Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

184B: After Clause 150, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of the impact of high temperatures on workplace health and safetyWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review of the impact of increasing temperatures on workplace health and safety.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure the Government is considering the impact of increasing temperatures due to climate change on the safety and health of workers.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, aware of the hour, I begin with a promise that I will not test the opinion of the House, although I am afraid that I cannot speak, of course, for the numbered amendments after this one.

Just to explain very briefly—it is fairly self-evident—my amendment calls for a new clause to review the impact of high temperatures on workplace health and safety. Of course, this is in consideration of the rising issue that this presents for the rights of workers in the climate emergency. I did not table a comparable amendment in Committee. I tried to table a broader amendment which was ruled out of scope and I never managed to get back to it, but I feel it is really important to bring this amendment here today, in light of events between Committee and Report.

Noble Lords may be aware of a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson called The Ministry for the Future, which features a mass mortality event as a result of extraordinary high temperatures and humidity. If we ever get to that stage in Britain, we will be beyond deep trouble. None the less, what we have just experienced at the end of June is what one expert described as a “quietly devastating” heatwave across Europe, which killed 2,300 people in 12 major cities and, it is estimated, will have caused several hundred deaths in London alone. The climate emergency means that, through that period, the temperatures were four degrees higher than they would have been otherwise, and one of the important things that has happened is that we have seen a large increase in so-called tropical nights, when the temperature does not drop below 20 degrees centigrade, people struggle to rest and that then has a cumulative effect on workers’ health.

We have not just seen the heatwave. We have also seen the TUC launch a large-scale, serious campaign to ask the Government to look at this and, in fact, to go further and set a maximum working temperature. It is worth stressing that, unlike other countries such as Spain—which might not surprise noble Lords—and Germany, we do not have a maximum working temperature. There is an obligation on employers to provide a safe workplace, but without that maximum temperature, and with circumstances arising that neither workers nor employers have encountered before, we really need to set some guard-rails for the safety of workers.

The TUC did a recent study on this and produced some horrifying examples, starting with what is happening in schoolrooms. It surveyed almost 6,000 teachers; some 94% reported they worked in excessively high temperatures during the summer, with 42% doing so regularly. A union rep reported on 27 telephone exchanges, in which the highest temperature was 36 degrees centigrade. A chicken factory reported high temperatures leading to incidents of tiredness and dizziness in a place where there was a lot of hard physical activity—that sounds like hell. In tissue culture and virology rooms, the temperature was 32 degrees and the room was full of ethanol fumes, which is another issue all to itself.

I am acutely aware of the hour, but I hope I will hear from the Minister that this is something that the Government will look at very seriously and consider the TUC’s call for a maximum temperature. That would obviously vary according to the circumstances. When we think about working outside, we have the issue of sun exposure, which also has longer-term risks for health and skin cancer, et cetera. I hope that I will hear something positive from the Minister and that the Government will take this seriously, listen to what the TUC is saying, acknowledge that the climate emergency is making this a fast-rising problem and take action. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. The problem is that words such as “reasonable” and “assessed risk” refer to what may happen in well-regulated, well-controlled workplaces; in contrast, it is the most vulnerable workers who are the most vulnerable to that not happening. However, many of the cases I cited were very mainstream workplaces, such as schools.

As promised, I will withdraw my amendment. Before doing so, I finish with an apology to the staff. We should give thanks to them for supporting us right through the Bill and throughout all the time it has taken. I also note that we should think about the impact of heat on their health and well-being in our workplace. We might want to think, as employers ourselves, about what reasonable adjustments we might need to make for them, as the temperatures in this workplace change. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 184B withdrawn.