Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

The speeches that have been made in this debate about an important issue are clear, and I strongly support those made on this side of the House. Because of the exigencies of where the issue arises in our consideration of the Bill, I have tabled manuscript Amendment 147A. Noble Lords may well be scratching their heads, but it is a manuscript amendment, which has been circulated separately, on a different subject, but it comes up at this point of the Bill. It has been brought to my attention by my union, Unite, and I need to declare that, but it is an issue of concern to all unions.

The unions strongly support the provisions in the Bill which introduce paid facility time for equality representatives. This is an important development and it is something for which unions have campaigned for some years. However, there is concern that there are some technical problems with the provisions in the Bill, which is why I need to raise them now. We are looking at Clause 62, which creates the right for paid time off for this new initiative of equality representatives in certain circumstances. It appears to me that there is a deficiency in the Bill, in that it says they are entitled to this time off for the purpose of consultation, but it is quite clear that these representatives will also be involved in negotiating. My manuscript amendment seeks simply to add “negotiating” in front of the existing provision in the Bill that says that these equality reps are involved in the process of consultation. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to give a favourable response to what is essentially a technical issue, but one which I need to raise now.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I feel in something of a time warp, because I opposed Clause 62 in Committee and tried to get it dropped, but I want to go back to the discussion we were having on Amendment 147. I support this amendment, because I genuinely think there are very good reasons why the trade union movement should not be frightened of this amendment, and I do not understand the changes that have happened. All the amendment does is to try to retain, at least notionally, control in the hands of trade union members: they should decide where they want their dues to go and whether they want them to go into a political fund. What could possibly be frightening about that?

It means that, at least in theory, the trade unions will have to be kept on their toes and justify why members should opt in, and therefore not assume or assert that their union’s political activity—which, to be fair, is often far removed from rank and file workers’ interests—is on behalf of their members. It simply puts unions in a position in which they have to convince their members to opt in.

Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, who possibly knows that constituency better than anyone else in the House today; she brings her wise counsel with her comments this afternoon. It is important that everyone who holds office in society, elected or otherwise, ensures that they consider the situation there in a favourable way to ensure that the police have their support and that the criminal justice system is allowed to take its course. Community cohesion and community engagement is the most important issue before the House today.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, does the Minister recognise the legitimate fury and frustration of local people, whether in Epping or Diss, because they feel their voices are not being heard in relation to their concerns about the hotels? They genuinely fear for their children because of crimes committed by people staying in the hotels, even if it is a minority of those staying in them. Secondly, does the Minister acknowledge that some of the misinformation includes calling those local people “far-right thugs”, which, to a certain extent, is the most insulting thing you can call people who are genuinely protesting? Will the Minister distance himself from that misinformation as well as the other misinformation that he has mentioned?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Any potential crime committed anywhere—be it in a hotel or a town centre —is a matter for the police to investigate. It is then for the police to charge people and for a jury of peers to make a determination in due course. In this case, an individual has been arrested and charged and will be before the court in due course, so I cannot comment on the specific circumstances.

If people have legitimate concerns about the hotels, asylum, migrants or people crossing the channel, they have a right to express that view in a peaceful, orderly way. The line is drawn where that protest leads to other potential crimes. In this case, the police have acted to arrest and potentially to charge individuals for crimes, which, equally, will go before the courts and be determined upon in due course. It is the job of us all to appeal for calm in those circumstances and to ensure that we find political solutions to some of the challenges that we have—but not, in any way, shape or form to encourage inflammatory action against the police, the community or people who are not committing crimes and who happen to reside in a particular place at a particular time.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, currently only a fully certified trade union representative or a colleague has the statutory right to accompany an employee to a hearing. In practice, this leaves the vast majority of workers in the UK—77.7%—to navigate proceedings alone or, worse, to be accompanied by an inappropriate companion, who may frustrate the process or cause inadvertent detriment to the worker’s case.

We all receive briefings from numerous organisations, which contribute to our debate. The last one I received today was on this issue, so I read it to see how I could incorporate it in my speech. It was from the TUC and said that only the trade unions could possibly represent people, which confirms my words and adds weight to this amendment. An amendment to the Bill is desperately needed to guarantee that all workers, regardless of their membership of a trade union, enjoy the right to be accompanied by a dedicated and trained companion during workplace disputes. This would ensure transparency, fairness and due process, as trained companions ensure that both employees and employers have a robust safeguard against unfair treatment and misunderstanding.

This sensible amendment would give rights to people who are very often not in a trade union-recognised organisation. The trade unions can still represent, but they do not have to be the only people to represent. This amendment, I feel, fills that gap. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 99 seeks to remove the restriction that only trade union representatives or a work colleague may accompany an employee to a disciplinary or grievance hearing. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, Lord Ashcombe and Lord Londesborough, for supporting what is a modest and practical but important change to employment law. It would give workers the right to be accompanied to a hearing by someone they trust, somebody of their choosing—perhaps a family friend, a carer or a person from the relevant industry. It is about fair play and equal treatment, ends a one-size-fits-all effective union monopoly and is simply empowering and modernising.

My amendment is similar to Amendment 98 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, which would expand the list of those who could accompany workers to include trained and certified companions. I support the principle behind the noble Lord’s proposal but fear that its certification regime is unnecessarily complicated, could result in delays and inconsistencies and could create bureaucratic barriers, especially for staff cohorts such as young employees unfamiliar with the bureaucratic paraphernalia of such procedures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a useful debate on Amendments 98 and 99, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

On Amendment 98, the law already provides that when workers are invited to attend a disciplinary and grievance hearing, they are entitled to bring a companion who is either a fellow worker, an official employed by a trade union or a workplace trade union representative who the union has reasonably certified as having received training in acting as a worker’s companion at a disciplinary or grievance hearing.

As we have heard, and perhaps in response to the critique by the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, employers can allow workers to be accompanied by a companion who does not fall within the above categories. Some workers may have a contractual right to be accompanied by persons other than those listed—for instance, a professional sports body, partner, spouse or legal representative.

As my noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway helpfully reminded us, the existing legislative provisions seek to keep disciplinary and grievance procedures internal to workplaces to better ensure that the heat is taken out of the situation and that they are used as conciliatory opportunities to resolve tensions and maintain a good employer-worker relationship. As my noble friend said, this could involve a workmate who knows the context of the situation, understands the employment —and probably both parties to the grievance—and can provide real insight to the situation and focused support.

The inclusion of professional bodies, which may include legal representation in the legislation, may jeopardise the involved parties’ ability to engage in amicable conversation, with the concern that discussion may be significantly restrained as a result, with neither party willing to accept fault. The Government are rightly concerned that this will result in an increased likelihood of a failure to reach a suitable outcome for both the worker and employer. As my noble friend Lady O’Grady said, we want systems in place that are quicker, cheaper and more effective at reaching resolutions.

However, this in turn, as part of the proposal, would increase the cost of hearings for both parties, as the processes and the meetings themselves become more protracted and reduce the chances of a mutually beneficial outcome. The involvement of legal representatives may be particularly costly for smaller businesses, which may not have legal resources readily available—we have heard much already today, if not in previous debates in Committee and on Report, about that issue. Additionally, the introduction of legal expertise at these hearings may limit the ability of ACAS to mediate an ongoing dispute, as legal arguments may already have been heard during an internal hearing. It is worth noting that an amicable solution between the parties is the fastest way to deliver justice and the amendment may have the inadvertent effect of increasing the likelihood of tribunal claims being made, although of course that is not its intention.

Of course I understand that certain organisations, including those that provide legal services, would benefit. However, as previously noted when discussing similar amendments, an employer already has the existing ability to nominate an organisation to accompany their workers if they set this out in the workers’ terms and conditions. This is a solution in search of a problem. ACAS estimates that there are 1.7 million formal disciplinary cases in UK organisations each year.

It is rare that I ever say this, let alone from the Dispatch Box, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, in that the approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, in his amendment would be unduly cumbersome. It would complicate a law that has been in place for over 20 years and, if accepted, will require that the employer checks secondary legislation for every case to see who is a responsible body and whether the individual has been certified as having been trained. These are additional administrative burdens that the Government are keen to avoid. Indeed, the Opposition Front Bench has been keen to point out when they see fault in our proposals in other places—erroneously, I should add.

On Amendment 99, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the Government believe that strong trade unions are essential for tackling insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay. If Amendment 98 was a solution in search of a problem, Amendment 99 is an opportunity for the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, to bash a problem, in her view—namely, trade unions.

