Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak on the issue of the labour market enforcement strategy in support of Amendment 274 to which I have appended my name and to build on the excellent remarks of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and the specific points raised by my noble friend Lady Lawlor. For transparency, I declare that I have been a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development for more than 20 years. The CIPD estimates that the People Skills HR support service which it has mooted, working with ACAS, would cost about £13 million under the new regime when this Bill becomes an Act. We already know, following on from my noble friend’s comments, that the cumulative cost of the existing bodies doing similar work, with analogous workstreams, is about £40 million.

Amendment 274 is important because in this country we have a strange anomaly. Unusually for an advanced country, we generally do not put the architecture of scrutiny and oversight in primary legislation. I want to know how this agency is going to be accountable in terms of the costs, who it employs, its policies et cetera. No doubt the Minister will say, “Well, once it becomes an Act, there will be what was the Business Select Committee, or there might be the National Audit Office, or there might be the Public Accounts Committee”. But we are being asked to sign a blank cheque for this without knowing how precisely this agency is going to operate and, most fundamentally, at what cost. We have not seen a detailed impact assessment focusing on the work of this body. On that basis, I ask the Minister specifically how he sees the process of accountability working and whether there will be any work by his department, and Ministers more generally, to work out what the costs are likely to be.

I accept at face value that this Government are committed to reducing the regulatory burden, particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Leong, will bend the Minister’s ear on that, having come from the background that he came from as a champion of small businesses from the Labour side. It is therefore not unreasonable for us to ask what the cost will be and how we will be able to hold this agency to account once it is established.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 277 and 328, which I expect the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, to speak to shortly, are an interesting element. Amendment 277 talks about the review of the fair work agency. Considering that a number of questions have come up about this, that is a fair assessment, given that there is still a considerable amount of consultation to be done. Amendment 328 would basically strip out the commencement of any part of the Act until that review has been done and

“a Minister of the Crown has tabled a motion in both Houses of Parliament for debate … and the review has been approved by a resolution”—

not just regulations.

The reason I say this is that I continue to assert that some of the powers here are going to be novel. Even if the Equality Act 2006 may give powers to the EHRC, it has never used them to institute legal proceedings, only as an intervener or for judicial review, rather than taking on individual cases; I am conscious that there is a consultation there. The amendment from the Liberal Democrats is an interesting way to think about how we are looking at the details of what the new agency is going to do.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, before I begin my comments about the various amendments, I have news from afar. Councillor Fox—sorry, not councillor; that is going back a bit. My noble friend Lord Fox wants to pass on his thanks to Members of the House from all sides who have sent best wishes for a speedy recovery. I signed his card today from the Lib Dem group with the sentiment, “Don’t hurry back. I fully enjoy sitting until midnight doing the employment Bill on your behalf”—which I think, with my noble friend’s irony, he will get. His amendments would require detailed review of the fair work agency’s remit, funding powers and accountability structures, and parliamentary overview before commencement.

We are fairly neutral on Amendments 271ZZA, 274 and 278 from the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, which aim at transparency and reviews. They are broadly procedural, but I have some sympathy with the noble Lord’s three-year review, which could be quite sensible. He explains those two amendments with clarity and brings out the blindingly obvious—the lack of cost and the lack of understanding of how this thing will be set up and work in reality.

I intend to ask the Minister some direct questions as well as supporting my noble friend Lord Fox’s amendments regarding the implementation plan, the opportunity for scrutiny and further consultation. First, I turn to what the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has been talking about, the fair work agency. We debated its creation and power across several earlier groups and I will not labour that point today, but I want to speak clearly in support of Amendments 277 and 328 tabled by my noble friend Lord Fox, and again place on record my regret that he is not able to be with us today. These amendments are central to establishing a credible and accountable agency. Amendment 277 would require a full review of the agency’s remit, powers, funding and relationship with other enforcement bodies, and would be subject to review, as the noble Lord has said. Amendment 328 would link the commencement of the Act to that process.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support several of the amendments tabled by my noble friend. The stand part notice in my name on Clause 134 is also in this group. We are getting into an interesting bit, in a legal sense, about what information is being gathered and how it can be used. I was somewhat struck by this. I found Clause 130 interesting in that, quite surprisingly, no evidence that has been provided relating to the information can be used in a criminal prosecution, apart from that which is directly related to perjury. That made me wonder how this works.

I want to probe why HMRC is—apart from the intelligence services, which I completely understand—singled out in Clause 134 as a body for which extra permission has to be given before its information can be disclosed to all these other different parties. That does not apply for information about the national minimum wage. I remind the Committee that HMRC is a non-ministerial department, so no Minister can be involved in directing HMRC in any way whatever. That is why it surprises me that it is felt that extra permission is needed. I would love to hear further from the Minister on that.

To turn to other amendments in this group, Amendment 273PB is an important one. I appreciate that there are further amendments later about the wider aspects of immigration, but in recognising that this new body will take over from the gangmaster authority on the extension of the Modern Slavery Act, it makes perfect sense that it should be proactively working—not just on cases that “may” be disclosed—with the Government’s agency that is responsible for tackling illegal immigration and all the impacts that come as a consequence of it. I support my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough in that regard.

I have a cheeky point to make about Amendment 273N. For reasons of procedural purposes, my noble friend does not believe that Schedule 9 should be allowed because it contains Henry VIII powers. However, the Minister has already amended, or at least debated, Schedule 9 during the passage of the Bill. I am quite struck that the Low Pay Commission is one of the bodies to which information may be disclosed in relation to Clauses 113 and 114. I am not aware that it is an enforcement body; I thought that it was, in effect, a research body that comes up with recommendations about the minimum wage and so on.

I also noticed that under “Other persons”, Scottish Ministers have for some reason been left out of the equation and may need to be added. Recognising that Part 5 applies to Scotland as well and that Welsh Ministers will receive information, I am surprised that Scottish Ministers are not there.

To make a broader point, we will of course start to see a lot more co-ordination, even with local government. It might be something for Ministers to share with their colleagues. We need to start thinking about combined authorities and also mayoralties—the Greater London Authority is accounted for, but others are not. The intention of this is, I think, to allow more co-ordinated efforts to try to stop abuse of employment law, including issues relating to modern slavery. I am afraid that, for once, I disagree with my noble friend on this occasion. The Government desperately need to be able to amend the bodies under Schedule 9. My main point was probing, particularly on HMRC.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 271D, I shall speak also to Amendments 272ZZA, 272ZZB, 272ZZC, 272ZZD, 272ZZE, 272ZB, 272ZC, 272AA, 272AB and 272AC.

There is a troubling message throughout this legislation of the fundamental belief that third parties, whether they be unions or the state in Part 5, will make decisions on behalf of individuals rather than individuals being able to make decisions for themselves. The challenge with third parties making decisions is that they pay no price when they are wrong, and that is evidenced in this clause. Clause 113(6) states:

“The Secretary of State is not liable to any worker for anything done (or omitted to be done) in, or in connection with, the discharge or purported discharge of the Secretary of State’s functions by virtue of this section”.


That is an unacceptable subsection in this clause, hence my Amendment 272ZZE.

The reality is that workers whose claims are taken up or not taken up by the Secretary of State risk having their rights mishandled or ignored, yet, under the clause as drafted, they would have no recourse, remedy or ability to challenge that failure. We think that that sets a dangerous precedent, because we are granting power without responsibility. We would be creating a regime in which decisions that affect individuals’ livelihoods and legal rights can be made from behind a veil of immunity. That is neither just nor consistent with the principles of good governance. We need to be clear that, if a private employer or a trade union behaved with this level of impunity, we would not accept it, so why are we accepting it from the state?

The fundamental principle underlying Amendments 271D, 272ZZA, 272ZZB, 272ZZD and 272ZC is consent. Clause 113 currently allows the Secretary of State to initiate legal action in a worker’s name without requiring that worker’s consent. That is deeply problematic. Legal proceedings, particularly employment proceedings, can be deeply personal, reputationally sensitive and complicated. To bring such proceedings without the individual’s explicit and informed consent is a serious encroachment on personal autonomy. My Amendment 271D would insert a requirement that the worker must provide written consent before the Secretary of State may act on their behalf. That is not a mere administrative formality; it is the cornerstone of the individual’s control over their own legal affairs.

What if consent was not initially required or given but circumstances change? That is addressed in my Amendment 272ZZA, which would establish a clear opt-out mechanism. It would ensure that the worker is given notice before proceedings begin and is afforded 28 days to object. If they do, the case does not proceed. Surely this strikes a balance between the state’s interest in pursuing enforcement and the worker’s right to decide how their own case is handled. Legal action is not always welcome, even when it is justified. The consequences of litigation, especially in employment, can be damaging professionally and personally. Workers may prefer alternative dispute resolution.

However, consent and opt-out are not enough on their own. Even with consent, the state must be bound by a duty to act in the worker’s best interests. That is why I have proposed an amendment requiring that the Secretary of State should have regard to the worker’s stated objectives, the potential impact on their current and future employment, and the proportionality of taking legal action in the specific context. That is a safeguard to prevent well-meaning intervention becoming harmful or heavy-handed.

Then there is the matter of control. A worker may initially consent to the Secretary of State taking the lead but later wish to take back control of the proceedings, perhaps because they have secured private representation or circumstances have changed. My Amendment 272ZZD addresses this. It would ensure that the worker retains the right to reclaim their case and that the Secretary of State must accommodate that request. It affirms that ultimate control remains with the individual and not with the state.

Finally, my Amendment 272ZC would introduce a fundamental principle, that of subsidiarity. The state should not intervene unless there is absolutely no other viable route to justice. If the worker has representation or access to advice or union support, that route should be exhausted first. Legal action by the Secretary of State should be a last resort, not a first impulse.

These amendments are not intended to frustrate enforcement—far from it. They are designed to ensure that enforcement is fair, consensual and genuinely in the interest of the person whose rights are at stake. Workers are not passive subjects of policy; they are individuals with agency, judgment and a right to decide how they wish to pursue justice. We must ensure that the Bill does not cross the line from protection into paternalism.

I turn to Amendments 272AA and 272AC. Amendment 272AA simply calls for an annual report—nothing excessive, just a basic record of how often these powers have been used, what types of claims have been pursued, the outcomes and any costs or awards recovered. This is a common-sense transparency measure. If the state is litigating on behalf of private individuals, we should, at the very least, be keeping track of how that power is being exercised and with what effect.

Amendment 272AB, however, is the more pressing amendment because it would place a sunset clause on the power, causing it to expire at the end of the next Parliament unless it is actively renewed. It would also require an independent review to assess whether this power has delivered real value for workers, for justice and for public money, because the truth is we simply do not know if this clause is necessary. We do not know if workers even want the state litigating on their behalf; we do not know if the outcomes justify the costs; and we certainly do not know if this is the most effective way to improve enforcement. If this power is to remain, Parliament should be given clear evidence that it works and works better than the alternatives.

Finally, Amendment 272ZB would introduce a simple but important safeguard: a public interest test before the Secretary of State can bring proceedings on a worker’s behalf. Without this, we risk allowing the state to pursue claims that may be frivolous, politically motivated or unnecessary, potentially at public expense and also to the detriment of both workers and employers. Litigation should not be used to make a point; it should be used to deliver justice where it truly matters. This amendment would ensure that such powers are exercised responsibly and proportionately, and only where there is a clear public benefit. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I oppose the Question that Clause 113 stand part of the Bill. I raised this in Second Reading, and I appreciate the discussions that have taken place with officials and the Minister since, but I genuinely believe these are novel powers.

I appreciate that we are perhaps just not going to agree today on how far the Equality Act 2006 goes, but when I tabled Questions to the Minister, they were passed to the EHRC. The commission said that, since it had received those powers—I think it was commenced in 2007—no powers had been used to initiate legal proceedings that were not judicial review or as an intervener. It gave me the distinct impression that it did not necessarily believe that it should be initiating legal proceedings in this regard. It has its own policy and that is under consultation. However, it does beg the question, given some of the other consultations that the Government have initiated, whether they will in future seek to take over any such duties or powers that the EHRC has in a variety of legal proceedings, because the EHRC is not using powers that the Government think it has. However, I think that is still really a matter of debate.

Building on the amendments that have been tabled by my noble friends on the Front Bench, I think this is an odd situation. I appreciate we have discussed elements of Clause 113 before; indeed, the other day we debated my noble friend Lady Noakes’s sensible amendment that this should be in the public interest. It would be helpful to understand from Ministers what they see will happen as a consequence of this. Where are we getting to? What is going on?

I have deliberately degrouped some parts of this discussion on Clause 114—about the money side—but it is useful to understand that, for the purposes of this clause, this is not just about people who are working; it is about people who do not have a job with the person they are seeking to take to court. We had a debate some time ago about why that could be, and we got into a debate about what sort of special privileges there might be. Nevertheless, this seems quite an extraordinary shift in the capability of the Government, first, to initiate these proceedings anyway and, secondly, to do so when the worker involved does not intend to do so. That is why, I appreciate, the legal wording really restricts any inclusion of the worker at a future date, which specifically seems to be ruled out in various provisions in the clause, except in Clause 113(5), which allows the worker to be brought in at an appeal stage. However, I am concerned more generally about this approach of a new agency.

Another element that really concerns me is subsection (6), which in essence provides:

“The Secretary of State is not liable to any worker for anything done (or omitted to be done)”.


I expect that is there to cover circumstances—we may have had a brief exchange on this already—in which the worker says, “You didn’t go after this bit or that bit”; it is kind of “Tough luck”. As it stands, it is not clear to me whether, if the worker is unhappy with the action taken, double jeopardy is allowed: will the worker be allowed to initiate separate claims against the employer, if they feel that the Secretary of State and the enforcement officers have admitted different things?

Overall, this clause is an unnecessary innovation. I am concerned about it, and I would be grateful for some broad examples of how it could be used in the future.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Although I did talk about migrant workers as an example, this is meant to capture all vulnerable workers and all workers who are exposed to unfair practices or intimidation—which happens rather more than noble Lords opposite like to acknowledge.

In conclusion, the civil proceedings powers within the Bill align with our manifesto commitment—

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

The Minister explained subsection (7)(a)(i) of this clause with regards to zero-hours contracts. In subsection (7)(a)(ii), I am struggling to understand how an individual

“seeking to be employed by a person as a worker”

could be a whistleblower. I would be grateful to understand that better, but I am happy for the Minister to write.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

On that point of clarification, I will write to the noble Baroness.

In conclusion, the civil proceedings powers within the Bill align with our manifesto commitment to strengthen enforcement and improve outcomes for workers through a fairer, more accessible system. We need to let the fair work agency operate with the tools it needs, guided by the statute but not constricted by inflexible restrictions or ministerial bottlenecks. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, to withdraw Amendment 271D.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

272BA: Clause 114, page 125, line 34, at end insert—
“(1A) This section only applies to an individual, not a trade union or a person acting on behalf of a trading union, seeking to take action against an employer.”

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, in moving my Amendment 272BA, I will speak also to Amendments 272D to 272L and to oppose Clause 114 standing part of the Bill. With Amendments 272J to 272L, I will consider parts of Clause 115.

I have looked at the Labour Party’s manifesto plan, Make Work Pay. In a previous debate, we talked about enforcement, but no reference was made to this being done without the consent of the worker involved. The manifesto is silent on providing funds, so I thought it was worth debating why we are having this, who it will go to and what amount of money we are considering. Consequently, I have proposed a number of amendments. They were actually tabled before we had the debate on Monday in which covered elements of this. At that time, I noted the response of the Minister, who said that the word “person” used in this legislation—I am not a litigator but a legislator, and I continue to learn about some of these matters—could also include an employer, which I also somewhat address in aspects of some of these amendments.

One of my questions is: who will this benefit? My reason for putting forward Amendment 272BA is to try to make it explicit that we are not talking about money going off to a trade union, which might provide legal advice or legal assistance. When we discussed it the other day, we never got to the bottom of what “any other … assistance” may be. I appreciate that that might be a catch-all, but it would be helpful to get some examples of what Clause 114(2)(c) would cover.

When we get into this—I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has tabled an amendment about legal aid in a later group—it is important to ask: where is this really going? The EHRC has some similar powers to finance proceedings. When I asked the EHRC to set out the amount of money, it said that, as of last month, there were four live cases and that, since April 2020—five years ago—it had spent £1.2 million on this sort of provision. Recognising that the EHRC can already provide assistance on aspects of discrimination and the like, I wanted to try to explore, in this clause stand part debate, what the Government were signing themselves up to and, as I pointed out, to whom it would go.

Amendment 272D is intended to be a probing amendment to examine how much an individual could claim—whether for advice or for representation—and to consider how often people might be turning to the fund that the Government seek to put forward. Should we cap that? How many times can somebody go to get basically free advice? I do not know who would even provide it. We could well consider that it should be provided by only the government legal service, under the auspices of the Attorney-General. I cannot imagine that that is what the Government are thinking, but it would be useful to understand who they think will deliver this and how.

Part of the role of the single enforcement body was supposed to be a place for anyone to go to get advice for free. So I am trying to understand what further is in this. By the way, the Government’s intention— I think it is in their manifesto and other papers they have developed—is that employers can go to the new fair work agency to get advice on how this all works and what they should do as employers. So I am interested to understand where else this could be.

Turning to Amendment 272E, I am conscious that—as was rightly pointed out to me a few weeks ago by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway—Clause 114(2) says “may provide”, rather than “must”, so it will not become a right to get this money. But it would be fair for statutory guidance to be developed and published—ideally, as quickly as possible—on the result of this subsection coming into effect. Candidly, if people anticipate that extra funding will be available, it is important that they understand what expectation they should genuinely have.

