Taylor Review Highlights '7 Principles For Good Quality Work For All'

In a central London speech, alongside the Prime Minister and Business Secretary, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, set out his blueprint for a UK economy that truly works for everyone, creating more skilled, well-paid jobs to boost the nation’s earning power and productivity...

Matthew Taylor, who was commissioned last year by the Prime Minister to carry out this review called for a fresh look to be taken at employment laws to make it easier for workers to understand and access their rights.

Matthew Taylor said: "Our national performance on the quantity of work is strong. But quantity alone is not enough for a thriving economy and fair society. We believe now is the time to complement that commitment to creating jobs with the goal of creating better jobs.

"The Review calls on the government to adopt the ambition that all work should be fair and decent with scope for fulfilment and development.

"Despite the impact of the National Living Wage and tax credits, there will always be people who are in work but finding it hard to make ends meet. Our social contract with those people should include dignity at work and the realistic scope to progress in the labour market.

"Bad work – insecure, exploitative, controlling – is bad for health and wellbeing, something that generates cost for vulnerable individuals but also for wider society.

"As many business leaders recognise, low quality work and weak management is implicated in our productivity challenge. Improving the quality of work should be an important part of our productivity strategy.

"Technology – like robotics and machine learning – is going to have a big impact on jobs and the tasks that make up those jobs. As we seize these technological opportunities – as we must – we should do so with the aim of making working lives better, taking away the drudgery and leaving the human contact and creativity that machines can’t provide.

"If we want citizens who are engaged, responsible, active, who – to coin a phrase – ‘take back control’ we should encourage those same virtues in the workplace. Our idea of what it is to be a respected citizen should not stop at the office or factory door."