I am a former trade union official. I have also worked in a number of private sector roles as a manager. Unions are a good part of our industrial landscape, as we have heard across the House. I join with others across the House in saying that it would better if more people were members of trade unions. They are far from perfect, but although the cases that the noble Baroness raises undeniably raise issues about the trade unions she talked about, they do not undermine the day-to-day work of many trade unions and, in particular, of trade union reps. In the workplace, day in, day out and across the country, they work with employees and businesses to make workplaces safer, to ensure that employees are properly educated and skilled, and to help those employees access their rights at work, which we deem fair and necessary.

Trade unions have an important role to play in supporting workers during the process of a disciplinary or grievance hearing. Union officials allowed to accompany a worker, as prescribed in the existing framework, must be certified as having received training in acting as a worker’s companion at disciplinary and grievance hearings. By opening this role up to anyone the worker chooses, the amendment risks introducing individuals into the disciplinary and grievance hearings process who are not familiar with the workplace in question or, indeed, with the employment rights framework.

As I noted when speaking to the previous amendment, this is again likely to lead to a reduced likelihood of successful mediation of these disputes. The role of the recognised union representative allows the relationship between the employer and representative to be developed over time, thus increasing the likelihood of an amicable solution that does not go to a full legal process. This amendment could lead to the involvement of a family member or friend in disciplinary grievance proceedings, which may, in practice, cause more problems than solutions, given the sensitive nature of such a personal relationship.

In closing, it is unclear to the Government where the demand for expanding this right is coming from and which workplaces specifically would benefit. In the consultations we have undertaken in government and prior to being elected, with both businesses and trade unions, the need to expand this right has not featured from either side in the workplace.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I think the Minister may have answered his own question there, because if the consultation was with trade unionists about whether there was any need for non-trade unionists to go in, then they would give you one answer. I want to clarify one thing: it is true that I have never been a trade union official, but I have been a rank and file trade union member for decades. I am not anti-trade union, but I do not think the world stops and starts at trade unions.

I want to ask the Minister whether he understands that, at the moment, the statutory right to be accompanied by a trade union official is not in-house. The way the law is phrased is that any trade union official, even one from a union that you have never joined and from a completely unrelated sector, can accompany you—that is the way the law is. I wanted to know whether that is fair or whether that wording could change. What is wrong with, say, a Citizens Advice caseworker or what have you? The numbers of people who are in the trade unions just do not tally for people to be accompanied fairly at the moment. Unless there is an 80% increase in trade union membership, it is obviously two-tier and discriminatory at present.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

To respond to the first point the noble Baroness made, perhaps I did not enunciate clearly enough, but I said that in the consultation the demand for change did not come from either trade unions or employers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

This is the final word. This is not a trade union rights Bill; this is the Employment Rights Bill. It is casually known as the workers’ rights Bill. There are millions of workers who are not in trade unions for a variety of reasons, including your own Minister Angela Rayner, as I just noted. I simply suggest that when you ask employers or trade unionists whether there is a demand for this then rank and file workers are being ignored. I suggest that you acknowledge and empower them.

[Baroness Nichols of Selby (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to put the record straight, because we have heard much about the Deputy Prime Minister not being in a union. She is in a union. She is in the union called UNISON and has been for a number of years. I did not want noble Lords to go home tonight thinking that no one would represent the Deputy Prime Minister.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it is possible to bring both sides together on this issue. I have a long history of being attacked for my views on this. I was the Member for Lewisham West when we brought in the east African Asians, and I remember the appalling attacks that one had for supporting Ted Heath and the Conservative Government at the time. I want to underline the long history of Conservatives being supportive of proper attitudes towards human rights and asylum. But it does not help us in this discussion if we miss out two different things.

The first is that we need to support international agreements, because this is not going to get any easier. I will not bore the Committee on the question of climate change, but if anybody thinks we have real problems of immigration now, the kind of weather changes we are going to have will mean that there will be a lot more people moving not for economic reasons but because they can no longer live where they are born. We have to realise how serious the issue of immigration right across the board is going to be. One has to take this very seriously, but that means we should be very careful about protecting the rights of asylum seekers. We did not just do this because of the Holocaust, although that was the proximate pressure. There are people who are treated in a way that makes life in their countries absolutely impossible, and they cannot leave by some accepted rule or open system. They have to hide and escape, and we need to take them very seriously.

The other thing we have to remember is that there is widespread concern about the number of immigrants who have come into this country and who are likely to do so. This Committee must not ignore that fact. But if we are to accept both those things, we have to be very careful that the legislation we pass is truly consonant with the international agreements we have. We also have to be extremely careful that we do not say, every time there is an amendment, that somehow there is something unsuitable behind it.

These amendments are technical. I do not agree with them all, but the Committee has to accept that they are important. To dismiss them as if they were merely the product of people who always oppose any kind of restraint on immigration seems unfair and unworthy. I also happen to think that many of us opposed the Rwanda proposal because it was a load of old rubbish—because it was not going to work. That is why we opposed it, not because we did not understand the importance of the issue but because it was not the right answer. Frankly, to suggest that because we did not agree with the Rwanda concept we are somehow wet on this subject seems untrue and very unfair.

We in this House are surely in the business of discussing these matters in detail and carefully. The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have rightly brought to our notice some important issues that we have to get right. They may not be the right amendments, but we have to discuss them without automatically believing what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who has a long history of defending those who are not otherwise defended, has brought to our notice. I am pleased that we have been discussing it. I think we will find that he withdraws or does not move the amendments and thinks again about which ones he wishes to press.

I hope we will treat this with the seriousness it deserves, which means, first, recognising the national concern about numbers and, secondly, trying to make a proper distinction that protects people who flee from terrible regimes. I would like everybody in this Committee to think once again how blessed we are that we are not in that position. If we are blessed in that way, we should think carefully about those who are not.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, every time I speak after the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I feel as though I have taken on the headmaster. Having been admonished, I tread carefully. I have wanted to comment on this group of amendments from the beginning. The fact that the debate has become quite fractious and animated in some ways indicates what my original concerns are and why I wanted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, in particular, to clarify something.

Terrorism Act 2000 (Proscribed Organisations) (Amendment) Order 2025

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harper (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as I had a recent trip to Israel, organised by Conservative Friends of Israel, to learn more about the consequences of the terrorist events of 7 October.

I had not intended to speak in this debate had it just been the statutory instrument in front of us. I was provoked into doing so by the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, which I think is misplaced. I have to say that my experience is that, when Members advance arguments and are not willing to take questions, it is usually the sign of a very weak argument. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for taking an intervention. That shows somebody who has confidence in their arguments and is prepared to have them challenged. The fact that the noble Baroness was not even prepared to take an intervention from a single noble Lord I think demonstrates that she does not actually think her arguments are that strong.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord Harper (Con)]

Of course I will take an intervention.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord had little choice then.

First, I think it is entirely inappropriate in this discussion, which is fraught enough, to assume you know which side people are on around the Israel-Gaza situation. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and I disagree wholeheartedly, but I agree with her that there is real concern over this particular issue. Secondly, when you are trying to make a contribution and are heckled, with people standing up and calling out, and you are basically on a minority side, I think it is perfectly respectable for noble Lords to accept that you do not want to take interventions. To draw any other conclusion from that has a really unpleasant, nasty vibe about it.

I am actually shocked. I am generally on the side of the people backing this proscription. At one point, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, I thought maybe people were being proscribed for misinformation. I have got to the point now where I do not know what the terrorist act is. However, I think it is completely wrong to assume that there is cowardice involved in not taking points from other Members.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

I suggest we take the heat out of this a bit. Interventions are welcome, but noble Lords are not obliged to take them, and they should be brief.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I have a few short points. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has just said.

First, I hope that when we vote, if we vote, we will entirely put out of our minds whether we sympathise with the Palestinian cause, as most of us do, and whether we regret what Israel has done in various respects. We are concerned with a violent group. It really does not matter whether the cause it articulates and supports is justified. The law in a civilised country simply cannot accept people using violence against people and property in support of a cause they believe to be right. No such law can survive in a civilised society.

Secondly, if I understood him correctly, the Minister has explained why it is not sufficient for the law simply to prosecute people who commit criminal acts of the sort that are alleged—I agree that we have to be very careful here, for sub judice reasons—against members of Palestine Action. The point, if I have understood the Minister correctly—and he will say if I have not—is that there is a vital public need to prevent these people organising and recruiting, and the only way in which the law can do that is to take the action that the Minister is proposing today, which I strongly support.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am a little concerned about how the sides are being laid out in this discussion. I have some serious worries about proscribing Palestine Action and have a lot of sympathy with the regret amendment, but not because I consider Palestine Action to be some idealised, cuddly, heroic campaign for peace. I have no sympathy with its destructive, wanton, often violent and nihilistic assaults on factories, air bases and so on. The individuals deserve criminal prosecution and punishment. God knows, we have enough draconian laws on the statute book to throw the book at them.

