Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this important Second Reading debate. It is great to see so many noble Lords taking part, and I particularly welcome and congratulate the maiden speakers. I hope they will work with all of us, particularly those on the Government Benches, to constructively improve the Bill.

This is a Bill that the Green Party welcomes, and my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb will shortly provide a listing of the many points on which we agree. I am going to focus on the big-picture context in which this Bill comes before us. In doing so, I respectfully but strongly disagree with the pleasantly colourful opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. This Bill modestly—we Greens would still say inadequately—seeks to rebalance the power of workers and employers.

That relationship was thrown profoundly awry under Margaret Thatcher, particularly by strangling the ability of workers to get together in unions to support each other against the power of the bosses, particularly the bosses of large companies. The imbalance was then enhanced by allowing zero-hours contracts and other insecure forms of employment to explode, and for working hours to extend, across many sectors of our economy. That is something that was not permitted to happen in many of our European neighbours, which now benefit from healthier, happier workers, who have the capacity to contribute to their communities and societies generally, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, highlighted. We saw the wage share of workers collapse, a rise in inequality, and the inefficient and destructive financialisation of our economy, all of which can be at least in part attributed to failures to make work safe, fair and adequately remunerated.

There was a failure to recognise changing social structures, whereby the previously unpaid and unacknowledged labour of women has been brought into the paid workforce. That work has to fit around the continuing demands they still face. We are, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, both highlighted, people with responsibilities and needs outside work that our working structures do not adequately acknowledge. The economy is paying the price of this too, with skills, energy and talents excluded by inadequate labour protections.

The Blair and Brown Governments failed to redress the imbalance between workers and employers created under the Thatcher Government, and so we are where we are today. They too allowed the minimum wage to drift downward in real terms, subsidising the profits of giant multinational companies in particular, at a cost to us all. As the noble Lord, Lord Barber, said, we have seen a race to the bottom in employment, and that has to stop.

I often hear those on the Government Benches say that they want to get workers into good jobs. We in the Green Party take a different view: we want every job to be a good job, and those that are unavoidably difficult and unpleasant to have conditions that reflect the conditions of work. We clapped essential workers during the pandemic, but we did not lift their pay or the respect in which they are held. This Bill has the potential to do much more than it currently does. I invite noble Lords to consider the relative position of sewer cleaners and bankers, and what would happen if we did not have the former working for us all.

A fair society and a fair working environment are particularly important in what have often been described as the green areas of the economy. On Monday, the All-Party Group on Climate Change held an interesting meeting about the just transition, and that is something I want to look at in this Bill.

I am greatly concerned about the impacts of new technology on workers—for example, on the employees and agency staff at that great parasite, Amazon, who are forced, at a cost to their health, to act like robots, working themselves into the ground. That kind of surveillance is spreading to many other areas of work. Workers need the right to breathe at work. Hospitality workers need to be able to travel home safely at night, and work is being done on that through the Get ME Home Safely campaign. Generally, health and safety at work needs much more attention, and I want to see how we can build this more strongly into the Bill.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. In doing so, I declare my technology interests as set out in the register. It is a pleasure to follow him because this has always been his “WAIRIA” of expertise—bear with me. I will speak to my Amendments 289 to 298 and 314 to 316, but before doing so, I give full-throated support to everything the noble Lord said and his amendments. We are very much on the same page.

There is a strange situation with government at the moment when it comes to AI. That is not specific to employment rights but across the piece. We have been subject to it for the past year. We are told consistently that the Government will not be bringing forward cross-sector AI legislation. That position is to be defended if it is taken—the Government have decided on a domain-specific AI approach. But the difficulty with that is that whenever we have had domain-specific legislation coming through your Lordships’ House—be it product regulation, data or any of the Bills that I, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and others, have worked on—we have been told that those are not the Bills where AI is to be considered. In only a slightly reductive way, we currently have a situation, to be clear, where the Government are saying they are not bringing forward cross-sector AI legislation and specific Bills are largely—not exclusively—not the place to incorporate AI issues.

The amendments that noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I set out in this group are key to one of the most important sectors—it is broader than a sector, and such an important aspect of our lives. It is how we are employed, what that employment looks and feels like, and how it is experienced by all of us. These amendments do not seek to address issues that will occur next year, next month or even tomorrow. AI is impacting workers right now, oftentimes without them even knowing that it is in the mix.

