Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

151: Schedule 4, page 195, leave out from line 3 to line 18 and insert—
“(1) In the case of staff employed under subsection (3)(b) of section 148C, matters within the SSNB’s remit are limited to the establishment of a framework to which employers of school support staff must have regard when discharging their functions.(2) A framework under subsection (1) must include information on—(a) the remuneration of school support staff,(b) the terms and conditions of employment of school support staff,(c) the training of school support staff,(d) career progression for school support staff, and(e) related matters.(3) When taking any action related to the matters in subsection (2), an employer may disregard the framework only in exceptional circumstances.(4) For the purposes of subsection (3), the definition of “exceptional circumstances” shall be set out in regulations.(5) In the case of staff employed under subsection (3)(a) of section 148C, the matters within the SSNB’s remit are matters relating to the following—(a) the remuneration of school support staff;(b) terms and conditions of employment of school support staff;(c) the training of school support staff;(d) career progression for school support staff.(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that, for the purposes of subsection (5)—(a) a payment or entitlement of a prescribed kind is, or is not, to be treated as remuneration;(b) a prescribed matter is, or is not, to be treated as relating to terms and conditions of employment of school support staff;(c) a prescribed matter is, or is not, to be treated as relating to the training of school support staff;(d) a prescribed matter is, or is not, to be treated as relating to career progression for school support staff.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would change the matters within the SSNB’s remit in relation to academy staff, limiting it to the creation of a framework to which academy employers must have regard in all but exceptional circumstances.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 151, 174 and 180, which are in my name. These amendments would address one of the most crucial challenges in our education system: how we value, support and compensate more than half the school workforce—the non-teaching staff. These teaching assistants, business managers, IT technicians, cleaners and catering staff form the backbone of every successful school.

While the Government’s intention to establish a school support staff negotiating body demonstrates a genuine commitment to these vital employees, and indeed fulfils a manifesto pledge, I am really concerned that the proposals as drafted are unworkable, expensive and time-consuming. They will add to the complexity and workload of every single school, not just academies. Individual maintained schools will often not be aware that the pay structure in their local authority is different from that in a neighbouring one. My amendments focus on academy schools, but the thrust of my argument to the Government is to think again because of the impact on every single school.

Amendment 151 seeks to mitigate potential damage by limiting the SSSNB’s powers to creating a framework that academies must consider regarding remuneration, terms and conditions, training, career progression and related matters. I believe that these flexibilities should extend to maintained schools. Amendment 174 would require the Government to produce before introducing these changes an impact assessment of the cost to the whole education sector, both academies and maintained schools. Amendment 180 would require annual reports of the SSSNB to include an assessment of the increased costs to the sector of any pay and conditions agreements.

It is important that we are clear what we mean by support staff. Support staff are not a homogenous group but an extraordinarily diverse workforce spanning many different roles, skill levels and contexts. Teaching assistants, while crucial, comprise less than half of all support staff. The remainder includes roles ranging from pastoral care to facilities managers, finance assistants, network administrators and school receptionists.

A small maintained primary school might employ a part-time administrative assistant handling multiple responsibilities, while a large multi-academy trust might maintain specialised finance teams, HR professionals and IT specialists serving multiple schools across a region. This diversity is intentional and beneficial. Schools and trusts have developed different approaches to organising their support functions because they face varying challenges. They serve distinct communities and operate at very different scales. What serves a 100-pupil rural primary school will not suit a 2,000-pupil secondary academy. What works for a stand-alone school will not fit a trust operating across multiple regions. Any national framework that fails to acknowledge this reality risks becoming either too vague to be useful or too rigid to serve communities effectively.

I am not trying to suggest that the status quo is perfect. The current National Joint Council arrangements have significant weaknesses in their application to schools, leading some local authorities such as those in the so-called London fringe to opt out of the Green Book terms and conditions entirely.

