Employment protection – Are Liam Fox’s claims
intellectually sustainable?  There’s a hint of desperation in
this piece from Jeremy Warner. We have to make it easier for
firms to fire people, he says, “everything else we’ve tried has
failed to stimulate economic growth.” That’s the sort of thing
people say when they go to see faith healers. We’ve tried all
the usual drugs and treatments, so a visit to the Reverend Mumbo
T. Jumbo has to be worth a go.  The article was written in
support of Liam Fox, who, last week, claimed that weakening
employment protection legislation would stimulate economic
growth.   If anything is ‘intellectually unsustainable’ it’s Dr
Fox’s argument. There is no evidence that employment law is
holding our economy back. Countries with a lot more employment
protection, from the law and from collective agreements,
continue to outperform the UK on a number of measures. Many
countries manage to be more competitive than the UK while still
having tougher employment laws. Ann Pettifor recently c