Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Norton of Louth

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for tabling Amendment 323C and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for Amendment 335. I pay tribute to the expertise of the noble Lord, Lord Norton, in this area. I reassure the noble Lord that, despite Amendment 323C’s positive intentions, it effectively repeats what the Government already intend to do.

Our impact assessment sets out a clear plan to monitor and evaluate the effects of the Bill and its secondary legislation, following standard government practice. This approach will help us assess how well the measures are delivering on their objectives, inform future policy-making and review the real-world impact on all stakeholders, whose contributions we recognise as vital to the strength of our economy. As is standard practice, in line with our Better Regulation Framework obligations, we also intend to conduct a post-implementation review of the Bill within five years of Royal Assent. This will provide sufficient time to assess the policy’s effectiveness and gather sufficient data for evaluation purposes.

In the case of the fair work agency, ongoing oversight of employment rights enforcement is provided for in Clauses 91 and 92. They require the Secretary of State to publish a three-year labour market enforcement strategy and annual reports, which must be laid before Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Secondary legislation made under the provisions in this Bill will also be subject to the requirements in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 regarding proportionate monitoring and review.

In addition, where further detail will be set out in secondary legislation, the majority of statutory instruments will be subject to the affirmative procedure, allowing both Houses to consider them in detail and providing Parliament with sufficient opportunity for scrutiny and debate. Furthermore, the Government will consult on many of the details to be set out in secondary legislation, listening to the expertise of business, trade unions and civil society to ensure that the details of the regulations are appropriate to the current needs of the labour market.

On Amendment 335, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we want to ensure that workers have these rights for life and not just three years, as the noble Lord proposes. As a result, we oppose his amendment. As is typical with employment legislation, further details on many of the policies in the Bill will be provided through regulations after Royal Assent. We will begin consulting on these reforms in 2025, seeking significant input from all stakeholders. We anticipate this meaning that the majority of reforms will take effect no earlier than 2026. We are committed to getting the detail right. This means listening to and incorporating a wide range of views into our policy development.

While headline statistics, such as employment and unemployment rates, may appear strong by historical standards, millions of workers are stuck in low paid, insecure and poor-quality work that is detrimentally affecting their financial stability and health. The UK’s productivity slowdown is more severe than in other advanced economies. A fragmented labour market and too much insecure work are holding back growth and investment. We also lag behind the OECD average on employment protections, and we have paid the price. The UK economy has not grown at the average rate of other OECD economies in the last 14 years, missing out on £171 billion-worth of growth. Average salaries have barely increased from where they were 14 years ago, and the average worker would be over 40% better off if wages had continued to grow as they did leading into the 2008 financial crisis.

This Bill will ensure a fairer, more equal labour market and deliver wider benefits to the business environment by improving well-being, incentivising higher productivity and creating a more level playing field for good employers. Consider a few of the changes it will bring: over 10 million workers in every corner of the country will benefit; increased well-being alone could be worth billions of pounds a year; there will be less workplace conflict, which costs UK employers about £30 billion a year; and up to 1.3 million employees will gain a new entitlement to statutory sick pay, increasing total sick pay by £400 million per year.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, spoke about the way businesses are perceiving this, but, as my noble friend Lord Leong said, business confidence is actually rising. The latest Lloyds Business Barometer survey shows business confidence at a nine-month high, with rising hiring expectations among businesses. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that a sunset clause would create business uncertainty at the very time when we want to build on that confidence. The industrial strategy, which we published yesterday, has been welcomed by all sectors of business and will help to build that long-term strategy for growth.

Given the benefits the Bill will bring for workers over the long term, we oppose the noble Lord’s amendment and will continue to promote growth for businesses and the level playing field for good employers. With this in mind, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Norton, to withdraw Amendment 323C.

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and the Minister for their contributions to this short debate. Obviously, I am very grateful for their opening comments; it seems to be something on which I have united the two Front Benches.

I am very grateful for the Minister’s considered response. I would prefer it to be in the Bill for the reasons I have given, but I feel I have achieved something this evening as she has come to the Dispatch Box and made the commitment she has, which is valuable because it ensures the Bill will be subject to a review of the kind I seek. Although I would have preferred that to be in the Bill, this short debate has achieved something.

If the Bill is subject to post-legislative review, it picks up on the points made by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral because, with the claims he has made about the Bill, it will be a chance to test whether it has delivered. It is important that post-legislative scrutiny is thorough in the way that some departments most definitely have done it for some Bills, which I welcome. My whole point is to encourage that. It is something I will return to, not necessarily on this Bill but on others, to ensure we achieve the same result. I am grateful to the noble Lord and to the Minister for what they said and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Ivory Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Norton of Louth

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 12th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, have signed to give notice of opposition to the clause standing part of the Bill. I endorse the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, with whom I agree totally. Like him, I have no problems with what the Bill seeks to achieve; the principle is wholly worthy. Indeed, I have no problem with other parts of the Bill either. My concern is with this clause. I do not see why it cannot be excised from the Bill leaving the other parts in place.

Given the clauses that precede and succeed it, I do not see why this clause is necessary. It confers a particular power on civilian officers and civil servants in a way that is remarkable. The Explanatory Notes seek to claim that the powers conferred in the clause are not unusual, but they cite only one example as a means of doing that. One example is not sufficient to demonstrate that this is “not unusual”. It strikes me that these are remarkable powers in themselves, which means that there would have to be a compelling case for this House to go along with them.

There is already a problem with the actual powers, therefore, but then, as the noble and learned Lord indicated, we have to look at what they are designed to achieve. Subsection (2)(a) is free-standing. It confers on civil servants the power to enter purely for the purpose, as the noble and learned Lord put it, of giving a pep talk. I would be rather amazed if even police officers wanted the power to come in and simply give one a pep talk, so to confer that power on civil servants strikes me as remarkable. It is not linked to the enforcement powers; it is simply to go in and, effectively, to seek to educate people about the provisions of the Bill.

Therefore, the power of entry is remarkable but so is what it is used for. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether there are provisions in any other Acts that confer on officials powers of this sort to go in and simply remonstrate or give a pep talk to those whom they feel need to be educated. I am at a loss to understand why the clause is in the Bill, given the other provisions that it contains.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, we very much welcome the interventions by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, members of the Constitution Committee and other noble Lords who have raised concerns about the status and powers of accredited civilian officers. The noble and learned Lord has done a fantastic demolition job on the provisions in the existing clause. I also welcome his overall support for the objectives of the Bill, which are indeed very welcome.

While we have argued throughout that there need to be robust enforcement mechanisms in the Bill, we equally accept that the creation of a new breed of civilian enforcers, with the widespread powers envisaged in the Bill, goes far too far. We would have hoped that providing extra resources for the National Wildlife Crime Unit would provide a more acceptable alternative to the challenge of effective enforcement.

I do not intend to say a great deal because I know that the Minister is keen to find a way to resolve these concerns. I hope that he is able to reassure us that the Government will be tabling their own amendments to bring enforcement back in line with the practice of legal enforcement using comparative situations. I therefore look forward to hearing his response.