First, the NJC terms and conditions were designed for general local government workers—from refuse collectors to office administrators—but they barely address schools’ specific working environments and unique demands. Secondly, there is insufficient co-ordination between teacher and support staff pay negotiations. These separate processes often reach conflicting conclusions about affordability and appropriate pay increases. Did the Minister consider expanding the remit of the STRB to include support staff? Thirdly, the Department for Education has minimal influence over support staff pay decisions, and school affordability is not factored into NJC decision-making. Consequently, when resources are limited, teachers’ pay becomes the residual after other decisions are made, which is clearly an extraordinary outcome.

The current legislative approach is fundamentally flawed. Mandating a single detailed set of terms and conditions for all support staff will create more problems than it solves and certainly will not address the challenges schools face with recruitment and retention. First, it is essentially impossible to have a national set of pay scales for this very wide range of roles, given the vast variation in how schools and trusts organise their functions and their work. Consider this example: how can one write a generic job description for a finance assistant that serves both a small primary school’s sole financial administrator and a large trust’s specialist management accountant? Although sharing a title, these roles require entirely different skills, qualifications and responsibilities. What schools do for themselves, and what is done by the local authority or trust’s central team, varies hugely across the country. How many people there are to run finance or technology in a school, and therefore their seniority and skill, depends on the size of the school and on its legal status.

Secondly, at present, under the NJC each local authority sets its own grading structure. Even if you could find a role which was commonly defined across the country, you would find that it was graded and paid somewhat differently in different areas. The SSSNB would be expected to override these 150 grading structures and produce one national one. This would inevitably entail paying some people more, at potentially substantial cost in some areas, or paying some people less. I would argue that neither outcome is palatable.

Furthermore, much of this variation is driven by local labour markets. Some areas have to pay more than others to get decent IT skills, for example. It would be extraordinary to require schools in Cambridge to pay the same for IT skills as other schools if it meant that they could not get the skilled people they needed or that other schools had to pay significantly more than they do now.

I have heard Ministers suggest that their aim is to create a pay floor, not a ceiling, but that does not change the fundamental problem. It represents a full pay negotiation beyond NJC agreements, and therefore an effective national grading structure in which roles are mapped to a national spine in a consistent way across the country, rather than the more than 150 ways that currently exist. The task of trying to do that could begin only after considering every local variation. The floor points negotiation faces another challenge: employers cannot afford floors above current pay rates, plus cost of living adjustments, and understandably unions will not accept anything lower, even as a minimum. Given that the same role currently receives different pay across local authorities within the NJC, achieving both goals everywhere is impossible.

I hope the Minister acknowledges that this will create complications for local authorities, as their grading structures will likely not align with nationally mandated school support staff pay scales. Must authorities alter their grading structures to match the national framework, or will they apply it only to schools, or neither? Every possible answer creates serious problems of complexity and comparability within individual local authorities.

Most concerningly, this fiendishly complicated approach addresses non-existent problems. Despite repeated allegations of academies cutting and poaching support staff, sector colleagues can find no evidence of this. I find it hard to imagine that any rational person would take a cut in their salary to be poached. In fact, academies that have departed from standard terms and conditions have done so to enhance pay and improve conditions and career prospects, not to reduce them. Claims that support staff lack clear contractual terms are just not correct. Like teachers, they have specific contracts, often referencing established national or local frameworks. Contractual arrangements are not the issue.

Our school support staff deserve recognition, proper pay, good working conditions and career development opportunities. Above all, they need a policy framework that serves them and their schools effectively. We can build this through pragmatic reform, building on existing strengths, addressing real weaknesses, and respecting the diversity and complexity of modern school organisations. However, we cannot achieve meaningful improvement through legislation that ignores schools’ practical operations and imposes uniformity where variety better serves everyone. My amendments seek to make some progress towards this goal. I strongly urge the Minister to reconsider the Government’s approach. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name, but first I fully endorse what my noble friend Lady Barran has said. It is worth the Government reflecting on her direct experience of this before Report.

My amendment is quite simple. It is about the practice and conventions behind whatever we get into primary legislation. Candidly, I object to the naming of an organisation that is not a regulator in this country as needing to be consulted by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can consult anybody they like when considering making regulations. I do not see why the TUC should be named in primary legislation. That is the reason for my amendment. This is poor legislation and adds nothing to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this debate and add my support to in principle to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey: she makes a very sensible, practical point.