In Amendment 272F, I am trying to address the situation that just came up in the debate on Clause 113. I find it hard to understand how we can be in a situation where, having taken over a case, it would go against the sense of natural justice that the worker themselves would then not be able to make representations to the tribunal, or indeed to other courts, to help consider why it has been taken over, when they did not want such action to do. I felt that it was important that, frankly, the Government should pay for that. For me, that felt like a sense of natural justice in that regard.

Amendment 272G concerns something I have raised before, but I wanted to specifically address it. I find it astonishing that the Government are opening up this fund for people to get advice—which, I assume, they cannot get from the fair work agency—but they will not be allowed to use it towards mediation. The answer given in previous debates was, “Well, people can just go to ACAS”. That is right, they can—and ACAS is free. However, while it is free for early conciliation, it is not free for more advanced mediation.

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[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I do not want to extend the debate too much or do too much quoting across the Dispatch Box but, to counter that, Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay talks about establishing a single enforcement body that

“will have the powers it needs to undertake targeted and proactive enforcement work and bring civil proceedings upholding employment rights”.

To a fair-minded person that is pretty clear.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this has been an exceptionally revealing debate on this group of amendments and the clause more broadly. I somewhat agree with the Minister on creating the ability to initiate legal proceedings—which, by the way, continues some of the work already being done by the existing authorities—but the Bill does not refer to being able to do that without the consent of the worker, which will surprise a lot of people, and absolutely does not make reference to the level of financing, which we have just discussed in relation to Clause 114.

Another point I noted is that, on Monday, the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, referred to “employees and employers”, but the Minister at the Dispatch Box today has been very clear that this is also about funding trade unions. As I said, this has been a revealing debate and one that, after I discuss it with my Front Bench, we may explore further on Report. With that, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 272BA withdrawn.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, for the sake of clarity, we on these Benches fully support the Government on expanding employment legal aid beyond discrimination cases to improve fairness and efficiency and also on the importance of maintaining the power of employment tribunals to ensure summary judgment, speed up proceedings and reduce unnecessary hearings. However, we have concerns over the existing backlog of employment tribunals, which we have debated several times on previous evenings, which is causing delays of up to two years and making the system very difficult to navigate.

I strongly support Amendment 273, tabled by my noble friend Lord Fox, which would

“require the Secretary of State to report on the impact of expanding the right to legal aid in employment tribunals within 6 months of the passage of this Act”.

This modest but important proposal recognises the reality facing too many claimants today. Legal aid in employment cases is currently restricted almost entirely to discrimination claims, leaving workers pursuing other serious issues such as unlawful deduction of wages, unfair dismissal and whistleblowing without any publicly funded legal support. These are not simple matters.

For claimants without legal training, navigating the tribunal process, understanding evidential requirements and articulating legal arguments can be incredibly challenging. This lack of access undermines both fairness and efficiency. If claims are poorly presented or inadequately understood, they are less likely to succeed and more likely to absorb more of the tribunal’s valuable time. Given the current backlog of employment tribunal cases in which claimants often wait for more than two years before their cases are heard, the process can feel effectively impossible to engage with. This amendment would, based on evidence, begin to build the case for change. I hope that the Minister will look on it constructively.

I also welcome my noble friend Lord Fox’s Amendment 323, which seeks to ensure that employment tribunals continue to have the power to make summary judgments in cases brought under this Act. Tribunals already use this mechanism to resolve matters early when one party has no reasonable prospect of success. It is an essential part of an efficient system that avoids unnecessary hearings and reduces pressure on the tribunal’s time. With the Bill creating new routes to claim and potentially increasing the volume of cases, the continued ability to make summary judgments in those procedures will be more important than ever. It provides certainty to respondents facing unmeritorious claims and reassures claimants that their cases will be dealt with proportionally and swiftly when they are clearly valid. I will be grateful if the Minister can confirm that this power will remain fully enforced under the new regimes and that guidance will reflect the continuing relevance of these points.

Lastly, I note that Amendments 279GA, 330ZA, 330D and 334A by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, are concerned with ensuring that the employment tribunal system has the capacity and resourcing to absorb these responsibilities. Those are legitimate concerns and considerations that the Minister should address. Tribunal delays are already a source of frustration for many users, and it is right that we consider how implementation will interact with the wider system. I urge caution, however, against any suggestions that reform must wait until conditions are perfect. A parallel process is needed, with sensible, targeted reform on one hand and sustained investment in the system on the other. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 279GZA seeks to understand what “and, in certain cases” means in Clause 149. I would be grateful for an explanation. I looked extensively in Schedule 12 and saw only the insertion of a regulation to do with Northern Ireland. I would be grateful to understand that.

I am happy to support Amendment 323, which seems a sensible way of trying to ensure that justice is delivered effectively and people can still have fair access while also making sure that we make the best use of employment tribunal judges’ time.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Coffey for introducing her amendment and also to the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, for speaking to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, the first of which proposes a report on the expansion of legal aid in employment tribunals. It would not itself change entitlement but seeks to prompt a structured exploration of the options. Legal aid is, of course, a complex and often contested area, and this amendment simply calls for a government-led review that considers both employer compliance and the financial position of workers. It is reasonable to assess whether the current system adequately supports access to justice in employment disputes.

I have a question for the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I will discuss with him outside but, just to get it on the record, I am curious to know whether the “report on the options”, which he describes in subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in his lead amendment, extends to small and medium-sized employers as well. I am interested to know whether he thinks they should be included within that survey based on the fact that many of them will also suffer some financial hardship.

On the proposed new clause on summary judgments in employment tribunals in Amendment 323 by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, such a power could offer a means of reducing the burden on tribunals, improving efficiency and focusing resources on cases where the issues genuinely require full examination. In short, both amendments are interesting and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

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[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 273PA in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I want to give an example of why this amendment is so important. Following a five-month freedom of information battle, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was finally given access to 19 farm inspection reports produced by the Home Office between 2021 and 2022. Nearly half of the 845 seasonal migrant workers interviewed raised welfare issues including racism, wage theft and threats of being sent home. In nearly two-thirds of farms inspected, workers said that they were not always paid for the hours they spent at work, off sick or travelling, or that they faced pay deductions beyond the maximum allowed by law. Workers who complained were ignored or told they could leave the farm and go back to their home countries. One visa sponsor was recorded saying:

“Look, do you want to go home? Shush then”,


by workers protesting about working conditions.

A report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration found that none of the allegations raised during these inspections was ever investigated by the Home Office. Workers understandably concluded that the Home Office was more interested in checking their immigration status than upholding their rights and dignity at work. The only way that the fair work agency can do its job of stamping out exploitation is to guarantee safe reporting. Only then can migrant workers speak out about exploitation at work without fear that it will result in a bad employer silencing them by removing their visa. Ultimately, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, the rights of all working people are only ever as strong as those of the most vulnerable workers. This amendment seeks safe reporting that will benefit workers and decent employers alike. I hope my noble friend the Minister can support it too.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am conscious of the sentiments expressed here, but it would put the Government and the Secretary of State in a very difficult legal situation if they were to hold information that they were not allowed to pass on to relevant authorities within the rest of government. I hear what the noble Baronesses have said, but I do not know, with all the other rights that are starting to come through this Bill, why anyone should be afeared, especially when they are here on a legitimate visa as in the example to which the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, has just referred. I am conscious of some of the exploitation, but I believe that same sponsor was suspended from sponsoring any more visas. I was not aware of what the Home Office did or did not do, but restricting the Secretary of State from formally upholding the law is quite a worrying trend.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, whom I had the honour to serve when she chaired the Home Affairs Select Committee. She has raised a number of key points, as has the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, and my noble friend Lady Coffey for their speeches as well.

Let me make it absolutely clear: modern slavery remains one of the gravest human rights abuses of our time, and tackling it requires vigilance, clarity and effective enforcement. It is crucial that the agencies tasked with identifying and assisting survivors and with co-operating closely with the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner have clear mandates and necessary powers to act decisively. While the specific amendments before us seek to clarify the transfer of roles from the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority to the fair work agency, the wider point is this.

Enforcement bodies must be both effective and well co-ordinated to respond to the complexities of modern slavery. Without this, vulnerable individuals risk slipping through the cracks, and the machinery of justice and protection loses its impact. Ensuring transparency about which bodies are responsible for what and guaranteeing that they are properly equipped underpins our broader commitment to eradicating modern slavery. It is not just about legal technicalities but about safeguarding human dignity and upholding fundamental rights.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

279ZZZA: Clause 144, page 144, line 19, leave out paragraph (b)
Member’s explanatory statement
This is a probing amendment to understand Parliament’s role as an employer itself and the role of over 600 other employers on the site.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 279ZZZA—it somewhat reminds me of ZZ Top. This is, again, a bit of a niche amendment. The reason I say that is because many people—not your Lordships, I am certain—may think that “the Crown” in Clause 144 applies just to the King and the Royal Family. In fact, UK Ministers are of the Crown, and “Crown premises” means any government building and any land that it has, and so on. So the reality of what this clause refers to is much broader. I am sure that Ministers are thrilled that subsection (3) applies to them, so they will never be found criminally liable in that regard.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Finlay of Llandaff) (CB)]

Does the noble Baroness wish to move her amendment?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thought I started by saying I would move it, but yes, I certainly do want to move it.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for her amendment, which raises an important topic: how the enforcement provisions in Part 5 would apply to Parliament and MPs as employers.

Parliament must of course comply with employment legislation. However, the Bill provides that the powers of entry in Part 5 cannot be exercised in relation to

“premises occupied for the purposes of either House of Parliament”;

otherwise, Part 5 would apply to both Houses of Parliament and to MPs as employers. We are in danger of having something similar to—but slightly less than—a deep constitutional crisis, because the approach was agreed on the advice of the House authorities. It is therefore not a government decision; it is a decision made by the House authorities. They are more powerful, as far as I can see, and they can therefore overrule what the Government may think about all this.

This approach is not unusual. It aligns with recent precedents, such as Section 165(1)(a) of the Building Safety Act 2022, to respect parliamentary privilege. In this case, Parliament has to comply with employment legislation. The only issue raised here is about the power of entry not applying to the Parliamentary Estate. The noble Baroness might understand why we want to make sure that the Parliamentary Estate is secure from that challenge, and there is probably another place where she could raise her concerns about employment in the Parliamentary Estate. I have some sympathy with some of the cases that she argued about, but I suggest that she sees the House authorities about them. I therefore ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I certainly will withdraw it. I did not mean to put the Minister in a difficult place, and her answer was very gracious. My amendment was based on the expectation that this is a royal palace, where things such as licensing laws and health and safety rules do not technically apply. However, that aside, we still need to consider how we act. If nothing else, I hope that this short debate has contributed to reminding ourselves of the obligations that we all share. With that, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 279ZZZA withdrawn.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 263 and 330 standing in my name require the Secretary of State to conduct a consultation on the effects of the provisions in Part 4 on the operation of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and to report on the outcome and any proposed changes. It is a modest proposal, even a restrained one, but, make no mistake, it is a necessary amendment and a crucial one.

What we have before us in Part 4 is not the result of careful planning, measured engagement or evidence-based policy. No, what we have instead is a so far unconsulted set of sweeping reforms to trade union law inserted on Report in the other place with little scrutiny and even less transparency. I believe it is extraordinary that provisions of such weight, which could dramatically alter the balance of industrial relations right across the country, should arrive in this House having not been through a proper public consultation. The provisions would allow the Secretary of State to rewrite fundamental aspects of how trade unions operate, how they are recognised, how they interact with businesses and how ballots are conducted. This is not a footnote to the Bill. This is, I believe, a redrawing of the boundaries of employment law and industrial relations. It has been done without engaging employers, without informing the HR community and without giving those who will be most directly affected any chance to prepare.

We must ask ourselves who, precisely, was consulted. It certainly was not business. It was not those employers, large and small, who will be forced to navigate the implications of this legislation. We are left to presume that only the trade unions were consulted, or at least advised, because the changes serve their interests almost exclusively. They have access to workplaces in ever-broadening circumstances. There is the weakening of independent oversight by stripping powers from the certification officer; the dilution, or in some cases outright removal, of long-standing ballot thresholds that were introduced to protect the legitimacy of industrial action; and the potential for significant changes to trade union recognition processes that could alter the employer-union relationship fundamentally—all to be done by secondary legislation.

That point cannot be emphasised enough. These changes are not in the Bill. They are hidden in the detail that is to be brought forward later through regulations, through statutory instruments, through mechanisms that allow for no amendment and only limited debate. That is no way to legislate on matters as fundamental as the recognition of trade unions or the conditions for lawful industrial action. These are not administrative details. These are foundational questions of how workers and employers interact under the law. They deserve full, open, transparent scrutiny. They deserve proper consultation.

Perhaps most galling of all is that even when the Government speak of consultation, they do so with inconsistency and confusion. I draw your Lordships’ attention to two statements by the Minister for Employment Rights in the other place, Mr Justin Madders. On 7 May he stated unequivocally:

“No decision has yet been made by the Government as to whether or when to exercise this power. Therefore, there is no planned timetable for consulting on it at present”.


No decision, no timetable, no consultation—yet less than a month later, on 3 June, the same Minister declared:

“The Government will consider what criteria to assess whether to lower the recognition threshold in due course, including through the public consultation process”.


We go from no consultation to a planned consultation in the space of four weeks.

This is not just a contradiction. It is, sadly, becoming a symptom of a Government who are making policy on the hoof and who are unable or unwilling to provide clarity on matters of legal and constitutional significance. Let us talk plainly about what that power is. It is the power to reduce the threshold for trade union recognition to just 2%. No justification is offered for that number. There is no White Paper, no consultation document, no cost-benefit analysis, no report from ACAS, no statement from employer organisations or trade bodies, not a single name that the Government can point to that supports the reduction of that recognition threshold to just 2%.

Yet here we are, with Ministers potentially claiming this power to change that threshold by statutory instrument, out of reach of substantive parliamentary control. Why is it 2% and not 20% or 50%? If the Government believe that a change is needed, surely a change should be in the Bill and the rationale should be available to all stakeholders, including this House. If the Government are not prepared to provide that rationale, surely we are entitled to suspect that it has not been thought through.

How will employers respond to these changes? What of the small businesses, the charities, the start-ups, the growing firms that have never had to deal with trade union recognition processes before? They are not anti-trade union. They are simply unprepared, yet under these proposals they may soon be required to accommodate access, to facilitate recognition and to engage in statutory processes for which they have no guidance, no support and no warning. These employers are being thrown into an environment of legal uncertainty, an environment shaped not by consultation or consensus but by expediency. It is also abundantly clear that the Government have shown little interest in listening when they have, in the past, consulted.

On those parts of the Bill where consultation has occurred, however limited, the views of employers and professionals have largely been ignored. We are hearing consistently that business voices are being drowned out and that legitimate concerns about workability, proportionality and unintended consequences are being brushed aside. What then is the purpose of consultation, if it is treated as a procedural formality rather than a genuine dialogue?

Let me repeat again for emphasis: on trade union recognition itself, there has been no consultation. It was confirmed in the other place. To move forward with such a major change in industrial relations law without even the courtesy of asking stakeholders their views is frankly an abdication of responsible governance.

I do not stand here as someone hostile to trade unions: far from it. I recognise their historic role and their ongoing contributions to workplace fairness and safety. But fairness has to go both ways. Changes of this scale must be fair, transparent and built on consensus, not stealthily inserted into a Bill and then pushed forward by ministerial decree. That is why the amendment matters. It seeks only to do what the Government should have done in the first place. It seeks to restore process and balance where neither is currently present. I urge your Lordships to support it, not out of ideology or political interest but out of principle, out of a shared commitment to deliberative democracy and out of basic respect for all those who will live and work under the laws we make in the House. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, the reason I support the amendment is that it links making sure we get the consultations done and then not proceeding with the legislation until that has been printed. This goes to the heart of trying to understand, in effect, the detail of the Bill and how it really will impact jobs, because that is what this is about; how we will not only help workers but make sure they have jobs to still be in. That continues to be the underlying concern, which is why this perfectly formed group of amendments makes sure that at least this House knows full well what the expectation is that employers have, and the risks and opportunities that are highlighted, before it makes the final decision on when this becomes legislation.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I just want to intervene very briefly as well. I have raised numerous times that I worry that small and medium-sized businesses have been completely left out of the debate. I spend all my time speaking to small and medium-sized businesses, and most of them are very unaware and quite nervous when they get to hear that a lot of legislation is coming their way, and they are certainly not prepared for it.

My grandfather, Mr Ujagar Singh, was one of the founders of the Indian Workers’ Association, and he created that with others to ensure that Indian workers had rights in the 1930s. So I understand it when we are standing up for workers’ rights, because at that time many Indian workers were not even protected by the unions that were here at the time. I am always conflicted, because I want to always make sure that we always have the right laws in place for the workforce. But, at the same time, I have been in business for over four decades, I talk to small businesses all the time, and the one thing that makes me incredibly worried and nervous is the absolute lack of consultation that has gone on with this enormous Bill that will actually destroy jobs, because those small businesses will just close up and shut shop.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, jumping to Clause 92, I shall start by addressing Amendment 271ZZB in my name. It refers to the annual report that the Secretary of State would be expected to make on the extent to which they have undertaken the enforcement functions. I have a particular problem with suggesting that it is acceptable to have in primary legislation:

“As soon as reasonably practicable after the end of each financial year”.


There have been plenty of other reports which say that things will not fit the grid slot, or that all these other things that get in the way. We get promised a child poverty strategy, then we discover it will arrive probably about seven months after originally planned. Those sorts of things are the reason I have simply suggested that this should be done within three months. I have seen that happen for other things, such as the Environment Act, where a specific timing is put on reports. To me, this is no different in that regard, so something as sloppy as that should not be left in the Bill.

