Public Service Bank Holiday

– in the House of Commons at 1:43 pm on 2 February 2005.

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Photo of Claire Ward Claire Ward PPS (Rt Hon John Hutton, Minister of State), Department of Health 1:43, 2 February 2005

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to introduce a public holiday on the third Monday in October in recognition of public service and for connected purposes.

I have two reasons for wishing to introduce this Bill today. The first is to provide a much needed additional day of rest for the British worker. This Government have done much to encourage a sustainable work and family life balance. The extension of maternity rights, better financial support for working parents and more child care have certainly helped many parents to juggle their lives more successfully, as has the right to a minimum of four weeks paid holidays a year.

Families need more quality time, however, because the British work some of the longest hours in Europe and many families do not have as much time together as they would like. That has an impact on relationships between couples and on the influence that parents have over their children. An additional public holiday might not hold the key to all the ills of family life, but it would certainly be a further step towards giving British workers a little more time away from their workplace.

We have eight days of public holiday in England, Scotland and Wales at present. Our Northern Ireland citizens are rather better off, benefiting from an additional two days. With the exception of the one-off public holidays granted by Her Majesty in 1999 for the millennium and in 2002 for the golden jubilee, we have little to celebrate regarding public holidays. Sadly, as the law stands, some workers cannot even be guaranteed public holidays free from work, and I hope that the Government will address that at some time in the future.

The meanness of our current public holiday provision is highlighted by comparison with our European counterparts. France has 11 days a year, Belgium has 10, Germany and Greece have up to 12, while Portugal and Spain have up to 14. Before the enlargement of the European Union in May last year, the average for EU members was 10.8 days. Since welcoming the new members to the European Union, the average has increased to 11.35 days, boosted by the fact that Slovakia has 18 days, Cyprus has 16 and Hungary has 13. Meanwhile, Britain languishes at the bottom of the table, with eight days.

Not only do our citizens work the longest hours in the European Union, they have the fewest public holidays. A survey conducted by the TUC last year polled more than 20,000 people, with 99 per cent. wanting an additional holiday—hardly surprising, one might argue. The poll asked people to vote for the most popular time to take an additional holiday: 40 per cent. wanted it to be in the third week of October, which was the most popular of any of the suggested dates.

Suggestions have been made in this House that we should have an additional holiday to mark the various patron saints representing the nations. Other suggestions have been for a holiday to commemorate international women's day, Trafalgar day or Armistice day. The third Monday in October might fall on Trafalgar day—21 October—in some years, but I am not convinced that a chance to create a new public holiday should be linked to a battle that took place almost 200 years ago. The commemoration of those who died in service to their country in all wars, which is marked by Armistice day, is a commendable objective, but I believe that we have a chance to make our new public holiday mark the contribution of all who work in public service.

Many families would benefit from an additional public holiday during the week of half-term in October. The date of half-term varies throughout the country, but the most popular time seems to be the third week in October. This Bill would encourage all local authorities to select the same week for half-term to be in line with the public holiday—for example, the third Monday would fall on 17 October this year. A further reason why this would be a good time of the year for a public holiday is that there is a 16-week gap between the public holiday in August and Christmas. That is far too long to have to wait during the darkest, most miserable and depressing months of the year. I know that that does not directly affect Members of this House, but it affects millions of their constituents. How good it would be to leave the summer behind knowing that there would be one more chance of a rest before the Christmas frenzy.

Of course, it might be argued that those who wish to have an additional day's holiday should be able to negotiate that with their employers, but the reality is that many employees are unable to take additional time from work without pressure from employers. A public holiday is an opportunity for all employees to feel entitled to that day without any fear that employers are losing competitive advantage by granting time off.

I said at the beginning that I was introducing this Bill for two reasons. The second major reason is to pay tribute to the work that is done by all those who work in public service. I mean the broadest definition of public service, not just those who toil in our hospitals, schools, military, postal services, emergency services, central Government and local government. It would also pay tribute to those who give their time and effort to serve the public good. Every Member of this House will know of the impressive network of community and voluntary activists without whom many of our essential services would grind to a halt. In my constituency, residents organise neighbourhood watch schemes and residents associations, volunteers work with charities and good causes, parents run parent-teacher associations in schools and members of the league of friends assist in our hospital. Those are just some of the people who help to make our lives and our communities work, usually without pay and often without thanks. They are our local heroes and it is to them, as well as our paid public servants, that I would dedicate this public holiday.

Some would argue and even vote against the Bill. Business, it will be claimed, would have to foot the bill at an estimated cost of £2 billion and suffer reduced productivity. I would argue that giving employees an additional day for leisure, time with their families and rest would be better for business in the long term. British workers already top the poll for productivity, with the least amount of holiday compared with other European countries. Another day away from work will not damage their competitiveness, but may make them more refreshed in the final weeks of the year.

