The business secretary has said that working from home boosts productivity as he criticised the Conservative Party for “declaring war on people working from home”.
Speaking about workers’ rights from Riyadh, Jonathan Reynolds said of the previous government’s approach to workers’ rights: “Jacob Rees-Mogg made this big thing as (then) business secretary (in) declaring war on people working from home.
“That’s pretty bizarre given the economic position the country was in and the real business agenda that needs to be pursued.”
He talked up the benefits of working from home. “It does contribute to productivity, it does contribute to [staff] resilience, their ability to stay working for an employer,” he said in an interview with The Times newspaper.
Speaking about their plans for flexible working, Mr Reynolds recognised that there were occasions when it was “absolutely necessary” for employees to be in the office, adding that work from home would not be a hard-and-fast rule.
Working from home, he suggests, will ultimately contribute to levelling up. “The UK has very significant regional inequality. It could play a significant contribution to tackling that,” he says.
“A lot of businesses will say their motivation for being a workplace that offers this is because it opens up a much wider group of talent that they can recruit … there are real economic benefits to be had from the UK adopting this approach.”
He says that most businesses already provide workers with rights above and beyond what they could have expected.
He added: “The pledge of the Labour government is not just that we get the economy growing, it’s that we get it growing in a way that everyone benefits from. I feel every time we have a session with business where we are able to talk candidly they are reassured by what we are saying.”
It comes as Labour is due to unveil one of its most radical pieces of legislation in the form of an employment rights package.
It aims to protect employees from unfair dismissal, a ban on zero-hours contracts and a right to flexible working by default.
He insisted, however, that he would not be returning to the past, stressing that Labour was no longer dependent on unions.
“They’re always a part of the Labour movement and a welcome one,” he said. “But to try and present this as some sort of 1970s paradigm is a bit cliched and out of touch to be honest.”