Clearly, we are now on to Part 5, a really chunky part of the Bill that deserves detailed consideration. The previous Administration started this idea of bringing together the different enforcement bodies, and I think everybody is united on this. It is noteworthy that the Labour Government, in the variety of papers they have put out, say that they are going far further than any of that. That is why this needs careful consideration.

In this Bill, not only do we see significant changes in employment rights and in the scope of what is here, but, as has been pointed out, this is also a radical change in who gets to do it. As the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, pointed out, I would be interested to find anywhere else within government—perhaps the Civil Nuclear Police and the Armed Forces—that would have this level of direct control by the Secretary of State.

That said, I will explain why I have some sympathy with the Government in how they are going about this. I am also very struck by Amendment 269, tabled by my noble friend Lady Noakes. Setting out the advice the board has given to the Secretary of State would not be unprecedented, because this is exactly what the Office for Environmental Protection does on matters involving environmental legislation. By the way, Ministers are not expected to ask—nor do they have to ask—the OEP for advice, but they can. However, the OEP can and does publish the advice that it gives, solicited or not. That open transparency, to which my noble friend Lady Noakes referred, in how these powers are being used would be welcome to give confidence in this new body. We will be debating, perhaps on Wednesday rather than today, why I think some of this is so novel. It certainly merits all that scrutiny.

More broadly, I completely understand what the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, is saying about the extent of the powers being given. I have some sympathy and, in another group, I talk about these enforcement officers—who used to be known as labour market offence officers—and combining all these different agencies and how that comes together. For example, the Environment Agency is a regulator that has powers to investigate criminal offences. It started an investigation on 18 November 2021, and at no point would it ever brief Ministers on the progress or intimate details of that investigation. To this date, it still has not brought any charges. We recognise that the public expect somewhat more of Ministers nowadays, powers having been set out, and that it is possible for all these things to happen. If Ministers are then, effectively, locked out from what is going on in terms of this operational independence, I can understand why they are keen to have a closer relationship with what is going on.

I will explain this in more detail in the other group, but having it as an executive agency with this advisory board provides an element of scrutiny but not the independent oversight, which is why the framework to which the noble Lord, Lord Carter, refers is important in trying to get this balance in whether people are behaving themselves in applying the law. I am not suggesting that any civil servant or any enforcement officer would necessarily want to go rogue, but they would have that extra oversight, with such significant powers. Let us be candid: a Secretary of State does not have the time to go through every single assessment of every operation that would be expected under the widened scope of legislation that this new agency will be enforcing.

I have some sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Carter, who wants to see a pretty tight grip on what is going on, but I understand why the Government have set it out in the way that they have. Nevertheless, as my noble friends on the Front Bench pointed out, that aspect of oversight is important. As has been explained, considering how small businesses will handle this gets us into pretty tricky stuff.

By the way, I fully supported the development of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. That is where a lot of the powers that may seem pretty tough in this Bill originated. How can I put it? Some people, whether in aspects of modern slavery or otherwise, can be pretty tough employers. I understand why some of what is, in effect, emergency access to offices and documents is needed: to make sure we tackle the abuse of workers. Overall, however, this is going to be a sensitive area. I encourage the Government to be as open and transparent as possible, and to consider not only the level of scrutiny but also the transparency in terms of reports—which would be, I am sure, welcomed by the Government and, candidly, by people relying on these agencies to do this work for them in the future.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Goddard is disappointed that he is unable to speak on this group this evening. Given the multiple groups of amendments concerning the fair work agency, we will restrict our comments to this group. The Department for Business and Trade has set out the rationale for the fair work agency, suggesting the current system of employment rights enforcement is fragmented and inefficient. We agree. This fragmentation causes confusion for both workers and employers and leaves many breaches, such as underpayments, unchallenged. The Bill aims to establish the fair work agency and will consolidate existing bodies responsible for enforcement, abolishing those authorities and transferring their functions.

However, there remains some uncertainty about the agency’s precise scope and responsibilities, how it will relate to existing organisations, the level of funding it will receive, how it will access and use data, and the mechanisms for compliance and oversight. Although the Bill includes data-sharing provisions and the Minister has highlighted further detail, these issues will be key in determining the agency's effectiveness.

On powers and oversight, many enforcement powers currently held by other bodies will be transferred to the fair work agency, including powers of entry. New powers, particularly in relation to HMRC, will also be introduced. Oversight of these powers is planned to be provided through independent policing standards authorities, but it is important that the limits to these powers are clear and that they are exercised proportionately.

Regarding resourcing, it is understood that around £600 million is currently allocated across the authorities being restructured into the new agency. I am sure that discussions with the Treasury on the appropriate level of funding are ongoing, but is the Minister confident that this figure will provide the resources needed to meet the scale of the agency’s mission?

Bringing enforcement functions together in the fair work agency should improve the Government’s ability to tackle labour market abuses, including serious issues such as modern slavery. It is also acknowledged that previously, fragmented responsibilities caused confusion, duplication and ineffective enforcement, so this consolidation aims to provide a clearer, stronger enforcement framework.

I will not speak at length on the amendments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, but what he said was very wise. He raised important questions about the advisory board’s composition and enforcement powers which deserve further consideration by the Minister and the Government. Given the wide-ranging powers the agency will have—from workplace inspections to civil penalties and criminal enforcement orders—it is only right that Parliament has a clear opportunity to scrutinise how these powers will be used in practice.

Before the agency becomes operational, there should be clarity around its remit, resourcing and relationship with other enforcement bodies, and around the structures of accountability that will apply. This is particularly important for small and medium-sized businesses, which often lack the internal capacity to navigate complex regulatory frameworks. Advance scrutiny and a clear published framework would offer reassurance to both workers and employers that the agency’s approach will be proportionate and well targeted. We would welcome the Minister’s further explanation of how the Government intend to maintain transparency and accountability, to ensure balanced representation on the advisory board, and to keep Parliament informed throughout the phased implementation of the fair work agency.

Finally, I seek clarity on the Government’s timeline for the agency’s full implementation and how they plan to keep Parliament updated on progress. These are significant institutional changes and deserve close attention. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

264ZA: Schedule 7, page 262, line 29, leave out paragraph 27
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe the scope of enforcement actions.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, we are now considering Schedule 7, which is the scope of the legislation that the enforcement officers will be considering in applying their powers and the prosecution for offences. I picked out one of the Acts that this is looking to. I will be happy to hear from the Minister, but I am interested that this is now extending into fraud.

We have gangmasters, working time, holiday pay, the question of whether the employer is keeping details of annual leave, and so on and so forth. I wonder at what point we will end up relying on this agency, which we have already heard has probably unique powers for any Secretary of State. Where is the balance between this agency and the organisation—a non-ministerial department—that we would expect to start prosecuting criminal offences in areas such as fraud, the Crown Prosecution Service? I am trying to get a sense of where this stops. I think that is also the purpose of my noble friend’s Amendment 266. We are getting into trying to work out where on earth we will be turning to. There is a combination here of investigation and being able to get lots of information, but why is the Crown Prosecution Service not involved?

I appreciate that the hour is late, but time was not given at the other end to consider the detail of this legislation. That has increasingly become the role of this House. I am concerned specifically about the Fraud Act, but there needs to be a wider conversation—I am thinking particularly of paragraph 35 of Schedule 7 —to work out at what point we hand over to the police or to the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate potential crimes.

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[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for tabling Amendment 264ZA, which concerns the fair work agency’s remit. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for Amendments 266 and 267, which seek to alter the delegated powers in Part 2 of Schedule 7.

Amendment 264ZA would seriously restrict the fair work agency’s ability to tackle labour exploitation of a more serious nature where the threshold does not meet the requirement under the Modern Slavery Act. There are no other enforcement provisions in the Bill that would cover this scenario. Currently, a number of Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority investigations have to be abandoned when the modern slavery threshold is not met. Since 2023, 104 cases have been dropped. That is bad for labour abuse victims and for taxpayers.

We are adding elements of the Fraud Act to the fair work agency’s remit precisely to address this issue. It will allow the fair work agency to investigate cases of financial fraud by abuse of position. That has specifically been included within the Bill following extensive discussions with stakeholders, including the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and the Home Office. Removing the Fraud Act offences from the fair work agency’s scope would truly limit the agency’s effectiveness, and I must therefore respectfully resist this amendment.

Amendment 266, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, would drastically narrow the scope of the power. This would undermine the very purpose of the fair work agency, which is to simplify and consolidate the enforcement of labour market legislation. The fair work agency will be greater than the sum of its parts as its remit is further expanded. This will relieve pressure on a struggling employment tribunal system, which I have heard many times from noble Lords across the aisle.

The power to expand the fair work agency’s remit has appropriate safeguards and limitations. Any expansion of its scope will be informed by the advice from the agency’s tripartite advisory board, and with consideration of the overall enforcement strategy. Furthermore, any changes to the remit will be through affirmative-resolution regulations that will be laid before Parliament and, where relevant, will require the consent of the relevant Northern Ireland department. This power is crucial to the long-term flexibility of the fair work agency. By enabling the remit to expand over time, it can respond to developments in the labour market. If we were to restrict the power to such a narrow range of issues, we would be tying our own hands.

Amendment 267, also in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, would require that a super-affirmative resolution procedure be used when the Secretary of State exercises the delegated power in Part 2 of Schedule 7. In my almost three years in this House when the party opposite was in government, I never heard them bring any super-affirmative resolution in any of the Bills they brought before this House, so I do not understand the sudden change of heart.

This amendment is unnecessary. The Bill provides for appropriate parliamentary scrutiny as use of this power will be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. I also highlight that the recent report by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee did not raise any concern with this power as currently drafted. The additional scrutiny this amendment calls for would place unneeded burdens on parliamentary time, which is currently stretched. With this point in mind, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw Amendment 264ZA.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response to my amendment. To be candid, if that had been in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes, it might have made life easier. As the Minister knows, the creation of this fair work agency, with the novel powers it is going to have, is one of the reasons why my noble friends on the Front Bench have been pushing for the super-affirmative procedure. We will briefly get into a bit more discussion about the advisory board, but it is those elements—recognising the novel powers—that we are concerned about. With that, I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 264ZA withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

266A: Schedule 7, page 264, line 21, leave out paragraph (b)

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendments 267ZA, 267AA and 267AB in my name in this group. Schedule 7 tries to bring together a whole bunch of legislation in a meaningful and sensible way so that it can handily be used in future. I could have extended some of these amendments, but I decided to focus Amendment 266A on paragraph 35(5)(b) of Schedule 7, which relates to Clause 89 on the delegation of functions. I could have considered a whole number of these, because this is a classic Henry VIII clause—put something in primary, shove something through regulations and, hey presto, a whole Act can change before our very eyes. In particular, Clause 89(6), which I address in Amendment 267AB, stood out to me.

My concern is that we start off with this agency, the enforcement officers and all these different things, but Clause 89(1) says:

“The Secretary of State may make arrangements with a public authority”.


I do not think “a public authority” is defined anywhere else in legislation at all. This is the first time I have seen it defined, as

“a person certain of whose functions are functions of a public nature”.

That could be a whole bunch of people. What does it really mean? Are they seeking to act in the public interest, or in a different way?

The Explanatory Notes do say what they are, but, as the Minister and the Committee will know, they are not part of legislation. One of the reasons for bringing this out is to try to understand from the Minister precisely what it means. The consequence of these bits of the legislation is that, by statutory instrument, this novel area that we are getting into could be changed very quickly, away from what might have seemed a sensible agency, though I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, would rather have operational independence.

This is why I have peppered through my amendments in this group the very specific point that it should be a public authority that has civil servants in it and is not a non-ministerial department. I think that there are about 24 non-ministerial departments. Perhaps really only two—the Supreme Court and the Crown Prosecution Service—should be non-ministerial, recognising the accountability that, understandably, Parliament and the public expect.

The difference of a non-ministerial department is that it is accountable to Parliament. The device to do that is principally through the Select Committee in the House of Commons, perhaps the Public Accounts Committee, not so much in the House of Lords. Therefore, significant parts of the work being done are left to an occasional accountability meeting, whereas if civil servants are not in a non-ministerial department, the Secretary of State is directly responsible and can be held to account by Parliament and can hold those civil servants to account. I am therefore very nervous about how easy it will become to change Clause 89(6) and what that then means. It would be better for the Government to have more in the Bill about what it is.

As we are starting to get into Part 5, could it be that the public authority starts to become not-for-profit groups of solicitors who start to have these enforcement functions? Could arms of trade unions suddenly start enforcing and be able do all these different elements and to take employers to court so this starts to spread? The reason for my amendments is to try to get better legislation about what this is supposed to be. I am desperately trying to make sure that the only people to whom these things can be delegated will be civil servants who honour what the Government have set out in Part 5 and that the variety of enforcement officers and the fair work agency will be directly accountable and have the executive powers of the Secretary of State. That can be done only if people are civil servants and they are not in a non-ministerial department. I beg to move.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for her amendments that comprise this group, and I speak in support of them. They bring much needed clarity and constitutional discipline to the question of to whom the Secretary of State may delegate important public functions.

Clause 89, as drafted, grants the Secretary of State, as my noble friend has explained, broad discretion to delegate enforcement and other key responsibilities to a public authority. However, the current definition of that term is overly expansive. It could include not only departments under direct ministerial control, but also non-ministerial departments and other bodies with a degree of operational independence from the Government, which raises fundamental issues of accountability.

If enforcement powers, which could be potentially intrusive and far-reaching, are to be delegated, they should be exercised by those within the direct chain of ministerial responsibility. They are civil servants who operate under the authority of Ministers and who are, in turn, accountable to Parliament. Amendment 267ZA, therefore, rightly confines the scope of Clause 89 to public authorities that are comprised of civil servants and are not non-ministerial departments. That would ensure such functions are not handed to bodies that lack clear ministerial oversight or democratic accountability.

Amendment 267AA serves as a necessary consequential safeguard because it ensures that any legal substitution of the Secretary of State with another authority in the eyes of the statute is similarly limited to such core public bodies. Without this clarification, we risk a situation where statutory references to ministerial powers are extended, potentially without scrutiny, to entities with a more ambiguous constitutional status. This is not about casting aspersions on the competence or integrity of non-ministerial departments. Many do good work, but they are deliberately designed to operate at arm's length from Ministers. They should not be the recipients of powers that the public rightly expects to be exercised under ministerial responsibility.

--- Later in debate ---

With these points in mind, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, to withdraw Amendment 266A.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his response. I am interested in his answer that, “Oh, well, they are already a non-departmental public body, so why am I bothered?” Well, why are the Government bothering to make this an executive agency and bring the powers under the Secretary of State? They are doing this themselves. I am struck that a lot of the legislation here is getting rid of non-departmental public bodies. By the way, they are not directly accountable to Ministers, and Ministers cannot direct them. That might satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, but at no point did the Minister address Amendment 267AB, which talks about subsection (6). He did not address what is probably my key point in the group of amendments about the definition of a public authority. I am concerned about that and will certainly revisit it on Report. Given the late hour and that there are still two groups to go, I would be happy if the Minister would write to me and the Committee before then on that issue, as it was the key part of what I wanted to talk about. I will not trouble the Committee any further at this point and I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 266A.

Amendment 266A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I will speak to Amendments 272B and 272C in this group in the name of my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough. I will also speak to the other amendments, particularly Amendment 272, which has just been spoken to by my noble friend Lady Noakes. She has hit the nail on the head: how often is this going to be used to go beyond what has been requested—for example, a worker not intending to take a case forward, such that it could still end up in a tribunal?

I am conscious that we will return to Clauses 113 and 114 on Wednesday, so I will be brief on Amendments 272B and 272C. Even if the Minister cannot respond today on Amendment 272C, can she say what is meant by

“any other form of assistance”?

“Legal advice” and “legal representation” are pretty well understood, but what else? There are genuine concerns about this starting to become a blank cheque for almost anything with regard to employment law. While of course the House of Lords does not have financial privilege, it is important to still be mindful of where this could go.

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Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

267AC: Clause 90, page 108, line 38, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State must appoint a Chair of the Advisory Board who must be qualified to practice as a barrister and have been made King's Counsel.(1B) The term of the Chair’s appointment must be for a maximum of four years, with a maximum appointment of two terms, and with other conditions as may be specified by the Secretary of State.(1C) The Chair’s appointment must be approved by a relevant select committee of the House of Commons.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 267BA, 267BB and 267D in my name. This is where we get to the composition of the board. In this group of amendments, the most important that I have tabled is probably Amendment 267D. It would remove the words “trade unions” but would insert “employees”. I am conscious that, of course, trade unions represent employees, but I was surprised by the composition of the board: that the word “employee” did not turn up as to who the members of the board were supposed to represent. To that end, one reason why I laid Amendment 267D is that we should remember that only 22% of UK workers belong to a trade union. That leaves 78% who, at the moment, may not necessarily be represented in the consideration of the advisory board. I think it is important that we rectify that.

It is possible that independent experts and others may be involved. By the way, this happens on a variety of other bodies—I think it is so on the Health and Safety Executive. Usually, the organisations representing employees are trade unions, but the point is made that it does not have to necessarily be trade unions. It could be professional associations—that has happened in the past as well, from my recollection.

In looking at the composition of the board, I noticed that my noble friends on the Front Bench have come up with a slightly different approach. Mine has tried to be pretty straightforward and to, in effect, insert an independent chair, who should be put forward to the relevant committee in the House of Commons for consideration before their appointment.

