Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Report stage
Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord’s flow, but I feel that his comments on political funds go a fair way outside the scope of the amendments we are speaking to today. There will be plenty of time to discuss political funds next week on Report.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

With the greatest respect, I do not know if the noble Lord has read my amendment, but that is exactly the point. The point is that before the Bill is passed there should be consultation on these proposals, but there is no opportunity for consultation because they are implemented at Royal Assent. The Government keep telling us that there will be a consultation, but how can there possibly be consultation if the measures come in at Royal Assent?

Still, I am grateful to the noble Lord for that interruption because it proves the point. It also allows me to explain to him another payment from the Unite political fund, which he may not be aware of, to the Marx Memorial Library. I kid you not—you could not make it up. I am sure the members of Unite are thrilled to know that their hard-earned wages are going to support the Marx Memorial Library, but when the Bill becomes an Act, in a matter of months, they will no longer have the right to see that disbursement.

If that is what Unite wants to do then that is up to Unite, but surely it should not be covered up. All I am asking at this time is that proper consultation on the effects of Parts 4 and 6 should take place before this is ramrodded through on the statute book without any proper consultation and discussion with, as the Government like to call them, “relevant stakeholders”. It is on Amendment 106 that I will probably be seeking to test the opinion of the House today.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Katz and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I assume my civil servants understand that I probably know the answer to that question—they might be right, or they may be wrong. To cast my mind to the inner workings of Committee in the other place, the reference in the Bill, as I understand it, is to communication with workers rather than explicitly to digital communication. I sometimes feel that I cannot speak for the way we examine Bills in Committee in this place, let alone in the other place.

We now have the opportunity to discuss, as we are doing, the fact that in the modern day, in 2025, the idea that access to a workforce would not include digital channels is, frankly, fanciful. Were we seriously to say, not to trade unions but to employees—to workers—that the only way that they could receive a message from a trade union or from an employee representative or, to turn it on its head, from an employer was on a piece of paper or in a one-to-one verbal communication, then I think we would all regard that as fanciful. There is a little bit of sophistry—

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Just to expand on this a little further, we are not arguing that unions should not have the right to communicate digitally with workers. That is not the issue; the issue is the right of access. The Government are asking the House of Lords tonight to pass legislation that will allow a third person the right to access an employee’s computer—let us imagine that it is an SME business, possibly run on only one computer, which may contain highly sensitive information; in my case, that would be market-sensitive information— without any controls, references or parameters. I invite the Minister to commit that, before Report, further consideration is made of what such right of access means and the limitations on that right of access. We are not trying to exclude communication to workers; we are just trying to find out the channels and protect SMEs from intrusive activities.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am happy to write to the noble Lord with more detail, but this is one of things that will be set out in regulation following extensive consultation. I go back to the original point of principle that I made about levels of granularity in setting out specific channels: if we specify channels A, B and C, as soon as the Bill is published we risk finding that employers are actually using channels E, F and G, because that is the pace of technology as it develops, so we have to retain flexibility.