Alison McGovern – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alison McGovern on 2015-02-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what definition the Government uses for classifying a zero hours contract.

Jo Swinson

There is no legal definition of a zero hours contract in UK domestic employment law. In general terms a zero hours contract is an arrangement under which an employer does not guarantee the individual any work, and the individual is not obliged to accept any work offered.

The ONS in their Labour Force Survey describe a zero hours contract as a contract ‘where a person is not contracted to work a set number of hours, and is only paid for the number of hours that they actually work’.