems, and I do not want the bill to create a loophole so a disreputable agency could define, say, a builder as a professional service provider to sidestep the legislation.

There is a fundamental difference between the kind of temporary and agency worker on whom I am focusing and IT professionals who choose to market their services via an agency.

The latter have significant negotiating skills to determine their conditions of employment, while the former are some of the most exploited people in society.

There is a grey area inbetween and that is why my bill provides for secondary legislation in clause 4(1)(e) to clarify exactly how lines are drawn.

This clause empowers the secretary of state to determine “the applicability of the rights to special classes of employment” and it will be designed to exclude professional IT contractors and similar people.

The purpose of my bill is to improve the lives of vulnerable agency workers who are unfairly treated.

It is not intended to interfere with those who are perfectly capable of negotiating their own terms and conditions.

Andrew Miller is MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston and a BCS contributor