What we are challenging here is whether the concept of them being proscribed as a terrorist organisation is appropriate, not whether they are nice, peace-loving, wonderful Greenham Common types. That is the wrong way to look at it. In an earlier intervention, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, asked whether these could indeed be terrorist acts. I think that they could well be assessed as acts of terrorism without proscribing a whole organisation.

These are my reservations. I am worried about criminalising the vocalising of support for this organisation. Vocalising support for a reprehensible law-breaking protest group is one thing, but once it is proscribed, we are talking about the possibility of prison sentences of up to 14 years. All of this was brilliantly explained legally by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. You could, even if you only say that you support them, end up in prison.

The problem we have is that it is true that Palestine Action’s cause and its broader support are very popular —we have heard it here today. I do not mean that it is populist; I mean that many young people support that outlook. I do not. I spend a lot of time at the moment going around arguing with those young people about what I consider to be the growth of casual antisemitism and an intense hatred of Israel that seeps into Jew hatred. I talk a lot about that wherever I go, but it is certainly the case that I am not on the winning side on this one. If you go into universities and sixth forms, many support them. I am worried about the consequences of proscribing this organisation because it can threaten free speech. There are also going to be a lot of people who could be classified as in breach of it.

We should note that, for the first time since records began, this week the UK is no longer classified as an open country in the global expression rankings, which is shameful. In case noble Lords think the global expression rankings are some JD Vance-like prejudice or something, it is actually an annual report by Article 19, which noticed that free speech is seriously deteriorating in this country, so I put that warning out. We have to be very careful that this proscription does not have a chilling effect or, even worse, give some credibility to the idea that supporters of Palestine Action are some kind of free speech heroes and martyrs along with, undoubtedly Bobby—what is his name?

[Noble Lords]

Bobby Sands.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

No, I do not mean Bobby Sands. That made me laugh. Bob Vylan was where I was going. What I mean is that there are these people, whose views I despise, who, once you start banning them, suddenly develop some kind of heroic free speech status. That is the point I am making.

Finally, I am slightly worried about making a mockery of the anti-terror laws and even confusing our definition of what constitutes terrorism. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others have implied that the definition of terrorism is absolutely clear-cut and that we know what it is in the law. We have had a wide range of controversies from the Government on what Prevent interprets as terrorism and extremism. There has been some confusion. If it was so black and white then recent confusions would not have emerged.

My concern here is quite straightforward: we might end up relativising what constitutes terrorism if we put Palestine Action on the same list as the likes of Hamas, ISIS and Hezbollah. It seems that it could create a moral equivalence. It could, unintentionally, confirm a prejudice in western activist circles that the likes of the Houthis and Hamas are legitimate resistance groups, a little bit like those encampments on university campuses, and everybody thinks, “They’re just resisting; we’re resisting”. I always make the point about the butchers and rapists of Hamas. The Jew hatred that goes on in their camps is slightly different from standing around with a flag or going on a demo. If we flatter Hamas and say that it is just like Palestine Action then surely that undermines the very thing that we are trying to do.

At the very least I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. I do not think that this is something where you can be so certain of yourself that you think, because you are on one side, that something should be banned as terrorism and, because you are on another, something should not be banned. It is much more complicated and we have a responsibility to acknowledge that.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, made a number of important points. I accept much of her analysis, but come to a different conclusion on proscribing Palestine Action. I strongly endorse the statement made by the Minister today and the Government’s action. It is something that I called for last year in my review Protecting our Democracy from Coercion, in my then role as the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 26th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, and I certainly support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Cameron. The first of my amendments, Amendment 22, is very straightforward in saying that the commander should publish financial accounts. Clause 4 refers to the financial year but not the publication of financial accounts. It is very important that we have discipline around what the purpose of the organisation is and what will be the return on the investment the public are making in it. When the Minister comes to respond on this group, perhaps he will guide the Committee as to whether the £150 million that has been mentioned is, in effect, new money being put into this organisation or whether it represents a reallocation of existing budgets. Perhaps it is a blend of the two.

That brings me on to Amendment 24, which could almost be thought of as post-legislative scrutiny on an ongoing basis for the new structure that is envisaged. It is a new layer—I will not use the word bureaucracy, but it is a new agency essentially—designed to co-ordinate other agencies, rather than necessarily operationally deliver outcomes itself. There is, therefore, undoubtedly a danger, which I am sure the Government recognise, that having another cook in this kitchen could destroy value rather than add value. We need to be clear about what the real outcome is, over a period of years, of the initiatives that the Government have brought forward. We certainly give them credit for doing so for all the right reasons.

Perhaps my drafting was rather inelegant, but this is not about the performance of the individual commander; I am talking about the commander’s organisation—the BSC. It is about asking whether the partner agencies continue to believe that the new agency is adding value and doing things that could not otherwise be done. If it does not work as we all hope it will, there must be an argument that it should be stood down and the co-ordination function perhaps be taken up by another agency or indeed by the Home Office itself.

These are two very straightforward amendments. The first point is that the Government need to be accountable for the money spent, and the second is that the partner agencies that will be the beneficiaries—or otherwise—of this co-ordination should be able to express their views about the efficacy of the structure. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to attend Second Reading. I have put my name to a number of later amendments, but I wanted to say how much I support the spirit of this group. On the issue of boat crossings, there is a feeling in relation to smashing the gangs that there is a huge amount of smoke and mirrors and not enough transparency and understanding. I fear that there is a climate of public distrust in which politicians are just not believed.

These amendments would therefore be really helpful to the Government, because they give assurances that this will be fully accounted for and not just a slogan, as has been indicated. The area around these crossings is a territory for rumour and potential misinformation. All sorts of figures are bandied around and people, because they no longer believe in the official figures, are open to all sorts of untrue figures. These amendments would help pin down exactly what this Bill will have achieved, which is very important.

There was an interesting incident recently where journalists—Patrick Christys and a team from GB News—helped to smash the gangs themselves. They did this by going on Instagram and pretending to be trying to get a crossing; they organised one and had WhatsApp communications, voice messages and so on, partly as a sting operation to show how easy it is to infiltrate the gangs and get this information. They passed on the information to the appropriate authorities. They have chased it up, and nothing has happened. Even though they had the names and phone numbers—because they were WhatsApp messages—of two gang leaders, nothing has happened to those people. Those journalists understandably used this to say, “For all the rhetoric about the gangs and this new piece of legislation saying that it will smash them, will it really?”

The first two amendments in this group will tell the public what they want to know about this Bill—how many gang leaders have been arrested and what exactly has happened. I urge the Government to look at these amendments favourably, as helpful to their cause and to the general atmosphere, so that we do not have public cynicism about political rhetoric without action.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I am intrigued by Amendment 20 requiring a statement of

“the number of … gangs that have ceased to operate as a result of enforcement action”.

As I understand it, that is very difficult to know. The characteristic of these gangs is that individual smugglers group and regroup. You have smaller fish who may be better known than the bigger ones. Obviously, the objective that is the subject of this amendment is exactly the right one, but I do not know that there could be any useful or meaningful reporting in quite the way that the amendment suggests. I am sorry not to be supporting it.

On Amendment 21, I note how important it is to have good data, whether or not the six headings here are precisely what the commander should be producing. The more general point—I will go on repeating it—is that the responsibility lies with the Secretary of State, not the commander. It is important to have full and accessible data much more frequently, and more up to date, than in an annual report published some time after the financial year to which the information relates.

I agree with the noble Lord to the extent that this is about accountability, but I do not agree—as he will have gathered rather tediously from me, and I am sorry about that—that the accountability is that of the director. It is that of the Secretary of State.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with almost everything that my noble friend said. When I was growing up, my father, who was in business, suffered the three-day week, and I understand the impact it had on his business and many like his. I also understand that productivity needs to be improved and increased. We need to look at what is happening across the world to be competitive enough.

I know that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, has a business and understands business. If he were sitting on this side of the Chamber, I suspect that he would be arguing in the same vein as we are. It would be right and proper not to shirk away from proper impact assessments and proper comparative assessments of what is happening across the world, because we all want a competitive country where we are leading at the helm. Denying and disagreeing just for the sake of denying and disagreeing does not do this debate any good.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, unusually, I completely agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deben; he and I are both surprised by that. That is not because I am a business owner—that has never been my shtick—but because I am worried about the unintended consequences of the Bill. I too simply want an opportunity to check—and if I am wrong, that is fine.

