7. Plaid Cymru Debate: Workers' Rights

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:10 pm on 1 May 2019.

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Photo of Helen Mary Jones Helen Mary Jones Plaid Cymru 5:10, 1 May 2019

I was about to come to that, because of course in terms of banning—legally banning—zero-hours contracts we do not have the competence to do that. But our motion doesn't ask for that. What our motion asks is for the Welsh Government to use its economic power to keep those zero-hours contracts out of those areas of service over which they have control—

'devolved Welsh public services and associated supply chains'.

If the Welsh Government chose to ban them in public services through various service level agreements and the various ways in which their public services are managed, they could do that. If they chose to then, through the contracts that they let and the contracts that public bodies let, to put in a clause that banned it, that would be perfectly lawful within UK legislation as it stands. Of course, on these benches, we feel we should have the power to legislate, but let us use the power that we do have. 

Now, have some steps been made forward? Certainly. But what we're asking for is something specific. I, like Leanne Wood, am really disappointed that, on something where we would have expected that across most of these benches, and indeed colleagues in other parts of the Chamber, we could have broad agreement, you have chosen as a Government to take a fish knife to our motion and gut it and be just self congratulatory about what has already been done. I don't think that's really in the spirit of the way we put this motion forward and how we hoped that you would react. 

So, let me come back to what Mick said: remember the dead and fight for the living. We do not have the power here yet to ban zero-hours contracts. I do not understand why the Welsh Government will not use the power that it does have to reduce them.