Election 2024: Firms have ‘nothing to worry about’ on workers’ rights, Reeves says

Rachel Reeves has told businesses that they have “nothing to worry about” when it comes to Labour’s workers’ rights reforms.

Speaking at The Times CEO Summit yesterday, the shadow Chancellor reiterated that Labour is “unambiguously, unapologetically, a party of wealth creation” in a continuation of her efforts to woo top City bosses ahead of the July 4 general election.

Attendees at the summit included Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire head of Ineos; Allison Kirkby, boss of BT; CS Venkatakrishnan, Barclays’ chief executive; and Dame Emma Walmsley, the GSK CEO.

Reeves told business chiefs her party would not ban flexible working or zero-hour contracts and would allow companies to hire short-term staff in their workers’ rights reforms.

This could include, she said, “for example, to meet holiday demand, Christmas demand, summer holidays demand or to offer overtime. We’re not going to prohibit those things.”

Reeves vowed: “We will make sure that all the plans that we bring in will be properly consulted on with business. 

“We want to make sure that businesses have the flexibility that they need while also ensuring that working people have greater security in work, because too many working people don’t have that today. 

“There’s nothing in Labour’s New Deal for working people that businesses should worry about.”

It came as former John Lewis chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield appeared to suggest Labour had his support in a piece for The Times.

Mayfield praised Labour’s “emphasis on collaboration with business in pursuit of renewed growth” and the fact Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer had promised a “determined leadership and a focus on outcomes” which he said firms would “lean in” to.

The shadow Chancellor also pledged that Labour had “campaigned as a pro-business party, and we will govern as a pro-business party”.

She told firms “I hope when you read our manifesto, or see our priorities, that you see your fingerprints all over them”.

Reeves added that Labour’s proposals on planning reform: “That’s not something that we came up with in our office, that’s something that was probably first mentioned to me at the first smoked salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast that I had three-and-a-bit years ago”.

And she said the issue had been raised “countless times” since, before making it into Labour’s policy slate for government.

Reeves also vowed to make Britain a “safe haven” for international investment and promised to hold an international investment summit within 100 days if Labour is elected next month.

She said she wanted “investors to look at Britain and say it is a safe haven in a turbulent world”, in contrast to the rise of “populist politics” elsewhere.