Introduction: Baroness Shawcross-Wolfson
Farmers: Competitiveness
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Roborough
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the competitiveness of English farmers with neighbouring nations and countries, and what assessment they have made of the impact of the Budget and recent policy changes by DEFRA.
Lord Roborough (Con)
In begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I draw the House’s attention to my registered interests.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are supporting farmers with a new deal to boost growth and strengthen food security. We will protect farmers from being undercut in trade deals and back British produce. A multitude of factors influence agricultural competitiveness, and international comparisons are challenging due to factors such as differences in the structures of agricultural sectors in different countries. Defra and devolved administration officials meet routinely to share insights regarding our respective agricultural policies.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, farmers in Scotland and the EU enjoy area-based payments of around €280 per hectare, with minimal environmental obligations, while farmers in the US are reported to receive subsidies worth $30 billion. Our own farmers receive de minimis area-based payments and no further access to SFIs while planning for inheritance tax. What will this Government do to ensure that our farmers can compete on a level playing field in their trade agreements while also restoring nature in line with the obligations of the Environment Act?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We have pledged £5 billion towards farming over the next few years, which will be spent through our environmental land management schemes. We are currently working to reform SFI to allow us to align it with our work on the land use framework and the 25-year farming road map. That is designed to protect the most productive land and boost food security while at the same time delivering for nature. We have published the update of a £30 million boost to HLS that recognises and rewards the vital role played by farmers in restoring habitats. We are also looking at how we can work with the farming sector in order to target those who would most benefit from future payment systems.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, has the Minister noticed that the Opposition seem to be obsessed with millionaire farmers? Is it not about time that they worried more about families in poverty? They call for more resources for farmers, but have they indicated where that resource is going to come from? They used to accuse us of having a money tree, but I think they have found an orchard.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My noble friend raises some interesting questions. It is clearly important that we target our resources and funding on those who are most in need. That is one of the reasons why the delinked payments are reduced the most for those who have the most and the least for those who need more time to make the changes.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, in that context can the Minister explain what assessment has been made of the main factors identified by Professor Julia Aglionby behind the cause of upland farmers’ incomes falling to half the minimum wage by 2027? They include the phasing out of the basic payment scheme, the recent negligible rise in HLS, insufficient financial reward from new environmental land management schemes and barriers to scheme transition, which is being done at a much slower pace in all the other devolved nations.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I should probably declare an interest here as I know Julia extremely well and meet her to discuss exactly these issues. Julia does an awful lot of work on uplands and common land, and it is important that we are able to support the farmers, particularly in uplands, who have a much more challenging environment to farm in. That is one of the reasons why we are looking at reforming the SFI to target those who need it most. Previous schemes have not always benefited those, such as in the uplands, who need the most support.
Lord Inglewood (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. Can the Minister confirm that in New Zealand, which is probably the pioneer of subsidy-free farming, there is no inheritance tax?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am afraid I have to admit to the noble Lord that I know nothing about New Zealand’s inheritance tax law, but I am more than happy to look into it.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, I draw attention to my registered interests in asking this question. Does the Minister accept that it would be helpful for farmers in England, Wales and Scotland if all the supermarkets in the UK were required to show the flags of the countries of origin of meat that they sell in their supermarkets, particularly in view of the possible threats coming from imports from the USA?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am sure the noble Lord is aware that there was a consultation on labelling fairly recently, which we are looking at. There are certain issues. What do we want on our labels? Country of origin is clearly something the public are particularly interested in. Also, what are the standards and the methods of production? There is a lot of interest in what labelling could include. We also need to be careful to ensure that the labelling that exists currently, and any future labelling brought in, is honest, because sometimes things that look British are not necessarily so.
Lord Bellingham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as in the register. Is the Minister aware that since the start of 2024 the level of sheepmeat imports is up by 59%? During the same period, the number of sheep in the UK is down by 40%. Why are the Government not doing more to help sheep farmers and upland areas?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I mentioned in response to the noble Baroness, it is important that when we reform our SFI we look at how we can support upland farmers more. It is also about getting the right balance between levels of grazing and environmental support. I will give a quick shout-out for Cumbrian sheep. Herdwick sheep are extremely important to our landscapes in Cumbria. I think it is important that our supermarkets and our butchers support locally bred meats as well.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, to correct the record—I live partly in a village with very small farms—it is not just rich people who have farms. What are the Government doing to support food production in this country?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
We have a number of plans to support food production, partly through the farming road map, which we are developing. We have appointed the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, to lead Defra’s farming profitability review, which will look at things like this. We are also looking at government procurement and buying British produce, which will support British farmers. There are a number of activities that we are currently doing.
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
My Lords, within the senior Defra team—and, sadly, I include all the Defra Ministers—we do not have a single farmer or land manager. If we did, they would explain that the last Budget and recent policy changes have created a lose-lose outcome for British farmers and the British public. Is Defra monitoring the number of farms going out of business, the increase in food prices the public are having to pay and the inevitable decline of our home-grown food security?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I take issue with the idea that our home-grown food security is declining. The data we have does not support that. Regarding the senior Defra team, including Ministers, not having any farming experience, although I spend far too much time in London these days and not enough time in Cumbria, I am actually a registered farmer on our smallholding, so that is not quite true.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that competitiveness should include not just price but environmental costs? Given that our farmers can produce meat and dairy products from our sheep and cattle with substantially reduced greenhouse gas emissions than the global and even European averages, should we not be buying British, trying to minimise imports and exporting as much as we can to protect our farming industry and benefit the planet?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord makes some important points. Interestingly, since Brexit our exports have gone down by 21%. We are very hopeful that the new agreement we are working on with the EU at the moment will enable our farmers to export more, help our agri-food trade be cheaper and easier, and help us align more with the EU. On costs, environmental costs clearly have to be taken into account as well. It can also save farmers money if they buy into the different innovative options available at the moment. For example, grants are available to reduce pesticide use. There are lots of opportunities through the different environmental schemes for farmers to become more productive and more competitive.
Health: Ultra-processed Food
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Sikka
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address health harms associated with ultra-processed food.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, a nutritious diet is key to living a healthy life. Currently, there is insufficient evidence on the extent to which the processing of food itself negatively impacts health beyond poor nutritional content. We have commissioned research to further understand the health impacts of ultra-processed foods. We are focused on taking firm action to reduce the intake of foods and drinks that are high in saturated fat, salt or sugar, which also captures the majority of ultra-processed foods.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister. Research shows that ultra-processed food causes disease, disability and premature death. It costs the UK economy £268 billion a year, in the form of additional costs for the NHS and social care, welfare payments, productivity loss and lifelong human suffering. Instead of a free ride, manufacturers of ultra-processed food must bear the true cost of their trade. This could be in the form of a 5% levy on their turnover. Does the Minister agree and, if so, when will the Government introduce it?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am interested to hear my noble friend’s suggestion. This Government do not have that as part of their plan. However, on my noble friend’s point about the need for research, I heard what he said about evidence, but that is not the evidence that I have available. I assure your Lordships’ House that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition repeatedly reviews evidence and assesses the impact of processed foods on health in position statements, and it has made two recent publications on that. We continue to invest in research on ultra-processed foods.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, we have plenty of time. We will hear from the Cross Benches next.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interests as recorded in the register. Last year, the author of the best-selling book Ultra-Processed People, Dr Chris van Tulleken, gave evidence to the Food, Diet and Obesity Select Committee, of which I had the privilege of being a member. He said that ultra-processed food
“is not a regulatory tool—I do not know anyone credible who is talking about using that definition to slap labels on things … the regulatory tool, in my view, should be fat, salt, sugar and calories”.
Does the Minister agree with Dr van Tulleken?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing his expertise and commitment to this area. It is indeed the case that the majority of foods classified or considered as ultra-processed foods also tend to be high in calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar, for which there is more definitive evidence, as the noble Lord has referred to. It is the case that many UPFs are already captured by the Government’s considerable programme of work to improve the food environment.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Government in general, and the Minister in particular, on taking such a sensible view about the great red herring that is ultra-processed food. There is no scientific evidence that it specifically causes obesity. Obesity is caused by eating too much of anything, and the answer is to reduce the amount of food that people eat.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for his appreciation of the Government’s efforts in this regard. I believe we have to consider the role of ultra-processed foods, but that has to be based on evidence and scientific truth, rather than speculation. That is why the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition has shown concern but cannot prove a direct link. It is not necessarily about the processing, but we know that high fat, salt and sugar is a problem for healthy living, and that is mostly a very good description of UPFs.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, in February last year, the British Medical Journal reported research involving 10 million people that found evidence highly suggestive of diets rich in ultra-processed foods being linked with the increased risks of premature death, cardiovascular disease, mental health disorders, diabetes, obesity and sleep problems. What is the timescale for the Government’s further research on the dangers of ultra-processed foods? How will reversing aspects of the ban on junk food advertising help?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
As the noble Lord will be aware, we are committed to implementing the TV and online advertising restrictions for less healthy foods and drinks. That is one of a number of steps that we are taking to tackle obesity, as per the question from the previous noble Lord. There is a direct link between advertising and intake, particularly with children, so I am glad that we will be introducing regulations to take effect in January—in fact, the industry has agreed to comply in advance of that, which shows a constructive approach. As for further information, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition will consider evidence again in 2026, next year, and make dietary recommendations. The Government continue to invest in research through the NIHR and the UKRI.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
Further to the regulations that the Minister mentioned that are coming in January, the Labour manifesto promised to prohibit unhealthy food ads online and before 9 pm, which was to come into effect in October. Can the Minister confirm that the rules that are coming in January are in fact watered down and will not forbid the advertising of brands? Does she think that advertising a brand but not a product—say, McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Greggs—will promote the consumption of fresh fruit and vegetables?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
First, I do not accept that the advertising restrictions represent any watering down. In May, a Written Ministerial Statement set out, to the noble Baroness’s point, that the Government will provide a brand exemption in legislation. The restrictions will come into force officially on 5 January. I realise that the noble Baroness regards this as not the position that she would choose, but I believe that it will provide certainty for businesses to invest in advertising campaigns with confidence and encourage them to develop more healthy products—that is the situation that we want—as well as protecting UK children from the harms of junk food advertising.
Lord Kamall (Con)
I thank the Minister for the answers that she has given so far on the evidence, because it is really important that any policy in this area is evidence led. When I looked at the British Heart Foundation website, I saw that it said that additives in ultra-processed foods
“could be responsible for negative health effects”
and that the
“actual processing of the food could … make a difference”.
It also says:
“Another … theory is that … ultra-processed foods could … affect our gut health”.
But what it says overall is that there is insufficient evidence here. We really need more research to be done. We are not sure whether it is something in the ultra-processed foods or the processing itself that makes them unhealthy. The Minister has touched on this already. We have talked about the timeframe for research, but when people are looking for a source to consider the dangers, or otherwise, of ultra-processed foods, are there any particular websites or sources that the Government could point people to, so that people are more aware of and more educated on the research on ultra-processed foods?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The important point that the noble Lord raises is that our role is to encourage people to ensure that they are choosing a healthy diet and can achieve a healthy diet. As the noble Lord said, the word “could” is a bit of a problem. That is why we continue to invest in research and, as I say, work closely with the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, several speakers have alluded to the evidence available that associates ultra-processed and processed food with disease or health conditions. Would the Minister agree that all the evidence cited is from observational studies? No studies report as a causative factor a direct link between processed and ultra-processed food and any disease—including the British Heart Foundation, the BMJ and the one that the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, mentioned. It is right that we should fund research that associates the causation of these food processes to disease.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right. There is concern, and I am very aware of it, about the effect of ultra-processed foods, but nobody knows whether it is the processing or the content. What we do know is that it is definitely the content. We also know that high-fat, high-sugar and high-salt foods damage people’s health. Our focus is on what we know, and it is important that we continue to do that while researching what other links there may be.
Reservoirs: Protection from Contamination
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the protections in place to prevent reservoirs being contaminated by malicious state actors or others with hostile intent.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
I refer to my interest in the register as chair of the National Preparedness Commission and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government’s first duty is to protect our national security and keep our country safe. Defra recognises that the drinking water supply is a potential target for hostile actors. It works with water companies and partners across government to understand and monitor threats to water supply and to consider responses as appropriate to protect the security of our water system.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for that reply. As she knows, yesterday’s strategic defence review talked a lot about hostile actors sabotaging critical infrastructure. I wonder whether my noble friend’s department is being a tad complacent in talking simply about monitoring the threat rather than looking at what practical arrangements can be made. For example, how do we deal with a drone which is flown over a reservoir and deposits something in there? The panic effects of that being known to have happened and not necessarily knowing what the substance is would be enormous. Is my noble friend able to tell us what further steps are going to be taken to address this, perhaps with a little more urgency given yesterday’s defence review?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I refer my noble friend to a lot of the cross-government work that is taking place regarding security and state threats. Tackling the diverse range of state threats—not just drones but many other threats—requires a cross-government and cross-society response. We need to draw on the skills, the resources and the remits of different departments and operational partners. In Defra, we work closely to look at the threats and the appropriate levels of response, specifically drawing on expert advice from the National Protective Security Authority, the National Cyber Security Centre and the Home Office, as well as carrying out threat assessment with policing partners.
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
I apologise to the House and to the Minister that in my earlier question, I did not declare my farming interests as set out in the register, and I do so now.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
Will the Minister undertake an urgent review of the Reservoirs Act 1975, which is the relevant legislation for safety in the event of a possible breach of a reservoir? There is a lack of competent panel engineers, as they are called, to undertake this work. I think the noble Lord who asked the original Question would accept that we are too reliant on large reservoirs. Will the Minister also review the de minimis rule in the 1975 Act to see whether we could build smaller reservoirs in a greater number of places?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness will be aware of the Government’s pledge to build nine new reservoirs, and we are currently fast-tracking two of those, one in East Anglia and one in Lincolnshire. As we look at the future of reservoirs in this country, it is clear that the Reservoirs Act is a few years old now and it makes absolute sense to consider whether it is fit for the future. I will certainly take that back and discuss it with the department.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Harris, put his finger on a really worrying thing about our infrastructure. For about 15 years, I have been worried about the water supply: the large and small reservoirs, the pipes that connect them and, of course, the water treatment plants. I worry that there is sometimes confusion between the Home Office, Defra and others about who is looking after security. One simple question the Minister may want to ask is what the police response rate to alarms is, because it can be a testing of the system as well as a false alarm, or a proper alarm about people entering certain premises or doing something to the water. It needs to be higher in the priorities than it presently appears.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can assure the noble Lord that we discuss these matters with the Home Office. As I said, much of what we need to do is across government—one thing that we have been trying hard to do in Defra and other departments since we came into government is to work better across government; that is an important point to make. The noble Lord asked an interesting question about police responses, which I am happy to mention next time I have a meeting with the Home Office to see whether I can get a better understanding about that.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, given Thames Water’s inability to secure private investment with its £20 billion debt burden, can the Minister confirm that, should it have to go into special administration, contingency plans include ring-fenced funding for critical security upgrades at its reservoirs? Specifically, will the Government commit to independent audits of cyber defences and physical protections during any transitional period, which has been highlighted as a period of vulnerability that might be exploited by hostile actors?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The main point is that our water supply absolutely has to be secure. We have to know that we are doing everything we can to protect it from hostile actors, as the noble Baroness and my noble friend mentioned. That is why the cross- departmental work is so important. On Thames Water, I assume the noble Baroness refers to the fact that the preferred bidder has now pulled out. Thames Water has assured us that there are other potential bidders. We need to look at the current situation and, clearly, any investment needs to include security. The PR24 investment that has been made includes a substantial sum for improving security as well as infrastructure. It is important to make the point that it is part of our ongoing discussions with water companies.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, our country has frequently been at war or under threat in our history, and our water infrastructure is always one of our vulnerabilities. Can the Minister inform the House whether there has ever been an attempt or a plan uncovered to contaminate our water supply, and what lessons have been learned if so?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I asked about that earlier today, because it is important that we understand it. My understanding is that there has not been such an incident, but that does not mean that we should be complacent. We know that our water and energy infrastructure are both potentially vulnerable to hostile attacks.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, if I could correct my noble friend, because she is probably not aware of it, in 2008 there was an attempt by eight al-Qaeda operatives to poison north London water supplies. I am pleased to say that our agencies worked brilliantly to stop it happening. As a result, in the Home Office we put in hand a whole series of work on police response times, indicators of where the outflows from reservoirs went and new barriers. Where has all that work gone? These things somehow seem to disappear. There should be some reports, and hopefully someone did something about it.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
That is extremely interesting and very helpful of my noble friend. I will certainly look into it, because it is an important point. Clearly, the department did such an excellent job when there was a potential attack that it has never been picked up. However, if he would ever like to take over the Defra brief, I would be very happy to swap with him.
Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)
My Lords, we know from the Covid incident that we lacked experience of simulations of such incidents and were therefore not well prepared. When did we last simulate a situation where our water is contaminated and what did we learn from it? If we have not done so recently, is it time to think of doing it soon?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
That is an interesting question. I do not know when we last simulated such a thing, but there was the issue quite recently in Devon, where there was accidental water contamination. There was quite a rapid response to that, including, importantly, communication to consumers and to the public. One thing we are looking at now is how we learn from that accidental contamination, because contamination does not have to come just from hostile actors.
Lord Swire (Con)
Will the Government consider increasing their investment in desalination plants to ensure the provision of safe drinking water in the event of a national crisis?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Clearly, safe drinking water has to be an absolute priority, and I am sure the department would consider all options.
Gulf States: Trade and Human Rights
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to safeguard human rights in their proposed trade agreement with Gulf states.
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade and HM Treasury (Baroness Gustafsson) (Lab)
My Lords, the UK is a leading advocate for human rights around the world. We remain committed to the promotion of human rights. This Government are in negotiations for a free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council, comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. An FTA such as this one with the GCC can increase UK influence and help us have open conversations with partners on a range of issues, including human rights. Where necessary, the UK will draw on our full range of tools and levers, including our independent global human rights sanctions regime, to hold to account those involved in serious human rights violations and abuses.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
I thank the Minister for her reply. Obviously, there is some variation among the six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council in their attitude to human rights, but it is widely recognised that there are major failures in the areas of migrant labour, the position of women, LGBTQ people, freedom of expression, and access to justice. We understand that there will be some mention of human rights in this proposed trade deal, but would it not be much more effective if it was made legally binding? Surely we should not go for a good trade deal —which of course is very beneficial in itself—at the expense of recognition of human rights by the countries with which we are trading.
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
Free trade agreements such as this are hugely beneficial to both economies, and I do not think that is at the cost of things such as human rights. It is really important that we all hold dear to us our own standards and become huge ambassadors and advocates for those standards around the world.
Where you are best able effect change is by having standards such as labour provisioning and against forced labour, and where you are able to articulate those within free trade agreements, you should really consider and use those opportunities to do that. When it comes to much broader policies about how you set out and articulate much wider, free-ranging ambitions, I do not necessarily see that those free trade agreements are always the place to do that. Instead, those are conversations that are being had between organisations such as the FCDO and direct counterparts within each of these countries, to work with them collaboratively and co-operatively, to share best practice, to help and support and to raise their ambitions. I do not think this is something that you can simply document as an ambition on a piece of paper and put it away in a cupboard for years and years until it is renegotiated; it is the consequence of consistent and live ongoing conversations.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I do not understand the answer that the Minister has just given, because when Labour was in opposition, this House, in the ping-pong on the Trade Bill, insisted on a Labour amendment—which these Benches supported wholeheartedly—that every trade agreement would have a human rights chapter. So have the Government have done a really regrettable U-turn on human rights and trade agreements or has the human rights scenario in the Gulf improved so much that the Labour Government do not think it is warranted?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I do not believe that is what I said. What we are seeing is a combination of understanding that human rights are complex and broad. It is a much broader range of things: modern slavery and thinking about our labour standards, cultural things, same-sex marriages and how we think about women in the workplace. It is broad and far-reaching. Things such as labour standards can be clearly articulated and clarified in agreements such as this, but there are broader aspects that are a consequence of much wider-ranging conversations, and which happen as an ongoing conversation. Yes, there are places and tactical specifics where free trade agreements stand as an opportunity, but there are also much broader, more encompassing conversations which happen collaboratively.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. I actually agree with the Minister on the importance of FTAs. Can she confirm that the Government will continue to focus on the strategic dialogues that the previous Government initiated, where human rights were a key pillar of our discussions and co-operation? In doing that with our Gulf partners, we accentuated the positive; for example, in countries such as Bahrain, major strides were made on alternative sentencing and workers’ rights. We have seen—in an area close to my heart: the freedom of religion or belief and the initiation of the FoRB envoy role—great strides not only in Bahrain but in the UAE and other parts of the Gulf. While I accept that we need to move forward on human rights, I note that something I always did, as the Human Rights Minister for seven years, was to reflect on our own journey of human rights. Before we preach to others, we need to learn from our journey, share those lessons and work constructively.
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his agreement. The key point is that there is never an end state; the work here is never done. We are continuously building on our standards, sharing best practices and learning from what other countries are doing. One thing is clear: we really value our standards on human rights, and we will never compromise on those for any free trade agreement.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
My Lords, I take my noble friend the Minister back to her answer to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. I think I heard her say that, while the breadth of human rights is considerable, there is a place in a free trade agreement for specific, relevant, binding obligations; for example, on labour standards, which might cover third-country workers.