This group of amendments is very important because it will give the Government a chance to think again, to assess and to reflect. It does not have to be a U-turn; it can straightforwardly be something that is accepted at this point in the Bill that would then mean that those of us who are nervous about the Bill’s consequences can be proved right or wrong.

I am particularly concerned about the impact the Bill will have on productivity, and Amendment 311 is therefore key. I am concerned that the Bill is not doing what it says on the tin and will have a diametrically negative impact on workers’ rights, jobs and wages. I am interested in Amendment 312, which simply asks for real wage impact reporting.

Of course, the big amendment that would cover all the things that have been argued for so far is Amendment 319, which calls for an impact assessment of the regulatory burden of the Bill on businesses. In the past, people who have complained about overregulation have been considered to be on the right of politics—the idea is that those people are so irresponsible that they do not want any regulations and are prepared to take risks. I have never understood it like that at all.

I was therefore delighted to find that I agreed with the Government and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, when he made some tub-thumping speeches about the problems of

“the regulators, the blockers and bureaucrats”

stopping investment and growth. He called them an “alliance of naysayers”, which I thought was good, because I have always been worried about this. I am not from the Tory fold, but that goes along with what I thought. I was genuinely excited that the Labour Government were embracing this way of understanding what can get in the way of economic development and growth, which is necessary for workers to have jobs, wages and rights under an industrial policy that we are hearing about today—all the infrastructure things.

Last December, the Prime Minister infamously blamed Britain’s sluggish growth on

“people in Whitehall … comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.

As we have been going through the Bill, I have felt like I am in the tepid bath of managed decline at the heart of Whitehall and Westminster. Therefore, I urge the government representatives here to remember their own Prime Minister’s words when deciding how they should approach the Bill, rather than just being partisan.

Between 2015 and 2023, the Conservative Government set themselves the target of a £19 billion reduction in business costs through deregulation. Instead, the Regulatory Policy Committee watchdog calculated that even exempting most Covid regulation, the regulatory burden increased by £18.4 billion in that period. I am saying this because people keep declaring that they are going to tear up the regulations getting in the way of growth, industrial capacity and so on, and then, the next minute, unintentionally, regulations grow. The Bill is so jam-packed with regulations that workers’ rights do not stand a chance of breathing.

One of the fears I have about the Bill, which I have raised in a number of amendments and which I hope Amendment 319 will address, is that it is a recipe for huge amounts of lawfare. Day one rights and protection from unfair dismissal both sound progressive and admirable, but the Government’s own analysis predicts a 15% rise in employment tribunal claims. There are already huge backlogs of between 18 months to two years, even before the Bill is enacted, so there is a real threat of a litigious clogging up of the system. Of course it is important that employees are treated fairly. As I have argued throughout consideration of the Bill, I am not frightened of trade union and workers’ rights at all, but I am concerned about this growth, encouragement and incentivisation of the use of lawfare.

I have just read a fascinating report, which I will send to the Ministers, entitled The Equality Act isn’t Working: Equalities, Legislation and the Breakdown of Informal Civility in the Workplace, produced by the anti-racist, colourblind organisation Don’t Divide Us, which assesses the unintended consequences of the Equality Act. Nobody thought this would happen, but it has led to a real fractiousness in the workplace: people are suing each other, all sorts of things are going wrong, and, in many ways, it has clogged up the system. The last thing we need is the Bill adding to that burden, leading to lawfare and people taking matters even further by suing each other.

Either an impact assessment is going to show that some of the concerns raised are overhyped, or in some instances ideological or raised by nay-sayers; or the Government can take the opportunity to say, “We never intended the legislation to do this, but we have seen that in some areas, it needs to be tweaked to make sure that it is not over-regulatory, damaging workers’ rights and wages and so on, in which case we are prepared to be honest and hold our hands up”. That is the very least legislators should do when they introduce a law that is going to bring huge change the whole business and workplace arena.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, as somebody who does business from time to time and tries to encourage business, not least through my deputy chairmanship of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, which is trying to grow business right across the Commonwealth, it strikes me that the Bill comes at an unfortunate time. Of course, we should always look at regulation, and there will always be an argument about what is over-regulation and what is under-regulation. But at a time when so many jobs are threatened by AI, we should surely be looking at a low regulatory framework. I urge the Government to take this into consideration during any impact assessment.

The Minister knows about business. He is a businessman and has a successful business, and I too suspect that he identifies with many of the points we are raising, although he cannot say it. But it strikes me that, just at a time when people are very fearful about their future and the uncertainty of having a job at all, let alone when they get older, so they can raise a family, have a mortgage and so forth, we should be looking at ways to encourage businesses to employ more people. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that he saw every good reason not to employ more people. That is really bad news. If businesses are now saying it is simply not worth the candle, that will contribute to the unemployment that will surely follow as many of these jobs are replaced by AI anyway. So I urge the Government to look at that.

Equally, at a time when many countries around the world, not least in Asia, are spending much more money, time and effort on advanced mathematics and the other things you need nowadays for coding and so forth, we in this country seem to be lowering the standards, particularly in mathematics—dumbing down at a time when we should be raising up. So by all means, let us properly protect our workers, but let us not overregulate to the extent that we do not have any workers to look after or to regulate.

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[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to every noble Lord for their contribution, and I have listened intently to each and every one of them. I thank noble Lords for their kind words about my previous business career.

We return to the important issue of impact assessments. I appreciate the continued efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt of Wirral, here. It will be no surprise to your Lordships’ House, given the number of separate debates—I think there have been about eight now—we have had on this topic, that the Government view these amendments as unnecessary. Let me recap. We have already published 27 impact assessments, available on GOV.UK, which have been updated where needed as policy has been added to the Bill during passage.

Academics at Warwick University, Oxford University, MIT and UCL all find a positive relationship between job satisfaction and productivity in their research. For example, Simon Deakin, professor of law at the University of Cambridge, said:

“The consensus on the economic impacts of labour laws is that, far from being harmful to growth, they contribute positively to productivity. Labour laws also help ensure that growth is more inclusive and that gains are distributed more widely across society”.


All this evidence is laid out in our impact assessment, which was developed in consultation with external experts. Business supports the view that this will be good for productivity. In a survey undertaken by the Institute of Public Policy, seven in 10 employers said that strengthened employment rights will boost productivity, compared to just 7% who disagreed, and six in 10 employers thought stronger employment rights would have a positive impact on business profitability, while fewer than two in 10 disagreed.

We have worked hand in hand with businesses, trade unions and civil society to understand the impacts of this Bill—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There is no doubt that people who are happy at work are likely to contribute positively to the workplace. Nobody, I think, is arguing against that and wants miserable workers with no rights. However, what we are trying to explore is not whether people will have job satisfaction but whether they will have jobs. It is about the unintended consequences of the Bill that might mean that people are not employed; or, indeed, that new jobs are not created because productivity will not go up; or that it becomes too risky to employ, for example, young workers, and so on.

With all due respect to Warwick University’s academics—I went there and I know some of the people who wrote that research, and I am sure that they are happy in their workplace—the truth is that if some piece of legislation ended up unintentionally closing down Warwick University, they would not be happy and productivity would not go up. That is what we are concerned with. It is not a theoretical academic argument about how being happy at work makes you work harder—I know that. But if there is no work, then you are not going to be happy, you are not going to do any work and productivity will go down.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that contribution. If she can be a bit patient, I have some more positive news for her.

We have worked hand in hand with businesses and trade unions, as I said earlier, to understand the impacts of the Bill on industry and will produce further analysis as required under the Better Regulation Framework. It is worth noting that more doors are opening than closing. In the first quarter of 2025, the UK saw 90,000 businesses created, up 2.8% on last year, while business closures fell by 4.4%. This Government are backing British businesses and British workers, and our Modern Industrial Strategy, published yesterday, is making that real. To give one example, we have boosted the British Business Bank’s capacity to £25.6 billion, unlocking billions for innovative firms, especially SMEs. For the first time, the British Business Bank will be able to take equity in fast-growing tech companies. This has never happened before. That is helping crowd in tens of billions of pounds more in private capital, fuelling growth, creating jobs and driving long-term prosperity. I hope that gives comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Deben.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in a previous life, I used to work in further education with many young people who were non-traditionally successful. In more current times, I have worked on matters relating to prison reform and I am very interested in former prisoners gaining employment. In all the instances of working with young people who did not have traditional qualifications or were trying to get into work, or with former prisoners, you were in a situation where you were talking to local employers and asking them to take a punt—a risk—on people. You would say, “Look, the worst that can happen is that you try this person out, it doesn’t work out and no one’s lost anything, but actually I’ve got every faith they will be brilliant”, and so on and so forth. You had to say, “Take a risk”, and I am afraid that in all the responses from employers they are saying, whether we like it or not, that the Bill—if enacted as it is presently constituted —will mean they become risk averse and will not take risks on a former prisoner or a young person who is a bit of a scally. So it is key to assess social mobility.

