Labour empowering HR professionals

Len Shackleton has a useful CAPX piece on the futility of Labour trying to boost growth and empower HR professionals at the same time. 

Interesting because it reflects a remarkable absence of business acumen - or a remarkable increase in whatever the opposite of business acumen might be.


Labour won’t boost growth by empowering HR professionals

• Labour's Employment Rights Bill punishes both employers and workers
• A well-functioning labour market is one which adapts rapidly to change
• Tying up employers in red tape will do nothing to promote economic prosperity

The Government came into office hoping that by boosting economic growth it could maintain and expand welfare provision and pursue its many other objectives without excessive levels of taxation. It has not so far been successful; indeed, GDP appears to have fallen in the last two months.

The UK’s poor growth performance in recent years has many causes, but one important factor has been the way in which our labour market has been increasingly hampered by regulations and mandates imposed by successive administrations of both major parties.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet more confirmation that Keir Starmer's focus on growth was dishonest from the beginning. 


An increasingly scelerotic [sic] labour market will particularly penalise new labour market entrants, who will struggle to find suitable work; expect higher youth unemployment and inactivity. But we will all suffer as faster economic growth, which could in principle ameliorate our desperate fiscal position, becomes a lost hope.