Fair Work Agency: Small and Micro Businesses

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for reminding us of his amendment in Committee. As far as I know, and I will obviously correct by way of a letter, the consultation is happening and statutory instruments—secondary legislation—will follow suit. We hope to get this up and running by April 2026.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, the one thing one would have thought the Government had learned from the Budget is that business cannot deal with uncertainty. Most of the Fair Work Agency legislation is going to be in secondary legislation, so we need to know exactly when that is going to come out. Importantly, as my noble friend said, the SME community is very worried. SMEs employ 16 million people. Will the Government commit to set up a dedicated SME consultation panel to review the Bill’s rollout and try to avoid unintended consequences?

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

As I mentioned earlier, the intention is to have the secondary legislation in place and for this to be set up in April 2026. As for engagement with SMEs, we have stressed that there will be an advisory board within the Fair Work Agency made up of representatives from business organisations, big and small, trade unions and independent representatives so that they can feed in their concerns and so that the Fair Work Agency will be able to do its job.