In addition to that group of people, one of the key ways in which work contributes to social mobility is often through young entrepreneurs or young people who, again, might not be conventionally the kind of people who will pass the Civil Service exam, will not necessarily fit in as an ideal employee and might be slightly eccentric or risk-takers, but who will set up their own micro-business. We know that they are the kind of people who might well be successful, although sometimes they might not be.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, there have been a lot of amendments tabled about micro-businesses—not SMEs, as they are traditionally still quite large businesses whereas micro-businesses have around 20 staff, or even two, three or four. If you talk to young entrepreneurs—the sort of young men who drop out of college but set up semiconductor manufacturing organisations, like some people I know, a builders’ business or a small hairdressers’ business—they realise that many parts of the Bill, which I have opposed throughout, will affect them. They do not have huge HR departments, they are not lawyers and they do not know what they are going to do, but they will be held liable for swathes of regulatory rules mandated by the Bill about the way they run their micro-businesses.

Those people are part of the great success of social mobility. They start out and make a success of it, but now it might not be worth it. They are not always poor and impoverished people. It can be young people making good through small businesses.

If it is the case that this is scaremongering about the worst fears or people just being paranoid, fair enough. But this Labour Government, of all Governments, should want to assess whether the Bill inadvertently, not intentionally, damages social mobility via employment. I therefore urge the Minister to accept this harmless but important amendment.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who covered quite a few of the points I planned to make. I want to speak specifically about young people.

Speaking very recently in front of a committee, Employment Minister Alison McGovern said that

“the situation for young people is a big worry for me at the moment”

and that:

“A lot of our young people—nearly 1 million—are effectively on the scrap heap”.


Those are not words I would have chosen myself; they are her words to a cross-party committee.

We have heard a lot of statistics during today’s debates. I will just add a few more. There are 1 million people not in education, employment or training, which includes a lot of young people. In addition, we have massive numbers of people receiving sickness benefits. All these young people will be a risk for employers.

The Minister is quite right that there has been an uptick in new businesses starting, but there is a serious downturn in the number of jobs created; unemployment is rising year on year, month on month since this Government took power; and the tax rises in the Autumn Budget are beginning to really kick in. We have seen that in the written submissions by numerous business organisations to the Government, other groups and Peers in this Chamber, begging—pleading—with us all to make their case about the significant costs they are already facing due to the national insurance rises. We can see it in real time. This amendment is a request to monitor the situation and come back with an impact assessment on perhaps the most vulnerable people in our society.

To show that these young people really want to succeed and want to have an opportunity, I will read the Committee a couple more numbers that the Minister is probably already well aware of. Some 60% of young people under the age of 30 would love to start a business, 9% of them have done so and 18% more of them would like to do so this year. These are the most vulnerable young people in our society. They are our future, as our demographics are getting older, and we are going to become more and more reliant on the economy that they generate. I have said it before, and I will say it again and again in this Chamber: Governments do not create growth; businesses create growth. We are now looking to these young people to start businesses and take risks on employing others. I urge the Government to, at the very least, come back having monitored that there is no impact on them and no further impact on the loss of employment that could ensue.

Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

If I may paraphrase the Prime Minister, I think he was referring to the fact that people on the far right were using this to exploit fears and prejudices and to stir up fear and hatred.

What I am trying to do—I am sure the noble Lord will share this aim—is find concrete solutions by accepting the recommendations here and accepting into legislation, as far as we can, the recommendations of the IICSA report, and by taking positive action to encourage the police to go after particular groups that we know now can have their cases reopened, and so improve the prosecution rate accordingly. It is absolutely right that the core duty of police officers should be to follow the evidence and the truth and not worry about the ethnic background of the individual who may or may not be the perpetrator—they should bring the perpetrator to justice, whatever background they are from. I will ensure that guidance is given by our chief constables to ensure that the police understand that duty, as I believe they now do.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I urge more humility and a little less complacent gaslighting. No parties have clean hands. Too many people, including the victims, were smeared as racists for even raising the issue—and that includes in this House, as an aside. Will the 2020 Home Office paper on group-based child sexual exploitation be immediately withdrawn now that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, has exposed its much-cited false claim that group-based CSE offenders are most commonly white, which the audit says does not seem evidenced by research or data—in other words, it is misinformation? It is a Whitehall policy wonk version of the literal Tippexing out of the word “Pakistani”. Can the Minister assure us that that report will now be taken out of public circulation?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I will say two things to her. The 2020 report, as I recall, was not produced this Government or this Home Office. I will look at that report and the action, but the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, herself said only yesterday at the Home Affairs Committee, “If you look at the data on child sexual exploitation, suspects and offenders, it is disproportionately Asian heritage. If you look at the data for child abuse, it is not disproportionate, it is white men”. We need to accept the discussions and focus we have had to date and look at positive solutions for dealing with this.

When the noble Baroness says we need less complacency and more humility, I say that I have stood at this Dispatch Box on behalf of this Government and accepted all 12 recommendations from the noble Baroness, Lady Casey. I have accepted the bulk of recommendations from the IICSA report from Alexis Jay, and I have put in place additional police support to take action on historic cases and bring 50% more offenders to justice. I do not think that is complacent. I ask the noble Baroness to try to work with us constructively; let us look at the solutions. I will accept constructive criticism, but I am not going to be called complacent when we have accepted every recommendation, done the things we have done on IICSA and brought more people to justice.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled a number of probing amendments to Clause 61. As I alluded to earlier, I take the view that the amendments are not unhelpful but should be seen through the prism of fairness, balance, proportionality and reasonableness. There is the possibility that, as drafted, it could plausibly be argued that the Bill’s balance is very much in favour of not just employees and union members but unions themselves as corporate bodies and organisations, rather than employers.

We are on our eighth day in Committee, and we have discussed on a number of occasions the less than benign economic circumstances faced by many businesses, including small businesses. The situation is deteriorating. Pretty much every week, there is worse economic data than one would hope for, particularly for the jobs market and the levels of employment and potential unemployment.

Therefore, anything that the Government do—and certainly this Bill represents a very far-reaching change to the employment relations regime—to make things more difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises, and businesses generally, to employ people should be a cause for concern for Members of your Lordships’ House.

I will briefly go through the amendments. Amendment 224 would qualify the right to time off for union officials with a reasonableness test. I can see that most relationships between employers and union representatives are positive, based on mutual respect and it was ever thus. Therefore, this will not be a problem for the vast bulk of employers. However, when I was a local councillor, I had to rely on the Employment Rights Act 1996 to enforce my right to attend a number of meetings held during the day—in my case, at Ealing Borough Council, although I was an alternate member of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, which met across the road at County Hall. As a young working man, it was sometimes very difficult to get time off, and I understand that we went in the right direction in guaranteeing the right to time off. Equally, reasonableness is key, and this amendment speaks to that.

Amendment 225 would qualify the right to the provision of facilities for union officials with an appropriateness test. Again, this reflects a real-world experience of the discrete circumstances affecting a business at the time that the request is made. It might not be appropriate for a business to provide a room, audio-visual facilities or materials. This would be easier for a big company, which has a bespoke budget for HR training et cetera, than for a much smaller commercial entity, which might struggle to provide a similar level of facilities for trade union officials.

Amendments 226, 227 and 228 would reverse the burden of proof in disputes over the reasonableness of requested time off for union activities, and therefore there would be more of a balance for making the case for facilities being provided. I do not want to delay the Committee at this relatively late juncture; the amendments stand on their own merits.

Amendment 229 would qualify the right to time off for union learning representatives, again with a reasonableness test. In past debates, I mentioned my admiration for the Workers’ Educational Association and the great work it did in empowering working people to improve their life and their life chances, which is very important. However, a reasonableness test makes sure that it can be accommodated in a way which will not undermine the commercial viability of a business, while at the same time assisting individual workers and their representatives to deliver education and training outcomes.

Amendment 230 would qualify the right to the provision of facilities for union learning representatives, again with an appropriateness test.

Amendments 231, 232 and 233 would reverse the burden of proof in disputes over the reasonableness of requested time off for union learning representatives. It would be for the union representatives to explain why their request for facilities and learning resources was reasonable rather than the other way round.

