Despite being rejected by the House of Lords less than a month ago, the House of Commons has this week voted to reinstate the Government’s controversial “rights for shares” proposals into the Growth and Infrastructure Bill by a margin of 277 to 239.
The scheme, which was announced last October, would require employees to give up some employment rights, such as the right to redundancy pay and flexible working in exchange for between £2,000 and £50,000 worth of shares in the company they work for.
Employees will not have to take part in the scheme if they prefer not to and the Government has made one concession, aimed at emphasising the voluntary nature of the scheme, by dropping proposals to penalise Jobseekers’ Allowance claimants who reject employee shareholder jobs.
The Bill will now be returned to the House of Lords, where the clause will be debated once again by Peers, which opponents of the scheme have called “parliamentary ping pong”.
Critics of the scheme, such as the TUC, have insisted that it has no support amongst employers and pointed out that it was heavily defeated in the Lords by a wide coalition including prominent Conservative and Liberal Democrat Peers.
Meanwhile, in the same afternoon and relating to the same Bill, ministers also backed the Government on the relaxation of planning rules for home extensions, which had also been rejected by the Lords.
The proposals are to introduce a three-year relaxation of the depth of allowed single-storey extensions, from 4m to 8m for detached houses and from 3m to 6m for all other houses.
Detractors, such as conservationist Conservative MP, Zac Goldsmith, have warned that the change will lead to an increased number of disputes between neighbours, but the proposal will now also go back to the House of Lords.