Unlike many of my contemporaries on the opposite side of the political divide, I don’t underestimate Angela Rayner. Which other figure active in politics today could leave school at 16 — without any qualifications — and then rise to become one of the most powerful Cabinet ministers in the land?
Rayner achieved all that by the age of 44. Such a climb up the greasy pole of Labour politics clearly requires colossal ambition, and — a point often downplayed by her Right-wing critics — no short measure of skill and intelligence. Given that her highfalutin (and ageing) boss Sir Keir Starmer is now about as popular as an apocalyptic asteroid on a collision course with Earth, I think it is quite possible that Rayner — the former care worker from Stockport — could become Prime Minister before the next general election.
There is, however, one major obstacle in the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party’s path to the very top — and it is almost entirely of her own making. She is currently the commissar tasked with making the Government’s Employment Rights Bill a reality.
This innocuously named piece of legislation in fact represents an extraordinary tectonic shift in the way that we work, and the effects on business will be significant. The Department for Business and Trade’s own impact assessment, for example, discloses with casual bureaucratic sangfroid: “We expect the policies covered within the Bill to impose a direct cost on business of low billion pounds per year (i.e. less than £5 billion annually).”
A cost on businesses of the “low billion pounds per year”? What business in London — or anywhere else in the country for that matter — could be expected to shoulder this additional burden with such insouciance? At a time when business taxation already feels like it is at an all-time high? In a climate where the cost of employing staff is rising, and the administrative and regulatory burden on businesses of all sizes feels as if it is on a Himalayan climb of its own?
Translated into the real world, those costs mean a new weight on the backs of employers computing to no less than £150 per worker in Britain. And that’s if you take the Office for National Statistics at its word when it says there are as many as 34 million people currently in work. The Bill lashes out at flexible models of employment, effectively abolishing those dubbed “zero hours contracts”.
Imagine the irony, then, when it emerged earlier this year that Rayner’s political colleague, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, employed no fewer than 32 staff on zero hours arrangements. According to City Hall they are “a group of young Londoners who volunteer to engage and gather the opinions of other young people in the capital”.
Whatever you think of such a role, there is no doubt that if young Londoners want to undertake it on a flexible basis, they should be free to do so. In fact, giving this Mayor a strong dose of real world feedback could be considered a vital occupation.
If you haven’t heard about the impending Bill, you’re not alone. The Government admits that businesses are struggling to keep up. In the same impact assessment, the word “uncertainty” appears no fewer than 302 times, and the words “risk” and “risky” 432 times.
Hapless Labour minister Justin Madders confessed that Rayner’s rush to bring the draft legislation into Parliament “meant that not every element of policy was ready”. Sounds just what business needs after a year of being clobbered with global shockwaves. Even HR departments are up in arms. According to a British Retail Consortium survey, 70 per cent of HR directors think the Bill will damage their business. More than half think the measures will result in jobs being lost and prices rising. And that’s the nub of the issue: this risks not so much an Employment Rights Bill as a Rising Unemployment Bill.
As Tina McKenzie, policy chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: “If taking on staff becomes a legal minefield, businesses will simply stop. That means more people on benefits, a ballooning welfare bill and a devastating hit to living standards.”
The Government’s own “economic analysis” of the measures states: “The two most common ways that businesses would respond to higher labour costs are to increase prices (40 per cent of businesses) or to absorb within profit margins (31 per cent of businesses).
Other responses included to reduce the number of employees (17 per cent), limit overtime hours (10 per cent) or reduce wages for other employees (nine per cent).” If 17 per cent of businesses lay off workers, Britain will be faced with sky-high unemployment.
Whatever criticisms there may be of the record of previous Conservative administrations, unemployment remained under control and low while they were in office. This country has not known unemployment on that scale for decades — and never with the current demands on state provision and overstretched public services.
If this is Rayner’s legacy as Starmer’s number two, he will ensure it is deputy heads that roll. In this case, the rapid rise of the Red Queen could well be halted before she reaches the doors of No 10.
Ross Kempsell is a Conservative peer
