Ms Patricia King:

On the point about aviation about which I know a little, there is complexity in that both the investigation by the consultative group that the Department set up to look at the issue and the Comptroller and Auditor General's report have only looked at the misclassification of workers in the ordinary sense. Both reports look at the person services companies and managed services companies which are more common on, say, the communications side, but in aviation the models that have been developed are much more complex. We have received advice that the remedy lies in company law. In the past year some of the disputes and resolutions in the aviation sector have demonstrated that, from a collective bargaining point of view, one can reach agreement and agreement has been reached for direct employees. It covers quite a number of people in trying to remove the pillars of fear and putting in place mechanisms to try to give people fairness in the distribution of their employment locations, etc. That was one of the key pieces in a recent dispute in which I myself was involved. It shows the value of a collective bargaining outcome, whereby one can deal with the employer directly to try to find a common response to the issues involved. There is the same outcome, no matter how complex the model. As Mr. O'Hanlon stated, the worker is denied all of the employment rights legislation and the benefits of the social welfare contributions system. The models can be so complex that company law can be the remedy, rather than the competition about which we have talked.