My first amendment seeks to suggest that the principles that have variously appeared in White Papers and other reports are put on a statutory basis in the Bill. We give ourselves the best opportunity to optimise with AI if we take a principles-based, outcomes-focused and input-understood approach. Similarly, I set out in Amendment 290 that all employers and organisations that develop, deploy or use AI should have an AI responsible officer. For this, do not think burdensome, bureaucratic or overcompliance. Because of the proportionality principle, it simply means that there is an obligation on those employers to report on their use of AI in the workplace. It can be well understood through reporting obligations such as those set out in the Companies Act, which employers will be very familiar with at this stage.

My amendments then move to questions of use. What happens where IP or copyrighted material is being used in the workplace? There needs to be labelling so that everybody is clear on, and there is transparency about, what is going on. What about the use of workers’ data? This is an incredibly rich resource that should not in any sense be served up or sold off to the highest bidder. The use of AI in the workplace should be clear and transparent, and workers should have an opt-in, not an opt-out, responsibility, as set out in the amendments.

Then, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has touched on, there is the question of automated decisions. It is clear that workers not only have to be aware that ADM is being used—and have the right to opt out—but also need the right to a human explanation of what is happening in those situations. If we are to optimise things with these technologies, concepts such as “human in the loop” and “human over the loop” must be understood. Safeguards need to be in place, not least where ADM is used, and this could form part of the data protection impact assessment that employers have to undertake.

Then there is the question of regulators. Employment and recruitment currently find themselves wide open to the use of AI. An individual may find themselves not getting shortlisted, not getting hired and not even knowing that the reasoning behind that was algorithmic processing rather than human judgment and human reasoning. It is critical to consider the right approach to fill that regulator gap. Would a specific employment and recruitment regulator do the job? My view—and I think there is evidence to support this—would again be that we could have a cross-sector AI authority. Again, do not think of a bureaucratic and burdensome AI regulator; instead, think of a nimble, agile, adaptive and, crucially, horizontally focused AI regulator, not only in the area of employment rights but across the whole of our economy and society. It would deliver that clarity, consistency and certainty that we all need wherever we come across AI in our working, professional and private lives.

It is so significant that, in Amendment 315, I believe there should be a commission on AI in the workplace. Mindful of comments from Monday, I am certainly no fan of setting up a commission to delay or kick issues into the long grass. But perhaps by using the technology to solve some of the issues that are created by the technology, we could have a reimagined approach to commissions and consultations.

Finally, I come to Amendment 316 and the algorithmic allocation of work. This is already happening, and it has already been in front of the courts. It is clearly an issue and one that needs to be fully understood. The Government need to state clearly their position on this most significant of matters. I look forward to other speakers and to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow two of the House’s acknowledged experts in this area of the impact of AI. I will speak to my own Amendment 323B and also note that I attach my name to Amendments 294 and 298 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes.

My Amendment 323B is quite a modest step. It calls for a review to be published within 12 months. In saying that, I thank the Ministers for having a meeting prior to the discussion of these amendments, which I very much appreciated. But I think the time for talk is over; the time for action is now. Twelve months is still too short, but it seemed the best timeframe I could reasonably give for this call for a review of the electronic monitoring of workers in the workplace. This picks up some points made by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. It also crucially points to the need to look around the world and see what else is happening and what we can learn from what has happened in other places. The companies selling these systems are global giant multinational companies. The companies deploying these systems are giant multinational companies in many cases. It is important that, rather than trying to pick this off ourselves, we look around the world and say that we want to be leaders in creating a different kind of model of how workers can be protected.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I thank the noble Earl for proposing his amendment. I look forward to playing a continuing role in supporting freelance workers, specifically those in the creative industries, to secure their safety and indeed dignity at work.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Caine. She made some terribly important points; they are literally about matters of life and death.

I have added my name to Amendment 259, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I apologise to the noble Earl for not having also signed Amendment 287; I certainly would have done so, had I caught up with it sooner. I previously backed a similar amendment from the noble Earl to an earlier Bill under the previous Government.

I declare my position as beneficiary of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, with which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is associated. I published one book with the society last year, and I have another one coming out this year.

Amendment 259 is about unionisation and collective bargaining in the arts and cultural sector, and it calls for alternative, appropriate models for the sector. I hope the Labour Government see sense and come back in support of the amendment. They believe—I hope—in the values of collective bargaining and of workers being able to get together to fight for appropriate conditions, whether it is health and safety, pay or work security.

