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12.32 pm
Mr. Ross Cranston (Dudley, North): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Pond) on introducing the Bill. I first came across his name in 1977, when he was the co-author of an important book called "To Him Who Hath". Another co-author was my right hon. Friend the Minister for Welfare Reform. The book addressed several issues that are still on the agenda, such as the relationship between taxation and poverty, and how regressive taxation can be. It also contained an interesting European dimension, showing how we were taxed less than elsewhere.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend and I were elected at the same time. Other hon. Members have mentioned his time at the Low Pay Unit, where he worked for almost two decades, producing a stream of pamphlets and articles. He took up the important issue of the exploitation suffered by many in low-paid work. I congratulate him. In a way, the Bill is a culmination of the many years that he has spent toiling on the issue.
I shall concentrate my remarks on children of pre-school-leaving age. Hon. Members have already said, I think correctly, that work can create a sense of responsibility, self-respect and self-discipline. The Bill recognises the fact that we must not eliminate the possibility of young people's entering work. However, there are three important caveats. The first is exploitation. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) mentioned examples of exploitation from her constituency and my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mrs. Golding) referred to exploitation in terms of pay rates. The Low Pay Unit publication "Fair Play for Working Children" gives several serious examples of exploitation.
The second caveat is the health and safety concern. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham addressed that issue in his remarks and gave several examples of young people who were seriously injured while working. The third caveat concerns the impact that work can have on education, and I shall spend a few minutes on that point. The TUC commissioned an important study by the MORI organisation which found that some 28 per cent. of working children said that they were often or sometimes too tired to do their homework or their school work. Some 4 per cent. said that they played truant from school because they had to work. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes referred to such a case in her constituency.
That is a serious problem. There is strong evidence of the link between homework and achievement at school--even the previous Government acknowledged that. This Government have taken several important steps to ensure that children, who may not otherwise do their homework, can attend homework clubs. Some 8,000 such clubs are planned by the turn of the century, at a cost of £200 million. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment has emphasised the importance of homework and the fact that it makes a real difference. Even though there are advantages in young people's undertaking work, there should be limits on what they are able to do.
As hon. Members have said, the current legislation is a patchwork. It is a complex hotch-potch. The basic law is the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, and its key section--section 18--is clearly drafted. It imposes limits by stating that school-age children cannot work before 7 am and after 7 pm, and cannot work more than two hours a day, including Sunday. However, superimposed on that legislation are many other complex provisions, including the Employment of Women, Young Persons and Children Act 1920, the Children Act 1972 and local authority byelaws which, in many cases, were introduced as a result of the Employment of Children Act 1973. Although that Act was never proclaimed, draft regulations gave rise to local authority action.
There are limits on these provisions. The basic provision in section 18 of the 1933 Act covers only employment. As the hon. Member for Guildford(Mr. St. Aubyn) pointed out, the definition of employment in that Act is assisting in a trade or occupation carried on for profit, so it would not cover the job of babysitter. There are other relevant regulations, such as the Children (Performances) Regulations 1968 and the Health and Safety (Young Persons) Regulations 1997. There is a case for the Bill on the grounds of the complexity of current provisions alone.
Reference has been made to international instruments. My hon. Friends the Members for Preston (Audrey Wise), for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) and for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) mentioned ILO convention 138 on the minimum age for admission to employment. I want to correct something they said about the nature of that convention. This country has not ratified it, unlike some other European countries, such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden. The European directive is not inconsistent with the ILO convention, and nor are the provisions in the Bill.
The ILO convention seeks to do away with child labour. Article 7 clearly states:
Mr. Hopkins:
I referred to the ILO convention as a minimum starting point. It is a basis to work on, but I would go beyond it.
Mr. Cranston:
I agree, it is a basis, and the European directive is consistent with it.
The other international instrument that has been mentioned is the convention on the rights of the child. This country is an adherent to that convention: it came into force in the United Kingdom in 1992. It sets out important rights for children. The basic right is that we must always take the best interests of the child into account. Article 12 states that we should listen to what children say, for example when we make administrative decisions. I would extrapolate on that, and say that we have to listen to children when making legislation. The TUC survey shows that children say that they do get tired, cannot do their homework and, in some cases, play truant. We must take that into account in making laws.
The key provision is article 32 of the convention, which says that children have to be protected from exploitation, and from performing work
I refer also to the EC directive, to which others have referred, which contains an important provision on risk assessment in articles 6 and 7. We must ensure that, on health and safety grounds, any employment will not adversely affect children and young persons who are working. The directive also contains absolute limits on the amount of time a child can work. For example, a 12-hour limit is specified; that is different from the current law in this country where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham pointed out, a child can work up to 17 hours a week during term time. Under the directive, we are rightly obliged to reduce the hours a child of school age can work.
Article 11 of the directive states that children should have a period free of any work during school holidays. It is important for young people to have a couple of weeks free from any work. The previous Government negotiated certain opt-outs from the directive, and we have discussed one of those--the opt-out which relates to Sunday employment and the fact that children can work up to eight hours on Sundays.
I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes made about changing employment patterns in some parts of the country. However, my hon. Friend the Minister was right when he said in December that the provision allowing eight hours' work on Sundays
was--to use his colourful language--"dead in the water." Children, as he said, need time with their families and friends, and for their school work. Eight hours is simply too long. In addition, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry said that the other provision--the two-week break during school holidays--was appropriate so that children could have a rest from school and other work.
I now turn to enforcement. Under the UN convention, we are obliged to introduce an effective enforcement regime--which, clearly, we are not doing. There are various reasons why local authorities are not able to enforce the law, but the fact is that they are not doing so.
In 1991, the Low Pay Unit confirmed that much employment was illegal and unregistered. In 1995, a GMB report showed that only 15 of the 108 local authorities had employment officers specifically dealing with children. It also showed that there were few prosecutions--only 11 in the previous year, for example. In February 1997, Labour Research reported that, in Blackburn, only 4 per cent. of employers who should have been registered were, in fact, registered.
Law enforcement is important not only in this area, but more generally. If a law is not properly enforced--or if it is not enforced at all--not only it, but the whole legal process falls into disrepute. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister about the Government's proposals to improve enforcement.
Under the 1933 Act, children under 13 may not work, but the TUC survey found that one in five 11-year-olds and one in four 12-year-olds said that they were working. It also showed that the legal maximums were not being observed and that many children were working longer than two hours a day during term time.
"National laws . . . may permit the employment or work of persons from 13 to 15 years of age on light work"
subject to limitations. The first limitation is that it should not be
"harmful to their health or development"
and the second is that the work should not be
"such as to prejudice their attendance at school . . . or their capacity to benefit from the instruction received."
Paragraph 4 of article 7 enables adherents to the convention to
"substitute the ages 12 and 14 for the ages 13 and 15".
13 Feb 1998 : Column 713
It would be wrong to go away with the impression that the convention is inconsistent with part-time work for children who have not left school. It aims to do away with child labour, but it allows part-time work.
"likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."
To that end, article 32.2 says that states shall provide for a minimum age for admission to employment, for appropriate regulation of the hours and conditions of employment and for appropriate penalties or other sanctions to ensure the effective enforcement of the article. A number of hon. Members have referred to the under-enforcement of the current laws.
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