Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall and Lord Hendy

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, have said everything that I wanted to say. I just want to add that it has been a pleasure working with them and with my noble friend Lady McIntosh to endeavour to understand the nature of this dispute. It occurs to me, in the light of what we have been discussing this afternoon, that a good dose of collective bargaining and negotiation might come to the assistance of the parties.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I had not expected to speak at any point during this Bill, and I will do so now only very briefly to express my thanks to the noble Earl and his colleagues for praying my name in aid in relation to this amendment. I really just want to say that I may be the only person in the House—and I am certainly, I think, the only person in this Chamber—for whom a casting directory was the bible of my life for many decades. Therefore, I know exactly how important it is to performers that there should be a trusted published work of some kind to which they can refer their information which can then be the source of potential employment through the work of casting directors and other industry professionals.

I just say to the Minister, when she comes to consider this amendment—which, by the way, I do support, and I have nothing to add or anything I wish to contradict in what has been said so far—that it is important to recognise that this is an extremely delicate ecosystem in which there are many, many people who need to avail themselves, and have done over decades, as we have been told, of the kind of service that a casting director and a casting directory provide. Frankly, for most of all of our lives, it has been Spotlight, but it could be others. The people who need to avail themselves of that service are many in number, and the people who need to use it in order to find out about those people are much fewer in number—mostly casting directors. It is very important that they have a trusted source, that performers can rely on their information being carefully curated, looked after and protected in the way that the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, have already outlined, but that we do not disturb the particular delicate relationship between those two aspects of the way that the business works. While I am not in favour of exceptionalism on the whole, I think we do have to understand that this industry operates not always perfectly but certainly in an unusual kind of way, and it is necessary that it continue to do so with the right protections in place.