To all those Labour MPs calling for a four-day week – whatever happened to growth?

If a four-day week is such a good idea, it will happen, because employers will adopt it. The amendment’s sponsors would be better off sticking to the argument that a four-day week would make us better off, but unless they genuinely believe that it is a magic productivity-enhancer that 99 per cent of Britain’s employers have somehow overlooked, they look as if they are arguing that shorter hours are more important than economic growth. Unless the case for a four-day week is overwhelming, Labour MPs ought to be careful about contradicting their party’s supposedly single-minded focus on growth. It was telling that Maya Ellis, another Labour MP supporting the amendment, gives the example of “public organisations”, claiming that a four-day week would result in an “increase in capacity we so desperately need to see in our public services”. That is why I thought it was unwise for Angela Rayner, the minister responsible for the Employment Rights Bill, to reverse the Conservative government’s objection to South Cambridgeshire district council moving to a four-day week.