Deliberately, I have put in some specifications as to who should chair the board. Recognising that this is all going to be about enforcement of legislation, considering a wide range of issues including taking legal action when it has not been requested by people, by workers, I have specified that we should consider this board, which is going to be very important to the Secretary of State because there are a number of situations where the legislation says that the Secretary State “must” consult the advisory board. To that end, it would be worth while to have somebody who is a qualified barrister, a KC, but who shows a particular level of accomplishment without needing to look to tribunal judges or similar to chair that board. I beg to move.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 267B, 267C and 268A standing in my name, and I also thank my noble friend Lady Coffey for introducing her amendment, and, of course, my noble friend Lady Noakes for signing them. Amendments 267B and 267C are not mere technicalities; they are a matter of principle. They are a matter of representation and ensuring that the new fair work agency advisory board truly reflects the full diversity and complexity of the modern UK labour market.

As drafted, Clause 90(4) proposes a tripartite board composed equally of individuals representing trade unions, employers and so-called independent experts. While the intention of the balance is commendable, the provision as it stands is both overly simplistic and insufficiently representative of the contemporary workface. As my noble friend highlighted, trade unions, for all their historic importance, now represent only 22.4% of employees across the United Kingdom, 12.3% of the private sector—so the bulk of those are in the public sector.

As my noble friend also pointed out, that leaves a staggering 77.6% of working people whose voices, interests and concerns are not captured through union representation. To restrict employee representation on this advisory board solely to trade union nominees is to exclude the overwhelming majority of the workforce. That is neither democratic nor representative. It is outdated.

This amendment seeks to rectify that imbalance by introducing a more inclusive and nuanced structure. It proposes that the board includes two representatives from the trade unions, rightly acknowledging their important role; three representatives of employees beyond the trade union movement, an expansion that ensures that the voices of non-unionised workers, gig economy participants, freelancers and precarious workers are also heard; five employer representatives to be appointed only after the Secretary of State has sought advice and recommendations from recognised business representative organisations, a process that will ensure that these appointments are rooted in sectoral legitimacy rather than political expediency; and three independent experts to provide critical objective insight grounded in academic, legal or practical labour market expertise. That structure would do three things. It would broaden representation, professionalise appointments and future-proof the board against the ever-evolving nature of work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, we heard from the Minister justification for keeping it as it is, but I reiterate the point that employees are not mentioned anywhere. In terms of the social partnership, it may be worth her looking at the Health and Safety Executive board in that regard. Ultimately, this should be extended to make sure it is about not just trade unions representing workers but a wider range of other bodies that do that very adequately. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 267AC withdrawn.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

216YC: Clause 58, page 86, line 17, leave out from “resolution)” to end of line 20
and insert “, in subsection (1)—
(a) omit “of those voting on a ballot”;(b) after “union”, insert “by a ballot”.” Member’s explanatory statement
The intention of this amendment is to remove the existing paragraphs (a) and (b) of the Clause, and ensure that the majority of all union members who could possibly vote are needed to pass a political resolution, not just the majority of those that vote.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 216YC, I will also speak to Amendment 216YD and address Amendment 217, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to which I have added my name—as indeed has my noble friend Lady Finn, whose birthday it is today; she knows how to have a good time. I will also address Amendment 218A and various other amendments, and Clause 77.

In essence, we are debating Clauses 58, 59 and 77. Clause 58 is about political funds. The situation has been that a political resolution is needed, and a fair, open, democratic process occurs every 10 years at most where members of the union are invited to keep the resolution going, or a new resolution may be put forward. One thing that concerns me is that this clause could simply wipe out that need.

I do not know in detail how every political resolution can be put forward, but my understanding of trade unions is that, by and large, individuals cannot put them forward. They can be put forward only through resolutions and motions, often by a person who is a delegate of a branch or similar. As a consequence, in effect, we have a situation where a political resolution can go on ad infinitum. I am not sure that that is the right approach.

I recognise that a lot of the rest of the Bill is about changing ways that people can vote to try to make it a lot more digital and a lot easier. I understand why the Labour Government, in partnership with the trade unions, believe that that is the right approach. I am also conscious, though, of why changes have been made in the past.

I am looking just to probe with my proposal. At the moment, there is a threshold for a strike where at least half of those eligible to vote have to vote. Here, there is none of that at all. It shows me somewhat that, even with trade unions, there is a lot of disengagement from this part of the process. I get that a lot of people are not necessarily opting out. To give an example, with the Musicians’ Union resolution, only 18% of members actually voted or participated in the ballot. With UNISON’s last resolution, fewer than 15% of its members were involved in determining whether to keep the resolution. As I said, this does not seem very open to anybody who might want to table a different resolution. I am not expecting UNISON to start contributing funds to the Conservative Party any time soon—I guess the name of its political fund, Labour Link, gives the game away on where UNISON would like its funds to go—and that is democracy, but I am thinking of ways that we could potentially extend this.

On Amendment 216YD, we seem to have had a lot of general elections recently, but I hope we are now in a situation where we hold elections every five years. If your Lordships were so inclined, it would make sense, recognising the direct link between political funds and political parties, to start to think about these political resolutions happening every five years instead of every 10 years. We are in a political world that is significantly changing. Almost every parliamentary constituency has at least five candidates, with at least six or seven outside of England, in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. It is worth considering whether we should update this.

I generally agree with the proposal that we should get rid of Clause 59 in its entirety. I think back in particular to Second Reading. I will not go into detail, but the noble Lord, Lord Burns, spoke eloquently about what happened with his review. I do not plan to dwell on his amendment, as there are others who will contribute to it more. For me, it goes back to the need for a sensible approach instead of having to go through a long procedure, which to some extent is probably contrary to Article 11 and the implicit right not to join either a trade union or a political fund. This clause scraps that. Ministers have commented that that is okay. The basis is that you can opt out, and it will take effect the following January. You might have contributed a lot of money by then, but they think that is all right.

This is why I tabled my Amendment 218A; I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Cash supports it. If we go ahead with the opt-out approach then someone who opts out may not have all the necessary paperwork on the day they decide to opt out—apart from when they join the union in the first place. Therefore, if we gave them four weeks from their becoming a member of a trade union, during which they could decide that they did not want to contribute, their decision could be backdated to the day of joining. This is an approach for a modern world, where people may not want to spend all their time looking at the small print when they sign up to something to understand quite what they can or cannot do, which can affect their rights. Contrary to the Bill’s title—the Employment Rights Bill—the text as it stands in effect removes an employee’s rights. If the Government were to scrap that element about “the day” I would be more than delighted, although I would prefer to stick to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Burns.

As regards some of the other approaches put forward in various amendments in this group, I would not in any way want to accuse any trade union of trying to allow intimidation or the like in their dealing with their members. We have heard the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, eloquently cite, I am sure with good evidence and good experience, cases of employers intimidating. However, I think it is fair to say that some of the trade union reforms that happened over the past decades—very few of which were changed by the Blair and Brown Governments, I should point out—were made on the basis of concerns about intimidation. I hope the Minister will at least recognise some of the concerns that noble Lords may have in this group. A variety of amendments have been tabled, which all seek to get us to us to a similar place.

Finally, I will speak to Clause 77, which starts, in effect, to remove transparency. Transparency is a good thing when we talk about democracy and the contributions that organisations make to a variety of political parties. I am surprised that the Government are going down this route. I cannot believe that it is that arduous for trade unions to compile this information. There are other aspects of what is happening with the certification officer, which we will get on to in another group, but given the importance that has rightly been given to considering the issues concerning the Electoral Commission, it is right that we should also consider this issue carefully at this stage. I do not believe that removing transparency is the right direction for the Committee to take.

Although I intend to keep this debate lively and pacy, it is important that we make sure that we get to the bottom of why this provision has been felt to be necessary. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain, fundamentally, why the Government have taken a complete and utter about-turn if it has not been designed —I do not want to upset the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport—to increase the amount of political funds. I am sure those funds will be use in very good ways—well, considering my political party, perhaps not always in good ways—but when the transparency is removed we will not be able to have that scrutiny. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Barker) (LD)]

I advise noble Lords that if Amendment 216YC is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 216YD because of pre-emption.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I am absolutely confident that union members can opt out at any time, not just every 10 years. It is the reminder that goes every 10 years, rather than the requirement for them to remain.

We have had a very detailed, long debate, and I have attempted to answer all the questions noble Lords have raised. If there are any outstanding issues, I will write. In the meantime, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, to withdraw her Amendment 216YC.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this extensive debate. There are still a number of issues on which there is not agreement, either on the nature of the legislation or the desired effect.

I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I am conscious that this is going over old ground, but he is right to resurrect it and to put his concerns forward. On the exchanges between my noble friend Lady Cash and the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, in any legal debate, normally we come up with one winner. However, in this case, it is fair to refer the noble Lord to paragraph 251 of the Bill’s human rights memorandum, where the Government specifically state that:

“Implicit in Article 11 is a right not to contribute to a trade union’s political fund”.


I would be grateful if the Minister would, unusually perhaps, be open to sharing the legal or policy advice on the bracketed portion of that paragraph: that

“the opt-out will take effect on 1 January of the following year”.

That is why my noble friend Lady Cash was pressing the point that continuing to have to pay would not, according to various judgments, be compatible with Article 11.

That said, I am sure that we will return to a lot of this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 216YC withdrawn.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am quite concerned about this amendment, although I rarely disagree with my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. I am just concerned about the number of agencies or government bodies that keep being created. We already have considerable regulation in this country; I am not convinced that this will add value. Although I recognise the reasons why my noble friend put this forward, I hope he might reconsider tabling it again on Report, if he was so minded.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I start by saying how pleased we are to see my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond in his place. I had the privilege of moving his previous amendments in his absence, but we are delighted to see him back with us and I thank him for proposing this important amendment.

The way my noble friend did it was very welcome because, at the heart of his speech, was a recognition that the labour market—especially the supply of temporary and agency workers—has to be fair and transparent. He used those particular words and stressed their importance. I agree with him that it is essential that all companies involved in these arrangements operate under the same clear set of rules. Too often, we see instances where umbrella companies or certain intermediaries do not meet the standards expected of traditional employment agencies, whether on pay, workers’ rights or transparency. This inconsistency undermines the integrity of the labour market and can put vulnerable workers at risk. Licensing could, in theory, help address this by ensuring that any business participating in employment arrangements meets minimum standards and is subject to proper oversight.

However, as my noble friend Lady Coffey stressed, the amendment raises some other important questions. Clause 34 broadens the definition of “employment business” to encompass a range of activities connected to supplying workers who are employed by one party but work under the control of another. This means that the regulatory net will be set much wider than before, potentially to cover businesses beyond traditional recruitment agencies.

Moreover, it is worth considering whether the same objectives could be achieved through improved enforcement of existing regulations rather than by introducing a new licensing framework. In this Chamber, we have to weigh carefully the costs and benefits, particularly to smaller businesses that may struggle with additional compliance burdens. We must also consider the impact on businesses and the wider economy. Many employment businesses operate with tight margins; for them, licensing means added costs, added paperwork and longer lead times to launch new services or respond to labour demand.

This is not an argument against regulation per se; it is simply a recognition that badly designed or poorly phased licensing can create barriers to entry, reduce competition and even push some providers underground, where abuses are harder to detect. In sectors that are already experiencing labour shortages, such as social care, hospitality and logistics, the cumulative impact could be significant.

As my noble friend Lady Coffey pointed out, there is also the risk of regulatory duplication or conflict. Some sectors already have licensing or registration schemes; others are subject to sector-specific standards set by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission or the Financial Conduct Authority. Without co-ordination, we risk creating overlapping regimes, with businesses subject to multiple audits, rival codes of conduct and inconsistent enforcement. Workers too may be confused about their rights and the mechanisms available for redress.

I also note that the amendment does not contain any provisions for parliamentary oversight or consultation. The power it seeks to create is broad and, while it is subject to the discretion of the Secretary of State, it is not constrained by any statutory duty to consult stakeholders. In a sector as economically important and socially sensitive as this, there must be consultation. Against that background, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 151, 174 and 180, which are in my name. These amendments would address one of the most crucial challenges in our education system: how we value, support and compensate more than half the school workforce—the non-teaching staff. These teaching assistants, business managers, IT technicians, cleaners and catering staff form the backbone of every successful school.

While the Government’s intention to establish a school support staff negotiating body demonstrates a genuine commitment to these vital employees, and indeed fulfils a manifesto pledge, I am really concerned that the proposals as drafted are unworkable, expensive and time-consuming. They will add to the complexity and workload of every single school, not just academies. Individual maintained schools will often not be aware that the pay structure in their local authority is different from that in a neighbouring one. My amendments focus on academy schools, but the thrust of my argument to the Government is to think again because of the impact on every single school.

Amendment 151 seeks to mitigate potential damage by limiting the SSSNB’s powers to creating a framework that academies must consider regarding remuneration, terms and conditions, training, career progression and related matters. I believe that these flexibilities should extend to maintained schools. Amendment 174 would require the Government to produce before introducing these changes an impact assessment of the cost to the whole education sector, both academies and maintained schools. Amendment 180 would require annual reports of the SSSNB to include an assessment of the increased costs to the sector of any pay and conditions agreements.

It is important that we are clear what we mean by support staff. Support staff are not a homogenous group but an extraordinarily diverse workforce spanning many different roles, skill levels and contexts. Teaching assistants, while crucial, comprise less than half of all support staff. The remainder includes roles ranging from pastoral care to facilities managers, finance assistants, network administrators and school receptionists.

A small maintained primary school might employ a part-time administrative assistant handling multiple responsibilities, while a large multi-academy trust might maintain specialised finance teams, HR professionals and IT specialists serving multiple schools across a region. This diversity is intentional and beneficial. Schools and trusts have developed different approaches to organising their support functions because they face varying challenges. They serve distinct communities and operate at very different scales. What serves a 100-pupil rural primary school will not suit a 2,000-pupil secondary academy. What works for a stand-alone school will not fit a trust operating across multiple regions. Any national framework that fails to acknowledge this reality risks becoming either too vague to be useful or too rigid to serve communities effectively.

I am not trying to suggest that the status quo is perfect. The current National Joint Council arrangements have significant weaknesses in their application to schools, leading some local authorities such as those in the so-called London fringe to opt out of the Green Book terms and conditions entirely.

First, the NJC terms and conditions were designed for general local government workers—from refuse collectors to office administrators—but they barely address schools’ specific working environments and unique demands. Secondly, there is insufficient co-ordination between teacher and support staff pay negotiations. These separate processes often reach conflicting conclusions about affordability and appropriate pay increases. Did the Minister consider expanding the remit of the STRB to include support staff? Thirdly, the Department for Education has minimal influence over support staff pay decisions, and school affordability is not factored into NJC decision-making. Consequently, when resources are limited, teachers’ pay becomes the residual after other decisions are made, which is clearly an extraordinary outcome.

The current legislative approach is fundamentally flawed. Mandating a single detailed set of terms and conditions for all support staff will create more problems than it solves and certainly will not address the challenges schools face with recruitment and retention. First, it is essentially impossible to have a national set of pay scales for this very wide range of roles, given the vast variation in how schools and trusts organise their functions and their work. Consider this example: how can one write a generic job description for a finance assistant that serves both a small primary school’s sole financial administrator and a large trust’s specialist management accountant? Although sharing a title, these roles require entirely different skills, qualifications and responsibilities. What schools do for themselves, and what is done by the local authority or trust’s central team, varies hugely across the country. How many people there are to run finance or technology in a school, and therefore their seniority and skill, depends on the size of the school and on its legal status.

Secondly, at present, under the NJC each local authority sets its own grading structure. Even if you could find a role which was commonly defined across the country, you would find that it was graded and paid somewhat differently in different areas. The SSSNB would be expected to override these 150 grading structures and produce one national one. This would inevitably entail paying some people more, at potentially substantial cost in some areas, or paying some people less. I would argue that neither outcome is palatable.

Furthermore, much of this variation is driven by local labour markets. Some areas have to pay more than others to get decent IT skills, for example. It would be extraordinary to require schools in Cambridge to pay the same for IT skills as other schools if it meant that they could not get the skilled people they needed or that other schools had to pay significantly more than they do now.

I have heard Ministers suggest that their aim is to create a pay floor, not a ceiling, but that does not change the fundamental problem. It represents a full pay negotiation beyond NJC agreements, and therefore an effective national grading structure in which roles are mapped to a national spine in a consistent way across the country, rather than the more than 150 ways that currently exist. The task of trying to do that could begin only after considering every local variation. The floor points negotiation faces another challenge: employers cannot afford floors above current pay rates, plus cost of living adjustments, and understandably unions will not accept anything lower, even as a minimum. Given that the same role currently receives different pay across local authorities within the NJC, achieving both goals everywhere is impossible.

I hope the Minister acknowledges that this will create complications for local authorities, as their grading structures will likely not align with nationally mandated school support staff pay scales. Must authorities alter their grading structures to match the national framework, or will they apply it only to schools, or neither? Every possible answer creates serious problems of complexity and comparability within individual local authorities.

Most concerningly, this fiendishly complicated approach addresses non-existent problems. Despite repeated allegations of academies cutting and poaching support staff, sector colleagues can find no evidence of this. I find it hard to imagine that any rational person would take a cut in their salary to be poached. In fact, academies that have departed from standard terms and conditions have done so to enhance pay and improve conditions and career prospects, not to reduce them. Claims that support staff lack clear contractual terms are just not correct. Like teachers, they have specific contracts, often referencing established national or local frameworks. Contractual arrangements are not the issue.

Our school support staff deserve recognition, proper pay, good working conditions and career development opportunities. Above all, they need a policy framework that serves them and their schools effectively. We can build this through pragmatic reform, building on existing strengths, addressing real weaknesses, and respecting the diversity and complexity of modern school organisations. However, we cannot achieve meaningful improvement through legislation that ignores schools’ practical operations and imposes uniformity where variety better serves everyone. My amendments seek to make some progress towards this goal. I strongly urge the Minister to reconsider the Government’s approach. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name, but first I fully endorse what my noble friend Lady Barran has said. It is worth the Government reflecting on her direct experience of this before Report.

