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Workplace Temperatures

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr. Brady. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on his superb speech, in which he said just about everything that there is to say. It was a veritable tour de force. In my few words, I will add my support for what he said. With my hon. Friend, I attended the meeting with Lord McKenzie of Luton, who is not just a noble Friend but a long-term one, as we both live in Luton and have known each other for 35 years. The meeting was enjoyable. As my hon. Friend said, I tabled the first early-day motion on this subject, which received 42 signatures, showing the support for this matter among hon. Members. In the 1970s, I worked in the TUC's economic department during the period of the social contract, part of the purpose of which was to introduce the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. We saw that as a beginning from which we would move forward— not a point that would be chipped away over subsequent decades. Perhaps we should revisit the principle of using the 1974 Act as a base for making conditions better for working people over the decades. My hon. Friend talked about temperatures. I asked colleagues from the bakers union about typical temperatures in bakery workplaces. Sometimes there are temperatures of 38.6° C, or 102° F, and they can even be in excess of 40° C, which in Fahrenheit—I will not say in English money, because Fahrenheit is not English—is 104°. At least if one is working outside in such temperatures, one has the breeze and shade, but in the enclosed space of a bakery, they are simply not tolerable. My hon. Friend made the point that people feel heat differently. Sometimes when I have an overcoat on, other people are walking around in T-shirts and clearly do not feel the cold in the way that I do. I can tolerate a little heat, but I cannot tolerate cold. Other people are the other way round. In a group of half a dozen bakery workers, it is possible that one would not be able to tolerate heat. The others might say, "What's the problem, Jim? We're coping but you're not." We have to accommodate everyone and should have a temperature that is reasonable and acceptable for those who find heat more difficult to contend with, not just the average person or the tough guy who can get by in hot circumstances. We must consider human variation. I have a particular interest in this debate, because my grandfather was a bakery worker and my great-grandfather was the village baker in Blaby in the 1880s. It is a Hopkins family tradition, although I have long since lost any connection to baking. I do enjoy bread, of course, and I want to know that the bread I eat has been produced by workers who are properly accommodated in terms of pay and working conditions. I do not want to feel that the bread I am eating has been produced in situations of extreme discomfort. At times such as this when unemployment is relatively high, people hang on to jobs and might be tempted to accept conditions that would not be acceptable if they were not desperate for work. In such circumstances, we want trade unionism, but we also need statutory protection for workers in the workplace. That is what this debate is about. My hon. Friend talked about other European countries. Sadly, time and again, the regulations protecting workers are considerably better in many continental countries than they are in the UK. We have to regulate working conditions, particularly the temperatures that bakery workers have to tolerate, and perhaps in other spheres, too. I do not want to make a long speech because my hon. Friend made a wonderful speech of almost 40 minutes in which he said just about everything there is to say. I congratulate him and give him my total support. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will take note and that legislation will be promised and implemented before long.