Kelly Time to up game on workers’ rights

ple in the right management positions, but perhaps most important of all has been adopting a completely different mindset.

The English attitude towards sport has gone from a sense of entitlement that we should win everything because we’re English, to working to achieve success.

How does this apply to the government? Thanks to British businesses – the acumen of bosses and the hard work of staff – the country is awash with money and is one of the richest in a very rich world.

Yet this money flows upwards and, at best, trickles downwards. As a result, social division through poverty is getting worse while there is crisis in public services basically caused by a lack of cash.

Yet make any suggestions to reverse this trend – higher minimum wage, higher taxes for those who can afford them – and you’re treated like some Soviet throwback.

The country’s most important asset is its workers. You invest in them by paying good wages. Not only do they work harder, they become more productive. The more cash people get, the more they spend. This means more money into the economy, British businesses benefit from the extra custom and higher salaries mean more taxes.

Instead, like the old Corinthian spirit of sport, there’s a musty Victorian whiff in the attitude towards workers rights – they should be grateful to just to have a job.

Maybe the seeds of change are being sown there too. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that workers who felt they had been unfairly dismissed or discriminated against no longer had to stump up £1,200 to take employers to an industrial tribunal.

The then Tory-led Coalition Government introduced this disgraceful law four years ago when the pillorying of the so-called ‘feckless worker’ was at its height.

Let’s hope the court ruling truly is a game changer.

Steph Houghton has led England’s women’s football team to the last eight at the European championships