In picking up on some of the points made by the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Prentis of Leeds, I just make it clear for the record that I am not quite sure why the Minister thought I was suggesting that the legislation directed who—or “what” was, I think, her word—schools employed. I can re-look at my notes, but I am not clear why she got that impression. Of the many concerns in my mind, that was absolutely not one of them. Again, just to be absolutely clear, as I said in my remarks, we accept the principle of the SSSNB—I think the noble Lord, Lord Prentis, questioned that, but it was a manifesto commitment, and we acknowledge and accept that. What I was arguing for in relation to his remarks was a due regard framework, which I believed would deliver what the Minister says is the Government’s ambition: to create a floor, not a ceiling, and to create a system which permits innovation of the type that we heard about from my noble friend Lord Agnew.

I am sure that the noble Lord knows this, but in recent years, the pay increases for support staff have actually been significantly higher than for teachers. I think his concern was that somehow this group had been left behind, but, certainly in recent years, that has not been the case. I think my question to the Minister goes back to the cost. I understand the emotional pull, even if I do not think it reflects reality, of a single voice and a single settlement. The reality is that we live in different micro-economies around the country. But if that is the Government’s aim, surely, to be responsible, they need to work out up front what it is going to cost. If we are not going to take a cut, and every IT assistant is going to be paid the same as those who live in Cambridge, and that is applied to every other role, could the Minister kindly write to me and put the letter in the Library setting out what those adjustments are? To introduce legislation without having worked out what the cost will be once implemented risks being irresponsible. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment, but I fear that we may revisit this.

Amendment 151 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I have put my name to only two of the amendments in this group, Amendments 154 and 164. Quite honestly, it took a lot of time and energy to read through all of his amendments; it must have taken an astonishing amount of time to write them all, so I am in awe of the work that the noble Lord has put into this Bill.

I was slightly nervous about the noble Lord’s mention of growth. I would like to know more about that later, perhaps, because growth obviously has to be of the right kind.

For me, collective bargaining is a way of making the world of work fairer. There are those who are vulnerable or not as talented who cannot argue for themselves, so they need support to do that. In a healthy economy, there is no place for poverty or for ultra-low wages, where people cannot pay their bills, feed their children or buy new shoes if they need them. It is incredibly important that people have a good wage.

My noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle tabled an amendment to be discussed later in Committee for a 10:1 pay scale, such that you can pay your senior managers or CEO whatever you like, but you have to pay at least 1/10th of that amount to your cleaners, doormen or catering staff. The idea is that everybody needs a proper wage and, honestly, what would rich people do with even more money? They usually plough it not into the economy but into yachts and things like that.

I support almost every one of these amendments, and I am sorry that I have signed up to only two, but this is an incredibly important area. I hope the Government are able to shift a little on this and take advice from a very well-known lawyer who knows what he is talking about. We all want a fair world, and this is part of actually developing it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, it will amaze the Committee to know that I do not support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. This could be a golden moment—I do not want to spoil it before it happens—where the Minister and I are on the same page. We will hold our collective breath.

I will make a few points. It was helpful and genuinely interesting to hear the history, context and examples that the noble Lord gave in relation to collective bargaining, but the fundamental concern that we have is that we find it hard to see how many of those—he talked about zero-hour contracts, for example—really apply to public sector employees across our schools and academies.

Our sense is that, in a world in which the Secretary of State receives advice from the negotiating body—the SSSNB, although I noticed that in my amendment on the Marshalled List I cunningly dropped one of the S’s, which makes it easier to say—the principle that the Secretary of State retains discretion is a good principle to stick to. I think the noble Lord explained that there could be ways in which the Secretary of State could overrule, but I feel that that makes it unnecessarily complicated. Perhaps more importantly, it fundamentally changes the relationship between unions and employers, and risks—perhaps more than risks—creating a much more oppositional relationship, where trade unions on one side and local authorities and trusts on the other are directly opposing one another in these negotiations. I also question whether it is practical, given the nature of our schools landscape.

