Homeworking in certain circumstances can be very valuable for both employer and worker, but I just don't see the advantages claimed by this motion as actually being there. Homeworking obviously has to be carefully considered and not forced on employers or employees, whether they're in the private or public sector, but homeworking really, really isn't feasible for a lot of roles, particularly in the public sector where jobs are more likely to be public facing. Gareth was talking about administrative workers. I don't see how your average administration clerk would be able to effectively work from home. These roles tend to rely on an input and output of some sort of hard-copy documentation, so I just don't see how it would work for many, many classes of staff, even those who are normally based in an office. Again, with the public sector, those jobs tend to be more public facing so, again, I just don't see how it's feasible.  

The proposal I think is questionable on a number of fronts. I think for a start it's conflating homeworking with flexible working. When I talk about homeworking, I mean working at home during your standard hours as opposed to working in a central point. It doesn't mean necessarily an effective cut or rearrangement of working hours to allow for an improved work-life balance. Homeworking itself also doesn't necessarily bring flexibility for family responsibilities either, although inevitably it means that the work is accessible to the family at home, which, ironically, might actually increase the stress of working at home, because you're having to juggle family stuff and work things as well while trying to maintain a relationship with your team. 

As Darren Millar's amendment makes clear, there's a valid concern that working from home may add to stress levels rather than be of help, and I've mentioned one reason why that might be. But, ultimately, humans are social animals and not designed for living in isolation. Healthy teams have a sense of camaraderie and provide support for when that employee faces a work difficulty. And, again, achieving a healthy work balance is actually harder for homeworkers, because they don't have that psychological cut-off from work of leaving the workplace at the end of the day, or even if you take work home with you, you still at some point pack it away and that's it—that's your psychological cut-off for that day. Homeworkers don't have that kind of cut-off, because their work is actually in their home; it's more difficult for them to get away from it.

As far as increased access for disabled people is concerned, I fear that the proposal would be letting employers off the hook on making sure that they abide by disability equality laws. Organisations should already be making their workplaces accessible to all, not being given a get-out by offering homeworking as a way of saving themselves the expense and effort. And cutting pollution using homeworking isn't as clear-cut as it may first seem. Homeworkers will have to heat their homes for additional time, they're going to have to use additional electricity; that's going to come off their utility bills, not the employer's, and the employers normally would bear those costs. I don't think it's right to transfer costs that would normally be borne by the employer to workers. So, that's certainly a reason why it wouldn't be particularly popular with workers, I'd argue.

So, homeworking, of course, eliminates the commute and resulting pollution on the days that the worker works at home, but that cut in pollution will be more than outweighed by the pollution created by the duplication of resources that would otherwise be shared in the workplace, such as equipment, heating, lighting et cetera. As well, you're going to have additional equipment in the office, additional equipment at the home. It's a lot more complicated than I think the UKIP group think it is. We could also perhaps just as easily cut down on rush-hour congestion by persuading employers to stagger their operating hours, so that entire industrial estates aren't disgorging everyone onto the same roads at the same time. But you've got to get employers to co-operate with that.

And on a cost and practicality basis, I don't think there's any merit in requiring public bodies to include homeworking in the job design and recruitment. Much of the time, it'll be a wasted exercise. It will distract both time and money from the organisation that could be used to better perform their core function. And, as I said, lots of roles just aren't suitable for homeworking. As any business case grows for homeworking, I'm sure employers—those reasonable employers, that is—will look to provide it as part of the recruitment package without the idea being given to them by Gareth. A case for the Government to develop a specific strategy for homeworking within the successor project to Superfast Cymru hasn't been convincingly made, and I think Rebecca Evans's amendment does make a lot of sense. However, I won't be supporting the proposal today, amended or otherwise. I think it has a danger of overburdening public bodies, while not delivering the benefits it claims, and I also don't think it's a priority for people in Wales. Thank you.