Employment Rights Bill

Lord Moynihan of Chelsea Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, what a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Lawlor. I support the amendments introduced by my noble friend Lord Jackson. I am assured by my noble friend Lord Leigh that he believes that Hansard will record that he referred throughout his speech to “the noble Lord, Lord Jackson”.

Employment is a precious coin. It is the many coins of employment that keep this economy going. When there are more coins, the economy grows, and this whole House is united in wanting that to happen. We are all on the same side on that. We want the economy to grow, certainly not to shrink. And, like any coin, it has two sides: the side of the employee and the side of the employer.

Sitting through the many days of this Committee, any poor, benighted individual who has been watching on Parliament TV might think that this Chamber contains two parallel universes, with two entirely incompatible ideas of what employment is about. On the one side they are hearing about greedy employers, grasping capital, and the need for trade unions to protect the poor employee. But what is this coin of employment? It is a place where an individual says, “I want work. I want to go to work and earn money for me, my family, and my future”, and where an employer says, “I want to provide work. I want to risk my endeavours and my capital, even my solvency since I might go bankrupt, in order to give you that employment”. And it is a fair bargain.

Most employers, particularly small employers, who start up a business and employ people are not thinking, “I’m going to exploit these poor workers”. The vast majority of workers are not the victims that we have heard described as the reason why this clause is necessary. The vast number of employees work harmoniously with their employer, and the vast number of employers work harmoniously with their employees. I imagine this poor person watching Parliament TV and possibly, if the camera cuts to the faces opposite, seeing the looks of doubt, irritation and disbelief when I say this. But I have been an employer on literally scores of businesses, large and small, and I know how it works. What the employer wants is to provide a good or a service and sell it at a slightly higher price than the cost of providing that good or service, so as to make a little profit and employ lots of people at the same time. That is what they want to do.

What they dread is law upon law that they have to spend all their time on and which bad actors can use to exploit them. We all know that in the human population it is said that 3% are what they call “dark triad” personalities—narcissistic, Machiavellian and sociopathic—who are very good at concealing their behaviour and coming across as caring individuals, by the way. They are found in the most caring societies, and on all sides of the Chamber. The employer dreads that individual joining their company and having a mechanism by which they can exploit the company and make money out of it, taking it to the employment tribunal or threatening it with that and getting paid off, not working hard or doing whatever.

We are saying here that some poor person who is going to hire, say, three, five or 10 employees is going to have to spend all their time understanding these laws, doing the things that the laws lay down and responding to employment tribunals when a bad actor comes into their company—as they do, from time to time, in every company—rather than doing what they are there to do, which is to provide great goods or services to their customers. That is what nearly all of them, employer and employee alike, want to do.

Barbara Castle, the great Labour politician, recognised the problems with trades unions and produced a paper called In Place of Strife. I suggest that the Bill—you can imagine the poor employer with three employees having to go through its 300 pages to figure out what they are going to have to do with it, even as it is passed —is creating strife in many places, and that even Barbara Castle might be turning in her grave when she sees how far this Government are prepared to go. I have sat here sometimes wondering whether the Government really believe the things they are saying.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to address the amendment. These sound like Second Reading speeches being redelivered and redelivered. When is the noble Lord going to address the actual amendment? This is just a tour de force around the 1970s and 1980s, with anecdotes from the Back Benches again. We are trying to do business.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments concerns the provision of employment rights. The essence of the group is about requiring employers to provide workers with a written statement of their trade union rights. Even after seven hours, I enjoyed listening to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, describe a romp through the 1970s and the bad old days of the Labour Party bringing the country to its knees and almost losing the car industry. He failed to skip into the 1980s, when the Government did destroy an industry—the coal industry—and did immeasurable damage to the trade union movement, which it has taken decades to recover from and is at the heart of the Bill. It is a direct result of actions taken by a certain Government in a previous life. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, I have been here since the start of the debate and listening. As the Companion says, it is courtesy to be here at the start of the debate to listen to the opening speeches and then the winding up speeches. There seems to be real departure from that by Members, who just wander in, make contributions and wander out.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I hope the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, is not saying I was not here for the start of this debate. Of course, the Labour Government closed down more coal mines than Margaret Thatcher.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I did not imply that the noble Lord was not here—he was. He is assiduous in his attendance to this House and I enjoy 90% of what he says, much of which is quite amusing, but not much knowledge from it goes into my head.

I have one final point for the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for whom I have the highest regard. I thought she was an excellent Minister and makes excellent contributions. However, I have to gently remind her that I think she also made her contribution tonight a couple of nights ago, in response to my intervention about the reason behind the Bill. However, I enjoy the heart and soul that she puts into this. She is interrogating and pushing the Government, but I try to keep it to what we are trying to do here.

These provisions are intended to ensure that individuals are made aware of their right to join a trade union. I do not think there is anything wrong with that. It is a fundamental element of workplace democracy. The amendments in this group raise important and valid questions about how that requirement should operate in practice, especially for smaller employers—and, yes, it may put a burden on them. For example, Amendments 205 and 207 examine whether it is appropriate for those duties to apply universally, or whether the threshold should be considered to avoid placing disproportionate burdens on small businesses.

I am somewhat concerned about the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, to remove the provisions from the Bill entirely. It risks sending the wrong signal about the importance of transparency around trade union rights. Although it is, of course, necessary to ensure that new obligations are proportionate and clearly drafted, deleting the entire clause at this stage could be seen as an overly blunt response. It would be preferable for the Government to engage with all the points raised tonight in these amendments and explore whether a more targeted approach could be achieved, with a fairer workable outcome that upholds workers’ rights without creating undue complexities for employers.