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 New jobs, not more laws, are the key to better employment policy, says business secretary John Hutton. Hutton, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said that the "end of the era" of major new employment regulation was here, and that new strategies were needed to increase fairness at work whilst maintaining labour market flexibility.
Speaking in a Fabian Society lecture, he said that the "automatic assumption" that passing new laws was the best way to protect workers from exploitation needs to be challenged.
"Stronger enforcement and action to close any existing legal loopholes that allow a minority of rogue employers to evade their responsibilities and undercut honest businesses, is often the more sensible way to proceed."
His remarks come just a week after new regulations were agreed by the government to strengthen work rights for 1.4 million agency workers.
But rather than further legislation, Hutton argued, the government should promote "the most important employment right of all – that is the right to work" by removing barriers to work and creating more jobs.
The government should act by "creating the opportunity for workers and businesses to work out what is best for their own circumstances", and by removing obstacles that prevent enforcement agencies from targeting those employers who flout the law, he said.
Read the full speech
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