My amendment is quite simple. It is about the practice and conventions behind whatever we get into primary legislation. Candidly, I object to the naming of an organisation that is not a regulator in this country as needing to be consulted by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can consult anybody they like when considering making regulations. I do not see why the TUC should be named in primary legislation. That is the reason for my amendment. This is poor legislation and adds nothing to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Prentis of Leeds (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of the proposed school support staff negotiating body, as set out in the Bill. Noble Lords may remember that such a body was established in 2010. All the things that have been said in the Chamber today on this issue were talked about prior to that. Unfortunately, there was a change of Government. The coalition came in and even though the arguments were dealt with, everything was set up and moving forward, and the school support staff negotiating body—which we had great hope in—had met once, the coalition’s first act was to abolish it.

Through the Employment Rights Bill, we can rectify something which was wrong. The new body referred to in the Bill is long overdue. It will work towards a number of goals for support staff, some of which have already been mentioned. It would give them a voice in the education debate, achieve fair pay, which is the law of this land, and create unified pay and conditions across the country—what is so wrong with that? Local government, which has been mentioned, negotiates on behalf of millions of local government workers who do different jobs in different communities, with different arrangements in place to meet the local conditions where the service is being provided. All that has been in place not for decades, but for a century. Look at our National Health Service. We all applaud joint working and the implementation of fair pay and conditions—fair pay for work of equal value— across the NHS and all the different disciplines it provides in our communities. Collective bargaining works well. Those bodies address and deal with any issues as they arise.

We are talking about a group of school staff who, for many years, have seen teachers have collective bargaining—which we obviously support. Other school staff have nothing; they are at the whim of the headmaster or headmistress, and of local conditions. Little is done on their behalf, which is why school support staff across the country welcome the re-establishment of the school support staff negotiating body.

The TUC is a voice for good. It is at the heart of the trade union movement and is respected by employers and governments alike. If there are differences or issues that need to be tackled, why not go to the heart of the trade union movement and ask for its advice and assistance? It has been doing it for nearly 100 years and doing it well. There is no reason whatsoever why it cannot be part of the arrangements for establishing the new body. I am proud of the work the TUC does.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I was clear that the Secretary of State could consult whoever they liked, and I would not be surprised if that was the TUC. My point is, why is this being put into primary legislation when it is completely unneeded?

[Lord Prentis of Leeds (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that comment.

The whole intention appears to be to limit the scope of any collective bargaining. It is as clear as day. Different forms of words can be come up with concerning who is involved, who should clear what, and so on. That delays things, and that is the intention of the amendments before us.

Noble Lords have to understand that the proposals legislate for the Secretary of State or their nominee to be involved in the negotiating body. I personally have no reservations about that. We want to talk to the people who have the power and the influence to make decisions that improve the service and teaching in our schools. This proposed new body is intended to improve schools and education. What better way of doing it than to bring people together, give them a voice, allow it to be heard and come to conclusions which are for the benefit of all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I too will speak to Amendment 185, to which I was very pleased to add my name. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, on this amendment and my noble friend Lord Hendy, who spoke to his amendments in this group.

As the noble Baroness already indicated, Amendment 185 relates to training and education for the social care workforce, which is a critical imperative given the care and attention required by the people they care for. I declare my interest as vice-chair of the APPG on Dementia, and I thank the Alzheimer’s Society for its support in preparing for this debate.

Our social care workforce is vital in providing care to those who need it. However, they have been undersupported for too long. This amendment seeks to include training and education in the remit of the social care negotiating bodies that the Bill will create. These bodies will then determine the fair-play agreements in the social care sector, and, in so doing, improve training and education, which will also make a significant contribution to tackling the recruitment and retention crisis that the social care workforce faces.

However, of particular concern is the level of training and education in dementia among the adult social care workforce. The Care Quality Commission’s 2024 State of Care report highlighted dementia as a key area of concern and, specifically, that

“health and care staff do not always understand”

the specific needs of people with dementia. Many of those who, like me, have people with dementia in their families only realise this either when they are training to deal with it or when they are working with them on a daily basis.

A Nuffield Trust report from November also found that people with dementia in England are not consistently receiving good-quality social care, so this amendment seeks to build the foundations to change that, not only for people living with dementia but for all who draw on care, through the prioritisation of training and education within the workforce. That is a simple but vital aspect of ensuring that workers receive the recognition and the value that they deserve. That is what this amendment, if included in the Bill, would do. It would help in introducing opportunities for progression and development within the workforce and improving the quality of care that people receive.

I come to this debate as someone who strongly supports the Employment Rights Bill, because I believe it introduces a number of measures to increase the protection and rights of workers. In so doing, I hope that my noble friend the Minister and the Government ensure that training and education form a part of this legislation. I hope that the Government share these sentiments and see the value of the changes that this amendment would implement. I look forward to the winding-up comments from the Minister.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will begin by mentioning that my sister and I cared for my mother in the last fortnight of her life, and we were significantly helped by carers—to whom I will be forever grateful—in that short time.

Of course, our social care workers right across the country were genuine heroes during Covid-19, and that recognition needs to continue. At the time of Covid-19, I was Secretary of State in DWP and, clearly, the workers there were carrying out tremendous acts of heroism right across the country—but there is a recognition, in a similar way to the NHS, that this drove quite a lot of burnout. However, recognising the importance of carers and the choices that people made in taking up that really important role, I felt it was absolutely vital that we tried to get better organised, to encourage people not only to stay in the sector but to join the sector. That is why I worked with the Department of Health and Social Care at the time, with my honourable friend Helen Whately.

I do not wish to lower the tone entirely, but I turn to the explanation of the creation of this negotiating body and to one of the things that I think is key. I am not at all opposed to it in principle. However, it suggests that the bargaining power of care workers has been low, partly because of low unionisation rates. This is only 20%, it is suggested, of a workforce of 1.6 million, which is about 5% of the total workforce in this country. I must admit I am somewhat sceptical about that.

I do not want to get into a huge debate about social funding. This is a challenge that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is taking up. With her capabilities, I am sure she will find a way through in this regard. However, I think we should recognise that there are a whole bunch of employers right across the country, and that social care funding is provided for through national government, through the hands of local government and, of course, council tax payers through the social care levy. That is the key challenge that we need to recognise, and we need to consider how this negotiating body could address that.

I will apologise to my noble friend Lady Browning for not speaking on something. When I looked at my amendment—I have an amendment coming up in the next group—I de-grouped it because I was trying to differentiate thinking about the progress of social care in regard to trying to split it away from the negotiating body. Perhaps I will explain briefly why and then, in the next group, come on to what I suggest could happen instead.

I have already set out that I started working on this, getting DWP to be engaged and thinking through about swaps and similar things. Indeed, one of the things that came out of that was the care pathway on a journey after People at the Heart of Care at the end of 2021, leading to the Next Steps consultation. I would say that the care workforce pathway is working.

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[Baroness Browning (Con)]

Perhaps I can just clarify that we were very much sighted on the fact that in education, people who are on the non-teaching staff are included in the Bill in the pay negotiating bodies. We were not clear why it should be different for social care workers.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. I must admit that I had almost to force-fit Amendment 200A, which I am coming to, into the Bill in order to be able to talk about a very valid concern about the progress and retention of social care workers in our country, recognising the absolutely vital role that they play in many care homes across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

200A: After Clause 48, insert the following new Clause—
“Registration scheme: duty to provide access(1) Social care providers must ensure that their employees have access to any registration scheme which Social Work England may establish.(2) In subsection (1), a “registration scheme” is system where social care workers’ training is centrally logged, allowing their previous training to be recognised by a new employer.”

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have already set out, in the debate on the previous group, my appreciation of social care workers right across our country. I said that I would try to set out in this group one of the ways that we can achieve the outcomes that the Government, and, I think, this Committee, are seeking to see: improved pay, terms and conditions for social care workers, including for the benefit of the people they help, to try to increase retention and tackle some of the challenges faced.

In my previous role, I commissioned my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith to consider in-work progression. While in DWP, I was concerned more broadly about people getting stuck in low-paid roles and what we could do to help increase their prosperity. In looking at a wide range of sectors, her commission highlighted the challenges facing the care sector right across the United Kingdom. A variety of research elements went into it. It cited research that found

“little incentive to gain qualifications in a sector viewed as low status”,

and that:

“Those working in care perceive it as involving highly skilled work, but workers tend not to view care work as a profession”.


As I referred to in the debate on the previous group, and therefore will not repeat, it set out, in effect, the care workforce pathway, which got going and has been enhanced by the current Government recognising the progress that could be made.

It used to be the case that a lot of people went into the care sector through the apprenticeship route. A decade ago, Skills for Care would cite nearly as many as 100,000, but that has significantly changed and has gradually fallen over time. Some of that might be to do with the nature and the variety of the work, which does not necessarily lend itself entirely to being appropriate for the apprenticeship levy for everybody in that sector. Last year, we ended up with about 24,000, one quarter of which were at level 2 entry, with, I hope, some of the people who had already completed level 2 securing level 3, but it represents quite a shift. It is testimony to the Department of Health having put together and worked with an Ofqual-registered qualification at level 2 as part of this new way to try to make sure that there is progress.

I agreed with one recommendation that my noble friend made, but she made a recommendation that I did not agree with. One of the challenges she set out was the hugely diverse nature of the social care sector. In financial support, as much is given to adults, as opposed specifically to pensioners, when it comes to social care. Indeed, my longest-standing friend Dawn spent most of her career as a social care worker for adults with learning disabilities. There is variety within the work that 1.6 million people in the workforce undertake every day. One of the challenges—whether you are self-employed or are moving to an agency or local authority—is that there is no way of recognising your experience and any training that you might have done. That is one of the key challenges of people leaving the sector, or getting stuck—instead of, perhaps, the sector expanding.

One of the recommendations was to emulate what happens in the construction skills certification scheme in the UK construction industry. This has been developed with a card and it shows that individual workers have transferable proof of a level of training and qualifications. When you start with a new employer in the social care sector, you would then not have to go through all the training that you have already done heaven knows how many times. If you are perfectly well skilled that is a frustrating element as well.

I do not agree with one of the recommendations. I strongly do not believe we should be regulating this sector. I think that would become more of a barrier. There are now many careers and jobs that are regulated by some separate authority. My noble friend made this recommendation on the basis that Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have done exactly that. Anyone who wants to be a social care worker has to become registered and be regulated by, for example, Social Care Wales or the Scottish Social Services Council. I am not convinced that we should be getting into that in this sector.

However, it could be possible—perhaps not for the negotiating body we have just spoken about, and I was suggesting why I did not think it would be appropriate—for Social Work England to establish something if people wanted to register and get their training recognised so that they had an equivalent to the construction scheme card. Again, the workers under that are not regulated by the construction industry in that regard. However, it has become a useful tool so that employers and workers are clear on what they can bring to the next employer they are seeking to have.

It will vary around the country but, quite often, social care workers will be contracted by multiple agencies. This recognises the flexibility of work that is available and wanted. This can sometimes lead to significant differential pay rates. Quite often, when working for a local authority, the pay will be considerably less than working for a private agency. It is important that we allow people to have this flexibility but, dare I say it, without the draconian regulation a whole body starts to bring about.

That is why I have put forward the suggestion that, if Social Work England chooses to establish such a scheme, any employees must be able to register training and any existing certificates with Social Work England to facilitate their personal choices on how to progress in work. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I was unfortunately delayed in getting here for the start of the previous group of amendments. I had added my name to the amendments on education. However, I am delighted to be here. I would have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, if I had realised what she was going to say.

I reinforce the need for education and monitoring what people do. The social care workforce is absolutely amazing. Its members work across an enormous range of people. When I chaired the National Mental Capacity Forum over six years, it was very evident that some people wanted to and had great talent for working with people with impaired capacity, and they wanted to learn how to do it better. There were others who did not like working with people with impaired capacity or people who had early dementia or even mental health issues, but they were extremely good at working with people with physical disabilities and impaired mobility. They were very good at manual handling, lifting and so on.

Over many decades, I have worked with social care workers in my field of palliative care. In the report of the palliative care commission that we wrote recently, we recognised the important role of many of these workers. When they look after people in their own home, they are often the person who spots deterioration first. Very often, patients will confide in them because they do not have the mantle of power that nurses and doctors have, and people speak very openly to them. They understand the problems and fears that people have in themselves and their lives. But they can see what is happening only when there is continuity of care—when they have seen the person before and will see them again.

I have to defend Social Care Wales; it has helped having a registration system because it has improved the perception of the status of people working in the field. When looking at this in detail in my field, we found that, although their time in post was transient, they often moved to a different employer. Although they did not remain with one employer, they would take their skills and what they had learned with them.

It has struck me over the years that this is a workforce thirsty for knowledge, skills and education, yet the group is not normally included among those considered as educated. When I first set up the hospice in Cardiff, it was the carers and kitchen staff who came in on their days off because they wanted to learn. Very often, because I had worked with them for 20 years or so, they knew best of all when I was worried about something and when to trigger calling me out of hours, because they had a whole set of skills.

Registering those skills will be very important in allowing career progression and recognition and allowing people in this workforce to work in the domains in which they have the best personality and skill set that suits them—where they feel appreciated and know that they are rewarded emotionally as well as financially. Some people are happy to drive around from one house to another in the ghastly traffic of the outer London suburbs or in cities. Others do not want to do that; they want longer one on one. Some are better working with disturbed young people or people with addictions. If we can have a way of recognising and building on that, we can go a very long way to improving the overall security of this very important workforce, which has, sadly, been tremendously undervalued across our society until now.

It was heartening to hear the Minister summing up on the previous group. I was absolutely delighted to have my name on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and to hear that the training will be set out via regulations under the affirmative resolution, which I think was going to be our next negotiating point when we were discussing what to do next. I hope that, with these amendments at different points in the Bill, we might find a way forward to get something on education and training recognised for the specific areas that people are in, so that they can gain credit for it, personally and in terms of career progression.

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[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for contributing and for again recognising the great value we attach to social care workers across the country. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, that I am not trying to do down Social Care Wales at all; it was more that there is almost a regulation approach, which I am keen to avoid and which I believe is not entirely necessary. I welcome the words of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom in that regard.

I am really pleased that the Minister has flagged this digital record, which I was not aware of. I am really excited to hear about that. I had already referenced the care pathway in the previous group, and it is great to see it being built on, which is something the sector was keen to achieve.

With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 200A withdrawn.

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[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, but I hope I am forgiven for thinking he has not been listening to what I have been saying. As I understand it, this clause is about reducing the number of people down to more or less nothing who are necessary in a company in order for a bunch of trades union mechanisms to be created. The amendment would remove that and tries to push up the number of employees below which this clause would not take effect. That is all that I have been talking about and I am startled to believe that a noble Lord of such eminence apparently has not been listening. I could finish fairly soon, if not interrupted much more.

My concern is that we are all people of good will. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, is rightly proud of the many good things that trades unions have done, but surely she cannot be unaware of how the people of Birmingham might feel about the striking dustmen or about how the people of this great capital feel about striking Underground workers and the commuter trains that so often muck up their daily life. She must be aware that, on another coin of trade unionism, there is the good and the bad. We have employment tribunals with two years of delay to even get to a tribunal, but clause after clause, including this one, threatens to increase the number of references to employment tribunals.

This clause is going to increase the awful number that we have just seen today of 150,000 job losses. In the parallel universe that we are in, can it possibly be that the Government Benches believe that that loss of 150,000 jobs has nothing to do with this plan, with their NIC changes, as my noble friend Lord Lilley said, or with so many other changes that are detrimental to employment in this country?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the Clause 55 stand part notice and Amendment 208. I have sympathy with my noble friend’s amendments regarding small and micro employers. We need to cut to the chase. I will probably irritate the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, but what is the point of this?

The Minister in the other place said that he hoped this clause would be “straightforward”—it is certainly straightforward—and “uncontroversial”. He said:

“Currently, there is no general requirement for employers to let their staff know of their right to join a trade union”.


and that there is a duty in this clause. He said:

“A lack of awareness of the right to join a trade union may be contributing to declining union membership and reduced worker engagement in collective bargaining. The clause will help empower workers to become active in protecting their rights. This is a step forward in strengthening worker representation”,—[Official Report, Commons, Employment Rights Bill Committee, 7/1/25; col. 517.]


and so on.

I go back to the point I made in a previous debate: the key headline in selling this to the public was that it was about day-one rights. As I have already explained to the Committee, this could have been done through a statutory instrument. Part 4 is a classic example of the fact that a lot of the motivation is about increasing trade union membership. Trade union membership is now at about 6 million people, I think; it might be just over that. By the way, as I said at Second Reading, I am not against trade unions, but I do not think it is the job of legislation to try to increase trade union membership as a consequence of our actions here today. I made the point about political funds.

To come back to the numbers, about 22% of employees are now members of a trade union. Of course, people have to pay a fee. I have recommended to people that they join a trade union, but we should be aware that the only sector where trade union membership is going up is the public sector. My general perspective on some of these things is that people tend to join a trade union when they do not trust their employer and they think they might need help, when they are not treated well or when there are other issues worrying them. That is when a lot of the benefits of trade unions come in, such as getting access to legal advice—I know there are plenty of other benefits as well. Family members of mine are trade union members and, as I say, I am not anti-trade union, but I am concerned about the approach we are taking in Part 4.

On Amendment 208, it would be useful to get an understanding from the Minister about what other prescribed times there might be. It is one of the oddest bits of this part of the Bill. When you join, you get to know certain things—it might not all be on day one; I accept that there is a bit later that talks about instalments and that sometimes you get to know certain key things, but you must do it within two weeks or two months, I cannot remember which. You may not get everything on day one, but, nevertheless, what are the other prescribed times? Will it be the same frequency as is being put in the Bill about the reminder to opt out of the trade union political fund, which will have moved to every 10 years? Why not put it in the Bill if we want an annual reminder, or we want it at the same frequency as a say on whether people can be part of the trade union political fund—or indeed on ways that that decision is made?

