SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
In summary our specific conclusions and recommendations
are:
The Draft Regulations and the Consultation Process
1. We are not persuaded that the Government's
reasons for delaying the publication of the consultation document
were sound. It is not clear, for example, why a three-month consultation
period beginning before Christmas should present a difficulty
for potential respondents when a two-month period beginning in
January does not. Although we recognise the value of private and
informal consultation while draft statutory instruments are being
prepared, we do not believe that it should be treated as a substitute
for an open public consultation exercise (paragraph 5).
2. The substantive errors contained in the
regulatory impact assessment, together with the unfortunate phraseology
used in the notes, suggest that insufficient care was taken with
the production of the consultation paper. They also cast further
doubt on the rigour of the Government's private consultation with
interested parties during the drafting of the document (paragraph
8).
The Meaning of "Employee"
3. We do not see any merit in introducing
Regulations with a narrow application at this stage, only to widen
their coverage later in the year. We believe that the arguments
in favour of a broader definition of "worker" are persuasive,
not least of all because the draft Regulations, as currently drafted,
do not appear to meet the reflect the intentions behind the Directive
and could be subject to a legal challenge. We welcome the Minister's
assurances that the Government will re-examine the coverage of
employment rights legislation but, in the meantime, we recommend
that the coverage of the Regulations should be broader (paragraph
15).
The concept of a hypothetical comparator
4. We are concerned that the definition of
a "comparable full-time employee" contained in the draft
Regulations is unnecessarily restrictive, and we urge the Government
further to consider the use of a hypothetical comparator, as we
recommended in our earlier Report (paragraph 16).
The Code of Practice
5. We are dissatisfied with the Government's
decision not to produce a Code of Practice on part-time work.
We recommend that the Government should re-consider its decision
to replace the Code of Practice with guidance which will not have
the same force in law. We would also welcome from the Government
a new response to those recommendations in our Second Report of
Session 1998-99 which it originally told us would be covered by
a Code of Practice. In particular we would welcome from the Government
clarification of how it intends to implement Clause 5 of the Framework
Agreement (Opportunities for part-time work), including Clause
5.2 which states that a worker's refusal to transfer from between
part-time and full-time work should not in itself constitute a
valid reason for termination of employment and Clause 5.3 which
encourages employers, as far as possible, to give consideration
to requests from workers to transfer between full- and part-time
work (paragraph 21).
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