I declare another position—or, perhaps, a situation—in that, 20 years ago, I reviewed a lot of London fringe theatre on my own website. Speaking to some of the actors and the other creatives involved in those performances, I learned that the conditions under which they were employed, or hoped to get paid, were often very precarious. I very much doubt that that situation has improved.

The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, spoke about the insecurity of Covid and what followed it. The Republic of Ireland saw that situation and took a step to deal with it: it introduced the universal basic income trial, which ran from 2022-24 and paid creative workers a weekly stipend of €325 for three years. We still have not had the formal impact assessment of that, but I have heard a great many anecdotal reports about the more stability and reduced stress for creative workers. Realised from anxiety, they had time and headspace to open up new possibilities and create trajectories. They spent time researching, experimenting and taking risks and really saw the benefits in their creative practice. What we are proposing here is not going as far as a universal basic income but is a collective bargaining approach that strengthens the position of creative workers within their sectors and organisations, particularly freelancers. This would surely be a positive step at least heading in that direction.

Finally, it might feel as if we are addressing something that has been an issue for a very long time. There is a very famous painting called the “Poor Poet”, done in three versions by the German painter Carl Spitzweg. It shows a garret room with a leaking roof. There is no fire or bed, only a mattress on the floor, and the poet is tucked underneath every bed covering because he cannot afford to heat his room. That has been a long-term stereotype, but it does not mean we have to continue that.

More practically, in the reality of Britain in 2025, many people cannot even manage to access conditions such as that. There is a real issue—and no one else has brought this up yet—about access to the creative sector being open to a wide variety of people from a wide variety of groups in our society, not just to people who can access the bank of mum and dad when things go a bit wrong and can afford to work as an unpaid intern for years. If we are going to have a creative sector that truly harnesses the talents of all our society, opens opportunities and—if I have to put it this way—is great for the economy, then surely all the amendments in the group, but particularly the amendments on collective bargaining and the freelance commissioner, would take us some steps down that road?

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, I address Amendment 287 on the creation of an office for a freelance commissioner in the name of my noble friends Lord Clancarty, Lord Freyberg and Lord Colville of Culross, who has managed to beat our limited motorway system but arrived just too late to speak, sadly.

I am somewhat conflicted about this thought-provoking amendment, in that I have argued at Second Reading and in Committee against the overreach of the Bill and its sheer complexity and burden on employers, especially for small and micro businesses. On the noble Baroness’s comment, I do not want to be seen to be adding baubles to the Christmas tree. However, I agree that year by year the arguments grow for the establishment of a freelance commissioner, partly because the number of freelancers is growing and will continue to do so. The current 2 million plus freelancers will easily rise to 3 million within the next 10 years in the UK alone as employers shed staff from payroll, weighed down by the combination of increased national insurance contributions, national minimum wages increasing much faster than the rate of inflation and all the new rules and regulations coming in this very Employment Rights Bill.

Just look at the recent and alarming drop reported last week by the ONS of 274,000 workers coming off payroll during the past 12 months. We do not yet have the data to track how many of them are transitioning to freelance or self-employment. Indeed, as my noble friends have pointed out, the data on this area of freelancing and self-employment is poor and not up to international standards, and that is a real problem when we are trying to assess exactly what their contribution is to the economy.

I am going to muddy the water slightly, but you could argue that there is a need for an independent commissioner for the self-employed. We have been talking about freelancers, but there are 4.2 million self-employed people, including freelancers, in the UK. Those numbers are going to increase given the impact of technology, digital communications, AI and, particularly, the practice of working from home. I accept that there are key differences between freelancers and many self-employed people, for example, sole traders or those running their own businesses or partnerships, perhaps with just one or two contractors, but freelancers, although independent and project-based, are also self-employed and are treated just the same way for tax purposes by HMRC.