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
First, there is no signed agreement with the GCC yet; it is under continuous negotiation. However, one of the opportunities we have is to reaffirm what standards a country should have and how it can rearticulate them within the terms of a free trade agreement. Then there are other aspects: consider the Modern Slavery Act here in the UK, which requires any business, anywhere in the world, trading with the UK to comply with efforts towards transparency around its supply chain, to identify forced labour and to eradicate that wherever possible. Where we have opportunities to expand those trading relationships, such as with this free trade agreement, we will only increase the number of businesses that will then be bound by those standards of transparency.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her answers to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. Will she confirm that trade agreements are about trade? They are about the removal of barriers and other obstacles to the free flow of commerce. All the other things that we are hearing about—women’s rights, freedom of expression and workers’ rights—are terribly important, but they do not belong as a coda in a trade agreement; they are matters to be addressed in their own terms. Here is a terrific opportunity for us to increase the value of our trade by getting on for £2 billion with these old allies of ours, the former Trucial States and other Gulf monarchies. Is that not good for us, good for them and —in a world that is increasingly moving to protectionism —good for everybody else as well?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
Trade is the consequence of a relationship: working with someone across the table with whom you have a shared ambition to work together. That drives both economic benefit and influence, and I do not believe that one ever comes at the cost of the other.
Lord Scriven (LD)
My Lords, over £42 million of UK government spending from 2020 on the Gulf strategy fund has failed to demonstrably improve many of the human rights abuses detailed by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Human Rights Watch across the Gulf states. I note that this free trade agreement lacks robust and enforceable human rights provisions. Will the Minister explain how this combined approach helps uphold the UK’s commitments to human rights in this region?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
What I am hearing from the noble Lord is that our work here is not yet done. It is a long way from being done, and it is a constantly evolving situation where all of us are raising our own standards—here in the UK but in other countries as well. Where we are able to work together to share ideas, continuously, in every conversation, and to articulate the benefits that those high standards have to our society, where we have trade agreements, that only increases the number of opportunities to articulate and continue to drive that change. I accept that we still have a long way to go and there is still much we could be doing.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, will the Minister assure the House that in the course of these trade negotiations with the Gulf states the Government will take steps to ensure that the UK’s commitment to a free and independent press is in no way compromised—that includes the press’s ability to report on human rights abuses?
Baroness Gustafsson (Lab)
I confirm that we hold our standards around human rights, and value our press, incredibly dearly and we would not do anything in a free trade agreement that takes away or dilutes any of those assets that we hold dear within the UK.
UK Nuclear Deterrent
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, on these Benches we wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s ironclad commitment to the nuclear deterrent and its modernisation. It is the backbone of our military deterrence capabilities and is so valuable to all our NATO allies. But we know that, historically, nuclear projects have eaten up enormous portions of the defence budget and—not unsurprisingly, due to the nature of the challenge—always tend towards overspending. With the raft of recommendations from the strategic defence review and the sheer number of projects that the Ministry of Defence will have to fund, is there not a possibility that the proposed increase in the defence budget could be consumed by the cost of the Dreadnought and nuclear warhead programmes? In light of this, can the Minister guarantee that there will be sufficient funds within the plans for the highly necessary renewal of the nuclear deterrent, as well as the equally necessary boost in what we now understand to be conventional capabilities?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I first thank the noble Earl for the ironclad commitment that His Majesty’s Opposition have just given to the strategic nuclear deterrent. That is the most important point that has been made today, and I thank him for that. The co-operation between all of us on that has been a source of strength to this country for many decades and will continue.
On the question of funding, the Government make it absolutely clear they will fund the nuclear deterrent. On the Dreadnought successor programme to Vanguard, we have made commitments to the four submarines, and noble Lords have seen the Statement about the nuclear warhead programme. I remind the noble Earl that, in 2015, the last Government put a package out of £31 billion for the nuclear modernisation programme with a £10 billion contingency, and I can confirm that the budget is within those parameters.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, the Urgent Question asked in the other place came from the chair of the Defence Committee. It came because there was speculation in the press that the SDR would propose not just renewing the continuous at-sea deterrent, which from these Benches we also support, but a move to a second platform for nuclear deterrence; that appears not to be the case. How does the Minister think such speculation came about? Would it not have been better if, rather than floating the SDR to the press, it came first to the other place and your Lordships’ House and we could have avoided unnecessary speculation?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
On the issue of nuclear weapons and the point that the noble Baroness makes, I will read the following for the purpose of clarity because she makes an important point. Neither the UK nor NATO talks about nuclear weapons being tactical. Any use of nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the nature of a conflict. I can say that the UK continues to view its nuclear deterrent as a political tool rather than a war-fighting capability, and it will remain the case that none of the UK’s nuclear weapons is designed for tactical use.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
We will hear from the noble and gallant Lord.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I was in command of the crew of a nuclear-armed Falcon on quick-reaction alert over a number of years, and I realise the cost of maintaining the V-Force on alert over many years as well. Will the Minister return to the first question as to whether the cost of maintaining new nuclear capability, which has been talked about, can be met with less than the 3% guaranteed for the defence budget?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
To be absolutely clear for the noble and gallant Lord, whatever the debate about the levels of funding for the defence budget, the nuclear deterrent will be funded both as it stands and for its renewal. That is a cast-iron guarantee from the Government.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s commitment to the nuclear deterrent, but does he agree that the problems we are facing now with the deterrent replacement are the failure to replace submarines in the 1990s by the Conservative Government, the delay from the coalition Government in ordering the replacement, and the movement of the actual finance for the replacement into the defence budget, whereas before it was always ring-fenced? Are not this Government trying now to play catch-up after the mistakes that were made in the past?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. We are trying to ensure that, whatever may have happened in the past, we move forward in a way which guarantees our strategic nuclear deterrent. That is the fundamental point that must ring out from this Chamber: there is unity of purpose across the Chamber that the strategic nuclear deterrent, particularly in the geopolitical times of today, will be maintained and renewed by this Government.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, does not the Minister crystallise in what he says the stupidity of the situation in which we find ourselves? The declaration that at all costs, at any cost, the nuclear deterrent will be retained, must mean, under a time of fiscal pressure, that the balance of the MoD’s programme—the conventional methodology for deterring attacks—is further undermined. Is this not a ridiculous situation, and should we not return to the time when the nuclear enterprise was funded completely separately from the conventional requirements of defence?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble and gallant Lord for his question. Clearly, others will have heard the points that he made. All I am saying to this Chamber is that, at this geopolitical moment in history, it is particularly important that His Majesty’s Government, plus His Majesty’s Official Opposition and all parties, are united in saying to others that the nuclear deterrent will remain at the heart of our defence policy, whatever the debates about the budget.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister confirm that it is an independent nuclear deterrent, or is it tied in? Would it work if we did not have support from the United States? One of the problems that we have had in the past is that it has not been an independent nuclear deterrent; it has been dependent on support from others. I would like to have an independent deterrent.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I just say to the noble Lord that it is an independent nuclear deterrent. The person who decides whether, God forbid, that nuclear deterrent is ever used is the Prime Minister of our country. It is only the Prime Minister of our country who can determine whether, God forbid, that nuclear deterrent is used. That guarantees its independence.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that our nuclear weapons will be used only when our supreme national interest so requires, and in no other circumstance?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Of course it will be in the most extreme of circumstances that the nuclear deterrent would even be considered for use. I just say that the whole point of the nuclear deterrent—this is something I have said many times at the Dispatch Box—is to deter people. It is that whole concept that sometimes seems contradictory: that by preparing for war, you prevent war. The strategic nuclear deterrent is the most significant example of that.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, it has always been the case that the nuclear programme has been at the very limits of our technological, industrial, scientific and cost profiles. The speed at which we produced Blue Danube bombs, for example, was excruciatingly slow, and so was the Beard process beyond that, and the other weapons. Now we have a lot of pressure from civil nuclear as well. Does my noble friend agree that we have to have a really national endeavour among all departments to pull together so that we can get the training of scientists and everyone focusing on this particular issue, because otherwise we will find it very hard to deliver—certainly within the cost parameters, but very hard to deliver anyway?
Just as an aside, when I was in government, the Prime Minister asked me to go and check on the independence of our deterrent. I was allowed access to all sorts of things, and the answer is that it is independent. Clearly, over time, over 20 or 30 years, that becomes more difficult, because of maintenance of missiles, for example.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My noble friend makes a really good point with respect to the nuclear enterprise and the need for it to be a national endeavour. It is true of the defence nuclear enterprise, as it is true with many other aspects of defence, that the need for us to upskill, to have more apprentices and to have more of the systems available to us in order for us to be able to deliver the defence programmes and projects that we want is a challenge. Let me be clear that we will make sure that we have all the necessary skills and capabilities required to maintain our nuclear deterrent.
Diego Garcia Military Base
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, this is an extremely important Statement concerning the future sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory. I begin by expressing my disappointment with the Government’s handling of the timing of this announcement. This is a matter of national security and territorial integrity, and this decision directly affects how our country is perceived on the international stage. To slip in an unscheduled Statement moments before these Houses rose for Recess shows a disregard for Members in both your Lordships’ House and the other place. Matters of this significance deserve to be discussed, and the Government’s actions scrutinised, in good time, and it is my view that the Government timed their announcement to disrupt that duty of scrutiny, despite efforts made the Official Opposition to raise this question on parliamentary time on the Thursday before Recess. I hope that the Minister can start his response by addressing this question.
The Statement made by the Secretary of State for Defence in the other place was effusive in highlighting the importance of the Diego Garcia base. He said:
“For more than 50 years, the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia has been a launchpad to defeat terrorists, to prevent threats to our nation, and to protect our economic security. This base keeps Britain secure at home and strong abroad”.
Can the Minister explain why, given that this is the Government’s latest assessment, they are surrendering that very same British sovereign territory to a foreign power—a power that only recently has agreed to deepen maritime co-operation with Russia?
Once sovereignty has been relinquished, it can never be regained. The text of the treaty also includes the provision that the UK must
“expeditiously inform Mauritius of any armed attack on a third State directly emanating from the Base on Diego Garcia”.
Does the Minister believe that it is in the interests of our national security to share advance information on military operations with third countries? Can he promise that this information, which we are now obliged to share with Mauritius, will never be shared with China, Iran or Russia, with whom the Mauritians are becoming increasingly friendly?
I, like many other noble Lords—and honourable Members in the other place—took exception to the comments of the Prime Minister during his press conference. He said that those of us who oppose the deal are on the same side as Russia and China. That is not only deeply offensive but entirely false. Just last week, we saw news reports of China’s ambassador to Mauritius hailing this deal as a “massive achievement” for Mauritius and then confirming that China would welcome it into the belt and road initiative. It is vividly apparent that, contrary to the Government’s claims, Mauritius is becoming ever more under the influence of China. It is no surprise that China welcomes this deal; it plays right into its strategy of weakening western democracies and hobbling our abilities to operate internationally.
Over the weekend, noble Lords will also have considered the renewed US views on China’s intentions towards Taiwan as context. Has the Minister considered how this treaty makes us look on the world stage? The Prime Minister has signed an agreement which will surrender a strategically vital resource to a foreign Government. He has also, it appears, committed us to sharing military information with that same Government, who show increasing signs of support for our enemies. The Prime Minister and the Defence Secretary have both argued that this agreement is necessary to safeguard our ability to operate from the Diego Garcia military base, in the face of legal challenges. However, the legal case is entirely opaque. Noble Lords will know that this all stems from a non-binding advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, a court which counts among its number a Chinese judge who is a member of the Chinese Communist Party and who voted against condemning Russia for its illegal invasion of Ukraine.
We also know that the International Telecommunication Union does not have the power to issue binding rulings against the UK in respect of the base on Diego Garcia, and it is unclear whether a case would be brought against us in the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Even if it had done so, it would have been a case that we could have opposed and appealed. Everyone seems to agree that the British Indian Ocean Territory is a critically important asset, not just to the UK but, by direct or indirect association, to all our allies.
To crown it all, we are paying for the privilege of surrendering our own territory. The Government, to the incredulity of Members across both Houses and people throughout the country, hail this as a success. In reality, I can find no positive report of this chosen route in any media or other channel not linked to China. Does the Minister honestly believe that this is a good deal that benefits the United Kingdom? When he responds in a moment, can he say with his hand on his heart that handing the Mauritians £30 billion over 99 years to lose one of our vital strategic assets is something that we should welcome and be proud of?
The Minister will be well aware that those payments are front-loaded. The agreement laid before Parliament states that, for the first three years, the United Kingdom will pay Mauritius £165 million per year, then £120 million for each of the next 10 years and an additional £45 million every year from year one for infrastructure improvements in Mauritius. That is for the next 25 years, which means that, over the next five years, we will be paying Mauritius £1 billion.
Let me put that into a defence context. £1 billion could pay for 10 new F35 Lightnings, 30 Apache attack helicopters, 125 Boxer armoured fighting vehicles, or an entire Type 26 frigate—which must rankle with the noble Lord, Lord West, among many others.
Given that the strategic defence review, revealed yesterday, contained 62 recommendations, all of which have been accepted by the Government, and at a time when the Chancellor is warning of additional tax rises and spending cuts, does the Minister not agree that a far better use could be found for this money? Can the Minister tell us exactly how this will be funded? Can he help the House to understand how the obligations to the British people are being fulfilled by pursuing this deal at the taxpayer’s expense? More importantly—and this is a simple question requiring a yes or no answer—will this money be paid out of the defence budget? If so, how can the Minister justify that, given the Government have spent the last few months attempting to talk up their increase in the defence budget?
This agreement must make the United Kingdom less secure, weaker on the global stage and at greater risk than under the current status quo. There are good deals and not so good deals. One of the key skills in deciding to complete a deal or not is knowing when it is wiser to withdraw than continue, and that is exactly what the previous Government did.
We should be mindful of the critical fact that, once sovereignty has been relinquished, it can never be regained. It is also somewhat ironic that, as the Government announce their strategic defence review on the one hand, they are wilfully disposing with the sovereignty of the British Indian Ocean Territory on the other, along with significant amounts of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash.
Finally, but just as importantly, what of the Chagossian community, which is already widely displaced? A one-off token payment of £40 million to assist resettlement and readjustment to an unknown and distant sovereign power—and its intentions—in the light of the overall magnitude of the Mauritian gains, both territorial and financial, seems almost derisory. Can the Minister advise the House how this sum is to be allocated, tracked and ensured, for the benefit of all Chagossians?
Noble Lords will be aware of the Motion against ratification of the treaty, tabled by my noble friend Lord Callanan. Let me be clear: we do not do this lightly, but this arrangement poses such harm to our nation and, indeed, international security, and is such a flagrant violation of the rights of the Chagossian community, that we feel it our duty to bring this fatal Motion to the House. We hope noble Lords across the House will weigh the agreement carefully and support our Motion. This deal cannot be the right thing for our country to do.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I find myself in a rather unusual position. On most defence issues, it is very easy for the Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson to agree with the Official Opposition, and to find that the Minister will also be saying very similar things. On most issues, we find ourselves saying how vital the defence of the realm is, and that we are broadly on the same page, with a few minor differences.
On this issue, however, there seems to be such a clear difference of opinion between the Official Opposition and the Government Benches that I will ask only a few clarificatory questions for those of us who are not Privy Councillors, have not been briefed on Privy Council terms and are therefore unable to express the effusive views on the importance of Diego Garcia that the noble Earl, Lord Minto, mentioned the Secretary of State had expressed. For anyone who read the Statement delivered in the other place just before Recess, the Secretary of State was indeed crystal clear about the importance of Diego Garcia to the security of the United Kingdom.
The Secretary of State particularly made the point that the deal is vital because we retain control over Diego Garcia, but he also pointed out how important it is as a joint US-UK military base. So what role does the United States play on Diego Garcia? I realise that the Minister may feel that this is privileged information that he is not able to articulate in open session, but we need to understand what is going on with our relationship with the US in this regard.
The noble Earl, Lord Minto, said that the only people who are really in favour of this are the Chinese, yet the Secretary of State pointed out that none other than Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Rubio and President Trump have said that this is a “very long-term” and “very strong” deal. So whose interests is it in? Is it in the UK’s national interest or is it primarily about the US’s interest?
Finally—because I want to give the Minister time to reply—this deal has apparently been two and a half years in the making. His Majesty’s Government have been in office for only 11 months. That means that, for over a year and a half, the negotiations were under the Conservative Government. What has changed between the two Governments to make one party now think that this is a vital deal, and the other implacably opposed?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Minto, for his comments and the articulate way in which he presented an opinion that I do not agree with. But that is the point of scrutiny and that is the point I am making back to the noble Earl. Whatever the process is, that he could stand here so that we can debate this—and others will debate it—is important to democracy and the way our country works. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her comments.
The Government’s position is quite clear: none of us disagrees that Diego Garcia is of huge significance and importance to the geopolitical security of us and our allies, in particular the United States. The discussion is about the best way of securing that base for the future. The Opposition’s point of view is that there is no legal jeopardy, that we can carry on ignoring the ICJ’s judgment, because it was just advisory, and that we may reach a point when a binding judgment is made. The question then becomes whether we ignore only binding agreements, if we get to them.
That was clearly what the previous Government were wrestling with. In answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, it is clearly why, at some point, officials and Ministers under the previous Government—under Rishi Sunak if not before—decided that they needed to negotiate and discuss the future of the Diego Garcia base with Mauritius. Otherwise, what was the point of those negotiations? Were they just a delaying tactic: “We’ll just negotiate and pretend that we’re discussing something when we don’t mean it”. I can see the noble Earl’s noble friend shaking his head, but the consequence of what the noble Earl said is that the previous Government were negotiating with a country with no intention of coming to any agreement. I do not believe that. As much as I do not agree with much of what the last Government did, I do not believe that the lack of integrity in Ministers or officials was such that they would have done that. So I believe that negotiations were going on about the best way forward, and this Government have come to the conclusion that there is judicial or legal jeopardy in allowing the situation to continue.
I will try to cut my remarks short to make sure that Back-Benchers get a proper opportunity. We negotiated a treaty, which will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny when it comes before Parliament to be debated. That treaty guarantees, with many conditions, the security of Diego Garcia. Our international partners are far from disagreeing. I will read what Secretary Hegseth said for the noble Baroness—and yes, the US is a really important partner for us on Diego Garcia. Of course it is. We work really closely with the US on this, and we make no apology for that.
Pete Hegseth said:
“Diego Garcia is a vital military base for the US. The UK’s (very important) deal with Mauritius secures the operational capabilities of the base and key US national security interests in the region”.
Secretary Rubio said:
“Today, the United States welcomed the historic agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Mauritius on the future of the British Indian Ocean Territory—specifically, the Chagos Archipelago”.
Canada said:
“Canada welcomes the signing of the Chagos Archipelago sovereignty agreement”.
Australia said:
“Australia welcomes the signing of the historic agreement between the UK and Mauritius”.
I will tell the House what I would do if I were China: I would say what a brilliant agreement it is to sow confusion, upset people and cause people to debate it. I will tell the House what I want: I want this country and our allies to determine what we should do and to tell China that we are going to act in what we consider to be our own interests, irrespective of what it might say to try to disrupt us.
New Zealand said:
“As a strong supporter of the international rules-based system, New Zealand welcomes the agreement”.
India said:
“We welcome the signing of the treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Mauritius”.
So, far from us being an international pariah because we have signed this agreement, many of the most important countries in that region have welcomed the deal because it confirms the security of that base.
We are worried about the law of the sea. The noble Earl asked about that situation. We do not have to share information about actions taken from Diego Garcia in advance of us taking any action. I say that on the record because the noble Earl specifically asked me about it. We do not have to let Mauritius know in advance about it and then potentially share that information.
The Government Actuary says that the cost of the treaty arrangements is £3.4 billion over the lifetime of the treaty. If the noble Earl and others want to take issue, let them argue with the Government Actuary, because that is the way that all Governments throughout the past few decades have costed government projects in this sense, so we are not changing that or moving any goalposts.
The noble Earl talked about the Chagossians. This was a UK-Mauritius state treaty discussion, but the Chagossian community itself is not united in its response. On 22 May, two prominent Chagossian groups—the Chagos Refugees Group and the Chagossian Committee Seychelles—said that they regretted the legal action that aimed to halt what could be a landmark agreement that serves the long-term interests of Chagossians as a whole. That is Chagossians commenting on this agreement.
The argument I put on behalf of the Government is that, far from undermining the base’s sovereignty in terms of its operational independence, and our ability to use Diego Garcia in the way we would all want—to protect our national security and defend our global interests—we have negotiated a treaty that is subject to parliamentary approval, which gives it the scrutiny the noble Earl would like, strengthened it and ensured that we protect our national interests and those of our friends and allies, including the US.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the Statement. He is right that this gives a long-term future to a strategically vital base not only for this country but, as he read out with his quotes, for our Five Eyes partners. China is being used as an example of why this is a bad deal. Does he agree that Mauritius’s main interlocutor in the region is not China but India, and that if China were to do anything in that region, India would certainly have something to say about it?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank my noble friend. He is right. That is why I read out what the Indian Government said about the treaty and the agreement that has been reached. They say clearly:
“The formal resolution of the longstanding Chagos dispute through this bilateral treaty is a milestone achievement and a positive development for the region”.
I for one am pleased that the Indian Government have made such a positive statement, in the face of some comments.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, if the military base on Diego Garcia is just as important to the US as it is to the UK, was the US ever asked to split the costs of leasing it back?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I am not sure of the answer to that, but I suspect not. All I can say with respect to this is that, whatever the payment is that the UK Government are making, through the MoD and the FCDO, to the Mauritian Government for the use and protection of the base, we should be clear that the US’s ability to use the base, with its equipment, its facilities, and the soldiers, airmen and sailors of its military, is the massive contribution that the US makes to it. Whatever arrangements we have, the fact that the US and the UK are standing together on that base sends a massive signal to China, the rest of those who stand against us and our adversaries. We are a proud country. We are going to stand with our friends, and we will deter those who seek to undermine us.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, may I perhaps inform the Minister? He is, of course, right that the previous Government engaged on this in good faith to try to seek a resolution. The reason why it could not be agreed, as has been said before in your Lordships’ House, was the principal issue of security. I visited at the behest of a previous Prime Minister and directly met the Prime Minister of Mauritius. One assurance that he could not give me at that time was about the long-term security of both the maritime waters and the Diego Garcia base. Linked to that, my specific question is about the other islands that make up the British Indian Ocean Territory. What assurances and, indeed, guarantees are there that there will not be a separate negotiation on them?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
My Lords, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, will have negotiated in good faith. I know too that if there had been an agreement that he felt was in the national interest then he would have recommended to his Government that it should be supported.
