Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Baroness Coffey

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to move Amendment 141 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She is, about now, talking about net zero to students at Oxford University. It was an engagement that was made some time ago, but she wishes to express her thanks to the Minister for arranging a meeting to discuss this and later amendments, and for the constructive dialogue that followed.

This amendment speaks for itself, but I would like to describe a case where it would have been applicable. It is that of 19 year-old Ellen Reynolds, from Glasgow, who worked a five-hour shift in a restaurant. She told the BBC:

“I ran food and drinks to customers … I cleaned the tables, set up the tables, swept the floor, took people to their seats … took a few payments on the card machine”.


Before that shift, she had to buy a shirt and trousers as a uniform, costing £20. Then, she got paid nothing, and she did not get a job out of it.

The Department for Business and Trade’s guidance on national minimum wage eligibility includes a section on unpaid work trial periods, which discusses to what extent the national minimum wage applies to work trials undertaken as part of a recruitment process. It says that work trials can help employers to

“decide whether the individual has the skills and qualities … for the job”,

and that unpaid work trials can be a

“legitimate practice”,

so long as they are not used

“to obtain work or services for which at least the minimum wage should be paid”.

That, I believe, is an invitation to abuse: the kind of abuse that Ellen suffered, being expected to work for nothing—not getting less than the minimum wage, but getting nothing at all. We hear reports of employers who do this to a succession of workers.

For those who would like to explore this issue in more depth than I have time for today, I point them to a debate in Westminster Hall on 29 March 2023, secured by Stewart Malcolm McDonald MP. That followed the introduction by the same MP of a Private Member’s Bill in 2017 seeking to achieve the same outcome as this amendment. That Bill that won the backing of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Students, among others. The commendably persistent MP reintroduced it last year. So, it has been an issue that has been around a long time but still has no solution.

If the Minister feels that the amendment is not properly drafted, I have been assured by my noble friend that she is in no way attached to the detail of how it is written, although she thanks the Bill Office for its assistance so far. The point is to act and to actually create a solution for an abuse that is enacted on people who can least afford it.

I have heard some very familiar phrases in the past few groups: we need more information, this is not the right time, there is legislation elsewhere that deals with this and this is not the Bill. But if not now, in the Employment Rights Bill, then when and how? We have to protect workers such as Ellen. They are often young and vulnerable, and sometimes English is not their first language. Surely the point of an Employment Rights Bill is to protect people from exploitation such as unpaid work.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am sympathetic to the intentions behind this amendment. There are risks of exploitation, which the noble Baroness has just set out. Where I am somewhat more concerned and have more sympathy with the amendment debated earlier today is about how people continue to do these sorts of jobs and still do not get paid.

To give a real example, the Department for Work and Pensions runs a programme called SWAP. It is quite a short-term programme and it is not quite the same as a boot camp, principally run by the DfE. It is often for people perhaps wanting to go into a new sector or who are open to new experiences, so there is an element of training. However, a key part of the SWAP is that you work and try out. There is no guarantee that, at the end of that, you will get a job with that specific employer, but what really matters is that it will give you a sense of aptitude and of getting back into the workplace, while you continue to receive benefits.

Let us not pretend that receiving universal credit for a week is necessarily the same as being paid the equivalent of a national minimum wage. But my principal concern with this amendment is that, while wanting to avoid exploitation, it would unwittingly or unknowingly shut down these broader opportunities and programmes which the Government run to help get people back into the world of work. That is why it needs to be considered carefully by the Minister, but ultimately rejected.