The UK’s five biggest business groups are this morning staging an intervention against Rayner’s Employment Rights (Union) Bill. The British Chambers of Commerce, Confederation of British Industry, Institute of Directors, Federation of Small Businesses and Make UK say the bill will “damage growth and employment, undermining the government’s own goals.” Rare for them to come together like this…
The groups add in a letter to the DBT that “our collective position is that… the Bill will have deeply damaging implications for the government’s priority growth mission as well as their admirable focus on tackling rising economic inactivity,” and “taken together, [the policies are] a recipe for damaging, not raising livings standards.” Guido has already spelt out how the bill has been enhanced to boost union powers even further…
In terms of action they are “calling upon the Lords to fully scrutinise and improve this legislation to ensure it is genuinely both pro-business and pro-worker, and to prevent unnecessary harm to employment and growth.” Better to bin it altogether…
Speaking on Times Radio, former Home Secretary David Blunkett spoke about overdiagnosis of mental problems:
“Let’s distinguish those who are really severely mentally ill, diagnosed with things that require prolonged medical and diagnostic treatment. My wife and I talk about this a lot, because she’s a retired GP, about the fact that you can be sad without being ill. You can be momentarily depressed because your boyfriend or girlfriend’s just thrown you and you’re not mentally ill. You can even have mild issues, which can be dealt with with the right kind of support, but it doesn’t make you mentally ill. So we’ve got a real task, I think, to get the psychology, if you like, of this over. But there are things where you definitely need medical intervention, and there are other things where you need good friends, you need good connectivity, and you need a job.”