The point that I am making is that the principle was established that negotiations were happening to see what arrangement or agreement, if any, could be made between the UK and Mauritius with respect to Diego Garcia. This Government’s judgment is that we have reached such an agreement. The noble Lord is quite right to point out the security guarantees that we have. He will know that in the treaty there is a 24-mile buffer zone around the island, and the US and the UK can veto any development within that zone. He will also know that there is a further exclusion zone beyond that encompassing the rest of the islands, which means we can prevent development that we are opposed to there as well. That is why we felt we could sign an agreement containing the sorts of security guarantees that the noble Lord himself sought but did not manage to achieve, and therefore did not feel there was an agreement that he could come to or recommend we agree to. We feel that we have guarantees that will protect the integrity of the base by excluding others who would seek to undermine it.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, the Statement twice refers to guaranteeing the UK full continued control over Diego Garcia for the next 99 years and beyond. What is the exact legal position that the Government have negotiated regarding the situation beyond the year 2124, which, after all, is little more than a single lifetime away? What concerns me is that the wording available to the public suggests that any extension depends entirely on obtaining the agreement of the Mauritian Government at the time, which does not sound much like a guarantee of full UK control of Diego Garcia beyond 99 years.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
The noble Lord will know that, in addition to the 99 years, there is in the treaty an option for a further 40 years. He will know the importance of respecting a treaty, which is a legally binding agreement between two Governments, whether through an international court, national courts or sovereign Governments themselves. The important principle is that what is in the treaty is what has been negotiated. As far as I am concerned, we will ensure that the treaty is respected, and that is the legal basis on which we go forward.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
I support all that my noble friend has had to say about the significance of the islands to our defence and that of our allies, but these kinds of exchanges tend to be very much about high politics. We should remember—and even though it has been said before, it needs to be repeated, preferably from the Front Bench here—that this cannot be done without a reflection on the gross abuse that took place all those years ago to the people of the Chagos Islands. There were shocking stories about Chagossians who were on holiday when the takeover took place and the military base was established who were unable even to get back into their own homeland. I really feel that there should be some additional statement from my noble friend on precisely what this deal does for the people who inhabited those islands and their descendants. I know there are differences of opinion, but what exactly will the rights of Chagossians be as and when this deal is ratified?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
On the rights of the Chagossians and what happened in the past, of course there is a lot to be regretted about the situation that occurred and what has happened with the Chagossians. The Chagossians in the UK, primarily in Crawley, receive support from the UK Government to facilitate their living here. The treaty provides £40 million for a trust fund to be set up for Chagossians living in Mauritius. Notwithstanding what I think is my noble friend’s point about resettlement and the opportunity to return, this was a UK-Mauritius agreement to protect the long-term integrity of the Diego Garcia base, and alongside that we have tried to provide some support for Chagossians whether they live in the UK or Mauritius.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
Successive Governments of all political backgrounds have behaved disgracefully towards the Chagossians. I presided in a case for the Court of Appeal in which we were unable to help the Chagossians but learned a great deal—I am talking about 20 years ago—about what had happened. What the Minister has not said is whether any Chagossians will be allowed to return to the other islands.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Rather than misinform the noble and learned Baroness, let me check that—I am not 100% certain of the particulars on the return of Chagossians to other islands. If she will allow me, I will check that, write to her and, with due respect to everybody, put a copy of that in the Library.
Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)
My Lords, following on from that question, there seems to be no guarantee in this agreement that Chagossians will be able to return to any of the islands. I understood that that was going to be in the agreement. Perhaps the Minister can tell me where I can read up, because obviously I am ignorant on this as I can see nothing that shows why Mauritius has such a claim on the Chagos Islands.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I will copy the letter that I said I would send to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, directly to the noble Baroness. Diego Garcia has been regarded as part of Mauritius. It is something that Mauritius has links to. It is recognised through the international order. As part of the negotiations that have taken place, we have negotiated with that Government to come to an agreement around the future of Diego Garcia.
The noble Baroness will know, with the interest she takes in security matters, that it is important for the Government to ensure the future of the Diego Garcia base. That is protected under this treaty. That is a hard and difficult position, and sometimes Governments have to make those decisions. The alternative would be a situation of judicial jeopardy and the future of the base would be uncertain. People are quite able to oppose that deal, but their position would be to let us continue with a situation that is uncertain and where there is judicial jeopardy. We think and believe that an agreement that protects the future of one of the most important bases in the world for our geopolitical security is something that—if we can agree it, and we believe we have—is worth agreeing. It protects the base, and that is the all-important principle to which we have adhered.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, I came to this matter with an open mind. I have listened to the arguments on both sides, and I have some background in the region. I conclude that the Minister has made his case on this matter.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord very much for that. That means there are two of us in this Chamber. For any journalists reporting this, that is a joke—just to ensure we have clarity. Seriously, I thank the noble Lord. At the end of the day—this is the point about scrutiny—the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has done nothing but shake his head the whole debate. There is a legitimate debate and discussion to take place. The noble Lord has articulated a point of view that says this is essentially a sell-out. I take the view that, on the contrary, it is nothing like that. It is a Government taking seriously their responsibility to try to come to an agreement in difficult circumstances, as we have heard from some of the questions, and negotiate with the Mauritian Government to protect a base of huge, vital strategic significance.
The noble Lord does not agree with the vital strategic significance, but we have sought to protect it through a treaty that we believe helps guarantee that and will guarantee it. For those who oppose it, I repeat that there is judicial jeopardy and no certainty that the base can be protected. The idea that we can just ignore international judicial opinion and not worry about where that may take us is not the right way forward. The challenge the noble Earl made, and the one I have heard time and again, is that nobody supports this and it makes us a pariah internationally. I read out statements from many of our most significant partners and allies, including the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India. All those countries said they support the arrangement and the deal we have come to.
The noble Lord, Lord Callanan, may propose a fatal Motion—he is entitled to do it; I am not saying he should not, and he will anyway. My point is that Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Rubio, the Indian Government, the Japanese Government, the Australian Government, the New Zealand Government and many others all support it. Those who oppose the deal will have to say why they are opposed to something supported by all those. They will say, “Because China is the real voice”. Let me say this: China can say what it wants. This Government know the malign influence of China, as the previous Government did. None of us needs any lectures about standing up to the Chinese, and we will.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
Perhaps I might take the Minister back to the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, about the wrong that was done to the Chagossians, and the agency and will of the Chagossian diaspora population. The Minister said at the beginning that they were divided, which is of course true—they are not a single block. I think it would address concerns on all sides of this House if this deal were made subject to a consultative referendum among the Chagossian population. Noble Lords may say that that is difficult to do because they are scattered—some are in the Seychelles and some are in Mauritius—but it is not logistically impossible. I voted not long ago on who should be the next chancellor of the University of Oxford—I voted for the noble Lord, Lord Hague—and there were people on five continents for that. You establish your credentials and then you vote, so I do not think it would be logistically unfeasible. If the Chagossian people voted for it, I think people would get behind it. Will the Minister consider giving a voice to the people who have more at stake here than anybody else?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. The answer is no. The British Government have made, and will make, their case. The treaty that has been agreed will be subject to parliamentary approval, and there will be a debate on it. No doubt the noble Lord will be able to put forward that point of view at some point. But the British Government have taken a decision on the basis of our national security and the geopolitical security of that region and beyond. Let us be clear: some of what happens at Diego Garcia has implications reaching far beyond the region, and the noble Earl, Lord Minto, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, and many others here will know that. The geopolitical significance of Diego Garcia is not linked just to that region; it has a global impact. As the noble Lord will know, Governments sometimes have to make very real and difficult decisions and, in the interests of the geopolitical needs of our nation and those of our friends —to combat China and others—we have taken the decision to ensure, through this treaty, that we protect the integrity and future of the Diego Garcia base so that it can continue to operate in the interests that we all share: democracy, human rights and the international rules-based order.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
The fact that the Minister has made this case so effectively raises a question about what happens next. With great respect, I do not think he has answered the question about what happens when the treaty comes to an end. I cannot imagine that the needs of security will come to an end. Are we to take it that the treaty says nothing about this? If so, what happens?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I will reflect on that—I note that the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, was shaking his head when I answered. I will see whether I can add anything further to the points made by the noble and learned Lord and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley. Clearly, the treaty lays out 99 years, with the 40-year further option on that. If the noble and learned Lord is asking me what happens at the end of 139 years, I will reflect on that so that others who may follow me can consider their options in 139 years’ time.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
I will clarify my question. My understanding, from what I read—which is available to the public—is that the Mauritian Government have to agree even to the 40-year extension, let alone what happens at the end of that 40 years.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I will clarify that. I tried to be open and frank in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I will reflect on that and whether I need to write to the noble Lord to ensure that we have correct factual information. We may differ on opinions, but it is important that we have factual information in front of us. If I need to, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and put a copy of that in the Library, as well as giving a copy to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, just for clarity’s sake.
Employment Rights Bill
Tuesday 3rd June 2025
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberEmployment Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Employment Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 81-VI(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Sixth Marshalled List) - (3 Jun 2025)
“Prohibition of unpaid work experience for a period exceeding four weeks(1) The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 is amended as follows.(2) After section 3(3) (exclusion of, and modifications for, certain classes of person) insert—“(3A) “No provision shall be made under subsection (2)(a) in respect of persons participating in a scheme designed to provide work experience for a continuous or non-continuous period which exceeds four weeks.””(3) After section 41 (power to apply Act to individuals who are not otherwise “workers”) insert— “41A Application of this Act to persons undertaking work experience(1) The Secretary of State must, in exercising the powers under section 41, provide that this Act applies to a person undertaking work experience with the same employer for a continuous or non-continuous period which exceeds four weeks.(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations in accordance with subsection (1) within a period of six months, beginning with the day on which the Employment Rights Act 2025 is passed.(3) Such regulations must provide that a person undertaking such work experience who has ceased to be of compulsory school age, but has not attained the age of 26, is eligible to receive the national minimum wage at the rate specified for workers of the person’s age.(4) In this section—“employer” has the meaning given to it by subsection 54(4) of this Act (Meaning of “worker”, “employee” etc.), and also includes any organisation which provides an individual with work experience;“work experience” means observing, replicating, assisting with and carrying out any task with the aim of gaining experience of a particular workplace, organisation, industry or work-related activity.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that unpaid work experience cannot be used to avoid National Minimum Wage regulations.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a freelance TV producer. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, whose amendment this is, has waited and waited to be able to debate it, but now, when the big moment arrives, he is prevented from taking his place in the Chamber by an unbreakable commitment—so the Committee has me.
This amendment is an attempt to address the wretched, exploitative workplace faced by far too many people wanting to enter work. It attempts to create a new definition of “work experience”, which would ensure that participants are educated, and not exploited, as they attempt to join the workforce. I am sure that noble Lords would agree that it is important for new entrants to spend time in a workplace, finding out whether they like the work environment and, even better, whether they are seen as a possible fit for the company.
Much energy has been spent focusing on how to get young people, and people returning to employment, back into the workplace. I am glad that there has been reform and improvement to the apprenticeship schemes, but that is for those who want training in a specific sector. However, many people do not know what they want to do and, for them, internships have been a way to discover whether they can engage with a particular industry and whether it can engage with them. Unfortunately, so many of these internships have turned out to be exploitative.
I have worked in the creative industries all my career, so I have first-hand experience of young people coming in to find out about the industry, only to discover that they are expected to work for either no pay or well below the minimum wage. This is happening not just in the creative industries but across the economy. I have been told about a strengthening coach, working for a major professional sporting body, who was initially on a short-term internship, which became a two-year, daily commitment. During all that time, he was not paid. He loved what he was doing so was afraid to ask for payment and was forced to take a second job to sustain himself.
Internships are essential, and they are covered by the National Minimum Wage Act, so any intern who qualifies as a worker, under the criteria laid out in the Act, should be paid. A new survey by the broadcasting union BECTU reveals that 49% of people joining the creative industries have been pressurised to work for free. In their desperation to get into this competitive industry, many succumb and work for free. The highly respected Sutton Trust found last year that 61% of internships undertaken by recent graduates were underpaid or unpaid. The largest percentage of these jobs are in the south-east, where accommodation is notoriously expensive. It means that those people from the regions and nations, or from more socially disadvantaged families, who cannot afford the accommodation, are prevented from taking up those places. For a Government who are determined and dedicated to getting people into work in well-paid jobs, this is a failure that must be rectified rapidly. Social mobility realises the talent of the whole population; it is the only way to ensure that our nation succeeds economically.
The body charged with enforcing the minimum wage Act is HMRC. Part of the problem is that if the intern is not paid, they do not appear on HMRC’s radar. This is not helped by the fact that so many small companies do not have anybody focusing on personnel issues and, even when they have an HR department, surveys show they are not well enough informed about the law. I ask the Minister: how many prosecutions against employers have there been under the National Minimum Wage Act for unpaid internships?
Amendment 129 is an attempt to sort out the complicated and often exploitative system for those trying to get into the job market. It is crucial to ensure that there is a difference in law between interns, who should be paid, and those undertaking work experience, who should not. Proposed new subsection (4) in the amendment sets out a new legal concept of “work experience”, defined by
“observing, replicating, assisting with and carrying out any task with the aim of gaining experience of a particular workplace, organisation … or work-related activity”.
The most important criterion for what constitutes work experience is that it is voluntary, and participants are not under the control of anyone else. It has to be a learning experience, and must ensure that participants are shadowing and not actually doing the job. Work experience is already part of many T-level courses for young people. Some universities facilitate work experience, but not nearly enough of these places are available. It is a crucial pathway into work life. At a time when we are hearing of so many people who are out of the workforce, it is important that this stage of their career is clearly established and legally defined.
I am pleased that the amendment has a time limit on what counts as work experience. A maximum of four weeks seems like a good duration. It would allow the participant sufficient time to get a grip on what happens in a specific workplace and to decide whether they want to embark on a career there, but, in my view, is not enough time for them to become established as an unpaid intern. So many underpaid or unpaid internships carry on for many more than four weeks, and this amendment would ensure that that does not happen.
The highly respected Sutton Trust says that access to the workplace is a central obstacle to social mobility. I beg the Government to take the suggestion in this proposed new clause seriously. I ask the Minister to examine it as part of a possible solution to the crisis facing new entrants to the creative and other industries. I hope your Lordships will discuss this further when the Committee gets to my noble friend Lord Clancarty’s Amendments 286 and 287 on establishing a freelance commissioner.
Meanwhile, this amendment is focused on the many thousands of young people who want to get into work but do not know what they want to do. If the Government take up the work experience category laid out in this amendment, it will give those people a taste of the workplace, which is crucial to engaging them and crucial to getting them engaged in the job market. I beg to move.
Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
My Lords, as somebody with long experience of campaigning against unpaid internships, I have a huge amount of sympathy with the motivation behind this amendment.
Certainly, it is true that a key reflection of the reversal of social mobility in this country has been the growth of unpaid internships. It started with the creative industries, where, in the past, a young person from a working-class background used to be able to start as a runner in broadcasting, or as a cub reporter on their local newspaper, and then found their path to national newspapers or progression within broadcasting blocked by the parachuting in of very often young people from wealthy backgrounds, often to senior positions, on an unpaid internship that nobody from a working-class background could afford to take. It costs thousands of pounds, particularly if the position is located in London and you do not live in London. I absolutely agree that unpaid internships have been a block and a major barrier to young working-class people’s progression.
My concern is that, from my perspective, the problem is not the law but the enforcement of the law. As trade unions, we have campaigned to get HMRC to take this seriously. There was a flurry of action around cracking down on unpaid internships, but, since Covid in particular, there has been an uptick—you have only to scan any recruitment agency website and you will see that they are brazenly advertising unpaid internships that lock young working-class people out of the professions, and doing so in flagrant abuse of the law.
Sadly, I cannot support this amendment. I fear that bad employers would be able to offer rolling unpaid internships, shoving young people through a revolving door of not getting paid as they are entitled to be for the productive work that they do. They should be paid at least the national minimum wage. What I would support is the proposed fair work agency launching a major crackdown on young people being robbed of their dreams and opportunities through the exploitative practice of unpaid internships.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 129, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, ably articulated by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross. I also have some sympathy with the view of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, on the matter.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes for tabling this amendment and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, with his perspective from the creative industries, for introducing it so well.
This amendment highlights an important issue: ensuring that work experience opportunities do not become a means to circumvent minimum wage regulations, thereby protecting young people and others seeking to gain valuable experience in the labour market. At the same time, as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, noted, it is important to recognise that many charities, non-profit organisations and others rely to some extent on unpaid work experience placements, partly to deliver their valuable services but also to provide opportunities for individuals who might otherwise struggle to enter the workforce. We must acknowledge that many young people who leave education not knowing what they want to do, as the noble Viscount noted, find them a useful way of testing various sectors. The practical impact of this amendment on such organisations merits careful consideration to ensure that their ability to provide meaningful work experience is not unduly restricted, while maintaining fair treatment for those undertaking such experience.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who contributed to this short but focused and interesting debate. I too regret that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, was unable to attend; with my Whip’s hat on, I note that perhaps if we had made better progress on earlier days of Committee then we would have heard from him directly. I pay tribute to him for tabling Amendment 129, which seeks to prohibit unpaid work experience for a period exceeding four weeks. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, for stepping into the breach and making a more than worthy understudy in moving the amendment. I thank my noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway and the noble Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for contributing to this debate. This is an important issue, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and others are right to raise it. I pay tribute on the record to his previous work campaigning on this issue, not least through his Private Member’s Bill in the 2017-19 Session.
This Government made a commitment to deliver the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation. This includes tackling unfair working practices. As we heard from the noble Viscount, there are examples not simply in the creative sector—although that area of our economy is rife with them—but beyond it. This Government absolutely stand by the national minimum wage, and on 1 April delivered an increase of 16.3% to the 18 to 20 national minimum wage rate to make it £10 an hour—a record amount in both cash and percentage terms, making progress on closing the gap with the national living wage. This is an increase of £2,500 to the gross annual earnings of a full-time worker on the NMW. It was the first step in the Government’s plans to remove the discriminatory age bands and ensure that all adults benefit from a genuine living wage, making a real difference to young people.
I think it is worth saying in passing that we welcome, on this side of the House at least, the Conservative Party’s conversion in recent years to supporting the national minimum wage. However, as a member of the party that introduced it in the first place, in the teeth of some quite vehement opposition at the time, I assure noble Lords that this Labour Government are absolutely committed to supporting it and making sure that it applies in all cases where it should.
Work experience or internships can offer individuals, especially younger people, invaluable opportunities and experience. We do not want to close the door on these opportunities, but we do want to ensure that they are open and fair. Most importantly, where workers are due payment, they should be paid the wages they are entitled to, and I have to say that the current legislation already protects them.
As my noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway—to whose years of campaigning in this area, through the TUC, I pay tribute—said, there is an aspect of this amendment, very well-intentioned though it is, that would create unintended consequences and raises the spectre of, as she put it, rolling internships of four weeks, on and on.
As we know, according to the Department for Education’s 2022 employer skills survey, around 5% of employers had offered internships, either paid or unpaid, in the preceding 12 months, and there were around 200,000 people on internships. The vast majority of these—88%—were of two weeks or more in duration, and nearly 30% were over six months. It is only right that these people should be paid the national minimum to which they are entitled.
As we have heard, the national minimum wage legislation provides for a number of exemptions to recognise the importance of gaining work experience. It is important to recognise that these examples have a strong and firm place in the economy, including students on placements for up to one year, as required as part of a UK course of either further or higher education, pupils below the compulsory school age, participants in certain government programmes to provide training, work experience or temporary work, and—the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, made this point—voluntary workers employed by a charity or voluntary organisation, providing they receive no monetary payments, except for expenses.
The Government are committed to banning unpaid internships, unless they are part of an educational or training course. Because of the way legislation is drafted, they are already largely banned. For national minimum wage purposes, the crucial fact is whether someone is considered a worker due to the nature of the work they do. Employers cannot simply call someone an intern or say they are doing work experience and not pay them. What matters is whether the arrangement they have makes them a worker for minimum wage purposes. However, one valid exception is work shadowing, which is where individuals are observing others perform tasks and are not performing any work themselves.
There is a risk that the broad-brush nature of this amendment could create loopholes, leaving interns or individuals on work experience open to abuse. Where an intern is carrying out tasks, they are a worker and therefore entitled to the national minimum wage. Accepting the amendment could mean that these individuals could be recruited for short-term roles and lose their entitlement to the minimum wage, even if they are performing work. The Government will be consulting on this issue soon. We want to engage with businesses and individuals who carry out internships or work experience. This is how we introduce change to ensure that individuals are protected and treated fairly.
We have heard from both the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady that enforcement is the issue here. The noble Viscount, Lord Colville, asked about the number of prosecutions. I am afraid I do not have that number to hand, but I will certainly undertake to write to the noble Viscount. Enforcement of any law is important, and I am sure that part of the consultation will cover issues of enforcement. Creating more laws but not solving the problem of enforcement would not actually get to the heart of the issue, which is making sure that, when people work, they are paid the national minimum to which they are entitled.
In that vein, I hope that we can deal with the issues the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, wishes to address most effectively outside the Bill. I therefore ask the noble Viscount, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, to withdraw Amendment 129.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, this has been a short but informative debate and I am grateful to noble Lords who contributed. I listened very hard to the comments from both the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, on making sure that we enforce the national minimum wage. The national minimum wage has been in force since, I think, 1998. That is a long time for it not to be enforced, and it includes a time when there was a Labour Government. I very much hope that this will be an extra nudge to make sure that it is enforced and HMRC is given very direct instructions to make sure it happens. As the noble Baroness pointed out, the lack of enforcement is very deleterious to getting working class people into work.
On the noble Baroness’s and the Minister’s concern about it creating a revolving door, surely it cannot be beyond the wit of us to work out that, after you have done your four weeks of work experience, you are not allowed to go back or to stay—that is why we have a four-week block. It is useful to carve out a particular role for people who are there just for educational or work experience reasons, which is quite separate from being an intern.
I hope very much that the Minister and the Government will take on board this amendment and these thoughts as they contribute to the effort to stamp out unfair work practices. On that note, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
“Right of refusal to undertake instructions which would lead to inaccessible goods or services(1) A worker has the right to refuse an instruction or direction from his employer or anyone acting for his employer such as a manager which would—(a) cause the worker to undertake work which would result in the creation, development, deployment or sale of an inaccessible good or service,(b) cause the worker to undertake work which would result in the development, deployment or sale of a good or service, previously accessible, made inaccessible as a result of this instruction.(2) Any worker receiving such an instruction described in subsection (1) may report the nature of that instruction and their reason for refusing it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.”
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, as we have already heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond cannot be with us today, so I will move his amendment on his behalf and speak to the others in this group. In doing so, I declare a past interest as a consultant to the Royal National Institute of Blind People. For many years, I worked with Ian Bruce CBE, who was the director-general for many years, to promote access to work for those suffering blindness. That is particularly relevant to Amendment 297, but I will speak first to Amendment 131.
Amendment 131 raises important questions about accessibility, accountability and the role of workers in upholding inclusive standards in the goods and services we create and deliver. The principle at the heart of this proposal—that workers should not be compelled to participate in making a product or service less accessible or in producing something that excludes by design—is serious and worthy. As technology and infrastructure continue to evolve, ensuring access for all, including people with a disability, is a matter not merely of compliance but of basic fairness and social responsibility. The amendment seeks to give workers a right of refusal where they are being asked to carry out work that would knowingly—that is, knowingly to them—result in the development or sale of inaccessible goods or services. It also establishes a route for reporting such an event to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
I can certainly see the intent here to empower those on the front lines of design and delivery to raise concerns and to prevent regressions in accessibility. There are of course many questions about how this would operate in practice, particularly around definitions, scope and the safeguards needed to ensure clarity and fairness for both workers and employers. These are not reasons to dismiss the amendment, but they suggest that further discussion may be needed around implementation, enforcement and the supporting mechanisms that would then make such a right meaningful and workable.
We all have a role to play in embedding accessibility into our systems and structures. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will engage with the substance of the proposal and give thought to how the principle behind it might be taken forward, whether through this amendment or through other means.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 131, 297 and 314 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, so movingly introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.
Each of these amendments seeks to address long-standing inequalities that disabled people continue to face, particularly in the context of work and access to goods and services. Amendment 131 raises the important principle that workers should not be compelled to contribute to the development or sale of products that are knowingly inaccessible—which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised. I hope that the Government, through the Department for Business and Trade, will publish clear guidance on what constitutes inaccessible products and services. Such guidance is needed. It would be invaluable in informing decision-making for businesses and helping workers recognise when they may be asked to contribute to the creation or sale of goods that fail to meet accessibility standards.
Amendment 297, meanwhile, calls for a royal commission. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, I veer towards saying that we do need something formal such as a royal commission to investigate the persistently low employment levels among blind and sight-impaired people, a disparity that deserves serious attention. The questions that these amendments raise are valid and warrant a considered response from the Government.
I am also interested in the reasoning behind Amendment 314, which calls for a programme and timeline to develop an action plan aimed at closing the disability gap. Recent research from the TUC revealed that the disability gap stood at a staggering 17.2% in 2024, which was an increase on the figures quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, from 2023. The same figures do not reoccur every year—they are going up—and these figures show that. The amendment represents a measured and practical approach, reflecting a growing consensus on the need for greater transparency and accountability in tackling workplace inequality.
Even if the Government are, unsurprisingly, not minded to accept the amendments in their current form, I hope that Ministers will consider how their intent may be taken forward through alternative means—and there can be alternative means. These are not radical demands but thoughtful suggestions for achieving progress in areas where it is long overdue. I hope that the Government’s heart will be in favour of the reasoning behind these amendments, and that we can all work together towards bringing the legislation into line with what our conscience is saying.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond for his amendments in this group, and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for introducing them on his behalf. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for his contribution.
There is no doubt that those with disabilities, including blind and partially sighted people, face different challenges in the workplace, and the more we can do to increase awareness and representation in the workplace for these people and these groups, the better. We must also recognise that for many disabled people, the challenges begin long before a job interview. Structural barriers, from education and training to transport and technology, can compound over time and create a labour market that is harder to enter and harder to stay in. If legislation can help remove those barriers and create conditions for more equitable access to work, it is our responsibility to act.
It is also important that employers are supported and not penalised, so legislation should provide clarity and encourage inclusive practices. It should offer the right incentives and should not raise the cost or the perceived risk of hiring somebody who may already face disadvantage. Unfortunately, some elements of current legislation do just that.
I hope that the Government and the Minister listened to the concerns that were so well articulated by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. These are not radical demands, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, pointed out, and I hope the Government will address them.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for moving Amendment 131 and speaking to Amendments 297 and 314, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I go back a long, long way. When I was in the T&G, he was frequently instructed by my union to defend workers, so I appreciate that he is absolutely on the right side of this agenda.
Of course, this is an issue that we have been debating for a very long time. I particularly pay tribute to the late Alf Morris, Lord Morris, who absolutely focused on this agenda and was responsible for the Disability Discrimination Act, which has been the foundation of all the other changes since then.
On Amendment 131, it is important to be clear that the Equality Act 2010 already places a duty on providers of goods, services and facilities, and persons exercising public functions, to make reasonable adjustments for disabled service users. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, as Great Britain’s national equality and human rights body, safeguards and enforces the laws that protect people’s rights to fairness, dignity and respect. In the context of this debate, it monitors and has powers to enforce the Equality Act, which prohibits discrimination, harassment and victimisation in a variety of settings, including work. The commission has been active in monitoring disability equality, including as part of its regular comprehensive reviews of how Britain is performing on equality and human rights, as well as its work in monitoring compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The commission’s powers do not extend to monitoring the accessibility of manufactured goods or the development of services and, as such, it would not be able to respond to reporting of the kind suggested in the new clause. Therefore, the Government are unable to support the amendment.
Turning to Amendment 297, again I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for speaking to this amendment and drawing attention to this important issue, and of course I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who has been a strong voice on this and recognise his contribution in championing the rights of blind and sight-impaired people. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, can go back to the days when my union heavily supported the National League of the Blind and Disabled—a union that had been representing blind and disabled workers for nearly 100 years, certainly when we were engaged with it.
I agree that addressing the level of employment for blind and sight-impaired people is still an important issue, which is why we have a range of existing specialist initiatives in place to support individuals, including those who are blind and sight-impaired, to stay in work or get back to work. Our existing measures provide tailored support to disabled people more broadly and are designed to be flexible to meet the range of needs, including the needs of those who are blind and sight impaired. I repeat the point that the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, made: existing measures include work coaches and disability employment advisers in jobcentres —working with employers, absolutely right—and access to work grants, again to facilitate and support employers in doing this, as well as joining up health and employment support around individuals through employment advisers in NHS, talking therapies, individual placement and support in primary care, as well as WorkWell.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister, who always responds positively to any suggestions that I make, particularly in the corridors of this House. I should have declared not only my long-standing work with the Royal National Institute of Blind People but the much-appreciated instructions that “Brother Hunt” used to receive in substantial form from the Transport and General Workers’ Union. I was delighted, when I was Secretary of State for Employment, to be invited to the retirement party of Mr Albert Blighton, who was much cherished by all those who worked so hard for him.
I thank the Minister. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill. We disagreed a little about royal commissions. I recall being told that they took minutes but wasted years—I think it was a previous Labour Prime Minister who said that. There is a problem in that, as soon as you set up a body, you are postponing the opportunity to make the key decisions that are necessary. I guess the Minister did recognise that in his response; we do need to move on. These statistics have been at a seriously low level for a long time, and we have to find a way to break through so that people with disability are much more widely recognised as people of great talent who can contribute to the growth and competitiveness that we all so desperately want to see.
I recognise that the Government have taken a number of initiatives, and I will consult with my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond as we consider how to approach this issue on Report, but in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Independent advisers(1) Section 288 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (restriction on contracting out) is amended as follows—(a) after subsection (4)(c) insert—“(ca) if they are a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or other Professional Body and have been certified in writing by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or, as the case may be, other Professional Body as competent to give advice, or”;(b) after subsection (4B) insert—“(4BA) In subsection (4)(ca) “Professional Body” means any organisation which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection (4BB).(4BB) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section.(4BC) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4BB) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”(2) Section 203 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 (restrictions on contracting out) is amended as follows—(a) after subsection (3A)(c) insert—“(ca) if they are a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or other Professional Body and have been certified in writing by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or, as the case may be, other Professional Body as competent to give advice, or”;(b) after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) In subsection (3A)(ca) “Professional Body” means any organisation which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection (4B).(4B) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section.(4C) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4B) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”(3) Section 49 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 (restrictions on contracting out) is amended as follows—(a) after subsection (5)(c) insert—“(ca) if they are a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or other Professional Body and have been certified in writing by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or, as the case may be, other Professional Body as competent to give advice, or”;(b) after subsection (7) insert—“(7A) In subsection (5)(ca) “Professional Body” means any organisation which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection (7B).(7B) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section.(7C) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (7B) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”(4) Section 58 of the Pensions Act 2008 (restrictions on agreements to limit operation) is amended as follows—(a) after subsection (6)(c) insert—“(ca) is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or other Professional Body and has been certified in writing by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or, as the case may be, other Professional Body as competent to give advice, or”;(b) after subsection (8) insert—“(8A) In subsection (6)(ca) “Professional Body” means any organisation which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection (8B).(8B) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section.(8C) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (8B) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”(5) Section 147 of the Equality Act 2010 (qualifying settlement agreement) is amended as follows—(a) after subsection (4)(c) insert—“(ca) a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or other Professional Body certified in writing by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or, as the case may be, other Professional Body as competent to give advice;”;(b) after subsection (6) insert—“(6A) In subsection (4)(ca) “Professional Body” means any organisation which is authorised by a regulation made by the Secretary of State pursuant to subsection (6B).(6B) The Secretary of State may make a regulation or regulations authorising any organisation as a Professional Body for the purposes of this section.(6C) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (6B) is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.””Member's explanatory statement
This clause expands the independent advisers who may advise employees and workers on a settlement agreement.
Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town (Lab)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 132 as a probing amendment to highlight some of the concerns from the perspective of small businesses. Amendment 137, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, may perhaps be a different side of the same coin. I refer the House to my register of interests.
The intention behind the amendment is to explore the scope of possible options for better supporting both employees and employers, particularly small employers, who often lack access to in-house HR support, legal expertise or representation from trade unions. This legislation rightly seeks to strengthen workplace protections, and with that comes the need to ensure that small employers are equipped to meet their responsibilities fairly and confidently without being overwhelmed.
A one-size-fits-all approach risks overlooking the structural disadvantages that many small businesses face in navigating employment disputes or resolving workplace issues informally. One concern in this context is the potential for so-called ambulance chasing. I use the phrase cautiously, but it reflects a genuine anxiety among small employers. In the absence of good advice or proper guidance, a small employer may feel compelled to settle a claim, not based on merit, but because the cost, stress and complexity of the legal process makes fighting it feel simply unviable. That can undermine confidence in the system for everyone.
The aim behind the amendment is to consider how we might increase the availability of qualified independent advisers—professionals who can support employees in entering into a settlement agreement with full confidence and understanding, but in a way that is accessible, affordable and proportionate for small businesses too. This could help reduce the number of cases that unnecessarily escalate into formal litigation.
The presence of a well-informed independent adviser can give both parties clarity and reassurance. In such circumstances, access to credible professionals of the kind that organisations like the CIPD can recommend or help bring forward would seem both helpful and sensible. I fully acknowledge the concerns raised by colleagues on these Benches, particularly the risk of diluting the role of unions, especially in larger workplaces, where collective representation plays such an essential role. I value constructive conversations with colleagues and recognise the importance of safeguarding that voice and that function.
At the same time, I believe it important that the voice of business, particularly small business, is heard clearly from these Benches. Too often, the debate around employment rights can polarise into assumptions of employer versus employee or big business versus organised labour. But many of us bring experience from the front lines of running businesses that are small, community based and deeply invested in treating their staff fairly. It is essential that these perspectives are represented not to dilute rights but to ensure that they are designed in a way that is practical and sustainable and that supports good employment outcomes for all.
I also welcome the Government’s broad commitment to improving the enforcement system, including through proposals for the fair work agency and reforms to the tribunal process. These are important developments, and I hope that they lead to a more accessible and efficient workplace landscape for all parties.
Nevertheless, I believe that the specific issues raised here, particularly those that affect small and micro-businesses, merit further reflection. We know that many small employers genuinely want to do the right thing but, without access to the right structures or advice, they may find themselves exposed. That can have an effect on not just the business owner but employees, who may not get the resolution they deserve. Just as we rightly ensure that employees feel heard and protected, those of us with business experience also want to ensure that employers’ concerns are reflected, especially where they lack the infrastructure to manage complex processes alone.
I am happy to withdraw the amendment following the debate and the Minister’s response, but I hope that the reflections it prompts will help shape the implementation of the Bill in ways that are proportionate, inclusive and fair to businesses of all sizes, as well as to the people they employ. I beg to move.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 137 which, as the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, said, is probably the other side of the same coin.
My amendment seeks to expand the statutory right to be accompanied at disciplinary and grievance hearings. As it stands, the law allows workers to be accompanied by only a fellow employee or trade union representative. My Amendment 137—the other side of the coin—would broaden that right to include individuals certified by a recognised professional body as having relevant experience and training in supporting workers through such processes. It also provides for the Secretary of State to regulate which organisations may be authorised as professional bodies for this purpose to ensure that a proper standard is maintained.
At the heart of any disciplinary process is the need for transparency, fairness and due process. This is especially true in the workplace, where livelihoods and the professional reputations of individuals are at stake. Workers should never have to undergo the difficult procedures of disciplinary or grievance hearings alone. The presence of a colleague, union representative or other chosen companion ensures that employees not only are supported but have a safeguard against any unfair treatment or misunderstandings during the process. Not every individual is able to cope with this on their own. Some may well do, but they will need some help.
In fact, the presence of a properly trained professional companion is often the difference between an employee being able to make their case cogently or being denied a fair hearing. The law currently goes some way towards recognising this, but I am afraid that it is increasingly inadequate for the 21st century.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I rise with the soothing balm of cross-party collaboration to support the excellent amendments put forward by the noble Lords, Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill. I declare at the outset an interest as a member for more than 20 years of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, an estimable professional body. More importantly, I have been made redundant twice. My experience of redundancy is that it is often a difficult and traumatic experience if you are working for a small company or if you are relatively new to the company. I certainly had a great deal of sustenance and support from my trade union representative in securing and expediting a reasonably successful outcome in what could have been a very difficult period financially for me in that situation—this is many years ago.
I think the benefit of these amendments is that they look from the perspective of the small employer in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, and from the employee’s perspective in the example given by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I think that, for people who have, for various reasons, chosen not to join a trade union, it is important that not just anyone, not their mate from the pub, but a professional accredited person can accompany and support them in this.
Normally, I would not want to amend a Bill unnecessarily, but I genuinely think it would not be administratively and financially onerous for these amendments to be added to the Bill, and in fact they would improve it. I would not say they are cost free, but they would be important in saving potentially significant amounts of money if, as the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, has said, they would alleviate or ameliorate the possibility of an escalation to expensive litigation and an employment tribunal. Having an expert in the room with you can sometimes dissipate the anger, the frustration and the sense of a battle between two sides, and in that respect it is sensible.
For those reasons, with the proviso that I have experienced these issues myself, I think the amendments are sensible and I look to the Minister to give them due consideration. They would not add to the burden of businesses, and in the long term they would save significant amounts of money.
Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab)
My Lords, I oppose Amendments 132 and 137. Both of them seek to expand the list of organisations recognised in law to represent workers. Amendment 132 relates to representation in reaching settlement agreements, while Amendment 137 refers to representation in hearings at workplace disciplinary and grievance hearings.
At present, the law specifies that individuals can be supported by trade unions, fellow workers or, in respect of settlement agreements, lawyers or other qualified people from, for example, the respected network of citizens advice bureaux. Both amendments propose that the right to representation be extended to professional bodies specified by the Secretary of State, and Amendment 132 refers in particular to CIPD members. I have to say I am genuinely puzzled about which other professional bodies would wish to take on this new role.
In short, the law should rest where it stands. Workers should be represented, where they are present, by workers’ organisations—trade unions—that, where appropriate, can provide legal representation. The CIPD is widely respected as an organisation of HR professionals, but it essentially represents employers’ interests and would surely be conflicted if it were to take on this very different role.
I know my noble friend Lord Pitkeathley is motivated by a wish to ensure that people working in small and medium-sized businesses without trade union representation should have relevant expertise available to help resolve difficult workplace issues. I support that aspiration, but ACAS—which I chaired for six years, to declare an interest—has the responsibility and the independent, impartial expertise to conciliate in such matters, and a considerable track record of success in doing so. Far better to ensure that it has increased resources to provide this vital service in the interests of both parties in any such dispute, rather than muddying the water on the issue of who is competent and appropriate to represent workers. I hope that both these amendments will not be pressed.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, it seems that, yet again, the noble Lord, Lord Barber, and I are not going to quite agree. I support both these amendments, particularly the one in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer.
I would like to look at the amendments from the point of view of the employee. When an employee finds themselves in a disciplinary or grievance hearing—we heard from my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough earlier—it signifies a profound breakdown in their relationship with their employer. It is a moment fraught with stress, uncertainty and fear; one where an individual may feel their professional life is unravelling before them. They may question how they will continue to support their family, whether they can afford to remain in their home, and what their future may hold.
Large corporations, such as the one I work for, have the benefit of HR departments to guide them through such proceedings, ensuring that their position is well-organised and profoundly represented. I have had the dubious pleasure of having to make people redundant; it is not fun, even with HR beside you, but they had nobody. In smaller companies, personal relationships between employer and employee can add an additional layer of complexity to the situation. In either case, the individual facing the hearing is often isolated, and struggling to recollect past events and present their case clearly.
These amendments, particularly Amendment 137, propose a fair and practical position: the right to have the assistance of a certified individual—someone equipped to review the facts dispassionately, organise events in logical sequence and provide the employee with a much-needed sense of reassurance. As we have heard, the trade unions already fulfil this role, particularly in large companies. However, many employees, myself included, choose not to join a union for a variety of personal reasons. The absence of union membership should not mean a lack of support in such critical moments. This amendment would ensure that every employee, regardless of union affiliation, has access to a certified individual who may provide guidance when facing disciplinary proceedings, fostering a fairer and more balanced process. For this reason, I support these amendments to uphold the right of fairness in our workplaces.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, and in particular the noble Lords, Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for introducing their Amendments 132 and 137.
As has been said, not all workers have or want access to a union representative. In fact, the latest statistics that I have from the Department for Business and Trade suggest that only 22% of all employees are unionised. Not all workers have access to or can afford legal advice, particularly, as the noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, pointed out, those in smaller workplaces or those performing more precarious roles. Allowing trained, certified HR professionals to provide advice could help ensure that more employees are supported when making important decisions about their rights.
It is important to recognise the valuable support already available through organisations such as ACAS—mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Barber—citizens advice bureaux and others, which provide free and impartial advice. This amendment complements those services by seeking to expand the range of qualified advisers accessible to workers. The principle of widening access to competent support is a reasonable one, especially where safeguards are in place through certification by recognised professional bodies. As my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough pointed out, if nothing else, that ought to serve to ease pressure on employment rights tribunals, which, as we have discussed many times over the course of this Committee, are stretched to breaking point.
I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale, that that was a classic case of the TUC advocating for a closed shop, and I applaud him for that. However, not so many employees are now members of trade unions, as I have pointed out, and the majority of trade union members are in the public sector.
The question of genuine independence will be critical, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that. I would also say, perhaps to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, that, without wishing to quibble too much with his amendment, I think that as currently written it gives the Secretary of State rather too much discretion in determining what is a professional body. If he wants to have a think about that, I am available for a chat.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. Before I turn to the amendments, may I wish the noble Lord, Lord Fox, a speedy recovery? I am just sorry that he was not cast in the next “Mission: Impossible”. I wish him a speedy recovery and return to the Committee, as we miss him here as well.
I turn to Amendments 132 and 137. Amendment 132, tabled by my noble friend Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town, seeks to expand the scope of independent advisers who can advise individuals entering into settlement agreements. Settlement agreements in this context are a way in which employers and workers can settle potential claims. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, had such a great experience with his trade union rep and got a really fair settlement. I hope he was pleased with that experience.
However, it is important that individuals understand the terms and effect of the proposed agreement and its effect on their ability to pursue claims in an employment tribunal. That is why legislation requires individuals to receive advice from a relevant independent adviser. Legislation outlines a range of advisers that can be used, including qualified lawyers and authorised officers of an independent trade union.
My noble friend’s amendment would expand the list of relevant independent advisers to include a certified member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, an association of human resources professionals. This amendment would also give the Secretary of State the power to make regulations to include other professional bodies whose members would also be capable of giving advice.
While I understand that my noble friend has put forward this amendment on behalf of the CIPD, we believe current arrangements are working well and strike the right balance. I appreciate my noble friend’s passion and thank him for his contribution to this debate. We are happy to engage further on this issue at another time, but we do not think this amendment is required.
I now turn to Amendment 137, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, which seeks to expand the right to be accompanied by a certified companion at disciplinary and grievance hearings, as supported by the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe. The law already provides that, when workers are invited to attend a disciplinary or grievance hearing, they are entitled to bring a companion who is either a fellow worker, an official employed by a trade union or a workplace trade union representative that the union has reasonably certified as having received training in acting as a worker’s companion in disciplinary or grievance hearings. Employers can now allow workers to be accompanied by a companion who does not fall within the above categories. Some workers have a contractual right to be accompanied by persons other than those listed earlier —for instance, a professional support body, a partner, a spouse or a legal representative.
The current law seeks to keep disciplinary and grievance procedures internal to workplaces, given that they are one of the initial steps in resolving tensions in a worker-employer relationship. Expanding the types of organisations that could be involved in representing workers at disciplinary and grievance meetings could lead to these hearings requiring legal representation for both the worker and the employer. This would therefore increase the costs of these hearings and reduce the chances of an amicable outcome. In addition to introducing legal expertise at these hearings, it could also reduce the likelihood of ACAS conciliation or mediation as the next step to resolve a dispute, as legal arguments will have already been made during an internal hearing. This could increase the likelihood of a tribunal claim being made. An amicable solution is, therefore, the fastest way to justice, as set out by my noble friend Lord Barber.
It is unclear where the demand for expanding this right is coming from and which workplaces would benefit. There are, of course, certain organisations, such as those that provide casework and legal services, that would benefit. But, as I have already set out, should an employer wish to nominate an organisation to accompany their workers, they can set this out in the terms and conditions of their workplace.
I therefore ask my noble friend to withdraw Amendment 132.
Lord Pitkeathley of Camden Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short but important debate. I appreciate that my amendment may seem controversial to some, not to mention unfeasibly long, but I believe it is vital that the voices of all in the workplace are heard. I am pleased that they have been today. I emphasise that small employers are just as committed to their workforce as larger firms, and they want to attract and retain the best people too. This Bill is, in my view, both pro-worker and pro-business, and we should keep all sides in mind when we shape its final form.
I particularly appreciate the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Barber of Ainsdale. I reassure him that I do not raise this amendment in the spirit of confrontation, as I am sure he knows, and I am sure these are conversations that we will continue. I know that we both want to achieve the best for all workers. None the less, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom
“Impact on farm businessesWithin 12 months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must publish an assessment of the impact of the provisions of Part 1 of this Act on farm businesses in the United Kingdom.”
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 133 in my name.
I have to start by saying that the family farm tax introduced by this Government is a disastrous policy. According to the NFU, it has put 200,000 jobs at risk—a staggering number that should have stopped Ministers in their tracks. I am disappointed to see noble Lords opposite are laughing at that number. A recent economic report on the combined effect of these measures lays the facts bare. It estimates the direct cost to the Treasury at £1.9 billion by 2030, stemming from lost tax revenues and increased benefit claims due to job losses and reduced productivity. More than 60% of farmers are expected to cut investment by over 20%, choking off future growth and innovation. The cost to the wider economy will be staggering—a staggering £14.8 billion blow to gross value added, all for the sake of political posturing masquerading as employment reform. The effect on food security alone could be catastrophic.
I must also highlight a concern that has been brought to light by recent tragic events and official responses, and that is the case of a farmer who took his own life just before the Government’s Budget, which is a heartbreaking example of the immense pressures our rural communities face. These pressures are exacerbated by the looming inheritance tax changes that threaten the very future of family farms.
Despite the seriousness of this issue, the official statistics on farmer, landowner and family business owner suicides are woefully inadequate. There is a significant delay, often of years, before accurate data is published. This delay means we will not see reliable figures for suicides in 2026 until 2028 or later, and that is simply unacceptable. Without timely, detailed data, broken down by occupation, policymakers cannot fully understand the human cost of these policies. Would the Minister acknowledge the urgent need for this and commit to working with the Office for National Statistics and other relevant bodies to improve the frequency and detail of suicide data by occupation, particularly for farmers and rural workers, so that we can properly address and understand this crisis without delay?
Turning to this legislation, it represents a further devastating blow to British agriculture. This Bill introduces unfair dismissal rights from day one of employment without a shred of evidence that it is workable in sectors such as farming. The extension of unfair dismissal protections from two years to day one of employment is being pushed forward with no clear guidance, no transitional arrangements and no defined probationary period. There is only speculation, and speculation is not a legal framework.
The Minister will say that this is currently being consulted on, but in the meantime farms are exposed. Every hiring decision becomes a legal and financial gamble. If a worker turns out to be unsuitable, which can happen quickly in physically demanding and safety-critical environments, the employer may be already too late to act without risking litigation. In farming, where work is seasonal, strenuous and sometimes requires immediate action, farms cannot afford to spend months navigating HR processes. They cannot afford legal exposure every time a hire does not work out, and that is exactly what Bill sets out.
Then there is the matter of zero-hours contracts. This Government, in their detachment from rural life, believe that these contracts are exploitative, but on farms they are essential. Harvests do not run on clocks, and weather does not obey timetables. Labour demand swings sharply: one week it is quiet, and the next week it is all hands on deck. Therefore, flexibility is all. Without zero-hours contracts, many farms simply cannot function, so replacing them with rigid guaranteed-hours contracts is not just unrealistic but destructive. The Bill would force the farmers to guess months in advance how many workers they will need—or pay the price when nature does not co-operate.
Rural employers, particularly farms and estates, rely heavily on seasonal and zero-hour staff to meet unpredictable and time-sensitive labour demands. That is not a loophole but a necessity born of reality. But the Bill introduces a new legal obligation that completely fails to take account of how agriculture works. Under the proposals in Part 1, if a casual worker ends up working a regular pattern—say, 20 hours a week over a few months—the employer will be legally required to offer a guaranteed-hours contract reflecting that pattern. That will fundamentally alter the nature of seasonal hiring.
Instead of flexibility, farmers will be locked into fixed commitments, which mean guaranteed pay even if the work disappears. In farming, it often does: crops cannot be harvested in a thunderstorm, livestock routines change, and machinery breaks down. Labour needs fluctuate by the day and employers have to adapt. The Bill removes that option, forcing them to guarantee wages based on past patterns and not future needs, and the result of that inevitably will be higher staffing costs, less flexibility and more legal risk. Farmers will no longer be able to adjust hours week to week based on workload and may instead reduce hours across the board, or simply hire fewer workers to avoid triggering these new obligations. That is not security for workers; that is lost opportunity.
Then we come to flexible working—another ideological insertion into a sector where it simply cannot apply. The Bill increases the burden on employers to justify denying flexible working requests. But who in this Committee honestly believes that lambing can be done from home or that dairy herds can be milked on a four-day week? Farming needs people physically present on time and able to adapt to sudden changes. This measure will destroy farms and open the floodgates to legal claims, rather than improve their working conditions.
I turn to another deeply flawed proposal in the Bill: the changes to statutory sick pay, which will hit farm businesses with immediate and unsustainable costs. Under the current system, employees are entitled to SSP only after three consecutive days of sickness absence. That allows employers, especially small family farms, to absorb short-term minor absences without being penalised for every cold, sprain or missed morning. The Bill proposes to remove that protection entirely, and statutory sick pay will become payable from day one of absence. For most farms, this is not just a technical change but a fundamental shift in financial exposure.
Agricultural work is physically demanding, often outdoors and highly seasonal. Casual absences are common and often unavoidable. But, under the Bill, every single one of those absences now comes with an automatic cost from the very first missed shift. Under the current rules, if a farmhand calls in sick on Monday and is back by Wednesday, the farmer pays nothing. Under the Bill, the employer must pay statutory sick pay from day one. Multiply that by three or four casual workers, each with intermittent absences through lambing or harvest, and you have a significant unpredictable cost burden for a farm with already razor-thin margins.
It does not stop there: the Bill also proposes to reduce the lower earnings limit—currently £123 per week—meaning that even fewer workers on minimal-hours or short-term seasonal contracts will now be eligible for sick pay. These are precisely the workers whom farms hire during calving, lambing, crop picking and harvest, often working flexibly as needed. Under this system, a farm might be required to pay sick leave to a casual labourer who worked only a handful of hours the week before and might not be scheduled for any in the week ahead—that is not financial protection.
Farmers are also now expected to put in place formal absence tracking and management systems. That means logging each instance of sickness, reviewing attendance histories, holding review meetings, drafting improvement plans and, if things do not improve, potentially going through a formal dismissal process. If that were not enough, we now face the proposed cancellation payments. Farms will be penalised for calling off shifts at short notice, even when the reason is pouring rain or a late-season frost. These changes will force employers to choose between operating at a loss and paying people not to work, and in what rational universe is that considered progress?
The Bill, particularly Part 1, is not reform but sabotage. Amendment 133 is therefore essential. It does not block the Bill or repeal any of its measures; it simply demands what the Government have utterly failed to do, which is to deliver a detailed impact assessment of how these reckless changes would affect UK farm businesses. If the Bill proceeds unexamined, the consequences will not be theoretical: more farms will close, more jobs will disappear, and rural economies will contract. The very people this Government claim to support—working families, small businesses and so on—will be left to pick up the pieces. I reiterate my point about the necessity of food security in troubled times.
If the Government have nothing to hide, they should have no objection to analysing the impacts of this legislation on farm businesses, and they should accept Amendment 133. I beg to move.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, I hope the Minister listened with great care to what my noble friend said. I declare an interest as a partner in a small farm. I was walking the fields only yesterday, looking at the disastrous effects of the fact that we have had practically no rain. It is not much more than a year ago that I had to look at the disastrous effects of having too much rain. We are an organic farm, and therefore we have looked after the soil very carefully and suffered less than others during that period. But many farmers were not able to get a harvest or plant because the weather was so bad, and they therefore lost two years.
I believe that we have a real problem of diversity here. We often talk about diversity as if it is about race or ethnic minority, but it is so interesting that no member of the current Cabinet represents a rural constituency or is, as far as I can discover, a country person at all. There are 9 million people who live in the countryside and who are hardly represented at all. To be perfectly fair, the shadow Cabinet does not have, as far as I can find out, anybody who is a country person of the sort we are talking about. This is something that has happened to our society, and we who are country people find it extremely difficult. Therefore, I want to say to the Minister, who is known for his generosity, that it is crucial for this Government to show that they are listening to and thinking about this section of the community.
The seat that I once represented is now represented by a Labour Member. She must find it very difficult to appeal to many of the people who voted for her because it does not appear that the Government whom she supports have really understood how the countryside works—in other words, what agriculture is. I could, of course, make a great statement about the terrible situation of the IHT changes, which were rather peculiar given that no previous Labour Chancellor has ever thought them a good idea. I could make all those arguments, but I want to tone down what I might have said to one single concept: Governments can get the support of the nation only if the nation feels that they understand it—not just bits but the whole of it. The introducer of the previous amendment, who I am afraid is just leaving—I was going to be polite about it—rightly talked about the Bill having to represents both sides of industry. I ask that the Bill also represents different parts of industry, and one of those parts is the rural agricultural scene. My concern is that this has not been looked at through the eyes of the countryside.
It may be that, when the Government do that, they do not want to make any changes, but it does not seem possible for the Government to convince people that those changes are not necessary unless they have done what Amendment 133 asks them to do. All we ask is that the Government look in detail at the effect of the Bill on the agricultural industry.
In ending, I want to say something true and really serious. We are entering a period in which food security will be crucial. Climate change means that we will have less and less opportunity to import from wide areas of the world. I remember, when I was Minister of Agriculture, being interviewed by the cleverest man in Europe, Peter Jay, who said, “We don’t need a Minister of Agriculture because we’ll always be able to import food from somewhere else”. How madly wrong that was. Climate change will mean that we find it more and more difficult to fill our shelves at home. Nothing undermines a Government more than two or three days of people being unable to eat what they want to eat.
Therefore, I say to the Government that I hope that this is a helpful amendment—and, if the Government say that they will not do what it asks, that says something to the 9 million people who live in the countryside and, even more, to the many people who keep food on our plates. No farmers, no food. If farmers are to do the job properly, the Government have to recognise that the weather that farmers deal with, which has always been the thing that is different about agriculture compared with any other industry, is now going to be a difference that is made very much worse, as we have worse and worse examples of more extreme weather. In general terms, the Government—unlike other parties—have been extremely good on climate change and I ask them not to let themselves down on this but to say, “Yes, we will look and see exactly what these provisions will do for agriculture—and, if we find that they need alteration, we will be able to come back with the facts”.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 133 from my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom. It is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Deben. In doing so, I draw attention to my registered interests, in particular as a dairy and livestock farmer.
I am most grateful to my noble friends for their supportive comments for British farmers. I have asked in Written Questions and in debates whether the Government would commit to keeping detailed and timely data on the number of farmers and family business owners taking their own lives in the run-up to the introduction of the reduced inheritance tax reliefs, due in April next year. So far these requests have been denied or ignored. We know that a number already have taken that dreadful step—and, as the deadline approaches, the risk will only rise. It would appear to be callous in the extreme that the Government refuse to take responsibility for this tragic human cost of their Budget decisions. Will the Minister commit to keeping and publishing the data in a timely manner?
Farming has unique employment challenges, as others have already mentioned in this short debate—and as indeed the whole country is now aware, thanks to the popularity of “Clarkson’s Farm”. Arable crops and silage need to be harvested when the weather allows and when they are ready for harvest. This leads to high-pressure operations at short notice and often at anti-social hours. It is not unusual to see harvesters and wagons operating well into the night until the dew starts to form. If staff are not available to operate that equipment at the optimum time, it can lead to reduced yields, higher drying costs or even the failure to harvest a crop at all.
In the livestock and dairy sectors, staff are also required to be available to work flexibly. In livestock, this can mean being available for callout to inspect the health of animals, assist in lambing and calving, and recapture escaped animals. In dairy, cows need to be milked at regular intervals from one to three times a day, depending on the system being employed. If that regular schedule is not followed, animal health can be threatened and milk yields suffer.
In the fruit and vegetable growing industry, the fruit and vegetables need to be picked when ripe and when the market demands it. Contracts governing the supply of these goods to retailers and processors can be highly onerous and punitive when conditions are not met. It is essential for this industry that it can employ workers to meet these needs and contract terms.
Unfortunately, agricultural employers need to have staff who are committed to working flexibly, and access to staff who are willing to work when the work is available. The Bill makes it more difficult for employers to refuse employee submissions for flexible working requests. While these submissions can already be made from day one, employers can refuse them on the grounds of inability to fill the gap from reduced hours, or the detrimental impact on business performance or meeting customer demand. The higher bar set by the Bill is likely to make it harder to protect the business.
The Bill applies unfair dismissal rights from day one of employment versus the two years currently in law. We are yet to see the timetable to be proposed, creating significant uncertainty. I have first-hand experience of the damage that a new, unsatisfactory employee can do to a business, even without any malice, and being able to remove them at short notice when the poor performance is revealed is critical. In that case, due to the nature of dairy farming, it took over a year for the poor performance to come to light. The widespread industry reliance on casual workers is threatened by restrictions on zero- and low-hours contracts and the potential for those to obtain a right to guaranteed-hours contracts.
Paying fees for cancellation of shifts at short notice is also impractical in farming. While it is easy to see why the Government might want to penalise employers for potentially capricious and harmful decisions around shifts, the timing of work in farming is often not predictable. Therefore, it does not make sense to penalise farmers even more than they are already for changing weather.
The Bill is a massive threat to the viability of British farming. The extent of that threat will be known only when the Government have decided when employees’ probationary periods will end, when a casual employee gains permanent employment rights, and when notice has to be given of a shift cancellation. I ask the Minister why this work has not been done already and why are we debating a Bill when the extent of its negative impact is unknowable.
The English farming industry has been targeted by this Government, with dramatic reductions in delinked payments, the abrupt cancellation of SFI applications, the imposition of inheritance tax and the withdrawal of the rural services delivery grant being the highlights. We now read in the papers that the spending review is likely to slash the farming budget, offering little hope that government support will improve. Farmers also now face greater competition from heavily subsidised overseas farmers with little or no environmental obligations. On top of that, as my noble friend Lord Deben highlighted, our arable farmers are struggling with low crop prices and extremely dry weather damaging yields.
Let us at least accept this modest amendment to the Bill to allow an open appraisal of the impact on the sector after a full annual cycle, when the terms of the Bill are fixed and in force, and ensure that the information is available to make changes that might prove necessary. This Government have claimed to be pro business and pro growth. Will they, at last, show some support to this business? I hope that the Minister will listen to this debate, depart from his brief and offer encouragement.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
I rise with some trepidation to comment on the proposal of an impact assessment for farming businesses, as I am not a farmer and have never lived on a farm. But I say to the noble Lord, Lord Deben, that there are lots of people who support the farmers and the culture, as well as the steadfastness of an industry that is so reliant on the weather. I do not think that any other industry has to try to run a business, make a living and make a small profit with the weather this country has—unfortunately, I cannot blame the weather on the Government, or on any Government. It is literally the force of nature.
In considering the implications of the Bill, it is important that we pay close attention to the needs and circumstances of the UK farming sector. Agricultural businesses operate within a complex and fragile environment, where changes to employment law, however well intentioned, can have disproportionate effects. Recent debates around the family farm tax further highlight concerns about the punitive financial pressures on farmers, underscoring the need for careful assessment of any new burdens placed on this sector. This amendment proposes a structured approach to understand the impact through a formal assessment within a defined timeframe. While views may differ on whether such a provision needs to be set out in primary legislation, the underlying concern is legitimate and should be supported. We should ensure that policy changes do not inadvertently place additional strain on a sector already facing considerable challenges.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I have listened to every noble Lord’s concerns. To be fair to the Secretary of State for Defra and my fellow ministerial colleagues at Defra, I should say that they are in regular contact with the farming community and farmers. The Secretary of State has recently spoken at the National Farmers’ Union conference. My noble friend Lady Hayman comes from a farming community and understands the problems that noble Lords have raised.
I turn to Amendment 133, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom. As I have repeated multiple times throughout the debate in this place, we have already published a comprehensive set of impact assessments, based on the best available evidence, on the workers likely to be affected by these measures. This includes an assessment of the economic impacts of the Bill, including impacts on workers, businesses, sectors and regions. We intend to publish further analysis in the form of an enactment impact assessment when the Bill secures Royal Assent and, as I have said previously, further assessments when we consult on proposed regulations to meet Better Regulation requirements. The 23 amendments on impact assessments tabled by the Opposition would pre-empt work that the Government are already planning to undertake.
It should also be mentioned that this Government are steadfast in our commitment to Britain’s farming industry. It is why we will invest £5 billion into farming over the next two years, the largest amount ever directed to sustainable food production in our country.
It is with immense sadness that we hear about suicides in the farming community, and I agree with noble Lords that we need to have accurate and timely data. I promise noble Lords that I will speak to my ministerial colleagues at Defra and the ONS as far as their request is concerned.
It will be no surprise to the noble Lord that we oppose Amendment 133 and ask him to withdraw it.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank the Minister for his response and all noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. I particularly thank my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Roborough for their expertise, which I think noble Lords around the Committee will agree shed great light on this tricky subject. I also greatly appreciate the support of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, for what is a very modest amendment, and I am therefore disappointed with the Minister’s response, although pleased that he will consult Defra further.
On the subject of inheritance tax, the noble Lord asserted that Defra has been steadfast in its support for the farming community, but it is not clear that the farming community has recognised that steadfastness, because over a dozen leading farming organisations, including the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Land and Business Association, have condemned the Government for a lack of transparency. Those groups have written directly to the Treasury demanding the release of modelling and evidence behind the policy.
When pressed to explain why they rejected the fairer clawback option for inheritance tax reforms, Treasury Ministers offered nothing more than vague assertions—no consultation, no published impact assessment—and when challenged under freedom of information laws, the Treasury responded by saying that it was
“not in the public interest”
to disclose this analysis. How can the Government possibly claim this is not in the public interest? Are they really arguing that the means of food production and all that pertains to it are not in the public interest? We are talking about reforms that could rip through the foundations of multigenerational farms, force land sales and strip the viability from small rural businesses.
If this Government’s approach so far was not reckless enough, a fresh report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has added yet more weight to the call for caution and transparency. The cross-party group of MPs has urged the Government to delay its proposed reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief for two years, pushing back the implementation date from April 2026 to April 2027, with any final decisions postponed until October 2026. That is because the reforms are intended to tighten inheritance tax reliefs on farms and agricultural businesses and were introduced without adequate consultation or any formal impact assessment. The committee highlighted that rushing ahead without proper analysis risks serious consequences, including impacts on land values, tenant farmers, family farms and food production, and it warned that this could disrupt the food supply chain, potentially driving up supermarket prices and hitting consumers across the UK. Noble Lords should take seriously my noble friend Lord Deben’s warning about food shortages and what it does to government popularity.
What is particularly striking is the committee’s citation of a March 2025 survey which found that 70% of farmers were optimistic about their rural businesses before the Autumn Budget, but that figure plummeted to just 12% afterwards. That collapse in confidence speaks volumes about the uncertainty and fear that these policies have created within rural communities, and the same attitude is now evident in this Employment Rights Bill. Once again, we are seeing major legislative changes with profound economic impacts pushed through without proper consultation, without proper published impact assessments and without any serious recognition of the realities facing British farmers, and that is precisely why this modest amendment is so important.
At the bare minimum, before further damage is done, we should demand an independent, published assessment of how these employment law changes will affect UK farm businesses—not months after the fact and not hidden behind opaque Treasury memos. It is in the public interest, so it should be within 12 months of this Act passing. That is a modest, proportionate and entirely reasonable request. I will withdraw the amendment on this occasion but reserve the right to return to it. Again, I refer to my noble friend Lord Deben’s suggestion, or perhaps warning: 9 million people are watching.
Lord Lucas
“Notice periodsWhen—(a) an employee’s contract of employment contains a notice period of more than two weeks,(b) the employee gives notice of their intention to leave, and(c) their employer enforces any part of the notice period beyond two weeks,the employee may require the employer to pay them, for the enforced notice period beyond two weeks, at whichever is the higher of their current rate of remuneration and the remuneration offered to them under any new contract of employment that they have secured.”Member's explanatory statement
The purpose of this amendment is to incentivise shorter notice periods.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I thank Tim Leunig for drawing my attention to this proposal. The standard in the UK when a person has a job and contracts for a new one is that he or she has to serve a three-month notice period. In the United States, notice periods are typically two weeks. There is no legal requirement, but that is the convention and any longer is considered unreasonable. It is quite clear, looking at things in the round, that three months is not necessary to run a dynamic and effective economy—it is inefficient. Shifting the notice period down would be a contribution to productivity and a benefit to workers. Most people get a pay rise when they move jobs. Getting it 11 weeks earlier would mean a direct rise in the individual’s income, as well as a rise in GDP and tax revenues. It is of all-round economic benefit.
The most important effect is indirect. If notice periods are short, a dynamic company can scale up more quickly and easily than is currently possible. It can go out and bid for contracts knowing that it can get the staff in time to honour them. If an entrepreneur has a good idea, they can make it happen. If demand rises for one firm, it can respond more easily. Making it easier for dynamic firms to grow quickly is definitely an economic benefit.
Finally, knowing that employees can leave more quickly would give firms an incentive to think more carefully about them. If their leaving is a big nuisance, firms will want them to stay, and will therefore have an incentive to think more about pay rises, promotions, new training opportunities and other things that make the employee feel that his current job is worth having. In contrast, allowing firms to set long notice periods helps incumbents, particularly firms not seeking to grow and that do not want to respond to growth opportunities. That is not a productivity-enhancing strategy.
My amendment suggests a gentle way of seeking to change current practice in the UK—to incentivise a change without requiring anything. If the Government can see a better way of getting to the same outcome, I should be delighted to support them. I beg to move.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
My Lords, this amendment raises questions about notice periods and how they are handled under employment contracts. I make no particular case for or against it, but it draws attention to a more pressing issue: the complexity introduced by this Bill around notice periods and contractual exits. For many employers, particularly those without specialist legal support, understanding and implementing these new requirements will not be straightforward.
I am appreciative that this amendment attempts to bring some clarity and firmer parameters to that part of the framework. Striking the right balance is crucial: while shorter notice periods can support quicker recruitment and flexibility, they may limit employers’ ability to ensure a smooth handover or maintain continuity in key roles. Any reform should therefore weigh the benefits of agility against operational realities.
If the Government want compliance, they must ensure that the legislation is not only sound in principle but clear in practice. That means providing details on how these provisions interact with existing arrangements and what precisely is expected of employers. A complex system with vague guidance helps no one. That is not the first time we have made that point to the Government tonight, and we will keep doing so.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for his amendment and the gentle way in which he introduced what could be a very important move to simplify what the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, rightly reminded us is becoming a hugely complicated employment situation, with so many differing, complex and contradictory requirements.
It could be said—and is being said by a number of HR departments—that this is just the sort of Bill that will give an enormous boost to human resources as a profession. There are already queues of people lining up to join HR departments. My noble friend seeks a simple aim: to incentivise shorter notice periods and avoid situations where individuals are financially disadvantaged for moving jobs, especially when their employers insist on enforcing long notice terms.
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 noble Lords for this short debate and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for tabling Amendment 140.
When we were developing the plan to make work pay, we were clear in our ambition to establish a fair deal that balances employees’ rights and protections with employers’ confidence to hire the talent, skills and expertise they require to grow their business. A notice period is a period of time put in place to ensure a smooth transition, allowing the employer to manage minimum disruption to business requirements while the employee hands over their responsibilities. We therefore feel that, in the round, our proposals are beneficial to employers and fair. Many employers do not want their staff to leave too quickly, so that fairness is built in. Although the statutory minimum notice period that an employee must give an employer is currently, after one month’s employment, no less than one week, often a longer contractual notice period is agreed between the employer and their employees. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that I do not recognise three months as the standard; for many workers, it is considerably less.
This is all about fairness and balance. In practice, employers and employees recognise that both parties require stability and certainty to maintain a fair agreement. Of course, if an employment contract specifies a notice period longer than the statutory minimum, an employee is entitled to receive that longer period of notice, but the employer sets that out in the contract at the outset.
The current minimum notice periods legislation entitles an employee to their normal contractual pay rate during a notice period, as you would expect. This measure would require an enforcement mechanism of employees’ rights to increased notice pay, which would result in more disputes being taken to employment tribunals or the fair work agency. It would create a requirement for an employee’s current and future employer to confirm their salary offer, adding an additional step in the process of offboarding an employee. It also presents the possibility of increased financial burdens on employers.
So, the Government feel that it is not necessary to make a further assessment of this. They have not made an assessment of the costs and the impacts of making this change to employment rights. To do so would require careful consultation with employers and employee representatives. However, we have not received lobbying or any suggestion from employers that they particularly want the sort of proposal that the noble Lord has put forward.
The Bill is delivering the commitments made by the Government to improve workers’ rights in the plan to make work pay. I have listened to the noble Lord, and I absolutely agree with the noble Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Hunt, that we want a simple process. Our process is simple. It is also fair to both sides: to the employer and to the employee. If those arrangements need to change, by and large, that can be done within the workplace, based on negotiations—so we do not feel the pressure to make the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is proposing, but I thank him nevertheless for the suggestion.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. I am sorry she does not feel sympathy for the direction I was taking. It seems to me that when you are addressing the question of productivity in the economy, there are no big solutions. It is rather like the way British cycling came to win: you make a very large number of very small improvements, all in the same direction.
This was intended to be one of those, to increase productivity but at the same time to make life a bit better for employees. I am inclined that way. I spent last weekend at a Premier Inn. Premier Inn does not provide toilet brushes. I do not see why the cleaners who come after me and other people should have to scrub out the toilet bowls when I could do that myself. Having a campaign with Premier Inn to change its policy on that would be worthwhile. It is a small change but, by making small changes enough times, you make some progress. Indeed, one of the secrets of this House is to make small changes. So I am sorry that this small change has not appealed to the Minister, but I will try again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Prohibition of unpaid trial shifts(1) The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 is amended as follows.(2) After section 3(3) (exclusion of, and modifications for, certain classes of person) insert—“(3A) No provision shall be made under subsection (2)(a) in respect of persons working trial shifts. (3B) In subsection (3A), a “trial shift” is any form of work which a person undertakes in view of potentially being offered a temporary or permanent position.”(3) After section 41 (power to apply Act to individuals who are not otherwise “workers”) insert—“41A Application of this Act to persons undertaking trial shifts(1) The Secretary of State must, in exercising the powers under section 41, provide that this Act applies to persons undertaking trial shifts.(2) The Secretary of State must make regulations in accordance with subsection (1) within a period of six months beginning with the day on which the Employment Rights Act 2025 is passed.(3) Such regulations must provide that a person undertaking a trial shift is eligible to receive the national minimum wage for the period of that trial shift at the rate specified for workers of the person’s age.(4) In this section—“employer” has the meaning given to it by subsection 54(4) of this Act (meaning of “worker”, “employee” etc.);“trial shift” means any form of work which a person undertakes in view of potentially being offered a temporary or permanent position.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to ensure that persons are paid for trial shifts they perform in view of potentially being offered a temporary or permanent position.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I rise to move Amendment 141 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She is, about now, talking about net zero to students at Oxford University. It was an engagement that was made some time ago, but she wishes to express her thanks to the Minister for arranging a meeting to discuss this and later amendments, and for the constructive dialogue that followed.
This amendment speaks for itself, but I would like to describe a case where it would have been applicable. It is that of 19 year-old Ellen Reynolds, from Glasgow, who worked a five-hour shift in a restaurant. She told the BBC:
“I ran food and drinks to customers … I cleaned the tables, set up the tables, swept the floor, took people to their seats … took a few payments on the card machine”.
Before that shift, she had to buy a shirt and trousers as a uniform, costing £20. Then, she got paid nothing, and she did not get a job out of it.
The Department for Business and Trade’s guidance on national minimum wage eligibility includes a section on unpaid work trial periods, which discusses to what extent the national minimum wage applies to work trials undertaken as part of a recruitment process. It says that work trials can help employers to
“decide whether the individual has the skills and qualities … for the job”,
and that unpaid work trials can be a
“legitimate practice”,
so long as they are not used
“to obtain work or services for which at least the minimum wage should be paid”.
That, I believe, is an invitation to abuse: the kind of abuse that Ellen suffered, being expected to work for nothing—not getting less than the minimum wage, but getting nothing at all. We hear reports of employers who do this to a succession of workers.
For those who would like to explore this issue in more depth than I have time for today, I point them to a debate in Westminster Hall on 29 March 2023, secured by Stewart Malcolm McDonald MP. That followed the introduction by the same MP of a Private Member’s Bill in 2017 seeking to achieve the same outcome as this amendment. That Bill that won the backing of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Students, among others. The commendably persistent MP reintroduced it last year. So, it has been an issue that has been around a long time but still has no solution.
If the Minister feels that the amendment is not properly drafted, I have been assured by my noble friend that she is in no way attached to the detail of how it is written, although she thanks the Bill Office for its assistance so far. The point is to act and to actually create a solution for an abuse that is enacted on people who can least afford it.
I have heard some very familiar phrases in the past few groups: we need more information, this is not the right time, there is legislation elsewhere that deals with this and this is not the Bill. But if not now, in the Employment Rights Bill, then when and how? We have to protect workers such as Ellen. They are often young and vulnerable, and sometimes English is not their first language. Surely the point of an Employment Rights Bill is to protect people from exploitation such as unpaid work.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I am sympathetic to the intentions behind this amendment. There are risks of exploitation, which the noble Baroness has just set out. Where I am somewhat more concerned and have more sympathy with the amendment debated earlier today is about how people continue to do these sorts of jobs and still do not get paid.
To give a real example, the Department for Work and Pensions runs a programme called SWAP. It is quite a short-term programme and it is not quite the same as a boot camp, principally run by the DfE. It is often for people perhaps wanting to go into a new sector or who are open to new experiences, so there is an element of training. However, a key part of the SWAP is that you work and try out. There is no guarantee that, at the end of that, you will get a job with that specific employer, but what really matters is that it will give you a sense of aptitude and of getting back into the workplace, while you continue to receive benefits.
Let us not pretend that receiving universal credit for a week is necessarily the same as being paid the equivalent of a national minimum wage. But my principal concern with this amendment is that, while wanting to avoid exploitation, it would unwittingly or unknowingly shut down these broader opportunities and programmes which the Government run to help get people back into the world of work. That is why it needs to be considered carefully by the Minister, but ultimately rejected.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
I will speak briefly to this amendment, which proposes to prohibit unpaid trial shifts by ensuring that those who undertake such shifts are paid at least the national minimum wage. This issue echoes concerns raised in earlier debates on unpaid work experience.
The amendment seeks to clarify that shift trials, defined as work undertaken in the hope of securing a temporary or permanent position, should be fairly compensated. This would address that potential gap in existing legislation and offer clearer protection for workers, ensuring that their time and labour are respect and valued. Such clarity is important for both workers seeking fair treatment and employers, and in maintaining transparent and ethical recruitment practices.
At the same time, it is important to consider the practical implications for employers who may rely on trial shifts as part of their recruitment process. I therefore invite the Minister to consider carefully whether this amendment strikes the right balance between protecting workers’ rights from exploitation and allowing employers reasonable flexibility in assessing candidates.
I look forward to the Government’s view on the best way to achieve a proportionate and effective approach that serves the interests of all parties involved.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this relatively brief group. I agree with my noble friend Lady Coffey. At first glance, the idea of banning unpaid trials seems fair, because no one wants to see people, especially young people, exploited under the guise of a try-out, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out when she was introducing the amendment.
However, we also need to be honest about the likely effect of the change, particularly for those very people it is trying to protect. In many sectors—in particular hospitality, retail and care—trial shifts are often the only realistic way for somebody without a formal CV to show that they can do the job. Trial shifts can therefore open doors for young people, school leavers and those coming back into work.
If we start requiring every short work trial to be paid at minimum wage then the reality is that many of them simply will not happen at all. Employers, especially small ones, may decide that they are just too risky or costly. The obvious result will be fewer opportunities and fewer chances for somebody to get in front of an employer to show what they can do. I worry that this amendment, although well intentioned, could have the opposite effect: closing off relatively informal routes into work for those who need them most. The measures in the Bill already create the wrong incentives, and we do not need any more of them.
Lord Katz (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all who have contributed to this short debate, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for stepping in very ably. There seems to be a pattern of noble Lords needing to step in during the groups I respond to, but I very much appreciate her moving the amendment on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
We are somewhat repeating the first debate we had today on Amendment 129. Amendment 141 seeks to ensure that persons are paid for the trial shifts they perform in view of potentially being offered a temporary or permanent position. It basically boils down to the same thing: how do we make sure that people are not exploited when they are in a position where they need to be flexible to try to gain work? It is very much the Government’s objective to ensure we can get more people working. However, it is also our objective to ensure we make work fair and make fair work pay.
That is obviously the intention underlying Amendment 141. In that light, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for raising this issue and for using the case study of Ellen to outline how vulnerable people in vulnerable situations can be exploited by unscrupulous employers. I assure the noble Baroness that that is absolutely not the intention of the Bill nor, indeed, our attitude towards the amendment. However, I will go into detail as to why we are taking our position on this amendment.
As I have said, we are committed to making work pay, and we have been delivering on this promise through the actions we have taken since the Government came into office last year. At the risk of repeating myself, I note that we have delivered an increase in the national minimum wage of 6.7% to £12.21 per hour for eligible workers aged 21 or over. We have also, as I said, delivered a huge uplift for the lower national minimum wage rate for 18 to 20 year-olds, which has increased by 16.3% to £10 an hour. That is a record amount in both cash and percentage terms, and it closes the gap with the national living wage, because, as I have said, a fair day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay.
However, hand in hand with fair pay is the flexibility for workers and employers to decide whether a job is right for the candidate and, indeed, whether the candidate is right for a job. Government guidance sets out helpful and practical information on how the national minimum wage applies in the context of unpaid work trials. The guidance is clear that employers can ask individuals to carry out tasks or trial shifts without payment only if it is a genuine part of the recruitment process.
Short, genuine work trials—such as the DWP scheme that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, referred to—whether paid or unpaid, give employers and individuals an opportunity to test whether the role or the candidate is right for them. They empower individuals to seek out and test whether the role is suited to them and their needs. They allow employers to test whether a candidate can do the job and reduce the risk of taking on someone who might not have the right skills. As the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, rightly said, it is about finding the right balance.
Unpaid work trials can also provide a stepping stone for individuals who have been out of work for a long period of time but might want to get back into the workplace, as the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, said. There are also government schemes where individuals in receipt of benefits can participate in an unpaid work trial and continue to receive their benefits. The flexibility of genuine—I stress “genuine”—work trials can benefit workers up and down the country, and the Government feel that an outright ban would see these opportunities for individuals diminish. However, I repeat a point I made earlier because it is worth emphasising: employers cannot rely on unpaid trial shifts for free labour. If someone is carrying out work that goes beyond a short demonstration of their suitability for the role, they are most likely to be entitled to the national minimum wage.
We are committed to protecting workers and will monitor this issue closely. If changes are needed, those issues should be dealt with outside the Bill, so that the national minimum wage legislation can remain clear on how unpaid work trials can be used and ensure workers are protected.
As noble Lords will be aware, HM Revenue & Customs is responsible for enforcing the minimum wage legislation and ensuring that employers meet their legal obligations. Any individual concerned that they have worked on a trial shift or period that does not appear to be part of a genuine recruitment process can and should complain to HMRC, or they can contact the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service for advice.
In the light of the safeguards that already exist in legislation, and despite the fact that we very much agree with the sentiment behind the amendment, we ask the noble Baroness to withdraw Amendment 141.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I thank the Minister for his answer. If this amendment is so similar to Amendment 129—I was not in the Chamber during that debate, I am afraid—I wonder why they were not grouped together. That might be something to think about.
The Minister talked about genuine work trials. I argue that “genuine” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there: how on earth do you judge whether something is genuine if you are not monitoring it extremely closely? He also mentioned a “short demonstration”. How long is that? Are there criteria for them? Are they only two hours long, for example? In Ellen’s case, she worked for five hours—that is a fair amount of continuous time to work.
In speaking to this amendment, I am influenced by the fact that, in the Green Party, we are not allowed to take any unpaid work at all. We have no unpaid interns. If we have an intern, we pay them, and we pay them properly. This influences my attitude towards anyone working for nothing if they do not intend to do so voluntarily.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, said that there might be fewer opportunities, but workers are still needed and companies still have to find those workers. If companies cannot afford to pay the national minimum wage to somebody on a work trial, they are not solvent businesses, so perhaps they ought to go out of business. I have no sympathy for employers who do not pay for work.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, gave me conditional support, but I am not really sure; perhaps he will on Report.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that an amendment can be written to cover such schemes as the government scheme she mentioned. It does not necessarily exclude paying somebody for genuinely working for five hours continuously.
On balance, this is a good amendment, and I hope that my noble friend will bring it back on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“Right to disconnect(1) All workers have the right to disconnect from work-related communications outside their working hours.(2) An employer must not—(a) require a worker to monitor, read or respond to any work-related communications outside the worker’s working hours;(b) contact a worker outside the worker’s working hours except in an emergency as defined in subsection (6);(c) take any action to the worker’s detriment, or treat the worker less favourably, because the worker has exercised or sought to exercise the right in subsection (1).(3) Every employer must—(a) establish a written disconnection policy, in consultation with workers or recognised trade unions,(b) specify the technological and organisational measures implemented to ensure respect for the right to disconnect,(c) establish clear protocols for necessary exceptions, and(d) provide workers with information about how to report violations of the right to disconnect.(4) The right to disconnect does not apply where—(a) a worker is on call or standby duty and receiving appropriate compensation for such duty,(b) a worker has explicitly agreed to be available during specified periods outside working hours, with this agreement recorded in writing, or(c) in genuine emergency situations affecting public health, safety, or essential services.(5) A worker may present a complaint to an employment tribunal that their employer has infringed their right to disconnect under this section.(6) In this section—“emergency” means a situation that—(a) poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or environment, or(b) requires urgent intervention to prevent serious harm to the business, customers or other workers;“working hours” means the hours a worker is contractually required to work, including any agreed flexible working arrangements.(7) The Secretary of State must issue a statutory code of practice containing guidance on the implementation of the right to disconnect within six months of this Act receiving Royal Assent.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would implement a framework for a “right to disconnect”, whereby workers cannot be required to handle work related correspondence outside of their working hours.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I will again speak on behalf of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.
Amendment 141B is a no-brainer; I believe the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, referred to it as blindingly obvious. It would give workers the right to disconnect, which is already available to French workers; I am sure that many noble Lords have heard about that, since its introduction was seen to be world leading at the time. I am sure that many British workers expected to have exactly the same right as a result of this Bill, given the widely covered promises that the Labour Party made over recent years before it was in government.
I quote the Labour Party 2022 Green Paper on employment rights, as it is unequivocal on this issue. It says:
“Labour will bring in the ‘right to switch off’, so working from home does not become homes turning into 24/7 offices. Workers will have a new right to disconnect from work outside of working hours and not be contacted by their employer outside of working hours”.
That is very clear. By June 2024, the party had fleshed that out with an explanation in the document, Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay:
“The pandemic has led to a step change in flexible and remote working practices in many workplaces, which … inadvertently blurred the lines between work and home life”.
That is extremely worrying. The headline in that 2024 text is: “Right to switch off”.
Unfortunately, backtracking is already evident, but the promise to the electorate is more equivocal:
“We will follow similar models to those that are already in place in Ireland or Belgium, giving workers and employers the opportunity to have constructive conversations and work together on bespoke workplace policies or contractual terms that benefit both parties”.
However, the headline was: “Right to switch off”. I think most people would have read that and hoped for a more balanced and less harassed life.
The Green Party is always keen to help any Government. Here, we would like to help the Government live up to the promises they made to an exhausted and overstretched group of workers, who find themselves trapped with a boss who expects them to answer emails from the sideline of their child’s netball match or to take a client’s call when they are on holiday. The promise from the Government has been that they intend to introduce a statutory code of practice instead. That does not mean that such contact will be illegal or even prohibited, but if an employee can prove that they are routinely being contacted outside of their contracted hours then this can play a role in an employment tribunal payout. On the previous amendment, the Minister mentioned that it is possible to make complaints. Most people do not do that; it takes too long and they do not have the expertise to do it, and they may not even have the energy to do it—that is fair enough. Tribunal cases are possible but they are extraordinarily rare and extremely slow.
We have a health crisis in the UK—an overworked crisis—and a huge imbalance in the power relationships between employers and employees, as many other parts of the Bill point out. In the Green Party, we are always constructive. This amendment provides the Government with a chance to live up to their promise to the electorate to empower workers and to help them remain healthy and engaged in their family and community lives, not for ever distracted by having to check their phone. After all, the economy is there to serve people; it is not for people to serve the economy. I beg to move.
Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)
My Lords, I will briefly clarify the situation. I have just checked with my party, and we are not in coalition with the Green Party, that is for sure. But the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, makes a valid point. It is valid because of the societal change post Covid, where the number of people working from home now is exponential to what it was before Covid.
I go back to my days as a British Gas engineer, when I had a bleeper and was on call. We would dread the bleeper beeping, but I was on emergency calls and so I had to go out and do it. That was then and this is now.
There are so many people who are working from home who cannot switch off—the emails and alerts come through on their mobile phones. There needs to be some recognition of that within the legislation. Clearly, some organisations may need to contact people, but that should be by an arrangement that is agreed and supported by both parties. We are almost in a cowboy society again, where an unscrupulous company director of a small business with a small number of people wants to get things done and the deal has got to be made tonight—at 10 pm or 11 pm, when children are in bed—and so the phone goes and you have got to do it. If you do not, you face the consequences. These employees are probably not unionised, so it is difficult for them to resist. It is a never-ending circle.
I would like the Government to understand the importance of considering the framework set out in this amendment to provide a fair and practical approach that looks after the worker but protects the legitimate needs of the employers. It comes back to this idea of reasonableness and proportionality—the thread that seems to run through all this legislation. If it is reasonable and proportional then by and large it is fairly acceptable, but you have always got the unscrupulous person on either side. I have seen employees on call who have not replied when they should have, and they have been disciplined. That is correct; if you have an agreement and are on call, but you do not do it, there is a price to be paid.
The pendulum swings very slowly one way but very fast the other, to all those people who are working from home now and have no protection from the unscrupulous employer who just wants results 24 hours a day. We live in a 24-hour society—there is no escape from it. It happens with Ministers, spokespeople and friends I know. I have to turn my phone off—sometimes at 9 pm I switch the thing off until the morning, and then I get messages asking why I did not answer it. My answer is, “Because it was quarter to one in the morning and I was fast asleep”. These messages are from friends and colleagues. If you put that in the context of a work environment, where it is about your livelihood, marriage and children, it comes more into focus. I want the Government to look at this and see that there must be a way that we can strike a balance between the needs of an employer and the rights of a worker.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, this is an interesting debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has pointed out, this idea was in both the 2022 Green Paper and in the paper that the Labour Party published during last year’s election. Clearly, there is an expectation that this needs to be addressed in this huge Bill, the main purpose of which, as I have said to this Committee before, could have been achieved through a statutory instrument.
However, one of the important things in the amendment, which has been carefully written by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, sets in place the idea that:
“The right to disconnect does not apply where … a worker is on call or standby duty and receiving appropriate compensation for such duty”.
In trying to get into this debate, which is a fair debate to have, we find that the legislation already addresses the majority of situations where this would already happen, and so all that would happen if this were to become law is that contracts would be written in such a way that, in effect, if necessary, everybody would be on call—which would not be a desirable outcome.
I want to build on that. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, referred to a variety of anecdotes and his personal experience. Personal experience matters in considering how a good employer can act. For what it is worth, in my private office, which was very busy, and in my parliamentary office when I used to employ people, I required everybody to have their “do not disturb” setting on. The setting works such that if somebody really needs to get hold of you—if you are a Minister, say—switch will get through to you eventually. I have to say to the people on the Front Bench that that is the case even if you do not have your phone on. Those situations are already addressed.
One of the things the Bill is trying to do overall is to get that balance. However, it is fair to say that not everything needs to be put into legislation. It is about having a positive relationship, and some of that can be done through ACAS and in other different ways, such as guidance. Trying to micromanage every single relationship that the millions of workers have directly with their employer risks overcomplicating things. The fear that I have, given that this is in the Government’s manifesto, which they seek to put in place—it will be interesting to see how they want to make this happen—is that this will make for very tricky legislation. Although there may be instances where this would work, ultimately, it comes down to employment tribunals and somebody else’s judgment.
For what it is worth, we have an evolving variety of workplaces. A lot of people who used to work at home have now come back to the office so that they can leave their job behind, as opposed to feeling that they will open something up after dinner or whatever.
I look forward to hearing the Minister set out how the Government are planning to fulfil their manifesto commitment while trying to make sure that they do not micromanage every single element of how a job can be done in the workplace.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Baroness said, because this is about fairness and making sure life works. There are a lot of companies, big and small, where, to a great extent, what has been proposed is already working. However, there are a number of instances—including somewhere like where I work—where I do not think this would work.
I will just give your Lordships one quick example. I work in insurance for a huge insurance broker. We had a client in the United States who by 5 pm had not decided whether to renew his insurance contract in London. If he had not renewed it by 1 June—which I guess was a Sunday—he would have had no insurance on that specific part of his business. A member of my team kindly stayed online, for want of a better word—he was probably out and about with the phone in his pocket—and the call came through at some time after 9 pm. Looking at the way the clause is drafted, I am not sure whether that would be considered enough of an emergency to get a member of staff out of bed, so to speak. Equally, that company might have had to stop working, doing whatever it was doing in the oil and gas industry—I know that will not endear me to the noble Baroness, but that is a fact. But we had to bind that insurance contract once we got the order. It was all ready to go; it was just a question of sending a number of emails to say that it was done. So there are huge swathes of the country where it is in fact in place already, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has said, but in some of the big City environments where you are working across time zones particularly, it is extremely difficult to enact.
On working from home, we all worked at home for some time; personally I loathed it—I am back in the office almost as much as I can be. However, I have members of staff who like working at home, and, let me tell your Lordships, they know how to turn themselves off when they do not want to talk to us anymore, and they are good at it. So they should be, and I respect them for it. But if you really need them, you can always find them.
Finally, you can turn the damn machines off. Be it a telephone, a computer, an iPad or whatever it is, there is an off button out there. Certainly when I was a child, we were told never to call anybody after 9 pm, and that was friends and family. So there are some unwritten rules out there that are already very effective.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, we are very grateful indeed to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for introducing us to a fascinating debate. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, put us in touch with the real world, and then my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lord Ashcombe reminded us about what happens in real life. I suppose I have immediately to declare my interest as a practising solicitor. My phrase, which I always used to share with Albert Blighton, was that I was available 168/52. The number 168 is 24 times seven. So you quickly appreciate that, as a solicitor, you have to be available all the time.
When I won the contract to represent cricket with the England and Wales Cricket Board, they wanted to know whether I would be available on a Sunday evening when there was an incident at a Sunday league match, and I said, “Yes, of course I would”. So it is very much up to the individual to make themselves available.
When I was asked to join the Front Bench in the House of Commons in 1977, I do not think anybody expected that I would refuse to answer an Adjournment debate, even though it might have been at 3 am, which it was on one occasion. Therefore, you set your working parameter in the way in which you develop your own workaholic tendencies, but you should not expect it of everyone, and I think that is what the amendment is all about.
Do you have the right to disconnect? Although I am sympathetic to the idea that you should be able to switch off, which the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, put in context, when the Bill is already introducing considerable uncertainty for employers around shift notice periods, payment for cancelled shifts and wider questions of how flexible working is to be managed in practice, we have to be very cautious about layering on yet another rigid and potentially burdensome obligation.
The noble Baroness may have put forward what appears to be a straightforward proposal, giving workers a right not to respond to emails or calls outside their contracted hours, but in reality, as the Government have quickly realised, despite what they may have said in advance of the election, this whole proposal raises serious practical and legal questions. What does “working hours” mean in a world of flexible, hybrid and self-managed work? How do we define an emergency? What happens in small teams, in customer-facing sectors, which my noble friend Lord Ashcombe highlighted, and in businesses operating across time zones?
Employers, especially small businesses, already face growing compliance costs. This would add yet another administrative requirement. There would have to be a written policy on the right to disconnect, a consultation process, enforcement procedures and, of course, exposure to tribunal claims. So, we must ask: is this really the right moment to introduce such sweeping regulation?
The Bill already creates new rights and obligations that will take time to bed in. There is uncertainty around shift scheduling, compensation for cancellations and the cumulative compliance burden. I have to say to the noble Baroness that I believe the effect of this amendment would be to increase that uncertainty further and risk undermining flexibility for both sides. Most workers and employers already navigate these boundaries reasonably and sensibly. A blanket legislative approach risks making day-to-day communications feel legally fraught, especially in smaller organisations where roles are not so rigidly defined.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling Amendment 141B, which was moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.
We firmly recognise the vital importance of achieving a healthy work/life balance. The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, can be confident that we will indeed introduce a right to switch off. We understand that, in today’s fast-paced world, it is more important than ever to ensure that individuals and families are able to manage the demands of their work alongside their responsibilities and needs at home.
Our close consultation with businesses and civil society since the election has shown how important it is that we develop this policy in collaboration with those who will be affected: workers and the firms who employ them. The right to switch off must account for the full diversity in types of employment and sectors that exist in our modern economy. It represents a substantial shift in the way some businesses operate. This amendment does not account for that diversity and the need for collaboration. That is why we have decided to take a careful and considered approach to introducing the right to switch off, as was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe.
The focus for now is the Employment Rights Bill, which contains decisive and immediate action, such as reforms to flexible working that will make it easier to strike a better work/life balance. These reforms are not just policies; they are practical steps to support everyday lives and help people to draw clearer boundaries between their work and personal lives.
To add this amendment to the Bill would not do the right to switch off any justice. As drafted, it could create unnecessary burdens on businesses, particularly small businesses, as stated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Significant new requirements in proposed new subsection (3)(a) to (d) would force all employers, no matter their size, to produce written disconnection policies and specify new technological and organisational measures and protocols, while also establishing reporting systems for any violations. These new rules would be onerous and inflexible.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed, and I say how deeply disappointed I am in the Opposition. I am trying to hold the Government to account to actually bring in a measure that they promised to do, and they have given them an easy ride, I would say. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, that she is being far too kind to the Government, in my view. I am sure they are very grateful. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, was much more supportive of this amendment, so I thank him very much.
To the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, I say that we are, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also pointed out, in a very privileged position. The noble Lord sounds like a very kind man and is probably a very nice employer, so probably his employee would be free to say, “No, I can’t do that”, if they had to pick up a child from school or something like that. This is to protect people who do not have that sort of privilege, who feel obliged to do the things that their employer tells them, or supposedly asks them, to do. This is to protect the most vulnerable, the people who are not in our sort of position. I do not want to be here now, quite honestly. It is seven o’clock. I would much rather go home and have something to eat. I certainly did not want to be here at 10.35 last night—I would rather have been home in bed—but I do it out of a sense of duty, and I do it willingly. There are people who would not be able to do this but would not be able to deny their boss that work.
To the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I say that I am always very dubious when people start talking about “real life”, and I wonder how much real life they actually have. I grew up in a very poor working-class family, and I still have a lot of friends from my childhood who are not in the privileged position that I am in now, so I get a taste of real life when I am at home. In real life, there are people who would not be able to deny their employer this sort of overtime, or whatever.
I thank the Minister very much for his response. I am very glad to hear that the Government are going to introduce it. But, if this is too prescriptive and premature, why did the Labour Party commit itself to that? Why do the Government not just do what they promised? This is something that I struggle with. We see parties, before they are in government, promise all sorts of things and then they scrap them, and it is just not right. It is betraying the voters, and I do not understand why. Consult, by all means, but do it in a sensible and fairly fast way and just get it done.
By the way, nothing I have said in the last five minutes is to do with my noble friend Lady Bennett, so noble Lords should not blame her for it. I very much hope that she will bring this back on Report and that we will push it to a vote, because if you promised, you should do it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hunt of Wirral
“(B1) Subsection (A1)(a) shall not apply where the employer is undergoing relevant insolvency proceedings.(C1) Where the employer is undergoing relevant insolvency proceedings, the duty to consult shall arise only in accordance with subsection (1), by reference to the number of employees proposed to be dismissed at a single establishment within a period of 90 days or less.(D1) For the purposes of subsection (B1), “relevant insolvency proceedings” has the same meaning as in regulation 8(6) of the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that employers in formal insolvency proceedings are not subject to the new entity-wide redundancy consultation trigger. Instead, the existing “20 or more at one establishment” threshold would apply. The amendment relies on an established definition of insolvency proceedings, consistent with Regulation 8(6) of TUPE 2006.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, Amendments 141BA to 142B stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom.
Collective redundancies often occur in the context of an insolvency. Increasing the penalty for failure to inform and consult will exacerbate the difficulties for insolvency practitioners. Under the Insolvency Act 1986, administrators are required to act in the best interests of creditors as a whole. However, keeping employees in employment beyond the 14-day window afforded to administrators to decide whether to adopt the contract, to carry out an information and consultation process, in effect makes those employees super-priority creditors. This would elevate their claims above those of other creditors and reduce the funds available for ordinary creditors. In some cases, the resulting employment costs could make administrators reluctant to take on their role. This may lead to fewer contracts being adopted, increasing the liabilities that ultimately fall on the National Insurance Fund. Amendment 141BA gives insolvency practitioners clear legal guidance to apply the single establishment rule during consultations. This helps them make faster decisions without dealing with complex, entity-wide assessments, reducing delays and protecting insolvency processes. It supports rescuing businesses and, of course, maximising creditor returns.
I turn to Amendments 141C and 141E. Clause 27 significantly expands the duty to consult on collective redundancies. It requires employers to start a consultation if 20 or more redundancies are proposed in total across multiple establishments, even when those redundancies are unrelated. This overreaches, because simultaneous job cuts can result from distinct decisions, such as automation in a warehouse, reduced demand in customer service or restructuring in head office, affecting different people in different locations. Yet, under Clause 27, those decisions could be swept into a single mandatory consultation process simply because the total number affected crosses the arbitrary threshold. This means that HR and management teams would have to delay necessary action while they co-ordinated across unrelated departments. This means that representatives and employees would be dragged into consultations about matters with no relevance at all to them, and it risks undermining the quality of consultation itself by overloading it with conflicting priorities and timelines.
This would introduce legal uncertainty, particularly for mid-sized employers who may not have the resources to second-guess whether redundancies in different divisions are connected enough to trigger a combined consultation. If they get it wrong, they will face a protective award. If so, the risk-averse approach is to consult everyone about everything all at once. These amendments would make it clear that where redundancies across different establishments arise from a common underlying business reason, or from a connected series of events, a combined consultation is indeed required. However, where they are unconnected, made independently and for distinct reasons, the employer may conduct separate consultations at the level where the impact is felt.
Moving to Amendment 141D, we have continued to make the point that the one-sized central planning approach that this Bill uses is not appropriate. Many sectors rely heavily on seasonal or fixed-term workers. Agriculture, hospitality, logistics and retail businesses scale up and down, predictably, year in, year out. They take on workers for peak periods—the summer season, the Christmas rush, the harvest—and release them at the end of the contract. These are not sudden decisions; they are built into the business model and are clearly understood by all parties. For example, a national employer may let 12 seasonal workers go at a distribution hub in the north in July. A month later, it may make seven short-term administrative contracts redundant in the Midlands. In September, it might end six fixed-term roles in a tourist-focused retail unit in the south. Those are unconnected, expected and localised decisions. However, under Clause 27 as drafted, those 25 redundancies must be aggregated, triggering a full collective consultation process across all three events as if they were part of one co-ordinated business strategy. Is that really the policy intention?
Amendment 141F tackles the risk of retroactive liability—the possibility that employers who have already commenced consultations in good faith could be told after the fact that their earlier actions were invalid or insufficient, simply because the later redundancies pushed the total over the threshold. This problem arises from the way in which the 90-day window operates. It is measured forwards and backwards from any given proposal, which means that an employer making a set of redundancies today must ask, “Did I make others 30, 60 or 89 days ago?” If so, they now need to be bundled into a new retroactive consultation process. Let us say that an employer consults properly with a small team—five redundancies, full process, representatives informed; and then some weeks later, it identifies the need to make redundancies in another part of the business. The total now crosses the threshold and suddenly, it faces legal uncertainty. Was the earlier consultation valid? This creates a legal trap for employers acting in good faith. It penalises those who move early, communicate openly and begin consultation promptly—the very behaviours the law should be encouraging.
This amendment would bring common sense to the process. It says that where meaningful consultation on a proposed dismissal has already begun, whether individually or collectively, those redundancies are not to be re-counted towards a later threshold. It prevents the law demanding the impossible: that employers retroactively reconvene consultations that were lawfully and properly carried out before a threshold was even triggered.
Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)
My Lords, good evening. I rise in support of Amendments 141BA, 141C and 142B, and it is a pleasure to support the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on these amendments. I declare an interest as a businessman and as one who wishes to see the wheels of commerce and thus the economy moving smoothly and not unnecessarily clogged up.
As far as insolvency goes, this Bill presented an opportunity—one that I still urge the Government to grasp—to make insolvencies more efficient and less destructive of the economy. The law currently says that, in most cases where workers are to be made redundant, a 90-day consultation is required, regardless of insolvency or not. But, if a company is insolvent, consultation is necessarily spurious. The employees have lost their jobs, period, and the receivers have to move instantly, not wait 90 days to realise the assets. So, they do not wait 90 days and, because of this rule, they then break the law, because they are required to give 90 days. Two laws are in conflict with each other and one of them has to be broken. The more swiftly the assets of a failing organisation can be reorganised, the more likely it is that productive economic activity can be continued from these assets.
In the US, where these things are done much better, a study some time ago found that only 4% of assets were lost in a bankruptcy: 96% went on to be productive assets under a new organisation. Anyway, because the law has been broken, necessarily, in these cases, because the receivers are doing their duty to achieve a speedy liquidation, the lawyers move in.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitkeathley, who I am delighted to see is in his place, referred earlier to ambulance chasers. There are many lawyers in this House and every single one of them is, of course, honourable and valuable; but we are talking about no-win no-fee lawyers, who can be deeply pernicious in both practice and effect. These lawyers advise all affected employees that they have a case they can take to the employment tribunal because they have not been consulted, and that they will certainly win that case. These no-win no-fee lawyers refer to this case as “free money”: “Dear employee, you’ve got free money because you haven’t been consulted on a 90-day period”. These employees already get their redundancy money, their statutory sick pay, their holiday money and so forth. They get it all ahead of any other creditors. They are not disadvantaged.
This 90-day money that they get by going to the employment tribunal is three months’ bunce on top of everything else. I do not think that can have been intended, but it is certainly what the outcome has been. Who pays for this—because, as we know, there is no such thing as a free lunch? If the company was truly insolvent, there will not be enough money for everybody, so there will be losers when this money is paid to the employees: losers such as suppliers and HMRC, also known as the taxpayer, of course. And they will lose more as those workers get their 90 days’ pay.
I refer to one of many examples, Go-centric, a Glasgow-based call centre that suddenly went bankrupt on 19 December 2022, laying off around 600 employees just before Christmas. There is a whole story behind that that all of us can derogate. The receiver was faced with 600 employees who had to be laid off immediately. That is what receivers do, and they are honourable people running a very important economic activity for this economy. Enter the lawyers into this Go-centric situation, writing to redundant workers and advertising “free money”. That is what they actually wrote in the letters to employees, which the employees replied to. They went to the employment tribunal and the money was obtained for 200 workers who had already received all their statutorily due redundancy payments. I really do not think this can have been intended when the legislation was written, but so it was.
Now we have a wonderful opportunity in the Bill to rectify this, most likely unintended, clash of legislation by removing the 90-day consultation requirement in an insolvency, since, as we know, consultation is irrelevant, indeed impossible, in a liquidation. Have the Government wisely seized this opportunity? Have they rushed to validate their claims of fiscal prudence? They have not—far from it. Indeed, they have, bizarrely, proposed in the Bill to increase the 90 days to 180 days. A full six months of free money on top of statutory redundancy money, taking precedence over HMRC, suppliers and others. This all makes it more likely that their claims cannot be met, potentially precipitating further bankruptcies among suppliers. Noble Lords will have heard many pitiful stories of suppliers stiffed out of payments by a larger company going bankrupt and themselves then having to go bankrupt. This provision makes that more likely. There is no free 180-day lunch here.
We have a further problem, which may not have been considered by the Government in putting forward the Bill, which is that, if these payments fall short, which necessarily they will in many cases, the redundancy fund is called upon to pay moneys to workers. That is the redundancy fund that reports to HMRC, which reports to the Treasury. Have the Secretary of State and the Minister informed the Chancellor that they are legislating to increase the Treasury’s outgoings by a significant amount in future years, not to mention increasing the nation’s welfare bill, which the Government actually have a commitment to reduce? I suggest that the Government should speak to themselves and have a discussion about that.
The same concerns apply to the extension of the limit to 20 employees across an organisation to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred, and to encompass distressed businesses—businesses that are in distress, which are calling for financial advice, but have not yet gone into immediate insolvency. An opportunity is being missed to sort all that out.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
I support my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral’s amendment and have little to add to what he and my noble friend Lord Moynihan have said. I emphasise that we ought to support such amendments for reducing the levels of collective consultation for companies involved in insolvency proceedings. We should do so in the interest of reducing the escalating costs to a company as a result of compliance and protracted timing. I support these amendments for that reason.
As we have heard, the Insolvency Act 1986 obliges the administrator to act in the best interests of the creditors. The more time and compliance are demanded of a company, the more it will cost and the less there will be for creditors. These costs will escalate under Clause 27 as drafted. As a result, the creditors will have less available to pay their bills and their employees. We will see a domino effect on companies left short of cash flow and on their ability to pay their bills and their employees. These amendments are very important, because we cannot afford a domino effect, with businesses left short of cash because of the compliance costs and protracted timings posed on companies facing insolvency proceedings. They are suffering anyway; their bills have not been paid. In the end, the less that is available to pay them, the worse the outcome will be for the whole economy, for employment levels as a whole and for the cost of living.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak on this really quite interesting clause. I have carefully read Hansard from the other place in trying to understand what it is really putting in place. I am concerned by aspects of the comments made by the Minister at the other end, Justin Madders. He said that it really means only that businesses have to consult on their location and only with trade union representatives, and that, “By the way, these things get sorted in legal debate in the courts, and we hope the courts will understand”. That is not good enough when we are writing primary legislation.
In thinking this through, it is important for the Committee to consider what is happening here. Why is this needed? It has apparently been done to reduce the pressure on people with a vulnerability. Let us take the example of a pub chain, which has quite a big estate and has decided that it is going to reduce its number of hours. That could be a consequence of some of the other measures being brought in by the Government or just a trend that is happening. So it starts to think about what it is prepared to do in terms of how many people it employs in its pubs. It may not want to do that straight away; it may want to think about it in different sections and to leave that discretion to local managers. The man or woman in the street would think that that is perfectly sensible.