I accept that freelancers and the self-employed are not as valued or appreciated by Governments of all parties as they should be. This was brutally exposed during the pandemic with furlough and other schemes. If we want to develop a proper entrepreneurial spirit and environment in this country, we should do much more to value and look after those who create their own jobs and face up to all the risks and jeopardy that that involves. That includes freelancers, not just in the creative industries, but in other sectors where they are prevalent, which are as diverse as construction, professional services and agriculture. The Government need to give Amendment 287 serious consideration and, while doing so, think through how the interests of all the self-employed, not just freelancers, should be represented.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

320: After Clause 150, insert the following new Clause—
“Maximum pay ratio(1) A worker must be remunerated by their employer at a rate which is not less than one tenth of the remuneration made by the employer to the highest-paid employee.(2) The remuneration referred to in subsection (1) includes—(a) salary or hourly pay;(b) bonuses;(c) employer pension contributions;(d) shares, options, or other entitlements;(e) benefits in kind.(3) If a worker receives remuneration which is less than the entitlement referred to in subsection (1), the worker is taken to be entitled under their contract to be paid, as additional remuneration in respect of the period concerned, the difference between their entitlement and the remuneration actually received.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would implement a maximum ratio of 10:1 between the highest- and lowest-paid employees in an organisation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, my Amendment 320 sits in glorious lone splendour in this group. I am not responsible for degrouping it; that was the way it was arranged. Noble Lords will see that this is a proposed new clause to introduce a maximum pay ratio. I thank the Public Bill Office for assisting me with the drafting.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, took us into celebrity land with Usain Bolt and Mo Farah. I am going further into that space with a forthcoming event from this week: the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez in Venice. I am relying here on the interesting reporting in the Guardian from Zoe Williams, who has been spending time with the campaign group No Space for Bezos and finding that in Venice there is considerable resistance to a billionaire taking over a city and totally disrupting the life of that city for three days. Williams quotes one of the local campaigners:

“We really wanted to problematise the ridiculous and obscene wealth that allows a man to rent a city for three days”.


Williams reflects in the article that

“when wealth itself is seen to be acting in its own interests, and it has accumulated to the degree that its impact scars every poorer life with which it comes into contact”,

we have a problem.

This amendment sets out Green Party policy—yes, this is long-time Green Party policy—but I am really aiming to assist the Government constructively here, and to assist the Committee as well as perhaps our national debate, by demonstrating that it is possible to lay down bridges to cross the deep fissures in our society. They are not just in Venice and they do not just involve Amazon—although I note that the Government have been applauding an expansion of Amazon here in the UK. We might think about how many of the small businesses we have just been talking about might go out of business as a result of that. I posit that it is essential to start to bridge these chasms, to tackle the poisonous inequality that so affects our political landscape.

Bringing the context closer to home, noble Lords may perhaps have expected me to cite research out only a week ago from the High Pay Centre, which analysed five years of mandatory pay ratio disclosures across the FTSE 350. This was a previous modest legislative attempt, hoping that shining a light on the level of inequality might have some impact in reducing that inequality. The study clearly showed that the attempt to do that has failed. The figures have basically bobbled around since 2019, and the current ratio of median CEO pay to the median UK employee was 52:1. That has been at a similar level ever since the ratio started to be recorded. I note that it is even worse for the FTSE 100, where the median CEO to median employee pay ratio was 78:1. Those are the middle figures but, if we take the widest measures, we go to the security and catering group Mitie, where 575:1 is the ratio not to the lowest-paid employee but to the median employee. At Tesco it is 431:1. This situation is doing huge damage to our society, and I put it to the Government that they surely have to tackle it.

A 10:1 ratio is Green Party policy. I know from the discussions that the Minister kindly had with me before this debate that she will not leap up and support my amendment, but I hope she may be able to provide some response, at least to acknowledge that we have a problem. The pay differentials also react to the low-pay environment in which those essential to the success of a business are not getting the respect, as well as the pay, that they deserve. Meanwhile, a few at the top are incentivised to chase short-term profits and share price valuation at long-term cost to society but also to the businesses that they head.

The impact on communities is evident in towns and cities, where the vast bulk of workers are now trapped on or very near the minimum wage, while money is shovelled away to faraway company headquarters. Companies defend these sums as reflecting performance, but all too often, as we have seen with the water companies, that is far from the case. Why is it that every worker does not benefit if a company is doing well, as they have all contributed?

I finally note that, yes, this is also an environmental measure. To take just one element of the CEO lifestyle, the wealthiest people in the UK burn through more energy in flying alone than the poorest use in every aspect of their life. Environmentally, as well as socially and politically, we cannot afford a society split between a few have-yachts and the majority have-nots.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this amendment and, frankly, to express a degree of disbelief that such a proposal should have been made. With due respect to the noble Baroness, I do not believe that this amendment is a serious contribution to the debate on fair pay or responsible corporate governance. It is a piece of performative and ideological showmanship—a throwback to a worldview that sees profit as a vice, wealth as inherently suspect and enterprise as something to be managed, limited or downright punished. The idea that government should impose a legal maximum pay ratio—a flat arbitrary ceiling of 10:1 between the highest-paid and lowest-paid employees in every organisation—is not just unworkable but, I believe, economically illiterate.

