Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I have it in command from His Majesty the King to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Employment Rights Bill, has consented to place his interest, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

[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, before the formal Third Reading of the Employment Rights Bill, I will make a brief statement on its devolution status.

During the Bill’s development and parliamentary passage, the Minister for Employment Rights, Competition and Markets has regularly corresponded and engaged with his devolved Government counterparts. This has been supported by weekly engagement between officials. As a result, I can confirm that legislative consent Motions have been successfully agreed in both the Senedd Cymru and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Scottish Parliament has also agreed an LCM that covers the majority of the Bill’s provisions.

However, we consider that certain amendments relating to the social care negotiating body, tabled in my name on Report and accepted by your Lordships’ House, also engage the consent process. Owing to the date that these amendments were tabled and the Scottish Parliament’s Summer Recess, it has not been possible for a further supplementary LCM to be secured by the time of this statement. Now that the Scottish Parliament has returned from recess, and noting that the Bill has the support of the Scottish Government, we are hopeful that the process around this supplementary LCM will progress swiftly.

More broadly, I am grateful to Ministers and officials in the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive for their positive and collaborative approach towards this legislation. We remain committed to sustained engagement with the devolved Governments for the remainder of the Bill’s passage as we look ahead to its implementation, the benefits of which will be felt across the United Kingdom.

Clause 162: Commencement

Amendment

Moved by

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[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, this is a tidying-up amendment and I hope it will not delay the House too long. It is consequential on the House’s decision on Report to leave out Clause 59 on members’ contributions to trade union political funds. The amendment leaves out a now redundant reference to it in the commencement clause. It introduces and involves no new issues. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for tabling this amendment, which I acknowledge is a simple tidying-up one, following changes made to the Bill on Report. It is non-controversial tidying-up amendment and therefore we are content to accept it.

Amendment agreed.

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Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a privilege to be responsible for the passage of this landmark piece of legislation since its arrival from the other place in March. The Bill is a cornerstone of our manifesto commitment to make work pay. It seeks to address outdated provisions and gaps in the current employment law framework and helps us turn the tide on the damaging trend of in-work poverty. It would benefit millions of people across the country, and this is particularly the case for those in insecure and low-paid employment. As just one example, over 2 million people on zero-hours or lower-hours contracts could benefit from the right to guaranteed hours and to payment for shifts cancelled, moved or cut at short notice. Alongside our newly published industrial and trade strategies, it will also help increase productivity and create the right conditions for long-term, sustainable and secure economic growth.

Throughout the Bill’s Second Reading, 11 days in Committee and four days on Report, noble Lords from across your Lordships’ House carefully scrutinised its provisions. While we may not have agreed on every issue, I believe we do agree on the importance of the Bill, as well as on the need to improve workers’ rights and level the playing field for good employers. Therefore, I am grateful for the pleasure of engaging with noble Lords inside and outside the Chamber, and I would like to thank all noble Lords whom I and my ministerial colleagues have spoken to for their time and wisdom.

To mention every Member of your Lordships’ House whom I have engaged with would risk taking almost as long as Committee did. While I will refrain from doing that, I would like to particularly thank a number of noble Lords. My first words of thanks must go to my noble friends Lord Leong and Lord Katz for their dedicated support from the Front Bench. Over the course of the Bill’s passage, we have collectively had over 50 engagements with stakeholders, including noble Lords and external bodies. My noble friends have been generous with their time and wisdom, and I owe them a great debt.

Similarly, I must give thanks to my noble friends Lord Collins of Highbury, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, Lady Smith of Malvern and Lady Merron, all of whom represented from the Dispatch Box in Committee. This represents a whole of government approach to bringing about long-overdue improvements to workers’ rights.

It has been a pleasure debating the Bill’s many clauses with noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, who have continuously made the case on behalf of the Official Opposition, and the noble Lords, Lord Fox, Lord Goddard of Stockport, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who have made meaningful contributions on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. This includes contributions in relation to non-disclosure agreements, where I was delighted to see the amendments I brought forward on Report being accepted to introduce a world-leading framework on NDA protections. I would like to say how gratifying it is to see the noble Lord, Lord Fox, back in his place. I am sure I speak for all noble Lords when I say how thankful we are for his continued recovery to good health.

