Dear constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about flexible working. I agree with you on this important issue. All workers should have the opportunity to benefit from working flexibly.

As you will know, last year the Government consulted on making flexible working the default. It proposed giving workers a right to request flexible working from day one of employment. However, I believe that too often the right only to request flexible working is just the right to be turned down.

Currently, workers who have worked for their employer continuously for 26 weeks already have the right to request flexible working. Employers can only refuse a request on grounds defined in law, such as the burden of additional costs, a detrimental effect on the ability to meet customer demand or an inability to re-organise work among staff. Yet despite this, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) found in 2019 that one in three requests for flexible working were being turned down. In 2021, meanwhile, it found that one in two of the almost 13,000 mothers that chose to take part in its survey had had a request for flexible working rejected or only partly accepted by their current employer.

Research from the TUC shows 82% of workers in the UK want to work flexibly in the future, including by switching to flexitime or part-time working, job sharing, annualised hours, term-time working, compressed hours, and mutually agreed predictable hours. At the same time, flexible working provides benefits for businesses, including attracting staff, delivering a motivated and productive workforce and promoting a better business environment. I believe it is clear that flexible working works for workers, works for employers and works for our wider economy.

The Government promised action on making flexible working the default over two years ago. I believe it is past time for it to deliver properly on this promise. I can therefore assure you that I will continue to support efforts to press it on this issue and to back calls for all workers to have the right to flexible working – not just the right to request it – as a default from day one of employment, with an accompanying duty on employers to accommodate this as far as is reasonable.

Thank you once again for contacting me.

Yours Sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP