Labour's Angela Rayner says all workers should be allowed flexi-hours after the pandemic

Angela Rayner made the remarks on a visit to Hull, and said employers should use lessons learned during the pandemic to improve working practices.

The number of people who moved to permanent home-working more than doubled last year after the Government made the instruction in March that employees should stop going to offices unless it was essential.

Under current employment laws, any worker can request their hours to be flexible if they have been in post for 26 weeks or longer.

Flexible working can include doing compressed hours, moving to temporary or permanent home-working, or shifting work patterns to fit in with childcare or other commitments.

But it is up to employers whether they honour individual requests for flexible working, and there is no legal requirement to do so.

The TUC found 30 per cent of flexible working requests are turned down by employers.]

Ms Rayner said: “We’ve overcome so much and people’s attitudes to how they work flexibly has changed.

“We really need to embrace that, and there’s so many positivities to looking after your workforce and working in a more flexible way.

“As long as the work is done, it’s about making sure people can fit it around their needs for work-life balance.

“This would revolutionise how we see the world of work.”

Ms Rayner said she believed even frontline workers such as healthcare employees should be able to work flexibly, and suggested employees should be able to work out rotas between themselves.

She said Labour would make it mandatory for employers to offer flexible working as standard unless there is a concrete reason they cannot do so.