I am concerned about this element. There is no doubt that employer representatives are concerned about aspects of this Bill. In particular, when they spoke to me earlier this week, they said that quite a lot of the impact assessment is written on the basis that savings will be down to the fact that there will be fewer strikes. We should recognise the history of strikes happening in our employment places in the last couple of years or so: the number of strikes has gone up significantly in the public sector, exactly where trade union membership is going up—not the other way round. I appreciate that there has been a change in government and that Wes Streeting sat around a table, but we know that right now, where trade union membership is going up, the ballot papers—I do not quite know the process—are going out, calling for getting the vote together for a mandate for industrial action. It is happening right now.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that our very serious concerns about this clause would be assuaged were the Government to have properly followed Cabinet Office protocols and updated expeditiously the impact assessments, which are normally present in Bills of this size and magnitude?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. I have tried to get deposited in the Library, or sent through some other form of communication to all Peers, a response I have received from the Secretary of State on this matter. By the way, I have still not received a reply from the Cabinet Secretary, who is supposed to uphold Cabinet Office guidelines. In essence, the answer came back: “We’ll do a full impact assessment once the Bill is completed”. We know that industry is looking for that. We have no idea when these regulations will be introduced; I assume that they could already have started the consultation. It is important that the Secretary of State—I am trying to remember; I do not have a photographic memory—basically said, “We haven’t really changed that much”. That is where we are. I will continue to make the point. My noble friend is right and reminds me to chase the Cabinet Secretary.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Perhaps I can help my noble friend by explaining that Section 38 of the Employment Act 2002 allows an employee to claim compensation of between two and four weeks’ pay. Does she think this will lead to ducks-and-drakes people trying to seek such compensation?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I expect the bigger employers, if they know about this legislation—although we are hearing from a lot of the employers’ representatives that a lot of their members had not even heard about the day one rights until very recently—will probably put their HR departments and lawyers on it. I am concerned about the smaller ones, which is why I am sympathetic to the amendments in this group on micro employers and small employers. Otherwise, this could start to become a very expensive business. It is yet another reason why the Government generally do not seem to understand the chilling effect that not only their economic policies but legislation such as this will have on the recruitment of people to jobs.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I had no intention of coming here today to speak until I had dinner last night. Having put in a day’s work, I thought it was time to come here and express an opinion.

I would like to describe that situation last night. It follows on from a lot of what my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley said and the powerful words of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. This friend of mine, whom I have known for 30 or 40 years, is a small businessman in Bath, down in the West Country. He said to me, “Mark, we have a major problem coming. I have friends in similar places who run small businesses”—he runs a business of some six or seven people. “We are all talking together, because that is how we transfer knowledge, and the number of us beginning to think about throwing in the towel is significant. I want you to know about it”.

If this change were to happen, it would affect the poor employees of these businesses. There is nothing inherently wrong with these businesses but there is, as we have heard, more and more legislation coming upon them. It is the employees who are going. The domino effect through local economies is too much for these businesses. These small guys have to employ lawyers, HR experts and so on. I work for a company where we have those in house. They are just getting to the end of their tether. They do not want to stop, but I hope that Amendments 205 and 207 will help prevent that sort of thing happening and another nail in the coffin for these small businesses, which are really struggling as they think about the hassle of going on.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I know we have discussed the implementation plan several times now, and I can assure noble Lords that we are working at pace to finalise that. I do not think it would be helpful to see it in draft or imperfect form. We want people to have a categorical road map which shows the way forward. We absolutely understand that businesses need to see that; we are working on it. I am very confident that when businesses see it, they will be reassured that none of the things that we are proposing in this legislation will be rushed through. They will have time to prepare for it—I think we had a debate about this earlier. We know that businesses need time to prepare, we are absolutely aware of that, and we are going to make sure that they have it.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I just wanted to clarify something the Minister said. I think I heard her say that it would be done by negative resolution. Does that apply to all of Part 4 or specifically for every element of Clause 55?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My answer was specifically about Clause 55.

Amendment 206, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, would remove the compulsory element of the proposals, making it optional for employers to inform workers of their rights to join a union. To be clear, this is not about necessitating union membership but about ensuring that workers are aware of their rights and can make an informed decision about whether to engage. We want to empower workers to take a more active role in protecting their rights, and, where they choose, to participate in collective bargaining to improve their working conditions. Access to clear and accurate information is fundamental to that. This amendment would seriously weaken this measure by allowing employers to simply ignore the duty, defeating its policy intent entirely. It is vital that the right to union membership is made accessible to all workers as intended, that it is communicated regularly, and that employers are under a firm obligation to do so.

Amendment 208, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, would remove the requirement for employers to issue a statement of trade union rights on a prescribed basis. We are legislating for ongoing reminders of the right to join a trade union to reflect the reality of the workplace. New employers may miss information at the start of employment or change roles over time within the same organisation. Limiting the duty to the start of employment would also exclude existing staff, who equally deserve access to that information.

This statement of the right to trade union membership is important in fostering worker engagement and meaningful dialogue between unions and employers. Ongoing reminders are a key part of this measure. The Secretary of State will be able to set the frequency of this notification. This will be, as I have said, outlined in secondary legislation, subject to public consultation, and we invite interested parties to provide us with their views on this matter when we launch the consultation.

On the wider issue, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, urged us to consult more. I can assure him that these proposals have been subject to extensive consultation, and we are continuing to consult on them. I can also tell the noble Lord that we had a very constructive meeting with the Federation of Small Businesses.

Finally, I turn to the clause itself. Clause 55 introduces a new legal duty on employers to inform workers of their right to join a union. Employers will be required to issue this statement at the start of employment, alongside the written statement of particulars, which I commented on earlier. There is currently no requirement in law for employers to notify their workers of the right to trade union membership. This lack of awareness may be contributing to the falling union membership and reduced worker participation in collective bargaining that we have been discussing. This duty intends to address this gap, ensuring that workers are better informed of this right and helping to strengthen the collective voice in the workplace and enhance their representation. This delivers on the Government’s commitment to improve working conditions through increased trade union membership and participation. Specific details of this measure, including the frequency, form, content and manner of the notification, will be set out in secondary legislation, as I have said. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment and I urge that Clause 55 stand part of the Bill.

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[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and others. This clause strikes horror in my heart. The idea that someone could come into my business, access my premises with no notice—good luck with that, because I sit in a room on my own—or even worse, access my systems and my server, which are all heavily password-protected because I am regulated, strikes horror not just in my heart. I can assure the Minister, who says that she has consulted business groups, that she will see surveys coming out in the very near future that show the fear, horror and dislike that small businesses have of this Bill, and in particular the clauses we have been debating tonight. I hope she will have the opportunity to meet again with business representatives and listen to what they are saying.

The draftsman on this Bill is working in another era. What does physical access to a business mean? I like the clauses restricting this for smaller businesses, because most small businesses do not have a physical presence. In many businesses, literally tens of thousands of them, the employees work from home. They might have a WeWork office where they meet every now and then, but it is meaningless to give right of access to most small businesses. If we then go to right of access to digital communications, that implies, from the wording I have read, that a trade union official would have to be given the passwords to enter the systems.

What protection is there? What indemnities are there to ensure that this is not abused? We know that abuse happens, particularly in these days of cyber fraud, where someone who has accessed the system could take advantage. Obviously, I am not suggesting that that is going to be prevalent or happen in the majority of cases by any means, but I do not see any protection for small businesses should that happen.

It seems to me that the whole concept of access is misconceived. I would quite understand it if the legislation were drafted to require an employer of any size to pass messages to an employee—I would understand that; it would be reasonable—but can the Minister explain to us why she is demanding access to both physical and digital assets of small businesses?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak in particular to the amendments regarding communication with workers. I think it was Amendment 207 but, whichever one it is, I think noble Lords will know. The reason I bring this up is that my noble friend has just referred to aspects of cybersecurity. By the way, I am not suggesting that any trade union would be seeking to cause this havoc, but we know this is a particular challenge. I am struggling to understand how, under wider confidentiality, how anybody would have access to this or be expected to. It may be that the employer is required to pass on an email, I do not know.

I am also struggling to find the justification for this. In introducing the Bill, the Government did not make any reference to digital communication or this other communication; they referred only to physical access. I cannot find any justification put forward by the Minister for this. I cannot find the amendment in Committee, and I am struggling to find the amendment on Report, in the Bill documents on the parliamentary website. I am sure they are there; I am just struggling to find them. I certainly cannot find any reference by the Minister in the other place to why this is deemed necessary. I appreciate that it is not necessarily the job of the Government to do my research for me, but that would be very useful to hear, because it certainly was not in the Bill introduced to the Commons.

I would be grateful if the Minister could give this House a justification, because one of the things that is causing concern among employers’ representatives is this sort of process. It is fairly well established that trade unions are often invited in; that is all part of good industrial relations. The legislation talks about being able to organise. I think the Minister in the other place talked about using it as an opportunity to recruit new trade union members, to organise, to have meetings and so forth. I want to clarify something. The Bill states, in line 15 on page 75, that

“the access purposes do not include organising industrial action”,

so I would be grateful to understand this better. How is the Minister in the other place saying that you can organise different from organising industrial action?

I am genuinely concerned that anyone can just be told, “Please email all your employees with this material”. Fortunately, at the moment, it does not seem that we have prescription that the Secretary of State will write the words that need to be said—I expect they would not be writing on behalf of the trade union—but, again, I am trying to understand why employers would need to allow that to happen. On that, I will draw my comments to a conclusion.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I too shall be very brief. I strongly welcome this new right for workers to have reasonable access to their union representatives at their place of work—that is very important. It is also worth stating the good news that there are many voluntary access agreements already in place. I have had the pleasure many a time of visiting companies, big and small, walking the floor with the managing director and the union representative and having really good discussions, with an opportunity to meet workers and talk about the success of the business.

However, as a union official, I have also been in the position where I have had to meet workers in cafés, pubs, church halls, homes or anywhere, because they were too scared to be seen speaking to a union official outside their workplace with CCTV cameras trained on them. That is the reality that we are also dealing with, but there is plenty of good, practical practice to build on.

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To fully answer the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, this will all be part of further consultation. To reiterate, existing data protection legislation will continue to apply. That means that, whatever systems are put in place, those quite tough and onerous conditions that we have through the DPA will still apply. We expect, in many cases—

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Before the noble Lord moves on from that point, I am fully aware of where the reference to digital is in the Bill now. The point that I was trying to make to the Minister was to justify why, when the Bill was originally presented to the House of Commons—perhaps I should have been more specific—it was not mentioned at all. I believe it was not inserted in Committee, so it must have come somewhere on Report, but I cannot find any justification made by the Government for why they have added this digital communication when they had not put it in at either the introduction of the Bill or in Committee in the other place, when it has the most scrutiny at that end. I had hoped the civil servants might have sent him a note.

[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 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.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Will the Minister write to me with a better, candidly, a more comprehensive answer than he has given so far in response to my questions? I would be very grateful.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am very happy to write. I resist the idea that I am not being candid here. The noble Baroness may not like what I am saying, but the point stands. I am of course very happy to write to her and to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, with more detail.

In conclusion, we expect that, in many cases, employers and trade unions will be able to agree the terms on which access takes place, including for digital access. In the event that there is no agreement, the CAC can impose terms, including terms dealing with digital access. I repeat: the precise details of how this will work in practice will be set out in secondary legislation following further consultation. I therefore ask that Amendment 208A be withdrawn and that noble Lords do not press their other amendments.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

This probing amendment proposes a sensible and defined way forward by seeking to introduce a probationary period solely for young apprentices. I hope the Minister will recognise the problem and the need to make special provision for young apprenticeships.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I did not put my name to Amendment 102, because I do not agree with it entirely, for reasons I will set out, but the general approach is absolutely right.

We do not need to get into the rights and wrongs of the apprenticeship levy and higher-level apprenticeships, particularly level 7, but it is important to recognise that the number of people starting apprenticeships—particularly down in levels 1, 2, 3 and perhaps even 4—is a challenge, and is holding young people back from getting into work. Indeed, it is not just young people, and that is my broader point: getting people—many of whom, for a variety of reasons, may have been out of the job market for a long time—into work. It is exactly this approach, through apprenticeships, which means that, usually for SMEs, the larger elements of the levy are not being used by the larger employers and are instead being used to help provide 100% of the cost in order to train people.

There are a number of different factors there. People have talked about the different elements of costs. There is also the opportunity cost. It is important that employers get involved in identifying and helping the supply chain of their own workforce. I am sure I am not the only person who has been somewhere where I just got fed up doing the hard yards on training and the extra work, and, as I said, the opportunity cost, only for someone else to come along and poach that person, or for that person, once they had fully qualified, to leave. I have seen the frustration that this sometimes brought.

One of the adjustments I would have made to this builds on the discussion about NEETs. The definition of NEETs is those aged 16 to 24. My suggestion is that the amendment be amended, to cover an apprentice who is less than 25 years of age at the time that the contract is signed.

On the consideration of a probationary period, it is fair to say that people will want to give those new to a sector, and new to the world of work, more than a week or so to see if it is going to work out. There is a mixture of elements that need to be considered when people take on apprentices. One is their capability in work and college, and seeing how that evolves, because it is not always such a straightforward translation. Nor should apprenticeships be considered as work experience; they are proper jobs, admittedly a training job, and we should bear that in mind if we see a further drying up of apprenticeships.

We can debate at other times how, sadly, unemployment seems to be rising, which I believe will be exacerbated by this Bill more generally, but the Government should be specific about how we give more people a chance. I know we will debate probationary periods in general later. Apprenticeships should not be seen as, “We will just see if they work out or not”. It is supposed to be more of a commitment.

The Government could accommodate this. They will be aware that, already, on wages—if not some of the other rights—there is an apprenticeship rate which is not the same as the national minimum wage in the first year of an apprenticeship. There is already a precedent in legislation and practice that apprentices can be treated differently. I appreciate that people do not necessarily want two-tier elements like that, but we need to give special consideration to apprenticeships, recognising the special status they are given by the Government in contributions towards training and given the risk that employers may take on.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and declare my interest as the chair of a small housing association, Look Ahead, where we employ a lot of care workers and are encouraging apprenticeships to keep people in care work and to develop proper careers. We have not yet got the Casey review on care workers, but we know that the Government intend to reduce visas for overseas workers in this area. However, when you go into care work, you always find a small proportion of people who, when they realise some of the challenges of giving intimate physical care, feel unable to go on with that particular work. That is perfectly appropriate for both the apprentice themselves and the people they are supporting. I urge us to try to reach an agreement on this that is more flexible, so that people can have the opportunity of an apprenticeship in care, while recognising that, sometimes, a different kind of work is more appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

I am aware of a case of a small company that has got rid of four individuals in view of the legislation because those individuals are not doing a good enough job, but it could live with them if it had the ability to get rid of them. What it cannot face the thought of is having to go down any form of tribunal route or indeed threat thereof. That is not what we are trying to do with this Bill; we are trying to prevent that. We do not want to see those individuals leave employment. That is not what we want, and that is where it could lead a lot of people.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is one of the most important parts of this legislation, and I am very conscious of the Labour Party’s manifesto and its success in the election last year. However, at the same time, this is the same Government who want to increase the employment rate to 80%, which has not been achieved in a very long time. If we go back in history, we see that the Blair-Brown Government did not make changes to go to zero or day-one rights in the same way. Yes, they changed it from two years to one year. The coalition Government later changed it back to two years.

Yet we are now seeing—as has already been pointed out elegantly by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in response to some of the comments raised on the Government Benches—that this is the Government’s own impact assessment. If we look at the Regulatory Policy Committee’s assessment of these proposals, we see that it gives a very strong red rating on this element and suggests that, basically, there is no evidence that they are in any way needed.

There are aspects here of “What is the problem that the Government is trying to address?”. Lewis Silkin solicitors point out that if the only changes to be made were those referred to and we were still to have, as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy read out, the different approaches on fair dismissal in the tribunal, the Government could just put forward a statutory instrument based on the existing power of the 1996 Act. However, they have not done so in the Bill; they are seeking to go much further in a variety of ways in Schedule 3. That is why I share the concerns of many other noble Lords who are worried about the unintended consequences. Nobody can believe that a Labour Government would want to see unemployment rise or more people on benefits, or not tackle the challenge of people not in education, employment or training—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

Or the most vulnerable.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Or the most vulnerable—and we can just keep going.

However, on whether people take cases to the employment tribunal, as has been referred to, we are not going to debate Part 5 tonight, but in this same Bill, where we have to consider a lot of these things in the round, the Government are proposing to give an unlimited amount of money to somebody to get legal aid or legal support so that they can go to tribunal. In fact, they are going further and saying that the Secretary of State or somebody they appoint can go to court on their behalf. In that case, in Part 5, we are talking about people who have not even started work.

So, rolling it back, on some of the concerns about which noble Lords on the Government Benches are suggesting, “Don’t worry about it, this isn’t going to happen”, actually, the entire Bill is opening that. That is why I hope the Government do not just listen to the real concerns of noble Lords in this House; they should consider their own impact assessment and the representations of all the business organisations that think that this is just wrong.

I support the amendments. There are a variety of them about putting in the Bill a defined time for what should be considered a probationary period. We have already had a separate discussion about apprenticeships but, going further, one thing that surprises me is that in paragraph 2 of Schedule 3, new Section 108A refers to:

“Employees who have not yet started work”.


