Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway

The existing legislation and enforcement are sufficiently robust to ensure that workers undertaking work experience or internships should get the minimum wage to which they are legally entitled. HMRC have contacted over 3,200 employers advertising unpaid internships to ensure they are compliant with the law. Where HMRC come to the view that the arrangements constitute “work” under National Minimum Wage regulations, they will require the employer to pay any arrears to the worker, in addition to penalties of up to 200% of the arrears.

The Government believes that our trade union law complies with international conventions, including those of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Workers in the UK have the right to join a union and organise, this is rightly protected by law. They also have the ability to strike should they wish to. The Government believes however that taking strike action has to be balanced with the rights of others, including employers and members of the public.

We will consider the findings of the ILO report carefully and respond in due course.

The sectors in the Strikes Bill broadly stem from the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, as amended by the Trade Union Act 2016, as they have long been recognised as important for society to function effectively.

Strike action in education services has the potential for far reaching consequences for members of the public, for example children and young people who can be denied access to vital learning if education services strike.

It is only right that these services, which the public pay for and expect to be there when they need them, are included in the Bill.

The published impact assessment, as noted by the Regulatory Policy Committee, includes an in-depth discussion of the potential risks to the policy of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill. The Government therefore does not believe that it is necessary to change the impact assessment in this respect.

We are proud of the UK’s record on labour standards, having raised domestic standards over recent years to make them some of the highest in the world.

In leaving the EU we regained the ability to regulate autonomously, and the government is therefore conducting a comprehensive review of all retained EU employment law to ensure that our regulations are tailored to the needs of the UK economy and help create the conditions for economic growth.

The AI Safety Summit will focus on frontier risks posed by the most advanced AI systems. It will bring together key countries, as well as leading technology companies, academia and civil society, to drive targeted, rapid international action to drive safety at the frontier of this technology. The Summit will seek to advance international collaboration to understand, identify and mitigate frontier AI risks.

While the Summit is not focused on AI’s impact on the labour market and workers’ rights, these wider societal risks that AI, both at the frontier and not, can pose are issues the UK government takes extremely seriously at the highest levels. We are grateful for the engagement we have had to date from trade union representatives and the analysis they have shared, and we look forward to continuing that engagement after the Summit.

On regulatory protections, the AI regulation white paper was published in March this year. It set out five high-level principles that regulators should consider when thinking about AI: Safety and Security; Appropriate Transparency; Fairness; Accountability and Governance; and Contestability and Redress. On fairness, the White Paper set out that AI systems should not undermine the legal rights of individuals or organisations, discriminate unfairly against individuals, or create unfair market outcomes. The white paper proposed that regulators will need to ensure that AI systems in their domain are designed, deployed and used considering descriptions of fairness that they have developed for their remits. We expect that the implementation of fairness by existing regulators will be underpinned by existing law that protects against discrimination such as the Equality Act 2010 and Human Rights Act 1998 as well as data protection, consumer and competition law. Where AI might challenge someone’s human rights in the workplace, the UK has a strong system of legislation and enforcement of these protections, using both state and individual enforcement through specialist labour tribunals.

The UK notes the EU Artificial Intelligence Act with interest and highlights the importance of international cooperation and interoperability across AI governance approaches to ensure a global approach to responsible AI. While the EU are taking a statutory approach to AI regulation, the UK’s regulatory approach will be closely monitoring the impact of existing regulation on the wider ecosystem and we will consider whether further interventions are needed. We believe this approach strikes the right balance between responding to risks and maximising opportunities afforded by AI.

As the Chancellor set out in the Edinburgh Reforms last year, the government remains committed to high standards and to a robust regulatory environment that safeguards the UK’s financial stability.

The PRA and FCA, who are responsible for rules on remuneration, are operationally independent from government and have statutory objectives to promote safety, soundness, and effective market functioning.

The removal of the bonus cap is entirely a decision by the independent regulators.