General Election.

I blocked you for a week or so because I felt the debate between us on this issue was becoming too personal and generating too much animosity so needed time out.

I apologise for my part in that. I should have made much more effort to exclude you and others like you from my criticisms, so that it did not become or appear to be a personal attack upon you. I do not doubt that you are a good guy to work for.

Anyway, you are too good and intelligent and reasonable a debater to be blocked permanently.

I am reluctant to try engaging too deeply with you on this debate. I have never worked a zero hours contract. Relatives have at Sports Direct but no longer do. I have no vested interest either way, but recognise that you might feel that your very livelihood is at stake. 

All I will say is that when I first entered the workplace over 4 decades ago, no one ever heard of a zero hours contract. If such an offer appeared in a jobcentre no one would have accepted it. You still had the right back then to turn down any job you could not afford to live on. The only people who would ever have taken such a job would have been those whom it genuinely suited. And you sound as if those are the only people you would consider worth employing anyway.

The problem today is that people can be pressured into what are for them inadequate contracts by the threat of draconian sanctions if they refuse, and not all employers are as decent as you. Such contracts are open to abuse by bad employers, who sadly do exist and always have done. Even if they are a minority. I have worked for bad employers myself in my younger days. I know there are a few of them out there.

What we somehow need to do to give people income security is ban most zero hour contracts where this is reasonable but allow for their continued existence for those who need them where both employer and employee is genuinely happy with them. There is little reason why a chain like Sports Direct need to use zero hours contracts, when most of their competitors do not. 

The main problem is that many people who don't want an insufficiency of guaranteed hours are forced into them by jobcentre pressure, a fact which has enabled them to expand. If we were to give people the right to refuse jobs that don't guarantee at least 16 hours, would that not suit you by ensuring that the only ones applying for your jobs genuinely wanted them?

As for any ban on zero hours contracts, I accept that a total ban might not be a good thing where employers and employees both genuinely want or need them.

I am open to reason in regards to the details and exemptions in any legislation. But will leave representing that to your MP to you and others like you.

I have no desire to put people like you out of business, and think that any legislation needs to take you and your employees into account.

But there is certainly no reason at all why a large organisation like Tesco for example, with many thousands of employees cannot give at least 16 guaranteed hours to those for whom such guaranteed income is important. As Tesco is in fact now already doing because it was losing too many people by not doing so.