I agree with much of what Iain Duncan Smith said on Sky TV this morning: that zero-hours contracts should be rebranded ‘flexible-hours contracts’, that they are good for work-life balance and are often very popular with those who are employed in this way – who are, as a result, able to do such things as combine working with studying.
But IDS would have a much easier job of convincing the electorate on this had he gone further and recommended that one particular group of workers was switched to the contracts: MPs. I am not trying to belittle the job of being a parliamentarian, nor try to assert that it is on a skill level with shelf-stacking. Scrutinising legislation is a skilled activity which deserves to be paid well. A rate of £100 an hour would be appropriate, I think.
But being an MP is clearly not a full-time job. How could it be when 100 or so of them combine being MPs with ministerial jobs and many others continue to work on outside careers? There is a fairly obvious answer: only to employ MPs when they are required: when there is business to debate in the House of Commons or legislation to scrutinise on one of the committees. They might also be paid, at a much lower rate, for a certain number of constituency visits.
A zero-hours MPs contract would mean they would have no reason to be embarrassed, for example, when they found themselves in the absurd situation they did in the last year of the Parliament just ended – when there was so little business that they were bunking off home on Wednesday afternoons. Moreover, if taxpayers were only paying them for when they were working on our behalf we would have no reason for concern about outside jobs they did in their own time.
Governments always like to show that they are modernising Parliament. The next one should start by bringing its employment practices into line with business and putting MPs on flexible contracts.
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