Professor James Wickham:

On the administrative burden, there are things that employers are meant to do. They are meant to give people payslips.

I almost give up. Is it seriously a problem to give somebody a payslip? They are meant to do that anyway. Maybe the issue is that, as we know, at the bottom end of the labour market there are many situations where the payslip does not reflect the hours worked and we document that in our research. The payslip says a person has worked N hours when actually the person has worked N plus three or four hours. It happens, for example, in hotels and bars, that people are paid for the hours the place is open although they stay on and clean up afterwards. Magically, however, they do not get paid for that and it is not in their payslips, which means the actual rate of pay is lower than the legal rate. Information about hours is similar. Presumably employers know how many hours people are working and should plan at least for the week ahead. We all know that, especially in the hospitality industry, there is a lot of fluctuation but employers should know the sort of fluctuation there will be. I completely fail to see what the problem is except that employers are either acting illegally, and it is not the case that every employer does, but we know that happens, or, and this is perhaps more serious, employers are bad managers. It is always easier to summon somebody in and have them at your beck and call than to plan the work although that would probably deliver a better service.

I am sorry that is a bit of rant but it is important. In respect of offering hours we think this does happen the whole time.