You may think, “That’s very sensible. How can you have an unfair dismissal?” I have already referred to Part 5, coming somewhat later. Then there is a list in the Explanatory Notes. It is quite complicated—it tries to simplify it, but the legislation is complicated—but here we have one of the answers. A lot of the Bill is basically about trying to make sure that trade union membership goes up—that means more money going into the political fund and having to wait to opt out until the following January, for, in effect, finances. Indeed, paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 3, as a consequential amendment, says that, in effect, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal, before you have even started work, will not apply if you are a member of a trade union. That is what is going on in this legislation. I will read it out:

“Omit section 154 (disapplication of qualifying period for unfair dismissal relating to union membership”.


There are a number of activities here; it goes further in the Explanatory Notes. They include if you are on strike—I do not quite understand how you could be on strike if you have not started work, but perhaps one is on strike if one is in a different job. There are already protections in the disapplication in existing law—it suggests people who are pregnant and similar. There are a variety of things here where there are already protections, but these are now being extended in different ways. Sometimes, the Government Back Benches may not all have necessarily read the full detail of the Bill.

To that end, I support the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in saying, “Let’s get rid of this clause and this schedule”. There is genuinely a way to start this again. There is still time for the Government to go away and do proper thinking—there is plenty to get through in this debate before we get to Report—to really narrow in on what the Government are trying to do, rather than, frankly, giving a blank cheque to a series of employment situations. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral—happy birthday to him, by the way—has already deemed this to be the unemployment Bill. I know those are not the consequences that the Government are seeking to address, but the experience and the petitioning of business organisations is very clear that that is what will happen.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, there are two things that I can safely say. One is that I am unanimous in my comments tonight, and the other is that you cannot accuse the Liberal Democrats of extending the debate past a reasonable hour; we have done just over an hour on this debate. The debate has been quite sensible and both sides have ventured into the usual jousting, but the comments from the noble Baroness who just spoke were a bit disingenuous in saying, or intimating, that the real reason behind this measure is to increase union membership and generate money for the Labour Party. That could not be farther from the truth of what this Government are trying to do, whichever way you look at the Bill.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Has the noble Lord read the later parts of the Bill that specifically say that? In the human rights assessment, there is a qualified comment from the Government that, basically, cites in particular the element about postponing any refunds until January. That is exactly what part of the Bill is designed to do.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I will reply to that. Yes, it is a technical question, and perhaps that wording sits there, but any person with an ounce of common sense who sees the Bill can see what the Government are trying to do. I do not think that the Bill, with over 300 amendments to it, is geared to do what the noble Baroness is intimating. That is cheap political point-scoring, and I think it is beneath her.

I have carefully considered the amendments put forward by noble Lords in this group, particularly those seeking to remove Clause 23 and Schedule 3, including Amendments 23 and 334 from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, the series of amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others relating to probationary periods, including Amendments 105 to 112. While I am not persuaded by those amendments or the case for removing the provisions or fundamentally changing the Bill, I recognise the need for greater clarity on probationary periods. Given the Bill’s current drafting, which relies heavily on future regulation, it is essential that the Government provide clear and firm guidance on how the provisions will operate in practice, especially for small businesses, which will find ambiguity challenging in difficult times.

Amendment 107A from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which proposes a default initial employment period but would allow the Secretary of State flexibility to amend that through regulation, offers a balanced concept that could be helpful in providing certainty while retaining adaptability. Likewise, Amendment 334 from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, which calls for a retention of the current qualifying period until suitable regulations are in place, reflects concerns about the smooth transition, and that deserves attention. However, I am less convinced by the calls for further impact assessments or reviews of the proposals in Amendments 103 and 123, which I believe risk delaying the necessary reforms without providing clarity.

In light of those amendments, I urge the Government to seize this opportunity to give definition and definite practical guidance on the provisions that the Bill will implement. It would be better if the Minister could say in absolute terms the length of time for which probationary periods will be set in future regulation after the passage of the Bill. That would be particularly important for smaller employers that need certainty to comply. Providing that clarity would help to ensure that the reform worked as intended, and it would help to strike the right balance between protecting employees’ rights and allowing employers the flexibility to manage probationary employments effectively. On that basis, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Yes, I can confirm that that is the case.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

The Minister has not addressed the fact that there are already powers in existing legislation to modify the qualifying period. The Minister talks about going into consultation, but that consultation on the probationary period could start right now with the SI, and that element. I struggle to understand why we have to wait such a long time when, actually, the Government could get on with their policy a lot more quickly.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

That has reminded me that that was the other question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe—so I thank the noble Baroness for raising it.

As we have said before, we are working on an implementation plan, which we hope to share with noble Lords as soon as we can. It is in my interests as well as noble Lords’ interests that they see it sooner rather than later, but there is no point in sharing something that is not complete. Noble Lords will see that—and it will set out exactly what we are planning to do and where the consultations will fit in with all of it. I hope that when noble Lords see it, it will reassure them.

To go back to the particular question from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, we see this as a wholesale package. It is right that it is introduced to employers as a package; it will have appropriate timescales in it. We do not want to do things on a piecemeal basis, we want to do them in the round. That is why we are attempting to address this in the way that we are proposing today.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 73 in my name regarding SMEs and an SSP rebate scheme. I have made a drafting error by calling it four days when it should have been three days, in compliance with the law today.

Occupational health is a key factor in both helping people to stay in work, to try to prevent some of the illnesses, and to get back into work quickly, and for some time it has been a key part of the strategy of a successful business to do that. But I am also very conscious that SMEs in particular are not always well displaced currently to access, which is why expanding that capability has been a key part of DWP’s more recent strategies, which the present Administration have continued.

Sickness rates are significantly lower in the private sector than in the public sector, but what is common to both is that there is an increasing prevalence of the primary reason for sickness pay: people being off sick due to mental well-being. I am conscious that this is often not an easy situation to challenge or interact with if you do not have the experience to do so, and that is why increasing occupational health is needed.

Why is occupational health so relevant to this? It used to be the case that with statutory sick pay you could reclaim from the Government the amount of money that you had paid out. You might have paid out a lot more—100% of earnings or similar—but all businesses used to be able to get a rebate for the statutory sick pay element. I know that because I used to fill out the claims myself when I was working in industry. Over time that was whittled down, and it was finally abolished in 2014. Instead, the Government at the time created the Health and Work Service, which was designed to be referred to by SMEs for people who have been ill for a few weeks—again, almost as a provision facilitated by government.

One of the challenges is that this is continuing to be part of an issue. Many businesses, particularly small businesses—certainly in submissions made to me—are particularly worried about this starting from day one of people being unwell. As a consequence, it is important that we should investigate the opportunity to get a rebate scheme for SMEs to try to keep the status quo as it is today.

It is in the interests of government to support SMEs. As we have already heard, the statistics show that, unfortunately, payroll employment is falling. When in office I was very pleased that we saw it increasing. Indeed, I am certain, in wanting the Government to succeed in their ambition to get to 80% employment rate, that they need SMEs to be taking on people to work. As I have explained, I do not think the Bill will help with that, but one modest way to go towards alleviating some of the issues would be to introduce a straightforward rebate scheme for SMEs.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett, and in support of more being done on statutory sick pay. I welcome the Government’s commitment to strengthen statutory sick pay by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period, but they must go further to ensure that people with mental health problems have a secure safety net when they need time off work, and a pathway back into work when they recover.

The UK has one of the least generous sick pay schemes in the OECD in terms of rates and length. It forces people to remain in work while they are unwell, which risks them becoming more unwell and eventually falling out of work. Because statutory sick pay is inadequate, people who rely on it often carry on going into work when they are unwell. This can risk them becoming more unwell, to the point where they fall out of employment altogether. We need a sick pay system that provides real security, is more compassionate, gives people the time they need to get better and supports them to return to work when they are ready.

Reforming statutory sick pay is beneficial to the economy, to businesses and to people with mental health problems. As my noble friend has emphasised, presenteeism—going to work when unwell—is costing UK employers £24 billion a year, according to figures produced by Deloitte. It reduces productivity and business competitiveness, as well as aggravating a person’s illness. Introducing a flexible statutory sick pay model that allows for partial payments alongside wages would help people to gradually return to work after a period of sickness, or allow them to reduce their hours when needed without being signed off completely. Not only is this beneficial for the employer, as employees are able to return to work sooner part-time, but it keeps the employee connected to their workplace and reduces the likelihood that they will fall out of employment altogether.

Extending the length of statutory sick pay being paid from 28 weeks to 52 weeks will enable more people to stay in employment, reduce rehiring costs for businesses and prevent people falling out of employment and needing support from the benefits system. Ultimately, we need to see a higher level of statutory sick pay, and I see no reason why, when you are sick, you should get any less than the national minimum wage.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 1, although possibly not for quite the same reasons as those already expressed in this Chamber, and I regret I was not able to speak at Second Reading.

When dealing with a purpose clause, one cannot avoid spending a moment dwelling on the broader principles behind the Bill before coming to the amendment itself. It is worth noting that one of the reasons the British economy has surprised so many people over the last decade or so on the upside, despite all the gloomy predictions, is because it is an extremely flexible and responsive economy, particularly in the labour market. Most indices of these things put us in the global top 10 of labour market flexibility, which I regard as a good thing, although clearly many noble Lords who have spoken do not.

There is a paradox here, in that flexibility is the best way of delivering security—maybe not in any individual job, but security of employment and income over a period. The Government seem to think that the only way to ensure job security is to put in place more and more intrusive and detailed legislation to require it. That is why we are going to be discussing, no doubt at great length and with huge complexity, this massive Bill which tries to do just that. It is damaging that the Bill is being made up as it goes along to such a large extent; it just multiplies the complexity and difficulty.

I do not think that is the right way to look at job security. The best way to look at it is that flexibility produces security. If it is easier to change the terms and conditions of a job, or easier to dismiss people if they do not fit, then it is also easier to re-employ or shift resources from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors and to deliver growth in the economy. The approach in the Bill protects insiders at the expense of entrepreneurs and those who are outside the labour market, so it is not surprising that the representatives of trade unions are so supportive of it. The trade unions represent the insiders, but they are not the only people who have an interest in labour market flexibility.

I make these points because they go to the difficulty of drafting a satisfactory purpose clause for this Bill. It is desirable to have a purpose clause for something that is so complex and sprawling in the way it tries to legislate. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, has written it as cleverly and clearly as he possibly could in the circumstances. It is cleverly written, but the difficulty is not so much that it is not sufficiently exhaustive but that it contradicts the contents of the Bill. It sets out a number of things which the Bill simply does not do. For example, in paragraph (a) of the proposed new clause, it talks about “fairness”. Well, that may be fairness for employees on one definition but not for employers or those who are outside the formal labour market. Whose fairness are we talking about?

Paragraphs (b) and (d) in the proposed new clause do not “facilitate”—to use the word in the amendment—good labour relations; they actually make them more bureaucratic, complicated, difficult and hard to implement. Paragraph (c) makes provision for pay and conditions but, arguably, it should not be doing that at all—that is not the business of the Government but the business of employers and employees. The only one that is an accurate description of what is in the Bill is paragraph (e), the simple statement that it is to

“make provisions about the enforcement of labour market legislation”,

which it certainly does.

I am not sure that there is a satisfactory way of dealing with this. Nevertheless, I support this purpose clause amendment, because it seems to me that if it were to pass, the logical consequence, to be consistent, would be that large parts of the rest of the Bill would have to fall away to be consistent with the expressed purpose in this purpose clause. If the Bill were to be internally consistent with the things that we say are desirable, then much of this Bill is simply not consistent with that. Now, what goes first—the purpose clause or the rest of the Bill? I think we know how that is going to play out. Nevertheless, that is why it is difficult to get to a satisfactory purpose clause for this Bill. It would be good if much of the Bill fell away—no doubt we will come on to that in the next seven days—as it is going to cause a lot of damage to the economy and to growth.

To conclude, I support the amendment, if not perhaps for exactly the same reasons that others have supported it. It will enhance and make clearer, to some extent, what is a very sprawling, complex and unsatisfactory Bill.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to all of the amendments in the group. I spoke at Second Reading. As my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out, we only had four to five minutes then, so this gives us an opportunity to consider further what the purposes should be. In the document published by the Labour Government, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade referred to the fact that this would be about getting more people into work. So far under this Administration, we have, unfortunately and regrettably, seen unemployment rise.

At the same time, comments have been made by noble Lords on the other side, such as by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who referred to income inequality. What he may have forgotten is that, under the previous Labour Administration, income inequality rose. Meanwhile, under the recent Conservative Administration, income inequality fell. So, this is a case of trying to make sure that, as we take the legislation through, we focus on the outcomes it will have for people right across this country, rather than dogma. There is a combination of factors where, frankly, flexible labour has generally improved the prosperity of people in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, complained that people in work were on universal credit. That is a large point of it. We have finally got rid of tax credits, which went earlier this month. Those had been introduced by previous Labour Governments in order to increase people’s pay—which employers were not doing. It was done in a rather crude way, such that capital was not taken into account. When we were moving people from tax credits to universal credit, we discovered—particularly early on, when we were doing some of our test and learn approach—that there were people with capital of over £100,000 who were still receiving tax credits and who decided that, although they would be entitled to one more year of such a transition payment, they did not think it was right to do so.

It is about that sort of element, of trying to consider what we want to see as an increase in prosperity and productivity. However, I am concerned, given the recent increase in unemployment and all the messages that we are receiving from businesses, small and large, that we will instead start to see a significant increase in unemployment and indeed more people going on to benefits. As I say, the whole point of universal credit is that you will be better off working than not working. The approach is to try and support people as they reach higher salaries.

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is right to say that, if we were considering further things to add to the proposed new clause set out in Amendment 1, competitiveness and growth should be there. I would add that the outcome should also be about increasing the number of people in employment. I know that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has set an exceptionally ambitious target of 80% of people being in work—which would be the highest in an exceptionally long time—but, to do that, she needs to work with other parts of her Government to make sure that more jobs will be created, so that people can go into those jobs at the rate that is set.

After thinking through what will happen with this legislation, I made the point at Second Reading that the Bill started off at 149 pages—and I am conscious of the 100-day deadline set by the Deputy Prime Minister to present it—and that it had basically doubled by the time it left the Commons. Not a huge amount of time was set aside for consideration of the additional 103 pages that were considered on Report there. As we have already heard, we are starting to see more amendments come in from the Government that this House needs to consider.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I think I am allowed to come back in Committee. I want to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, because I probably did not articulate terribly well what I was proposing. I certainly was articulating a right to request, but I was also assuming there would be an obligation to meet that request, given certain thresholds that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, was talking about. It would not be an option for the employer as long as the request was within those thresholds. I suspect that is not what the noble Baroness thought I was proposing, and I just wanted to set the record straight.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 8. I commend my noble friend Lord Wolfson on his excellent speech, bringing the reality of employing so many people into the heart of this debate, along with the constraints and the concerns being raised, while still recognising that I understand why so many people consider casual work and zero-hour contracts to be particularly poor when people are trying to have certainty of employment over some time. I also support Amendments 7, 12 and 13—in essence, any amendment that refers to specifying the reference period in the Bill.

I say that because, when thinking of 26 weeks, I think in particular of the hospitality industry in coastal areas. There are a number of employers around the country who literally shut down their businesses, or move to a much lower level of needing people, at certain times of the year, and then, in the summer, are desperately trying to find people. We need to give flexibility. The 12 weeks simply does not recognise that, as has been referred to. It is perfectly usual for people to work at different points throughout the year, potentially in on annualised-hours contract, but varying the number of hours expected to match the demand of customers requiring a particular service. I fear that the 12 weeks does not address that sort of business.

Across the country, 2 million people work in the hospitality industry. It is one of our biggest industries, and for many families it is key to how they support their household income. For the flexibility that employers want, and—thinking of how many people lose their childcare at certain times of the year—for employees to have flexibility around their hours worked, bringing in casual staff is a key element in how employers keep those businesses going.

There is another element that needs thinking through. While I appreciate that the Government seek to reduce the number of agency and bank workers in the NHS, let us not get away from the fact that, unfortunately, many NHS trusts are actually terrible employers. A lot of people leave or reduce their permanent contracts because they simply cannot get the flexibility that they need working in the NHS. That could be for caring reasons, for all sorts of people—it does not matter whether it is men or women; people provide care to their families and to their friends. I am concerned, and I intend to discuss further with NHS Professionals how this will impact on the NHS fulfilling its expectations for people right across the country. I appreciate that it is not simply NHS Professionals; many individual trusts have their own bank. That is intended to provide flexibility based on need, and recognises that simply not everybody can work the NHS shifts expected.

Thinking of the 26 weeks or the 12 weeks, I am also concerned that, at the other end of the Corridor, 650 Members of Parliament are all individual employers. They have to sign contracts, which are provided, but when people are ill or go on maternity leave, MPs can and do take people on through certain term contracts. I am concerned that there will be unintended consequences for the provision of services. As a real example, if you had to guarantee hours beyond when the employee came back, you could end up in a situation that you simply could not manage.

It is for those reasons that we need to think very carefully about the reference period when we are considering the different employment situations that small employers find themselves in, as well as the large sectors, such as hospitality and retail, which have already been discussed.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 3, 6 and 17 stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt. Before turning to the detail, I would like to frame the debate in its proper context.

At the heart of this issue lies the question of incentives. Much of the discussion around zero-hours contracts rightly concerns the security and well-being of workers. We must not lose sight of the fact that only a relatively small proportion of the workforce is employed on such contracts, or in other forms of temporary work. Many of these individuals are young people—as my noble friend Lady Lawlor illustrated in her very detailed speech—who are starting out in their careers. Others are disabled people, who may be able to work only a limited number of hours due to their personal circumstances. If we make the regulatory environment too rigid, we inadvertently create a disincentive to hire precisely these groups. We reduce the number of vacancies, reduce opportunities and end up harming those we most wish to support. Good intentions do not alone lead to good results. It is the incentives that lead to results.