First, this proposal would be a gift to bureaucracy and a curse to business. Every company, from high street shops to high-growth tech firms, would have to monitor and police every single form of pay—salary, shares, bonuses, pensions and benefits in kind—just to ensure that they do not cross an artificial line. Do we really want our job creators to spend their time calculating compliance spreadsheets instead of investing, innovating and employing? Secondly, it would actively disincentivise growth and ambition. High-performing individuals—those who drive investment, lead exports and create jobs—would simply leave and take their talent elsewhere.

The noble Baroness mentioned Amazon. I join the Government in welcoming the further investment that Amazon is making. As a matter of record, Amazon employs circa 75,000 people in the UK. No one is on zero hours, and the minimum annual starting salary is between £28,000 and £30,000 a year. It provides flexible working opportunities from day one, including term-time contracts, which allow parents, grandparents or carers guaranteed leave during school holidays. It offers paid parental and bereavement leave. Amazon also offers guaranteed hours from day one, and employees have the choice of full-time or part-time contracts. It is important to put the record straight. Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than £64,000 million in the UK, and £12,000 million in the last 12 months, and supports a network of around 100,000 UK-based small and medium-sized businesses. I welcome the opportunity that the noble Baroness has given me to put the record straight.

To go back to the noble Baroness’s amendment, it would mean that employers would be forced to avoid hiring lower-paid staff altogether, just to protect the ratio. What would be the result? There would be fewer jobs, less opportunity and more outsourcing—the very opposite of what a fair and inclusive economy should look like, hitting the least well-off, the most vulnerable and those at the margins of the labour market.

My third point is that this is not fairness; it is levelling down. It is virtually saying, “Don’t succeed too much, don’t reward excellence, don’t grow too big or too fast or be too profitable”. That is not fairness—it is anti-growth, anti-aspiration and anti-business. I must tell the noble Baroness that this amendment looks like it would be more appropriate in a Maoist economic manifesto, delivered to his revolutionary cadres, rather than a serious proposal for modern employment legislation. What this amendment reveals is not a serious attempt to solve a policy problem but a mindset that is suspicious of success, dismissive of wealth creation and entirely detached from economic reality. Against that background, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, which I hope will agree with mine, that this is an amendment that should not be accepted.

--- Later in debate ---

By contrast, the noble Baroness’s amendment would introduce an arbitrary cap on the pay of any individual in a company, regardless of the experience or skills that they bring to the business as a whole. We are not aware of any other advanced economy that has introduced such a measure and have significant concerns that it could undermine the UK’s economic competitiveness. While it is right that companies should explain how pay at the top aligns with wider employee pay, it is also important that companies can compete for the best business talent in the UK and globally. The amendment would significantly undermine the ability of UK companies to attract and retain skilled and experienced employees, while providing international competitors with greater opportunities to poach UK workers, to the detriment of our economy as a whole. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, to withdraw Amendment 320.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this has been a short but very clarifying debate on the political divisions in our society. I will be fairly brief in responding, but there are some points that I must pick up.

The response of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, really sounded like something from a debate out of the 20th century. I started with the story of what will happen in the coming days in Venice because we are in the 21st century, where raging pay inequality is a huge political issue. If you are not prepared to acknowledge that that is an issue that is significantly shaping our politics, you really are not in the 21st century.

To pick up some specific points the noble Lord made, he said that the amendment would force people to monitor and police. However, as the Minister rightly said, all this monitoring and reporting already happens in FTSE 100 and FTSE 350 companies. It is the law already, so there is no extra paperwork to be done here at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that the amendment would disincentivise ambition, but ambition exists right across the board in companies. We have millions of cleaners, caterers and new apprentices out there who have huge ambition. Their ambition and the contribution they make absolutely need to be recognised.

I have to pick up the Amazon point. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, missed a couple of things out about Amazon, which I describe as the great parasite. How many jobs has Amazon destroyed? How many ambulances get called to Amazon warehouses, where workers are worked beyond human flesh and blood in trying to keep up with robots? That is the reality of Amazon.