I also pay particular tribute to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. While of course the wisdom of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, could never be replaced, the noble Lord was a worthy and often entertaining substitute. I am also grateful to my noble friends Lord Hendy, Lord Brennan of Canton, Lady O’Grady and Lady Lister for their valued contributions in relation to seafarers, bereavement leave, trade unions and parental leave, respectively.

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[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, I think we have spent 13 days in this Chamber scrutinising this critical Bill. I salute the Ministers and Front Benches for their stamina and perseverance. The Bill has tested the patience of noble Lords on all sides of this House, so I will not test their patience further by going over the same arguments we heard during Committee and Report—very often the same arguments. I will simply raise one overriding question expressed by the FSB, the CBI, the ICAEW, the British Chambers of Commerce and, indeed, pretty much the whole private sector. They are asking, in light of the Bill, how committed the Government really are to delivering on their overriding number one mission—real, sustainable economic growth —and how the Bill will impact on the two crucial ingredients behind growth: job creation and, as we have heard, productivity.

On job creation, vacancies have now fallen to an effective 10-year low when you exclude the exceptional pandemic years. The Bill looks set to accelerate that downward trend. On the need for greater productivity across our 30-million workforce, employers are currently paying, on average, 5% annual wage increases for close to zero productivity gains. The Prime Minister and Chancellor have hailed this as an achievement, putting more pounds in workers’ pockets, but I am afraid that it is as illusory as it is inflationary, and will only contribute to ever-widening black holes.

The Bill will, as the Government admit, push up even further the costs of employment and damage the risk/reward equations behind recruitment, probation and employers’ ability to conduct those crucial performance reviews for staff. That is bad news for productivity, and I fear it will not go unnoticed by investors.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I will respond to my noble friend Lady Warwick about Universities UK’s concerns. Given the stage of the parliamentary passage that the Bill has reached and the fact that the House has agreed that Clause 36 should stand part of the Bill, the clause will not be considered further during ping-pong. But as my noble friend knows, I have written to her on this issue, and the letter is available for all Members to read. We fully recognise the need not to impose disproportionate burdens on smaller procuring organisations such as universities and, to this end, we intend to consult in the autumn on the detail and scope of the two-tier code. The consultation will consider the extent to which certain public authorities, including higher education providers, are required to follow its provisions. While I cannot comment on whether we can carve out particular sectors before this consultation, I can assure my noble friend that we will carefully consider the issues, particularly applying to higher education providers.

Secondly, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, for his kind comments. I think it is fair to say that we have enjoyed working with him.

I am sorry that we have ended on a note of discord in this debate. I thought that we had, up until this point, had very courteous discussions around all this. The fact that there are relatively few issues remaining between us is a sign of the enormous work that this House has done over the last few months on this issue. I hope that, because there are so few areas of continuing disagreement, we can reach a conclusion on this Bill very quickly.

I do not want to rehearse the debates that we have had again. Listening to this debate this afternoon, it is a miracle that only 10 or so issues are still outstanding because it feels as if we are back at square one. But I feel that we made some progress during the course of the discussions.

When we came into office we inherited an economy that was on its knees and employment rights that were way out of date. We have been working and continue to work to address these issues. We are doing it in all sorts of ways. The small business strategy that we launched over the summer, the industrial strategy and the trade strategy are all designed to make the UK a place to do business with on an international basis and where jobs will be protected in the future.

On the state of the economy—because I have been provoked on this—in the three months to June, GDP grew by 0.3%, meaning the cumulative growth this year has already exceeded the OBR’s forecast for the whole of 2025. Since the start of the Parliament, 380,000 jobs have been added. Britain has become the most attractive place to invest in the world, joint top with India following its deal with the US. The FTSE 100 index smashed through the 9,000-point mark this July, with sustained growth throughout last month. Middle market businesses are growing at their fastest rate since the last election, according to research from NatWest. Confidence among UK businesses has grown, with 54% of companies feeling positive about the current environment, according to the Lloyds Business Barometer. I could go on.

We are positive about the opportunities ahead for our economy and, in that context, we are positive about the jobs that will be provided. They will be good jobs where people feel that they have a stake in their employment and a positive future. I am sorry we ended up on that discordant note, and of course I am sure we will come back and continue to try to iron out the remaining points of difference. In the meantime, I beg to move.