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National Insurance Contributions Bill

My Lords, I want to speak particularly to this amendment because it is, in a sense, a real request. Part-time working and job sharing are really important. The Government have done a great deal to promote, indirectly, part-time work through, in effect, a pupil premium that now goes down to the age of two. This for many women means that there is a form of very attractive childcare available from the age of two, even for disadvantaged families, making part-time working far more feasible than it might have been in the past. The culture, however, needs to change, and it seems to me that this Bill, because it resists using the language of part-time work and job sharing, falls into that ongoing trap of not challenging the culture and pushing that change forward. Part-time work is often seen as a temporary accommodation, and as the lowest skilled work—that is not always true, but it is the general image—rather than as something that can be embedded permanently into the way that a company functions. I will give a simple example. When I was on the board of Transport for London, we had to put together an urgent and complex project to introduce the congestion charge. The managing director role to achieve that required all kinds of complex engineering and marketing skills and was done as a job share. Two highly professional people who preferred not to work full time managed an exceedingly complex project with very tight timelines and carried it through brilliantly. It was a very good example of how many jobs lend themselves to a job share or part-time structure without it being career limiting. It would be great to see the Bill—and all other legislation—used to open up that potential and possibility, and to underpin the language of part-time work. The Minister says that with 10 posts there will be scope for part-time work, but more explicit recognition and underpinning of part-time work and job sharing would be exceedingly valuable, and no additional costs would be attached to the programme.