Labour Minister Can’t Name One Business Backing Rayner’s Zero-Hour Contract Changes – Guido Fawkes

WATCH: Labour Minister Can’t Name One Business Backing Rayner’s Zero-Hour Contract Changes

Angela Rayner’s much-hated Employment Rights Bill is in the Lords, with yesterday’s committee stage dominated by debate over the crackdown on zero hours contracts. Under the proposed changes, employers would be forced to offer workers a contract based on hours worked over a 12-week reference period. A change industry leaders have warned will crush businesses… 

Tory peer Lord Sharpe asked business minister Baroness Jones whether she could name a single business that supports the 12-week reference period. After much ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’, she couldn’t:

“The Bill sets out, in a number of ways, that there will be regulations that will be consulted upon… but there is a framework for that set out in the Bill which should cover that point.”

Painful stuff. Meanwhile, the CBI’s latest survey predicts private sector output will fall again in the summer due to concerns over the bill. Not the first time a minister’s been unable to name a single company that backs the bill…