These are probing amendments. I know I have said it before, but it bears repetition that these are not wrecking amendments. They do not alter substantially the kernel of the Bill, which is—and I take Ministers on their word—to improve the working lives of people, as in the report, Make Work Pay. I accept that premise and that Ministers sincerely want to do that, but these amendments are an attempt to rebalance between the workforce, their representatives and employers in a fair and equitable way. On that basis, I beg to move Amendment 224.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I oppose the question that Clause 62 should stand part of the Bill, with the intention of removing provisions which compel employers to allow time off for trade union equality reps. To note, I am not opposed to trade union facilities time per se, and I am actually not objecting to Clause 61 in relation to learning reps.

My concern is specifically on the nature of equality as has been interpreted by the trade unions in recent years, the divisive nature of their adherence to identity politics, for example, and the ideologically contentious implementation of prescriptive policies, often setting one group of workers against another. Trade union priorities under the auspices of fighting for equality have been skewed, to say the least.

The wording in this unfeasibly long clause states at subsection (12)(b)(i) that:

“‘equality’, in relation to a workplace, means … the elimination of discrimination, harassment and victimisation … in accordance with the Equality Act 2010”.


You would think I would have nothing to disagree with there, yet, time after time in the last few years, what we have actually seen is the discrimination and victimisation of women workers that has been at best ignored and too often actively abetted by trade unions’ own version of inclusive equality. They have in fact ignored the Equality Act.

Let me use as an example an incident that happened in May 2024 at Epsom and St Helier University Hospital. A black female nurse, Jennifer Melle, indirectly called a six-foot transgender patient “Mister” while on the phone to a consultant. The patient, whom I will call Mr X, was having treatment on the ward, having been transferred from a male prison. He was chained to two guards. Mr X is serving a sentence for luring young boys into sex acts on the internet while pretending to be a woman. For Ms Melle’s alleged misgendering, Mr X, the convict, violently lunged at her, screaming, “Do not call me Mister, I’m an effing woman”, and then called her the N-word, screaming it at her. He of course used the full words in those instances, and he screamed that word at her three times.

After her shift, Jennifer went home shaken but resilient about the reality of unpleasant abuse at work. She was then contacted by her hospital trust. You might think it was a welfare check—but no. There was no mention of support after the racist attack. Instead, she was issued with a written warning, and the trust reported her to the Nursing and Midwifery Council to investigate her fitness to practise, because she posed a risk to the public, it was said, and the reputation of the NHS for not using the patient’s preferred gender identity. Only when Jennifer went public and the story hit the media did the trust say it would investigate the racist abuse. But by then, it had suspended Jennifer for telling her story. Then, they moved her to another hospital, demoted her to a lower grade, and she lost pay et cetera.

Now, I would have assumed that this shocking story would be a huge equality-at-work story for the trade union movement to take up: an ethnic minority female, a front-line health worker, a victim of explicit racist harassment and male violence, all over the papers, and then gross discriminatory employer behaviour. But no, not a dicky bird: a deafening silence in the nursing unions and the TUC. Maybe Nurse Jennifer was, as an open evangelical Christian, rather than a trade unionist, the wrong kind of victim.

Recently, we heard that another nurse, Sandie Peggie, a Royal College of Nursing member for 30 years, has been forced to sue her union for its failure to support her or provide legal assistance when she was suspended by NHS Fife. Her crime was that she challenged the presence of Dr Beth Upton, a biological man, in the women-only changing rooms at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy. That Nurse Peggie’s legal action is necessary should shame the trade union movement. As Mrs Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, explained, her client expected the union to

“exercise its industrial muscle to challenge the decision which was adversely impacting her and other female union members”.

She alleged that she

“spoke to the union about the issue of single-sex spaces in February last year”.

In relation to this amendment, how can we mandate employers to provide generous facility time for trade union equalities work with such a risible attitude to the real-life attacks on equality at work, as evidenced? When Nurse Peggie is forced to take legal action to get justice from her own union, I am not sure I want any more union equality officers. Susan Smith, of the For Women Scotland organisation that brought the successful Supreme Court action, notes:

“We imagine this is likely to be first of many such cases. Sadly, it seems that only financial penalties will persuade the unions to step up, do their job, and represent women in the workplace”.

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[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for their amendments relating to the provision of facilities to trade union officials and representatives, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for speaking to them. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for initiating debate on Clause 62, to which I will also speak.

In Amendments 224 to 233, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, he seeks to amend Clause 61 to maintain, as he argues, a reasonable balance of obligations and responsibilities between employers and employees. Like the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, I take the amendments at face value: they are probing and not wrecking, and the noble Lord is trying to understand the appropriate balance. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that the clause already seeks a reasonable balance of obligations and responsibilities between employers and employee representatives. The paid time off that trade union representatives receive is often insufficient to fulfil all their trade union duties. Many union representatives use significant amounts of their own time to support workplace relations. Indeed, in some sectors, in some companies, in some firms, their trade union activity is carried out very much on a voluntary basis rather than it being about people having full-time release and doing nothing towards the organisation apart from conducting trade union duties.

The Government want to rebalance obligations and responsibilities by ensuring that union workplace representatives are able to take sufficient paid facility time and have sufficient access to facilities to enable them to fulfil their union representative duties. While the clause grants trade union representatives the right to facility time and accommodation and other facilities from their employers, it does so by having regard to a relevant code of practice issued by ACAS. The ACAS guidance will help employers to implement these measures and will be updated in partnership and through consultation with both employers and trade unions. It will therefore help to ensure that a balance of obligations and responsibilities is secured, and ACAS is a very appropriate and worthy organisation to undertake that role.

Greater facility time will lead to improved work representation and better industrial relations by giving trade unions and workplace representatives the freedom to organise, represent and negotiate on behalf of their workers. This will result in more mature industrial relations and increased co-operation between employers and unionised workers, leading to beneficial outcomes for businesses and the economy. This is a framework to promote more co-operation and understanding at work, not more scope for conflict.

Amendments 234 to 236 concerning Clause 62, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, require that a performance condition must be met before facility time for equality representatives is provided by public sector employers. This would make the provision of facility time contingent on the employer already meeting certain performance standards, although the amendment is not specific about what those standards are.

We fully recognise the importance of strong public sector performance and accountability. However, linking facility time for equality representatives to performance conditions is both disproportionate and counterproductive, as it would create a barrier to improvement and creating stronger industrial relations. These amendments would require the Secretary of State to certify that a public sector employer is meeting relevant statutory performance standards before facility time can be granted. Together, they would pose heavy administrative burdens on both employers, who would need to apply and provide evidence, and central government, which would have to assess compliance for every employer.

I hesitate in suggesting this, but in speaking to other amendments on the Bill in Committee, those on the Benches opposite have been very quick to point out the administrative burdens that they assume are being placed on employers across all sectors by various measures in the Bill. The kind of burdens that this amendment would place on the public sector would not be tolerated by them on the private sector. More fundamentally, they would risk delaying facility time precisely for those organisations most in need of support and undermine the very purpose of equality representatives. Furthermore, a Secretary of State-led certification process would create legal uncertainty and potential disputes. It could also harm industrial relations in the public sector.

Finally, I turn to the opposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, to Clause 62. This clause inserts new Section 168B into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and requires that an employer must permit an employee who is

“a member of an independent trade union recognised by the employer, and an equality representative of the trade union, to take time off during the employee’s working hours”

for specified purposes. However, this applies only if

“the trade union has given the employer notice in writing that the employee is an equality representative of the union”,

or will be undergoing or has completed training to become an equality representative. Sufficient training is that which is sufficient for fulfilling the purposes of an equality representative role, having regard to a relevant code of practice issued by ACAS or the Secretary of State.

Clause 62 also requires that the employer must permit the employee to take paid time off during working hours to undergo training relevant to their role as an equality representative and, where requested, provide the employee with accommodation and other facilities to enable them to fulfil their role, having regard to the relevant code of practice issued by ACAS. Should an employer fail to permit the employee to take time off or to provide the employee with facilities as required, the employee may present a complaint to an employment tribunal, at which it will be for the employer to show that the amount of time off that the employee proposed was not reasonable. So far on those grounds, it is as for any other recognised rep status.

Trade unions have long fought for equality: from Grunwick to the Bristol bus boycott, to campaigning on Section 28, to recently standing up for retail workers—mostly female—who have to cope with violence in the workplace, particularly from customers. It is important to recognise, as, it is fair to say, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, did in her remarks, that equality reps have a key role in raising awareness and promoting equal rights for members, as well as in developing collective policies and practices that enable organisations to realise all the benefits of being an equal opportunities employer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave some specific examples. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, in saying that the cases the noble Baroness recounted, of Nurses Jennifer and Peggie, were horrific experiences you would not want to see anyone encounter. However, I am unsure that using that single brush to tar the feathers of the whole equality reps proposal is proportionate. There may be some correlation, but I am not sure that there is causation.