I urge the House, and particularly the Government, to support this Bill. The British people deserve to have more public holidays. At the very least, the citizens of England, Wales and Scotland should be treated equally with those of Northern Ireland. I am aware that the provision of public holidays is now a devolved issue for the Scottish Parliament. It took little time in recognising that there could be great benefit in an additional public holiday for the Scots, especially where it may result in increased tourism. The Parliament is already consulting on the possibility of introducing a public holiday to mark Scotland's patron, St. Andrew. We should not delay any further; nor should we allow the possibility that the people of England and Wales will become even further disadvantaged by other nations introducing new holidays. I look forward to the progress of the Bill and, with the will of the House, to being able to celebrate public service day.

J

Three cheers for Claire! The second reading is Friday 18th March, so please write to your MP now if you'd like to see a new holiday - I have. The timing is great - breaking the 16 week gap would be really useful, and even little breaks to let off pressure would help loads with our per-hour productivity, which suffers from overwork compared to countries with more breaks.
More info at http://www.tuc.org.uk/work_life/tuc-9546-f0.cfm

Submitted by John Wood

Photo of Eric Forth Eric Forth Conservative, Bromley and Chislehurst 1:50, 2 February 2005

The trouble with this sort of thing is that it is one of those motherhood and apple pie issues that sounds so attractive, especially when put so attractively by Claire Ward, but it worries me considerably. It is the subliminal message underlying the matter which is bothersome.

The hon. Lady started out by putting the proposition, which she obviously regarded as unarguable, that the British people were in great need of an additional day's rest. That sets the tone for the whole argument, suggesting that we are so hard pressed, in a rather easy, casual world, that we need more time off. Nothing could be further from the truth. The hon. Lady must listen, until she is as bored with it as I am, to the great leaders of her party talking about the global market and global competitiveness. She went on to compound her crime by saying that the British already work the longest hours in Europe. So what? If the hon. Lady were to look at the unemployment rates in the very countries that she quoted with so much approval, and compare them with those of the United States on the one hand or those of the emerging economies of Asia and the far east on the other, she would be much more worried about the idea of British workers taking yet more time off in an ever more competitive world.

The whole basis of the argument that started with the proposition that our poor, hard-working people need lots more time off needs to be challenged. I wonder whether the hon. Lady has checked with her Front-Bench colleagues to see whether she is on or off message on this matter. I should have thought that the Chancellor, for example, might well have a word to say to the hon. Lady if he learned that she was arguing that British workers need more time off when he keeps telling us that we need to be more competitive—which, sadly, under his Government and hers, has not been the case. By the way, the hon. Lady's claim that British workers are now the most productive in the world certainly requires some analysis. I put it no more strongly than that.

Let us move on to the specifics of the hon. Lady's argument. She said that we could do with another day's holiday in October, and I am sure that many people would agree. In fact, I am sure that many of my colleagues would agree. We would probably suggest that we could scrap the May day holiday, with all that it symbolises, and instead have a day off in October. That would be my solution, so that we are not giving people extra time off; we are giving them an alternative day off in the year which would have much more significance. Let us get rid of the ghastly May day and have, for example, Trafalgar day. Why not? It is one of the great days in our history and should be remembered. Or how about Thatcher day or Churchill day? There are any number of possibilities that would bring joy to our people. Instead of the shame of the May day holiday with all its ghastly socialist and communist overtones, we could have a proper holiday in October. I am offering the hon. Lady a helping hand. If her Bill were to make any progress in the House, she and I might work together to amend it to achieve that objective.

I turn now to my third objection to the Bill. The hon. Lady made a plea for recognition of public service, which she went on to define in two ways. The first was to talk of the voluntary sector. I agree with her that we all now should, and increasingly do, recognise the value of the voluntary sector in our society. That is something that President Bush has been encouraging in the United States, and it is something that my party wants to encourage. We can all agree on that as a worthy objective.

When the hon. Lady went on to link that recognition to those working in the public sector, her argument became more problematic. We are rather prone in this House to lavishing endless praise on people who work in the public sector, forgetting that those in the private sector arguably work as long, or longer, and harder to create the wealth that pays for the public sector. To single out those working in the public sector for praise and recognition in an additional bank holiday seems to me slightly odd. Certainly those involved, for example, in retail and in other service provision in the private sector might find it rather hard to swallow the idea that their long hours of hard work dedicated to us consumers were being ignored in favour of those doing excellent work in the public sector.

What I am really saying is that the Bill is wrong at every level. It is wrong because it is arguing for more time off; it is wrong because it does not substitute a day in October for the horrible day in May; and it is wrong because it singles out those in the public sector apparently to the neglect of those working to create the wealth in the private sector. For all those reasons I hope that the Bill makes no further progress.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Claire Ward, Andy Burnham, Mr. Parmjit Dhanda, Mr. Andrew Dismore, Janet Anderson, Mr. Kevin Barron, Shona McIsaac and Mr. Martin Salter.

F

It would be nice for once to see a Conservative MP support something which would benefit workers in this country,but sadly will not happen as MP'S don't work on bank holidays.

Submitted by Fred Behardien