Finally, I come to the point the Minister raised about economic competitiveness and the best business talents. Yes, we need the best talents, but we need them across the board. One person as the leader of the company is a small part of that company. On the idea that this is a pyramid—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said these are the people who create jobs—I am sorry, but it is the whole of our society that creates jobs. You can put one of these CEOs on a desert island and they will not make a penny. The infrastructure, the workers and the customers—that is where the wealth comes from, and if we do not have a functioning society then we do not have successful businesses.

However, I am aware of the time and that there are some people in the Chamber who are undoubtedly waiting for next business, so I shall restrain myself from going on further. I shall look to come back with perhaps a more moderate amendment, but I will seek to hear from the Government what they plan to do about pay inequality, because I am afraid that I did not hear in the Minister’s response any answer to what they plan to do about that raging problem. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 320 withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

321: After Clause 150, insert the following new Clause—
“Review of safe homeward transport for workers(1) Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish a review of whether workers should be entitled to access to safe homeward transport.(2) The review under subsection (1) must include—(a) an analysis of transport options generally available to workers who finish work after 11pm;(b) an analysis of the costs, in absolute terms and as a percentage of pay, to such workers of taking the available transport options;(c) best practice examples of employers who provide homeward transport for workers;(d) proposals to ensure that workers can travel home safely after 11pm without excessive cost.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Government to review the safety and affordability of workers travelling home after 11pm, and make recommendations. It includes reviewing best practice, such as City firms who pay for homeward transport for workers late at night.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this amendment would require the Government to review the safety and affordability of workers travelling home after 11 pm and to make recommendations, including reviewing best practice. I note that some City firms already pay for workers to travel home.

This is based on work being done by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the “Safe Home” worker-led initiative launched in 2018 by the Better Than Zero campaign and supported by Unite the Union and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union. It was launched following a women in leadership course in which workers from the hospitality, fast food and retail sectors shared their frightening experiences of getting home after a late shift. They included sexual assault, verbal harassment, violence and stalking.

Large numbers of workers in these sectors are not able to get home safely. Your Lordships’ House is very well aware of how limited late-night public transport can be—perhaps more than we would like to be. We currently have nearly 9 million night-time workers, of whom 15% are in low-paid roles, compared to 10% of employees as a whole. When you take into account restaurants, pubs and entertainment activities, that rises to 38%. Low-paid workers, many of them female, finish work at 11 pm, midnight or 1 am. How do they get home? This is a modest and constructive amendment which seeks to say that, if you are working hours during which society does not provide the transport to get you home safely, your employer has the responsibility to do so. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling Amendment 321. We recognise the concern underpinning the amendment and agree that workers finishing late at night should be able to travel home safely and affordably. We are aware that for some workers, particularly those in hospitality, healthcare and security, late shifts can pose challenges when public transport options are limited. We also acknowledge and welcome that some employers, including firms in the City of London, have taken proactive steps to support their staff with safe transport home.

While we do not believe that it is appropriate to legislate for a review at this time, I hope I can reassure your Lordships’ House that we are committed to supporting workers’ well-being and safety. That commitment is evident throughout the Bill. For example, as we discussed on the second day of Committee in early May—another opportunity for a history lesson, it seems so long ago—the Bill strengthens the right to request flexible working from day one of employment. This flexible working provision empowers workers and employers to agree working patterns that better suit individual circumstances, including, where appropriate and reasonable, avoiding late finishes. We are also taking steps to improve enforcement of existing rights and to ensure that employers meet their obligations to provide safe working conditions.

Although it is not the subject of this legislation, the Government are also committed to reviving, rejuvenating and investing in public transport, not least through the Bus Services (No. 2) Bill, the creation of GBR, improvements to rail services and the huge amounts being invested across the country, particularly in the north, in new transport projects, all of which will provide a greater level of options and service for not just people working late but those who want to enjoy the night-time economy and to use public transport more generally.

While we cannot support this amendment, we share the underlying concern and will continue to work to ensure that all workers are protected and supported. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw her Amendment 321.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank those who have participated in this brief debate. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, and I can agree that there is an issue here and I thank the Minister for his response. I do not think that offering flexible working will really work with a pub or restaurant—that option will not be available. On public transport, for the workers affected, overwhelmingly we are talking not about grand infrastructure projects but local buses, which have been massively decimated over the last decade. None the less, the point has been made and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 321 withdrawn.