Employment Rights Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Tuesday 28th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Government and the Minister for their comments. When we debated this earlier, we talked about who was going to represent and who was not. I felt at the time that there was an undue feeling that we were trying to get at trade unions. That is not the case at all. Trade unions have a really relevant part in this, but not everybody belongs to a trade union. Many people and firms are not trade unionised, and they therefore use the other course available, which is to have a co-worker there. That works very nicely—you have a good pal who comes along and represents you, but they are not trained to do so. All the amendment was doing was finding that, when and if a trade union is not representing them and can well do so, a trained person accompanies the person at a tribunal. I gather from what the Minister has said that there is some merit seen in this proposal; that is what I have read, and I hope the Minister will confirm that when he finalises. If my understanding is correct, will the Minister and his department keep us updated on what is happening on this issue?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, on the Minister’s response, I positively welcome the Government’s commitment to this review of the right to be accompanied, and I thank the Government in this instance for listening to the concerns raised at Report and Committee stages. On Report, I put forward an amendment that would have allowed workers to have a companion of their own choosing at disciplinary or grievance hearings—I felt it should be that open. I was happy none the less to support the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, which, as has already been noted, was overwhelmingly supported. I would still like it to be a statutory right for workers—as this is a workers’ rights Bill, as we are constantly told—to be able to choose who represents them when they face grievance procedures, but I am really pleased that the Government will look at this. I hope that they look widely and think about the issue and that we can resolve it.

I want to respond very briefly to the way the Minister talked about the decision on keeping the issues internal and to draw attention to one of the problems with that. Over recent years, sometimes the grievances that workers have been involved in have been quite ideologically contentious, and issues have been very difficult, so simply to call upon fellow workmates to come with you into the grievance internally has been difficult because of a nervousness about guilt by association. It is also the case that not everyone is in a union, so, when the union might be representing someone, that is the opposite of keeping it internal and informal, because the person in that grievance procedure does not even know who they are with.

I also want to draw attention to just one thing: I wish it were not the case, but sometimes trade unions’ own policies can see them at odds with their own members. There have been a few instances of that recently—see the case of Sandie Peggie, who is suing the RCN around the issue of single-sex changing rooms for nurses. These things have been well documented, so I will not go into them, but it is not always as straightforward as saying that the trade unions will be the best people to represent a member of staff.

To finish, I stress that, historically, trade union representatives have very often protected and represented brilliantly, and been brilliant advocates for many people facing difficulties at work. I sat in many grievance procedures, representing members of my own union when I was a trade union rep. That is an ideal. Now that only a minority are represented by trade unionists, and based on the aspiration of the Bill to represent all workers and give them more rights, I hope this review will broaden the rights that workers have through representation so that they can choose who represents them. In general, however, I am very positive about the Government’s decision.