Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Baroness said, because this is about fairness and making sure life works. There are a lot of companies, big and small, where, to a great extent, what has been proposed is already working. However, there are a number of instances—including somewhere like where I work—where I do not think this would work.

I will just give your Lordships one quick example. I work in insurance for a huge insurance broker. We had a client in the United States who by 5 pm had not decided whether to renew his insurance contract in London. If he had not renewed it by 1 June—which I guess was a Sunday—he would have had no insurance on that specific part of his business. A member of my team kindly stayed online, for want of a better word—he was probably out and about with the phone in his pocket—and the call came through at some time after 9 pm. Looking at the way the clause is drafted, I am not sure whether that would be considered enough of an emergency to get a member of staff out of bed, so to speak. Equally, that company might have had to stop working, doing whatever it was doing in the oil and gas industry—I know that will not endear me to the noble Baroness, but that is a fact. But we had to bind that insurance contract once we got the order. It was all ready to go; it was just a question of sending a number of emails to say that it was done. So there are huge swathes of the country where it is in fact in place already, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has said, but in some of the big City environments where you are working across time zones particularly, it is extremely difficult to enact.

On working from home, we all worked at home for some time; personally I loathed it—I am back in the office almost as much as I can be. However, I have members of staff who like working at home, and, let me tell your Lordships, they know how to turn themselves off when they do not want to talk to us anymore, and they are good at it. So they should be, and I respect them for it. But if you really need them, you can always find them.

Finally, you can turn the damn machines off. Be it a telephone, a computer, an iPad or whatever it is, there is an off button out there. Certainly when I was a child, we were told never to call anybody after 9 pm, and that was friends and family. So there are some unwritten rules out there that are already very effective.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, we are very grateful indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for introducing us to a fascinating debate. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, put us in touch with the real world, and then my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Ashcombe reminded us about what happens in real life. I suppose I have immediately to declare my interest as a practising solicitor. My phrase, which I always used to share with Albert Blighton, was that I was available 168/52. The number 168 is 24 times seven. So you quickly appreciate that, as a solicitor, you have to be available all the time.

When I won the contract to represent cricket with the England and Wales Cricket Board, they wanted to know whether I would be available on a Sunday evening when there was an incident at a Sunday league match, and I said, “Yes, of course I would”. So it is very much up to the individual to make themselves available.

When I was asked to join the Front Bench in the House of Commons in 1977, I do not think anybody expected that I would refuse to answer an Adjournment debate, even though it might have been at 3 am, which it was on one occasion. Therefore, you set your working parameter in the way in which you develop your own workaholic tendencies, but you should not expect it of everyone, and I think that is what the amendment is all about.

Do you have the right to disconnect? Although I am sympathetic to the idea that you should be able to switch off, which the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, put in context, when the Bill is already introducing considerable uncertainty for employers around shift notice periods, payment for cancelled shifts and wider questions of how flexible working is to be managed in practice, we have to be very cautious about layering on yet another rigid and potentially burdensome obligation.

The noble Baroness may have put forward what appears to be a straightforward proposal, giving workers a right not to respond to emails or calls outside their contracted hours, but in reality, as the Government have quickly realised, despite what they may have said in advance of the election, this whole proposal raises serious practical and legal questions. What does “working hours” mean in a world of flexible, hybrid and self-managed work? How do we define an emergency? What happens in small teams, in customer-facing sectors, which my noble friend Lord Ashcombe highlighted, and in businesses operating across time zones?

Employers, especially small businesses, already face growing compliance costs. This would add yet another administrative requirement. There would have to be a written policy on the right to disconnect, a consultation process, enforcement procedures and, of course, exposure to tribunal claims. So, we must ask: is this really the right moment to introduce such sweeping regulation?

The Bill already creates new rights and obligations that will take time to bed in. There is uncertainty around shift scheduling, compensation for cancellations and the cumulative compliance burden. I have to say to the noble Baroness that I believe the effect of this amendment would be to increase that uncertainty further and risk undermining flexibility for both sides. Most workers and employers already navigate these boundaries reasonably and sensibly. A blanket legislative approach risks making day-to-day communications feel legally fraught, especially in smaller organisations where roles are not so rigidly defined.