IT IS ONE hesitant step forward but a long way from what working people need and want.

The new Employment Rights Bill would ban zero-hours contracts, outlaw the “fire-and-rehire” tactics we saw with the Dover ferry dispute and extend existing employment rights to the first day of employment. It would ease trade union access to workplaces, junk the Tories’ Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act and the 2016 Trade Union Act. It takes a tentative step towards sectoral bargaining by proposing a vestigial version for the social care and teacher support sectors.

Each of these provisions touches on the problems workers face and a new poll shows an extension of workers’ rights is vastly popular including among Reform UK and Tory voters but the Bill as a whole fails to make quite the impact it could.