Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 146)
WEDNESDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2004
MR IAN
BRINKLEY AND
MR PAUL
SELLERS
Q140 Lord Harrison: It is your response
as to how you might deal with the problem and you are saying those
industries which might be involved are heavily unionised. I am
showing my surprise at that statement.
Mr Sellers: I will try to explain that. Paragraph
5.2 refers to how we might deal with the SiMAP and Jaeger
judgments which are about on-call hours spent on the employer's
premises. The highest incidence of that is in the National Health
Service, but there are some people who would be affected in other
areas such as oil rigs, some emergency service drivers, some people
in care homes and so on. By and large these are very heavily unionised
sectors and it does lend itself to bargaining about hours and
productivity.
Q141 Lord Harrison: Yes, but what about
those industries, to give you one very large example, with 1.7
million people who are broadly speaking not unionised?
Mr Sellers: We were not aware that there was
a very large incidence of on-call working on employers' premises
in that industry. If there is, we would certainly like to look
at that.
Q142 Lord Harrison: In hotels?
Mr Sellers: Yes, I suppose there are some, some
night porters.
Q143 Lord Harrison: They are not unionised
for the most part. May I just take this opportunity? I do not
think we have asked our colleagues from the TUC what the view
of the ETUC is on the revision of working time practice and the
UK position.
Mr Brinkley: By and large the ETUC is very supportive
of our position. There is no substantial difference between the
two. They think the Working Time Directive ought to be applied
right across all the European countries so that all European workers
have the same basic common rights. If you are going to create
a single market in which you want to set down some basic standards
which cover conduct of industry and so on. They take the view
that we should have some basic common standards for European workers
as well and the directive is part of that overall approach.
Q144 Lord Harrison: My final follow-up question
arises from that answer which is that this is under health and
safety and the single market. Do you think this legislation should
have been drafted under the single internal market rules
to deal with competitiveness and all those allied issues?
Mr Brinkley: No, I do not. I think the key point
is that it applies universally as a basic standard across the
European Union. Working time has always been regarded as a health
and safety issue and it is the most appropriate way to do it.
The key point in setting all these standards, regardless which
bit of the legislative pattern you do it under, is that they apply
universally and set basic standards right across the Union.
Mr Sellers: The appropriateness of the Working
Time Directive being considered as a health and safety measure
was challenged by the previous administration and the evidence
examined and the case for it being regarded thus was upheld, as
you may recall.
Chairman: Can we move on to our last
point? This is a point we shall be discussing with our next witnesses
which is the actual judgments—I am not talking about the
text of the directive, but the SiMAP and Jaeger
judgments, of which the second one, about taking rest after a
period of work, is not actually in the directive, it is part of
a judgment.
Q145 Lord Colwyn: I have been keeping rather
quiet up to now because up to only two or three years ago I had
three jobs and often worked a 19-hour day. One of them was in
the entertainment business which has very, very long hours and
the other was medical, hence my question on these judgments. In
your paper you say that you think the government have over-estimated
the likely impact of the Jaeger judgment. You also say
that you felt the problems could be solved with collective bargaining.
We have heard that if later this year the hours come to a 58-hour
week we are going to lose the equivalent of the working hours
of 3,700 doctors and if that is then reduced to a 48-hour week,
we are going to lose somewhere between 4,500 and 9,500 equivalent
doctors. I wonder whether you could explain that and perhaps deal
with a point made by My Lord Chairman about the compensatory rest
ruling.
Mr Sellers: I will certainly try. The figures
I have seen so far were based on the standard Civil Service regulatory
impact assessment methodology, which is basically a cost assessment
measure. In that kind of analysis there is no attempt to analyse
the benefits of such a measure and it is necessarily going to
be an over-estimate. The benefits are pretty obvious, that if
you are going to have people becoming sick, having accidents or
making medical mistakes because they are working long hours and
shorter hours reduces that, that is a benefit which should be
analysed. We have made this comment about methodology in general
to the Cabinet Office regulatory impact assessment unit and as
yet there has been little roll-out, though the DfT has actually
produced one impact assessment for the Road Transport Directive
and it does all the things we wanted. Some of the things are difficult
to quantify, but they have made a jolly good attempt to do it.
Automatically the current figures are going to be an over-estimate.
We are also taking into account that the Department of Health
is going round to the hospitals now trying to come up with a better
number. They are actually trying to assess this hospital by hospital,
rather than a civil servant doing their best to work it out in
a room for the number of hours worked. A new analysis is very
likely to come up with a small number as well. That is quite helpful.
If I could pick up the point on the Jaeger case concerning
compensatory rest as well, we were a little bit surprised by both
the SiMAP and the Jaeger cases. You can see SiMAP
might give us some concern because it overturned a collective
agreement. In the case of compensatory rest and Jaeger,
the TUC have been very concerned that there were no regulations
at all which were leading to people not getting their rest. If
no time limits are set for taking your rest and your reference
period is 52 weeks, in some cases, you can see that waiting 52
weeks for a missed lunch break might not be acceptable. The problem
with Jaeger is that the pendulum has rather swung the other
way now and although we should like some robust limits, Jaeger
has gone a little too far. We should like something robust, but
not quite as tight as Jaeger.
Q146 Lord Colwyn: I suppose the BMA may
have some evidence but do you have evidence that there are difficulties
for people working over-long hours from stress and sickness and
injury and bad medicine?
Mr Sellers: There is evidence to this effect.
I cannot cite it to you at the moment, but if it is helpful we
could provide it.
Lord Colwyn: I suspect we will get it
later.
Chairman: I think we have covered a lot
of points. We are grateful to you for coming along today. We are
working fairly tightly, so when we send you the transcript, if
you could send it back within seven days, suitably amended if
necessary, that would help us a lot. We expect to produce a relatively
short report because of the timescale, but we want to influence
the Commission and in due course there will be the actual proposals,
so we shall probably come back to this again in the year. We wanted
to get in early, because we thought it would be a good thing from
the British point of view. I am very grateful to you for giving
us your views. May we thank you and move on to our witnesses from
the BMA. If we have any queries, we shall be in touch with you
directly.
| 