I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan and the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Goddard, for their contributions in this group, and I will come on to others. My noble friend Lord Moynihan made a compelling argument to leave out this part of the clause altogether, because it is simply unworkable in its current form. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.

I turn to the specifics of my amendments. Job security is vital, and there can be no disagreement on that point, but we have to recognise that guaranteed-hours contracts are not always practical or appropriate across all sectors of the economy. The principle that we wish to uphold is simple: autonomy. Workers themselves are best placed to judge their own circumstances and to decide whether a guaranteed-hours contract would suit their needs.

Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, published in its report on zero-hours contracts, found that workers on such contracts often report a better work-life balance and higher well-being compared with other workers. This is an important reminder that flexibility, when genuinely chosen, can be empowering rather than exploitative.

Not every worker wants a rigid schedule. Young people, parents with caring responsibilities and disabled people may actively prefer the flexibility that variable hours allow. A one-size-fits-all approach simply does not reflect the realities of the modern labour market. Sectors such as retail, hospitality and tourism, and other seasonal industries, are heavily dependent on flexible staffing to meet seasonal demand. It is these very sectors that offer the vital entry-level opportunities to workers who might otherwise struggle to find employment.

Despite the Government’s understandable ambition to improve labour market fairness, the Bill as currently drafted risks reducing that flexibility rather than enhancing it. The automatic obligation placed upon businesses to offer guaranteed-hours contracts once certain thresholds are met would impose significant and disproportionate administrative burdens, even when the worker involved may have no desire to change their current arrangements.

The problem is particularly acute for larger employers, such as national retailers, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Wolfson, who delivered an expert speech. They would be forced into a continual cycle of recalculations and offers, simply because an employee’s working patterns have shifted slightly. As my noble friend Lady Verma explained, that affects small businesses as well. In practice, firms would face a daily or weekly obligation to offer a new contract based on changing patterns, resulting in huge and unnecessary administrative costs. This would not only create inefficiency but would discourage businesses offering overtime and additional work voluntarily, thereby reducing opportunities for those who value flexibility.

The amendments I propose take a different approach. Instead of an automatic right to be offered a guaranteed-hours contracts, we propose a right to request a guaranteed-hours contract. It entirely respects the spirit of the Government’s intentions. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has already explained, it would impose the same the obligations on employers as the Government’s Bill. This would preserve the choice for workers, empowering them to seek greater stability when they wish, but it would avoid imposing blanket obligations on employers that may lead to perverse outcomes. The Government’s current drafting, with an automatic right to guaranteed hours, risks creating a bureaucracy that neither workers nor businesses have asked for.

On the subject of businesses, it is worth referring to the letter received from five employers’ organisations. For reference, those are Make UK, the CBI, the IoD, the Federation of Small Business and the British Chambers of Commerce. They say in that letter:

“Not every job can be made compatible with every possible need. This reform means businesses incur admin costs whenever an employee works variable hours. The result is that firms are discouraged from offering variable hours even when the flexibility is requested by workers, including voluntary overtime. The cost associated with administering and calculating contract offers on a rolling basis whenever staff work additional hours is also disproportionate and provides no clear benefit to workers”.


I could not have put it better myself.

There has been some reference on the other side, by the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, to the Low Pay Commission, which met seven years ago. That ignores the fact that, over the last seven years, working practices more generally through the economy—whether on flexible-hours contracts or not—have changed very dramatically, partly as a consequence of the pandemic. I note that the FSB has now signed the letter which includes the quote I have just delivered, so it has clearly changed its mind.

I recognise that there may be an even simpler and more effective alternative to the right to request, which would be an automatic offer of a guaranteed-hours contract combined with the right for the worker to opt out if they so wish, so Amendment 17 introduces a worker opt-out mechanism. A qualifying worker may opt out of receiving a guaranteed-hours contract provided that the employer has provided clear written information about the guaranteed-hours system, the worker has given written notice in a prescribed form, and the employer reminds the worker at regular intervals, at least every six months, that they can opt back in at any time. Under that model, every eligible worker would be enrolled on to a guaranteed-hours contract after the reference period by default.

However, those workers who genuinely value the flexibility of their zero-hours arrangement—and there are many, particularly, as we have already discussed, young people, carers and so on—would have the right to decline the offer by providing written notice. This approach would strike a better balance, because it would ensure that guaranteed hours are the norm unless the worker themselves chooses otherwise, thereby protecting workers who might otherwise feel pressured not to request more security. Equally, it would avoid the unnecessary administrative burden on employers of offering contracts that in many cases would be rejected. We would be sparing businesses the cost and disruption of a process that delivers little practical benefit where flexibility is mutually valued by both employer and employee. It would ensure that the choice remains a real and continuing one, recognising that workers’ needs and circumstances evolve.

--- Later in debate ---

If the measures in this Bill go through, many small businesses and microbusinesses will not be able to do what others have done—namely, grow rapidly and develop exponentially—as we have heard. There is a very strong case for exempting small businesses, particularly micro-businesses, as has been proposed. I hope that the Government will listen.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 5. Without small businesses growing and taking on people, we will not achieve the outcomes that the Government have set for getting more people into work. I referred in a debate on an earlier group to the 80% target.

I am conscious of what happened with the Kickstart scheme. We particularly encouraged small businesses to participate in the scheme and to consider the opportunity of an extra pair of hands, giving them the confidence that they could grow their business and employ people, often for the first time. That was an important step in thinking about how to minimise risk in the first instance. A considerable proportion of people were offered permanent jobs as a consequence.

That first step of taking people on is often the hardest for many small businesses and microbusinesses. That is why I would be even happier if this amendment was altered on Report to make it solely for microbusinesses, not just small businesses, as that first step is one of the hardest.

We already have thresholds in many other employment practices. We already have thresholds about things that connect with pension contributions, and other financial thresholds have been referred to. But this is about having the courage to take on people. You may decide to expand your services, whether in the care sector or elsewhere, as you do not want to let clients down, but you need to make sure that you can guarantee quality support to your clients. That is one of those uncertain things when we discuss a wide range of the amendments to Part 1 of the Bill.

There are other opportunities where I will raise the issues impacting small businesses in the Bill, but overall we should take the successful approach of previous Governments, including Labour Governments, of keeping small businesses out of this area. The impact assessments talked about mitigations they plan, but there is no mention of what those mitigations may actually be, and that level of uncertainty is one of the things that will hold back growth, which we are led to believe is the number one mission of this Government. I fear that without some of the exemptions, we will not see that growth coming in our UK industry.

[Lord de Clifford (CB)]

I rise in support of the gist of these amendments with regard to small businesses. I declare my interest as the owner of a medium-sized business with 130 employees, so it would not apply to me. But the burden on small businesses, certainly of Part 1, will seriously restrict their ability to grow and have the courage to take that step of employing people. I certainly think that micro-businesses should be exempted from a lot of these burdens. As we go through Part 1, we need to keep those micro-businesses in our thoughts.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move government Amendment 14 and shall speak also to government Amendments 23, 25, 26, 30, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41 and 45 to 61. I reassure the Committee that these are technical amendments brought about as a result of very welcome scrutiny of the Bill.

The amendments incorporate technical and clarificatory adjustments, close loopholes to safeguard policy functionality, and resolve uncertainties to ensure the measures are comprehensive and will accurately deliver the policy intent set out in the plan to make work pay, delivery of which was a clear manifesto commitment of this Government. They do not introduce new policy; they simply ensure the Bill works to achieve its intended aims effectively. Making technical amendments to the Bill in this way is an entirely appropriate and ordinary part of making good legislation.

On Amendment 14, as the Bill is drafted, workers on annualised contracts—or other contracts where the hours are guaranteed over a period longer than the reference period—that have a total number of guaranteed hours of work but little detail as to their allocation may fall out of the scope of the right to guaranteed hours. This is because the worker would be on neither a zero-hours contract nor a contract guaranteeing a certain number of hours over the reference period. It is the case even if they would otherwise be eligible. Workers may therefore fall out of the scope even if they are guaranteed only a very small number of hours over a year.

On the other hand, workers on annualised hours contracts who have a sense of when their hours will be worked may fall into scope of the right to guaranteed hours if they have a certain number of hours guaranteed during the reference period. This is not our policy intention—workers on annualised contracts may experience one-sided flexibility in the same way as those on weekly or monthly contracts. As the Bill is drafted, there may also be a perverse incentive for employers to place workers on to annualised hours contracts guaranteeing a very small number of hours with no indication as to when they should be worked to avoid being in scope of the right to guaranteed hours.

Amendment 14 will ensure that the policy works as intended and expected and will act as an anti-avoidance measure. It makes provision to determine what the minimum guaranteed hours are in the relevant reference period by providing a calculation method to find the apportioned number of any unassigned hours under the contract for that reference period.

Amendments 49 to 57 add grounds on which a dismissal would be automatically unfair. A dismissal would be automatically unfair where an employee was dismissed for bringing a complaint to an employment tribunal that they were wrongly issued a notice by their employer stating that their guaranteed hours offer had been withdrawn or for alleging the existence of any circumstance which would constitute a ground for bringing such proceedings. Adding these grounds aligns with the approach taken where a worker is unfairly dismissed for taking a claim to an employment tribunal on other grounds relating to the right to guaranteed hours. All employees deserve protection from unfair dismissal. These amendments will ensure that employees who make a claim in an employment tribunal on any of the grounds related to the right to guaranteed hours will be protected from being dismissed as a result of making such a claim. Consequential amendments have been tabled to amend the right not to suffer a detriment for workers and agency workers to ensure consistency when referring to the proceedings that can be brought or referred to and that could lead to that detriment.

Amendments 25, 26, 34 and 35 relate to the movement of shifts for the purposes of payment for workers for shift movement at short notice. These amendments make technical changes to the definition of the “movement” of a shift. This is to provide for situations where a shift is split in two or more parts, or where a part of a shift is moved with the result that the shift ends later than it otherwise would have but the start time remains the same. For example, a worker could have a 9 am to 5 pm shift changed at short notice to 9 am to 12 pm and 4 pm to 9 pm. In this case, it is right that a payment for a short-notice change is granted given that the worker may have already incurred costs for plans associated with the shift, such as childcare or other care arrangements.

Amendments 30 and 40 make technical changes relating to payments for shifts that have been cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice where an exception applies. Where an exception applies—meaning that the employer is not required to make a payment for that changed or cancelled shift—the employer must provide the worker with a notice so they are aware that they will not receive a short-notice payment and why. The notice must be given to the worker within a certain amount of time, which will be specified in regulations. This period may be shorter than the deadline for making payment, which will also be specified in regulations. Under the current drafting, even if they make the payment despite an exception applying, the employer still has to provide an exception notice if they make the payment after the deadline for giving a notice. The amendments change this so that employers do not need to provide a notice if they pay the worker within the deadline for making the payment. The same applies in respect of work-finding agencies and agency workers.

Amendment 23 aligns the wording used in Clauses 2 and 3. To be eligible for the right to short-notice payment, workers must be on a contract of a specified description, if they are not on a zero-hours contract or arrangement. This is referred to in Clause 2 as a contract

“that requires the employer to make some work available to the worker”.

We are adding the same description into Clause 3 to ensure that this is included in the provision.

Amendment 39 is a minor and technical amendment that corrects a cross-reference to align paragraph 23(5) of new Schedule A1 to the Employment Rights Act 1996 with new Section 27BR(3) of the same Act, both inserted by this Bill. This concerns the duty to give notice where an exception applies that means that no payment is due for a shift that has been moved, cancelled or curtailed at short notice. The amendment ensures that, for both directly engaged workers and agency workers, only the requirement to give an explanation in the notice of exception does not require the disclosure of information where that would contravene data protection legislation or breach a duty of confidentiality, or where the information is commercially sensitive.

Amendment 45 signposts at Clause 6 the definition of “work-finding agency” in Clause 4. This minor and technical amendment adds the definition of “work-finding agency” to the interpretation section in new Section 27BZ2, with other definitions used for that part. It does this by referring to its meaning in new Section 27BV of Part 2A of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Amendments 46, 58 and 61 amend Schedule 6 to the Insolvency Act 1986, Schedule 3 to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 and Section 184 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 so that employees can receive short notice payments in the same circumstances as they receive other wages on the insolvency of their employer. When an employer goes insolvent, outstanding wages due to employees are treated as preferential debts—or preferred debts in Scotland. Amendments 58 and 61 ensure that outstanding short notice payments are also treated as preferential or preferred debts.

Amendment 46 enables employees to obtain payment of unpaid short notice payments from the Secretary of State in the same circumstances as they receive other wages under the scheme created by Part 12 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Amendment 59 amends Section 202 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to ensure that information does not have to be provided and will not be disclosed to a tribunal or court under the zero-hours provisions where a Minister is of the opinion that such disclosure would be contrary to the interests of national security.

Amendment 60 amends Section 206 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to ensure that, in the event of a worker’s death or the employer’s death—or the death of another respondent in the case of agency workers—tribunal proceedings under the zero-hours provisions can still be instituted, continued or defended as appropriate by a personal representative of the deceased.

Amendments 41 and 47 amend Section 12A of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 and the provisions on short notice payments for agency workers in order to enable employment tribunals to impose financial penalties on all types of respondents in claims brought under the zero-hours provisions where there are aggravating circumstances.

Amendment 48 amends Section 16 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 to include payments for cancelled, moved or curtailed shifts in scope. This ensures that regulations can be made to enable benefits to be recouped where a worker has not received such a payment and so has had to claim benefits, and the tribunal has then ordered the employer or work-finding agency to make the payment. The amendment also ensures that regulations can be made so that benefits can be recovered from all types of respondents in claims brought under the zero-hours provisions—for example, in respect of the payments that are compensation for loss of wages.

These amendments seek to prevent workers receiving double award where their rights have been breached and ensure that employers and other respondents do not benefit from breaching these rights. I therefore beg to move these amendments.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of government amendments. I am surprised that the Minister made the assertion that they are all technical. Amendment 53, for example, extends the types of dismissal that will be regarded as “automatically unfair”. That is not a technical amendment; it is an extension of what is already considered potentially controversial in being added to the Bill in this way.

There are other amendments in this group that really concern me in their drafting. Multiple amendments leave out several lines of the previous Bill presented to this House and the other House and then leave the employment tribunal and the employer to get into the detail. For example, Amendment 52 states:

“It is immaterial … whether or not the proceedings were, or would have been, well-founded provided that the agency worker acted in good faith in bringing the proceedings or alleging the existence of the circumstance”.


I ask the Minister, what has changed? Why do we now have an employment tribunal group which has to decide whether the actor worked in good faith? They will not necessarily need to know what the Government proposed before, but it would be very helpful to understand why significant parts of the Bill on the operation of the employment tribunal are being changed at this stage.

Steel Industry

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, it is fair to say that the steel industry has been in special measures for some time. The noble Lord has just referred to the acquisition that was made in 2020. Indeed, the last Government made sure that Scunthorpe did not close, and there was only one private investor prepared to invest in British Steel. I am conscious that the last Government nationalised another steel producer, Sheffield Forgemasters, again recognising how important that was to the needs of national security.

The strategy put out for consultation less than two months ago recognises that primary steel is still important, but the end is nigh for this blast furnace way of producing it. I am concerned that, on the one hand, we now seem to be in a temporary situation: let us recognise that the technology is not around the corner; it will be a long time before we are able to produce primary steel in a more environmentally friendly way. At the same time, it is concerning that Scunthorpe is close to its life end. I want to understand from the Minister whether she has asked the HSE for its view on the lifetime of these assets and the cost of repair. I am not suggesting that the Government should shy away from seeking to extend its life, but it is important to understand the amount of money being invested.

The other issue is the supply of coke. As has just been explained, that is the only way that steel can be produced with a blast furnace today. Yet, within a week of taking office, the Government decided to pull out of the legal case concerning the coke mine in Cumbria. I would like to understand from the Government whether they will revisit this, recognising that, at the moment, they are trying to source coal from around the world.

Thinking further about the issues with the Bill, the sunset clause has already been mentioned. With candour to the House, I can see these powers probably being used for at least 10 years. In taking charge of effectively nationalising British Steel, the Government have made a commercial decision. On Clause 7, I therefore want to clarify the following: while the regulations will not be available and will be done by negative resolution, is it the Minister’s expectation that there will be a 100% reimbursement to the owners of British Steel?

On thinking ahead, the steel strategy very clearly talks about the electric arc furnace. I am conscious that the Government had the deal in Port Talbot to make that transition, and I expect that they will want to make that transition in Scunthorpe in due course. However, there seems to be one part of the country where there is a site ready, with planning permission already granted and connections already sorted with the national grid and where there is already the political will locally, but it seems there is very clearly not the political will nationally. I am sorry: it feels, just because the voters of Teesside decided to vote for my noble friend Lord Houchen of High Leven, that, where there is an open deal to be done—it is my understanding from speaking to my noble friend that the owners of British Steel are keen to invest in Teesside—the Government have indicated that there is no way that they will help British Steel to do that. Thinking just about political back and forth is not—dare I say it—a grown-up way. We should be looking to the future, to have a comprehensive steel strategy, and to make sure that the political colour of who represents people locally does not matter or determine whether there will be good green electric arc furnaces producing steel in the future, which are necessary for the expansion of many industries. Living in Suffolk, not far away from the nuclear power station but also very close to where a significant number of wind farms are being or will be constructed, I am conscious that we need to try to increase the amount of production of those turbines onshore with green energy.

I am conscious that this Bill will sail through today and that the Act will be in place for a long time, but we need to make sure that, while steel is produced domestically, it covers all the sectors heading forward, as well as those that we are trying to rescue today.