Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2016-04-11.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the finding in the study of attitudes to work by the Smith Institute that more than two-thirds of British workers are spending longer at their workplace for little or no gain in productivity.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
The Smith Institute survey of trade union members asked whether respondents thought they were working “harder” and whether they were more productive than two years ago. Given the ambiguity over the term “working harder” and the unrepresentative sample used, caution should be drawn on the relationship between hours worked and productivity.
However, ONS data indicate that between 2010 and 2015 the total number of hours worked per week in the UK economy has increased by 8.4%1. The vast majority of the increase, around 80%, came from higher employment. While the remainder did come from increased average hours this in part reflects a reduction in the share of part-time work.
It has been this significant increase in the number of people employed that has driven growth in the UK economy in recent years. The challenge now is to ensure the UK continues to grow through rising productivity. The government’s ‘Fixing the Foundations’ productivity plan, sets out an ambitious vision and the pro-productivity agenda designed to meet this challenge. Productivity, measured as output per hour worked, increased by 1.0% in 2015 as a whole – the largest annual increase since 2011.
References
1. ONS UK Labour Market (March 2016): Actual weekly hours worked (seasonally adjusted)
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