Clause 62 recognises a trade union equality representative as a person appointed or elected in accordance with the trade union rules, in a manner consistent with the Equality Act 2010. I contend that equality reps have a key role to play in raising awareness and promoting equal rights for all members, as well as in developing collective policies and practices that will enable organisations to realise all the benefits of being an equal opportunities employer. It is pure speculation but, had equality reps been in place in local authorities in earlier decades, and had there been more awareness of inequality in women’s pay, those local authorities facing significant equal pay claims today might not be facing them. Who can say?

I am not sure how rhetorical the questions were from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on the sort of equality. For the purpose of the clause, it is defined in the Equality Act 2010.

Turning to Amendment 237—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as the Minister asked a direct question, I might as well answer it now. I gave individual examples. I am sorry if the personalised examples made it sound as though they are one-off cases. I was simply trying to bring alive trends, not say, “Nurse Peggie”. There are loads of them, but I only had 10 minutes. They are trends, but I have brought them alive, I hope.

I ask the Minister to reflect on two things. As the Equality Act 2010 defines equality, I used the example that many trade unions are saying that they will refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court clarification of what equality means under that very Act. They are going to defy it in the name of equality—trans inclusion and so on. How do you square that circle?

Secondly, the Minister read out the points about training. In part, I was challenging whether the Government care what the content of that training is. My argument was that the training being used in the name of equality is divisive and may not be helpful in the workplace, and is in fact likely to turn worker against worker, rather than the reverse. Do the Government consider any of that, or do they just hand it over to the reps?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will try to address those points now. Of course we care whether reps, when undertaking any role—whether it is health and safety, learning, or workplace negotiation—comply with the law and are trained in a suitable manner. That does not mean we should necessarily be scrutinising every single thing they do, because one would not expect that in the normal way of things.

I certainly did not mean to belittle the examples the noble Baroness gave, and I am sure they are not the only ones. But at the same time, one cannot make the generalisation that this is endemic across all workplaces where there is union representation. I will also speculate —as we are sort of speculating here—that the engagement and involvement of equality reps might prevent the kind of activity the noble Baroness outlined in the case of Nurses Sandie Peggie and Jennifer. That is counterfactual speculation; one cannot say either way, but it is worth positing if we are serious about discussing this.

I should add, without wanting to stray too far from my brief and, indeed, land myself in some kind of legal hot water, that the Government’s expectation is that all organisations will comply with equalities law in every manner while carrying out their duties. Whatever equality law clearly specifies, we expect all organisations, employers and trade unions to follow that.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am getting snarky comments from the Tory Front Bench. I object strongly to that.

I am speaking in support of Amendment 238, even though the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, needs no support at all. This would establish

“a clear positive right to strike (and take action short of a strike)”.

As the noble Lord pointed out at the start of his introduction, from the early 1980s onwards, we have had one set of anti-union laws after another, and there are now decades of them. Conservative Governments have introduced anti-union laws, and Labour Governments have mostly kept them. The result has been declining union membership and that the power of working people has been taken away. The UK has gone from being a country where income inequality was not that bad, and was even falling in the 1970s, to one where inequality has been rising sharply ever since. That means more billionaires and more money for the top 1% of earners, while more people exist on low incomes and live their entire lives owning nothing but debt.

Our economy has stopped working in the interests of the majority of people. Working people have less power but businesses and capital have more. That is one reason why in this country millions of pounds now disappear to offshore tax havens. The right of working people to withdraw their labour is a fundamental right, but it has been eroded. This amendment on the right to strike is another little step towards restoring the balance of power in the workplace. Without these little steps, which enable working people to stand up for themselves, this country will continue to get worse for the majority of people who do the real work.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want briefly to commend the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for putting this amendment forward. I have a lot of sympathy with it. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has explained some of my reasons for supporting it.

I just wanted to note that it is very tempting when rights are being taken away to want to consolidate them via the law and constitutionally. I felt it myself in relation to civil liberties, which I think are under attack: the right to protest and in particular free speech. I keep wishing there was a First Amendment, because then it would be there and they would not be able to attack it.

However—this a good faith question—when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, justify it in relation to international treaties, ECHR, the Council of Europe and so on, I started to worry that maybe this would become one of those treaties where it would be, “You can’t touch this” and you would end up treating it technocratically, as it were. Rather than it being fighting for the right to strike, it would be fighting for the principle of the right to strike with ordinary workers, rather than simply referring to defending it in the law. So can the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, even though he does not stand a chance of getting it through, reassure me that this is not just an attempt at ring-fencing a right, but then neglecting to fight for it in real life? I commend him and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for raising this, because I really do feel that rights need to be protected under this Government as much as any other, I have to say.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Woodley, are I think as people have outlined. I have been on the wrong end of that legislation on a number of events—official strikes, unofficial strikes and secondary picketing. As a shop steward you are responsible for taking those actions for a company; there are consequences and I have suffered consequences from that.

It is not that I agree with the rights being taken away, but I think times have changed and unions have moved on now. The right of anybody to remove their labour, if they are pushed to it, should be a universal right, but it should be used very sparingly and in very special circumstances. It is all very well rushing to legislation and quoting the European Court, but we live in the real world and when things happen to people at work and people are treated badly, sometimes we have not got time to go and contact the KC and get case law. We just do the things that we used to do and take that action straight away. Sometimes that resolves the matter fairly quickly, because a reasonable employer will see the action you have taken as a direct result of another manager doing something that was not in agreement. So I get the thrust of this.

I have had notes typed and I have been writing my own notes, but I think the top and bottom for me is the amendment is seeking to restore a trade union’s flexibility in choosing which members to ballot and removing some procedural requirements and obligations to notify employees in advance of ballots. I think that time has gone as well.

Reinstating rights for prison officers, the group currently subject to significant legal limitations, is one I would like to slightly explore. The intent behind these amendments is to strengthen trade union rights and promote collective bargaining. The concern is potentially around impact, industrial relations and public safety, especially with the actions of prison officers. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and to the Government that the way to protect prison officers is not to enshrine the right to strike but to remove the reasons why they would want to strike. That really is about improving the Victorian conditions that we have in 2025 prison systems, where people go into prison and come out worse criminals or nine out of 10 as drug addicts or whatever.

Governments, instead of trying to give extra law for prison officers, should be looking at the root cause. I know there is a prison plan being built and we are trying to get more education into prisons—if you want to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, he can give you chapter and verse on that, as I have listened to him doing. I hear why it is being done, I understand why it is being done and I know that it is not got a hope in somewhere else of getting through. But I thank the noble Lord for bringing it forward, because sometimes it is good to realise that things that we used to do are perhaps today not even politically correct to do. Human rights and the rights of people who go every day to work, to earn a living and support their family, need airing and need protecting. I know this is a probing amendment, but I thank the noble Lord for bringing it because it is interesting. Now and again it is good to be reminded of how it used to be and how it can be now.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 31 should stand part of the Bill

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am proposing that we remove Clause 31 from the Bill. That would remove the power of the Secretary of State to require largely private sector employers with more than 250 staff to develop and publish equality action plans showing what steps they are taking in relation to the gender pay gap and supporting employees going through the menopause. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who is, sadly, not in her place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, who is in her place, for their support.

This is a probing amendment because I am not at all clear exactly why this clause is deemed necessary or indeed exactly what it entails. On the latter point, I note with some dismay that much of the detail is to be left to regulations in terms of the content of an action plan, the form of an action plan, what manner it will take and even its frequency. There is no detail at all on what sanctions employers face if they do not comply with the yet not detailed regulations. It is very difficult to scrutinise such vagaries, and I fear it reduces the issue to nothing more than a virtue-signalling clause to claim that something positive is being done—action is being taken. What action? We do not know.

What we do know is that here is another clause that requires workplaces to create more paperwork. I fear that the noble cause of women’s equality is being reduced to bureaucracy. I am a tad cynical because, since 2017, employers have been required to publish gender pay gap data annually. Now the demand is for actionable steps, yet what is the problem that we are trying to solve here?

The implication is that more needs to be done to crack down on gender discrimination in the workplace, but I am not convinced that that is such a major problem today as is inferred. Which actions would be deemed acceptable might help us understand what this clause is trying to do, but it is never considered. For example, we are frequently given a reference statistic that men earn roughly 20% more than women. But such figures are misleading, as this is an on-average figure reached through combining part-time and full-time earnings and takes no account of age or employment sector.