Can the Minister clarify a couple of points? Amendments 153, 159, 160, 162, 167 and 170—the amendments that would leave out “employment”—would make the clause broader, to cover staff who are under contract rather than under contract of employment. Our concern is that that could cover people such as casual exam invigilators, peripatetic music teachers or staff who are under contract to look after the grounds. I would be grateful if she could confirm that the remit of the Bill refers to “terms of employment” as we understand it to mean.

Amendments 155 to 158 say to leave out “or is not”. This relates to the Secretary of State’s ability to prescribe the SSSNB remit through regulations. As the Bill is currently drafted, the Secretary of State can say that something is or is not to be treated as remuneration or a term of employment. For example, at present it could be said by the Secretary of State that an honorarium payment is not to be treated as being within the SSSNB’s remit. Removing “or is not” would mean the Secretary of State would have to be very specific indeed about what is to be considered remuneration. The current wording allows enough specificity about what is—and, importantly, what is not—within the remit of the SSSNB. We would argue that it is very important that that wording remains as is to avoid unnecessary confusion, tension or debate on its scope.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Barran for their contributions to this debate. I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for getting rich people and yachts into a debate on the School Support Staff Negotiating Body. That is no mean achievement and she deserves our congratulations. I very much enjoyed the history lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. I learned a lot and I am very grateful, but I am afraid I have not necessarily arrived at the same conclusions or been swayed by his arguments.

I turn to the amendments. Amendment 153 seeks to confine the School Support Staff Negotiating Body’s remit solely to matters defined under Section 178(2) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, effectively transforming the body from a consultative forum into a collective bargaining entity. It seems to us that this is a dangerous and fundamental shift. The negotiating body was designed to provide flexible, pragmatic consultation tailored to the diverse and complex nature of school support staff roles across a variety of settings. As we have heard, these range from small rural primaries to large multi-academy trusts. To impose the rigid and often adversarial legal framework of collective bargaining, as defined by industrial law, is to ignore the realities and needs of schools and academies. It risks bogging down negotiations in legal disputes and inflexible procedures that seem wholly unsuited to education.

Secondly, it dangerously extends the remit to include those working under contracts other than contracts of employment. That would create a vague and problematic category that threatens to blur employment relationships, dilute employer responsibility and foster legal uncertainty. Introducing such ambiguity would lead to confusion, disputes and potential litigation, detracting from the core mission of supporting school staff effectively.

Thirdly, Amendment 154, signed also by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, demands a formal dispute resolution process involving conciliation by ACAS and binding arbitration by the Central Arbitration Committee. While dispute resolution is important, mandating binding arbitration at multiple levels removes essential local discretion and flexibility. Schools and trusts require the ability to resolve issues quickly and pragmatically without resorting to protracted and costly arbitration. This amendment risks entrenching lengthy legal processes that are incompatible with the fast-moving and diverse educational establishment and environment.

Additionally, expanding the negotiating body’s remit to include discipline, grievance procedures and any “other matter” agreed by the parties is dangerously vague. It threatens to overload the body with operational matters that should be handled locally by employers, who understand their context best. It risks creating bottlenecks in decision-making, delaying essential actions and ultimately frustrating both staff and management. In essence, these amendments push for a highly legalistic industrial relations model that is inappropriate for school support staff and the complex, varied environments in which they work. It will increase bureaucracy, create inflexibility and heighten the risk of industrial conflict rather than fostering practical co-operation.

Building on these concerns, I will emphasise the significant risk of unmanageable negotiations that other amendments in this group introduce. If the negotiating parties are free to consider any payment, entitlement or matter without clear limits, the scope of discussions could become unwieldy and unfocused. Instead of concentrating on core issues, such as fair remuneration, reasonable terms and meaningful career development, negotiations would risk becoming mired in peripheral or impractical demands. This would risk slowing down the entire process, making it less efficient and ultimately less effective in delivering tangible benefits for school support staff.