Are women continually disadvantaged in the workplace in 2025? When we compare how much women and men are paid for doing the same number of hours each week, there is virtually no pay gap. Of course, it would be illegal to pay men more than women. To illustrate the complexities of age, occupation and hours worked, it is worth noting that women in their 20s earn more than men of the same age—not just like-for-like but also on average. Even for all women under 40 working full-time, the pay gap is negligible. Indeed, it was acknowledged by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, when she was a Government Minister bringing in the pay gap notices. She said then:

“We’ve virtually eliminated the gap for full-time workers under 40 and the gap for the over-40s is shrinking too”.

If we only look at these issues in a technocratic way, do we not we miss nuances?

You could say that a decline in jobs traditionally associated with men earning more is actually a decline in old industries, because there has been a decline since 1979, when 40% of GDP was those old industries in which men earned more. But I am not sure that is something to celebrate. In other words, if you only view equality through the gender pay gap, you could actually end up arguing for the suppression of men’s pay or celebrating its decrease.

More to the point, what are employers being asked to action here, when many of the changes are broad social and cultural shifts, rather than sexist employment practices? It is true that, in the past, the labour market was rigidly segregated according to sex. As a consequence, men and women in their 50s and older today entered a labour market in which women were often not treated fairly. There was a cultural situation where women were more likely to take considerable time out of work to raise a family. This alone explains pay differentials that are still being felt today. But, as I say, as young women are earning more, these things are less of a problem. If we end up thinking that the reason the pay gap exists is older women and those differentials, I am not keen that we end up dumping older female employees so that, on paper, the gap is narrowed. I am not suggesting that anyone is saying that, but I am saying that we should not deal with this in a technical fashion.

I now arrive at something in which I have more expertise: older women. We arrive at the menopause part of the new section to be inserted by this clause. My concern here is that the Bill may end up amplifying the problems caused by the menopause for female employees, unintentionally presenting menopausal women as victims unable to cope. This could re-stigmatise the menopause—the opposite of what is intended. We should remember that the menopause is a natural life stage that all women go through and experience, and they all experience it differently in its duration and symptoms.

I worry that some of this has led to awareness raising that can mystify the menopause and turn it into an imagined horror story. I remember talking to a group of young students some years ago. I made a quip about being menopausal and they all said, “Oh no—how awful. That’s grim. How are you coping? Are you feeling all right?” They seemed terrified at the prospect. The menopause suddenly appeared to be an insurmountable series of anguishes that they would never cope with. Inevitably, they had been on a well-being course that had given them awareness training on the menopause. Do we want such attitudes becoming embedded in attitudes to female staff in the workplace, along with the association that, if you are menopausal, you are a delicate flower who needs to be worked around?

What exactly will employers be required to do to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the specific needs of menopausal women? I have read activist demands that include the widespread availability of cooling fans; menopause champions and ambassadors in every workplace and department to encourage anti-stigma dialogue across the workforce; therapist sessions, including the availability of therapy dogs; and training courses for HR and management to look at everything from thermostat levels to developing menopause-sensitive language codes. To be honest, lots of these ideas stray dangerously close to condescending women. It might well be that this is not what the Government have in mind at all, but we have no idea if that is true because there are no details in the Bill—in fact, the details are all deferred until after the Bill is passed.

Do not get me wrong—I have been a vocal supporter of improving access to HRT on the NHS and, as a woman of a certain age, I am rather too familiar with some of the debilitating symptoms. But we should be wary of the calls, for example, for menopause leave and time off, with no questions asked, when using the word “menopause” would be enough to mean that—without any evidence and based on lived experience—employers are just meant to accept that there is a problem. There is a danger of green-lighting a mission creep not dissimilar to the crisis of so many not in work citing mental health problems—and I am really pleased to see that the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has raised this. That is a new social problem, and I do not want the menopause to become another one.

Again, possibly none of this is what the Government intend, yet we are using legislation to demand that employers must take steps to support employees going through the menopause. That seems completely inappropriate and unjustified, and it is bound to lead to mission creep if this legislation is used to that end, with this clause in it.

I will make two quick points as a PS. Can the Government please be careful with their language? Usually, it is the Government lecturing people like me on the Back Bench about watching our words and what language we use, but, whether we like it or not, the word “gender” has been corrupted by ideology. The pay gap that the Government seek to tackle is between the two sexes—a fear that biological women may be discriminated against as women. I am not being pedantic or referencing the culture wars here; I have been at a number of official corporate events over recent years where businesses were patted on the back for helping women break through the glass ceiling and for their work on the pay gap only for the examples of success given to be trans women—that is, men who identify as women—on corporate boards. I want to avoid that con happening.

--- Later in debate ---

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and to my noble brother opposite, that we are taking a delegated power, mirroring the approach taken for gender pay gap reporting. The use of regulations in this way will enable us to share as much detail to employers as possible while maintaining flexibility, which is essential to good employment practices. We are aware that most employers think of equality and inclusion as a whole. That is why we are aiming to reflect how employers already work by proposing a single plan covering both the gender pay gap and the menopause. For these reasons, we believe that equality action plans will benefit women in the workplace and that this clause is vital to strengthening the opportunities available to women. I therefore beg to move that Clause 31 stands part of the Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke, some of whom were more sympathetic than others to what I was trying to raise.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, made an important point when he talked about the importance of accurate data. I agree, but data and statistics are not flat lines; they are complicated. I tried to indicate, without boring your Lordships with lots of statistics, that the gender pay gap number in relation to statistics is to do with age, the past, the change in relation to young women, and so on, which nobody has come back on. In fact, there are books written, and I have papers, and I have read them all—I will not bore your Lordships now—but I suggest that this is not the key issue facing women at work today.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, came back on a lot of the points in terms of the aspirations, and I agree with him. However, the Government are overcomplacent about the problems of delegated powers and legislative oversight, which I also raised as a substantial part of my complaint. There was no comeback. I supported the Government when they were in opposition. They constantly raised these issues, and I went along with them and supported them.

Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, suggested, I thought this was a modest proposal, but somehow I have managed to be accused of fuelling Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, and this was called an illustration of my political journey from far left to far right. I will not do a full critique of the attack on me, which was very personal and personalised, but I would like to point out something.

I was and am a member of the left, and the fact that the Labour Party and the left have moved in a different direction from mine does not necessarily mean that I am the one who has moved to the right. I spend a lot of time talking to ordinary working-class people—women and men—who are tearing their hair out at the attacks on the living standards that they are going through under this Government. Therefore, to be lectured about not understanding the fight against inequality, and the idea that anybody who stands up and challenges an orthodoxy on a potentially bureaucratic plan—by the way, I never mentioned employers and costs; I said it was an insult to women that we got reduced statistics and bits of paper, which was a different point. But anyway, it is crucial that we should challenge the orthodoxies of gender equality when they are presented in this way without being treated as though one is a far-right pariah. It is unworthy of the nature of this House, which is to debate and scrutinise, in my opinion. I simply try to do that.

I still want to push this—more so now than before—on Report, but for now I will not oppose this clause standing part of the Bill.

Clause 31 agreed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friends on this side of the House have commented on this amendment in far better terms than I could, but I will make a supplementary point. I was very surprised to see this amendment, because one of the perennial themes that we have heard throughout all stages of the Bill in this House has been a complaint about the alleged level of extra bureaucracy that it is supposed to impose on employers. Yet here we see a veritable feast of form-filling and requirements to report on those forms at regular intervals. I suggest that this amendment is not needed; it is surplus to requirements because it places unnecessary burdens on employers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. It is very important that we do not suggest that giving a helping hand to those who have been politically deprived of equality equals equality. It can also equal tokenism. Working-class people, women and people from ethnic minorities have been promoted to positions in authority, and people basically point them out and say, “Look at them: they succeeded”. That is the opposite of equal treatment, and condescension is not a good look.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I can hardly follow my noble friend Lady O’Grady in being the TUC’s first woman general secretary, but I was the first woman leader of Newport City Council after decades and the first woman leader of the Welsh Local Government Association—and am still the only one.

I was also a public service employee for 35 years, when I taught in schools in London and south Wales, so I know about positive action. When I became a public service employer, as the leader of Newport, what I tried to do with positive action was to actively take a range of measures and initiatives to encourage people from communities that were underrepresented. We wanted them to bring their talents, experiences and expertise to our organisation, and we wanted them to join us.

Our selection process was no different: through the use of positive action, we did not seek to remove competition; rather, we wanted to allow everyone the same level of opportunity. That final selection for a post was always made on the merit of the applicant. We built our workforce so that it reflected the rich diversity and complexities of our community of Newport and we attracted the best talent from the widest pool of people.