However, the businesses that gave oral and written evidence to the Bill Committee are worried—which the Minister recognised in saying that they should not worry—because that is exactly what the legislation is saying they will have to do. They could be undertaking consultation at huge expense, right across the country, while recognising that some of those situations could be very localised.
We already have sensible measures in place. When there are going to be significant redundancies across the country, it is already a legal requirement for them to go before Ministers, whether from the Department for Business and Trade or the Department for Work and Pensions, who can then mobilise local jobcentres and the like to prepare for those redundancies. Imagine going back to the business considering the impact of that on what can be quite localised operations. The Explanatory Notes are silent, frankly, which is why I took to reading Hansard from the Commons.
I am concerned and would be grateful to hear from the Minister why this is the right approach and how, despite the uncertainty still left in this legislation, the Government want this to be in place. Instead, they should accept the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Hunt to make sure that these situations are well considered and that we do not end up in a situation where, despite the primary legislation, we have to go to an employment tribunal again and again. For that reason, I hope the Minister accepts my noble friend’s amendments.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, for tabling these amendments. We have been listening to feedback from businesses on the clause as introduced. It requires collective consultation whenever 20 or more redundancies are proposed to be made across an employer’s organisation. Businesses told us that this would put them in a constant state of consultation. That is why we have made amendments in Clause 27 to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992; they aim to limit the burdens on employers while still expanding protections for employees, by ensuring that collective consultation is triggered when a threshold number of employees are proposed to be made redundant across an entire organisation.
The purpose of Clause 27 is to strengthen collective redundancy rights. The Government worked with stakeholders, including businesses, to address their concerns, which include not counting employees who are already being consulted on redundancy. We will set an appropriate threshold number in due course, via secondary legislation, following further engagement with stakeholders and a public consultation. We will look to balance the interests of both employers and employees when setting this threshold. Business stake- holders have welcomed the Government’s engagement on this clause and the opportunity to input to the threshold number via a public consultation.
Amendment 141BA seeks to exclude employers going through insolvency proceedings from the scope of a new trigger for collective consultation. I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, about how one expects an employer which is going insolvent to consult employees across the entire organisation. The Government believe that collective consultations are an important part of ensuring fairness and transparency between employers and employees. The benefits of consultations are felt by both. I heard what the noble Lord said, and I must say that employees are an important part of the organisation, as are the suppliers and the whole supply chain. Whatever is due to them should be paid, as is the same for other creditors.
The law already recognises that consultation may not always be fully practical in insolvency situations. That is why Section 188(7) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 includes a special circumstances defence for employers to depart from the collective redundancy obligations where it is genuinely justified and they have shown that they have taken all practical steps to comply. That flexibility should be applied on a case-by-case basis, not by removing that duty altogether.
Amendment 141C seeks to ensure that obligations are triggered only where redundancies are linked to a connected reason. We recognise that collective consultation will be most productive when workers and employers are focused on a common issue. However, employers and unions have told us that they believe it is not possible to define what is connected or “common reasons” in a suitable, clear way and that this could lead to more litigation. They tell us that attempting to restrict these new rights to connected redundancies in this way would create further burdens, rather than relieving them.
Amendment 141D seeks to exclude seasonal workers or those on fixed-term contracts from the scope of collective redundancy measures in the Bill. First, it may reassure the noble Lord to know that the expiry of a fixed-term contract at the end of its term does not trigger collective consultation obligations. Therefore, any fixed-term contract expiring at the end of its term will not add to the running total for the new threshold introduced for collective redundancies. We will consider further how employees on fixed-term contracts should be counted for the purposes of calculating an employer’s overall workforce that might be needed for the purposes of a national trigger for collective redundancies.
Amendment 141E aims to avoid an obligation to combine consultation by inserting two new subsections into Section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, but new subsection (2A) already strikes the right balance here. Employers will be well placed to determine how to divide consultations appropriately where the national threshold has been met. We agree that each group should receive meaningful collective consultation and intend to set up guidance on this point in a new code of practice.
On Amendment 141F, it is already the case that where collective consultation on redundancies has already begun those redundancies will not be counted when determining whether subsequent new redundancies reach the threshold for collective consultation. We do not believe that this should be extended to exclude employees who have been individually consulted, as individual redundancy consultations have a different character and purpose from collective consultations.
On Amendment 142, we agree with the noble Lord that the threshold number that will trigger collective consultation should be proportionate and not overly and unnecessarily burdensome on employers. However, this amendment is unnecessary and disproportionate to address this issue.
On Amendment 142A, the term “establishment” has already been settled and is well understood in employment law. It works well in practice, so we consider that attempts to change the definition here would create confusion and lead to more litigation with very few clear benefits in return.
Finally, Amendment 142B would undo the Government’s extension of the protective award period to 180 days. This change was made following a full public consultation in October 2024 and has been carefully considered. It makes it harder for unscrupulous employers to price in non-compliance with their collective consultation obligations, as we saw in the case of P&O Ferries. The Government are committed to strengthening employment rights in this landmark legislation. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 141BA.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
The Minister started off by referring to government amendments. I just wonder which amendments he is referring to, because I am not aware that any other government amendments to Clause 57 are planned.
Lord Leong (Lab)
I apologise. I can be much clearer. I said the amendments tabled in the other place which are now under Clause 27.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
This has been a very valuable debate on a very important clause, Clause 27. I am very grateful to my noble friends Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, Lady Lawlor and Lady Coffey, who gave some practical examples, particularly of the unintended consequences of previous legislation. A lot of questions have been raised by the Minister. I do not want to prolong this debate now, so I summarise by saying that there are many questions that we still want to ask and we will be returning to this on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Strategic Defence Review
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Earl of Minto (Con)
My Lords, first, I add to the widespread praise that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, General Sir Richard Barrons and Dr Hill have rightly received for leading and delivering this comprehensive and thorough strategic defence review document. It is indeed a transformational and genuinely strategic review and goes into great depth as to the purpose, intention and delivery of the defence of our nation and our interests abroad in its widest sense. Their emphasis that as a nation, and a proud one at that, we need the entire people of these islands to share, comprehend and be openly supportive of defence and all that we expect of our brave and committed Armed Forces is a point extremely well made. I also thank the Minister for taking the time to meet me yesterday prior to publication of the review. It was much appreciated.
As technological advance changes defence and our preparedness at a frightening pace, it is absolutely right that the entire country supports and has a broad understanding of what the future might hold. The review proposes some 62 recommendations, all of which the Government have accepted, and a number of which have already been in progress from the previous Administration. However, as the Secretary of State for Defence made clear in the other place, the world we live in now contains novel threats that are arguably more dangerous than we have ever faced before. As the spectre of Putin’s Russia looms over Europe’s eastern flanks, we can no longer take peace for granted. The case for transformation is both compelling and immediate.
It is in that vein that we on these Benches welcome the contents of the review: the commitments to continuing the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine programme, to GCAP, to increasing munitions production and to stockpiling are all most positive steps. However, I have a number of concerns. The first, I am sure, will come as no surprise to the Minister: there has been much consternation as to the correct level of funding required, but it is evident that the Overton window on defence spending is shifting rapidly. We on these Benches welcome the Government’s announcement that they will increase the Ministry of Defence budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2027. However, the recommendations in the review all come with a price tag, and the authors were clear that the plan is really affordable only if and when the Government commit to 3%.
As of yet, the Government’s messaging has appeared rather mixed, to put it politely. Most confusing were the Defence Secretary’s comments this morning on “BBC Breakfast” that the Government have an ambition to reach 3% by 2034, then that he was 100% confident that 3% was achievable in the next Parliament and then that reaching 3% was predicated on economic growth. It appears that all the Government have given are vague statements that—in the fullness of time, in due course, when conditions allow and at the appropriate juncture—they may raise defence spending to the 3% required. It is surely a position that Sir Humphrey would be thrilled with, so can the Minister confirm that all the recommendations in the review can be paid for in full within the current spending limits?
That becomes even more important when we consider the recent overtures from NATO. We have seen today that the Secretary-General will strongly push member states to bolster their budgets to 3.5% annually, plus 1.5% for defence infrastructure. The Danish Prime Minister has stated that waiting until the 2030s to boost defence spending will be “too late”, and the former Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has said that he is “really worried” that the Government are not acting fast enough on defence. Can the Minister confirm that the UK will follow NATO’s likely new targets when they are set at the Hague summit?
I have two further observations. First, there appears to be a slight lack of focus on amphibious capabilities. In fact, there are only three mentions of the word “amphibious” in the document. Given that the Government have scrapped HMS “Bulwark” and “Albion”, thereby leaving the Royal Navy with no landing platform docks and relying solely on the Bay class ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, ships that themselves are ageing rapidly, can the Minister provide further clarity on the future of the UK’s amphibious capabilities?
Secondly, the Minister will not be surprised to hear that I would have hoped for further measures on the reform of the structures within the Ministry of Defence. There is no doubt in my mind, from the albeit limited time that I served there, that there is considerable scope for streamlining, updating and commercialising large components of the overall modus operandi. In my view, the MoD has outdated views and practices, particularly in the areas of risk management, the concept of change and commercial imperative, that restrict the productivity and effectiveness of such a critical and large organisation.
Page 65 of the document mentions the increasing use of AI within the MoD to enable the department to redeploy staff currently working in finance, human resources and commercial functions, thereby aiming to reduce the Civil Service costs by 10%. That is of course a positive step, although perhaps a little unambitious, but it also states that the focus should be on productivity rather than headcount. Given that the MoD civilian personnel headcount was 61,706 as of 1 April 2025, almost as large as the British Army itself, is there not a compelling case for looking at how we might streamline the Civil Service radically within the Ministry of Defence?
Further, the review calls for the creation of a number of newly formatted bodies: a defence investors’ advisory group, a defence innovation organisation and a defence research and evaluation organisation. My concern here is that these new bodies could simply add to the already intricate web of overlapping and competing organisations and agencies of the MoD, thereby confusing the structure rather than enhancing it.
As the Minister knows well, many additions are made for valid reasons, but rarely are existing structures dismantled to make way for innovation. For example, we already have the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, which was split from the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency in 2001, with responsibilities for advanced technological research. How will the new defence innovation organisation and defence research and evaluation organisation fit in with DSTL? We must ensure that there is no duplication of functions if we are to have, as the review sets out, a policy of “one defence”. The critically creative work undertaken by DSTL needs as much freedom from interference as possible for it to flourish and deliver exception.
I have a final question for the Minister. Given the importance of the review and the significance of its recommendations, I hope the Government will provide time for a full debate on the strategic defence review to allow the House to fully consider the UK’s vital new strategy for defence. The challenge now is how to fund it in full to fulfil the hopes and expectations of the reviewers and the contributors to the limit.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, I start where the noble Earl, Lord Minto, finished by suggesting that it would be extremely welcome for your Lordships’ House to have a full debate on the strategic defence review. It is a full, thorough and detailed review that merits detailed reading. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team have clearly put in a huge amount of work, and it would repay noble Lords and the Armed Forces if we were able to explore at least some of the 62 recommendations in detail.
The review gives many recommendations, some of which have been trailed but some have not, and which are sometimes much more complicated than we might imagine. There are commitments to our Armed Forces, to recruitment and retention and to increasing the number of the reserves. That is the headline, but the detail of the recommendations says that we should increase the size of the reserves “when funding allows”. That gets back to the fundamental question raised by the noble Earl: 2.5% is not going to take us far enough. What plans do His Majesty’s Government have to enable us to implement the 62 recommendations. assuming that the other place and your Lordships’ House, after due scrutiny, agree with the Government that all 62 recommendations should be implemented?
There is clearly a need for a lot of detailed scrutiny because many issues are raised in the review, starting with the essential context that the world has changed a lot since the start of the post-Cold War era, and indeed since the start of the review. Many issues need to be thought about, some of which we have had the opportunity to think about over months and years while others have been floated recently. As the noble Earl, Lord Minto, pointed out at Questions, the commitment to the nuclear deterrent is obviously important and welcome. I was expecting to see the noble Lord, Lord West, here to take up the discussions on the future of sea capabilities; the transformation of the carriers is presumably something on which he could run a Question for Short Debate by himself.
There are many detailed questions about capabilities and procurement but also about transitions—for example, the upgraded Typhoons. Are we sending back the existing Typhoons for an upgrade or procuring more of them and keeping the production of the Typhoon going, pending the introduction of Tempest? There are a lot of questions about procurement that are worth considering.
There are also questions not just about the headline figure of 2.5% of spending but about savings. On page 5, there is a suggestion that £6 billion of new savings will be found, and then there is talk of spending £11 billion. Does the £11 billion include the £6 billion that has just been found from savings and is now being recycled, or is the £11 billion new money? There are a lot of issues that would probably merit longer than the Minister will have for his response today.
There is one welcome point in terms of recruitment. It is very welcome that a little bit of recommendation 16 suggests that the medical requirements will differ from role to role, because that has clearly been part of the recruitment difficulty. That is very welcome, as are the commitments to improving accommodation and the defence industrial base. There are many more questions than I have time to ask and the Minister has time to answer, but we welcome the review and look forward to working with the Government over the next decade and beyond.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Earl, Lord Minto, for their contributions and their overall general welcome for the review. I turn to my noble friend Lord Robertson and say how fantastic the report is and how professionally he has conducted himself with the experience he has brought to bear on this.
The contribution that my noble friend, General Barrons and Fiona Hill have made is not only to the report but to the overall effectiveness of the security of our nation, the security of our allies and the pursuance of the goals that we all hold dear. That is something that, as the noble Earl, Lord Minto, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, pointed out, is shared across this House. Many congratulations to him for that.
I take on board the points that both the noble Earl and the noble Baroness made. It is not a matter for me in terms of a day’s debate or whatever, but I will ensure that that point is made to my noble friend Lord Kennedy, the Chief Whip. I am sure the usual channels can consider that so that we may get the opportunity to discuss this in more detail.
Before I deal with some of the detailed points that have been raised, I will say that what is really important about this debate, which is why perhaps we need longer, is that different Members of this House will have different points they will wish to make about the report and the review. There is a debate about funding but the overall direction of travel this sets out for us is something that this place and the country can get behind. We face the new geopolitical challenges of today, the state-on-state threat that we thought had gone. We are now in a new age. We need to reconfigure our Armed Forces in a way which meets that challenge. We need to look at homeland defence. We need to look at the reserves. We need to look at the new threats such as those to underwater cables and underwater technology. We need to look at the threats that cyber presents to us. We need to look at how we protect the critical national infrastructure of our country. We need to look at the alliances we can build, not only in Europe but across the globe.
There is one thing laid out in the report and the review which is really important as we discuss this. It sets out that, yes, this is a NATO-first policy—it sees Europe as the priority for the defence and security of our nation—but it also says it is not a NATO-only policy. It recognises the political and geopolitical contexts in other parts of the world where we have a responsibility as well. I just say to my noble friend Lord Robertson and those who have contributed to this report that I think the direction of travel is the really important thing for us to discuss, and there are many points that many of us could make.
To address some of those points, it is quite right for the noble Earl, Lord Minto, to point to AUKUS and the development of that—the commitment of up to 12 additional nuclear-powered submarines as part of the AUKUS development and the AUKUS treaty. Time and again I was asked in this House about the commitment to GCAP. GCAP is maintained in that.
On the munitions stockpile, time and again many of us have thought about the way in which Ukraine, which has been a wake-up call for us, has led to the situation where we have not had sufficient stockpiles. The report lays out £6 billion for that, of which £1.5 billion will contribute to six new munitions factories. I have already had discussions about who in private industry may work with that and others have had discussions as well. All of that is taking place.
On funding, there will be debates and no doubt question after question will be that it is not sufficient—the demand to have 3.5% at NATO. If some other noble Lords were here, they would be demanding 4%. What about the 5% that they have heard President Trump may want? All I can say is that the Government’s policy is well known in this House. It is 2.5% by April 2027, with the ambition to reach 3% in the next Parliament. All the things in the report from my noble friend Lord Robertson and others have been brought about with the understanding that that is the financial envelope within which that works.
On some of the other questions, we are committed to amphibious capabilities. The noble Earl will know that we have the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships which provide that at the moment. He will know that fleet support ships will be built in Belfast to help support that. He will also know that the new First Sea Lord, with his background, will ensure that there is no shortage of amphibious capability, which will be important as well.
The noble Earl talked about reform within the Ministry of Defence. He will know just alongside this that defence reform has seen the creation of a military arm headed by the CDS, who is now in charge of all the service chiefs; the department of state; the new national armaments directorate, which will try to deliver the procurement savings and the more effective delivery that the noble Earl quite rightly points out are needed; and the nuclear arm as well.
The use of AI is another area that the report mentioned, and the use of that with the research that will be available to it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked whether the noble Lord, Lord West, was here. I am sure he would welcome the carriers and the suggestion in the report, which I think is a really good one, that carriers are adapted to that hybrid-type platform which not only allows jets to take off but has all sorts of autonomous capability both above and below the sea to operate off that, with missiles able to be fired. I think that is a use of the carriers. If noble Lords remember, there was some discussion about all of those, so I think that is a really good suggestion.
On recruitment and retention, many noble Lords have talked about the need for more in the Army. They will have seen the Secretary of State’s point that our ambition is to increase the Army to 76,000. But we cannot, as it stands, get the number of regular soldiers that are budgeted for. We have just over 70,000—70,500, I think I am right in saying—when the target figure is 73,600. The recruitment and retention points that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, points to are crucial if we are to deliver that. Some of the changes we have brought about—pay, accommodation, housing, childcare —seek to address that point. There are so many other issues around reserves and all that sort of thing which may come, quite rightly, from noble Lords, who will question how we are going to achieve those things.
I finish by saying that this House can unite around the fact that we have had an excellent report from my noble friend Lord Robertson, which sets out a direction of travel. There will be debate and discussion within that report as to what the correct balance is, what should be funded, what perhaps should be given a greater priority. We have accepted all those 62 recommendations. We are delighted with the way that the report sets out for us a sense of where this country can go in terms of establishing Armed Forces who fight the battles of today and the future and not those of the past. In that way, we can defend our democracy, defend our continent and stand up for our interests globally. As such, I think we should unite behind it.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, there is significant interest in this Statement. Can I urge brevity from both noble Lords and my noble friend the Minister in order to get in as many colleagues as possible?
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, I join all previous speakers in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team. Would my noble friend the Minister agree that, since the end of national service, there has developed a worrying gap between the citizens and the military? One way of bridging that would be to ensure a fair regional distribution of the new jobs that will be created by this review. Will the Government commit to that and perhaps produce some map or plan showing that jobs will be created across the whole of the UK?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
On the first point about the need for us to reassert and highlight the link between the Armed Forces and the general population, I think my noble friend is right. I have some optimism about this, although I think the Government could reflect on how we do it. The report talks about greater use of the military in terms of education in our schools in the appropriate way. I think that might be one consideration. I do not know whether my noble friend agrees, but I thought that the VE Day celebrations—the increase in cadets and the numbers of young people out on our streets celebrating and commemorating the sacrifice of those in the Second World War—give us some optimism that that link can be re-established. Perhaps as politicians we should be more proactive in standing up for that, and not being embarrassed to call for that recognition.
On my noble friend’s second point, page 52 of my noble friend Lord Robertson’s report has a map that illustrates some of the ways in which the jobs and industries of defence will be spread across the nations and regions of the UK. My noble friend Lord Dodds, who sometimes thinks—as I do—that Northern Ireland is missed out, will be delighted to see that Northern Ireland is included. All the nations and regions are mentioned; these are just some illustrated examples. There are many more, and we should make sure that is a reality.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, I declare my registered interest as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. I refer to the Statement:
“We will establish continuous submarine production through investments in Barrow and Derby that will enable us to produce a submarine every 18 months”.
That is a pretty ambitious timetable. Could the Minister say a little more on how we will co-ordinate this, not only in Barrow but across government, so that we can meet that timetable?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Can I apologise? I always forget this, and if the standards people come after me, I am really sorry; I should have mentioned that my son-in-law is in the reserves. I apologise to the House for not stating again that my son-in-law is an active member of the reserves.
On the ability to produce the number of submarines the noble Baroness mentioned, she will know there has been huge investment in Barrow in order to be able to deliver. There is now dual-line production, which will mean the ability to produce more submarines at speed will be possible. That sort of adaption and need for investment shows the fact that, over a period of time, we have allowed the sovereign manufacturing capability of this country to develop the defence equipment it needs perhaps to not have the priority it deserves. One of the things my noble friend Lord Robertson’s report says is that we need to ensure we have a sovereign capability to produce the equipment and munitions we need. Submarines will be part of that.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
My Lords, I want to make a contribution and ask a question. I have spent 10 months answering questions, so there is a slight difficulty involved in that. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether in future, to this House and the public outside, he will emphasise the fact that this was not a Labour defence review? It was designed specifically to be a strategic review that would incorporate other elements of the country. Not only did we consult as many people as we could—we got 8,000 submissions through our invitation—but I asked a former distinguished Conservative Minister for defence procurement, Sir Jeremy Quin, to be part of our team. Throughout the whole of that, he was of invaluable assistance.
This report is not simply about warships and missiles. It is about reforming the whole way in which we deliver defence. After all, defence expenditure is the premium we spend for an insurance policy, not only for the current generation but for generations to come. I hope that is something Ministers will be making clear to the outside world.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I think my noble friend has just demonstrated why the report has been such a success. There may be things that divide people in this Chamber. There may be debates to be had, and quite genuine disagreements. I have always said, and I have always tried to reflect as a Minister of State for the Ministry of Defence, that that is a real privilege. It is predicated on the basis that I do not believe that anyone in this House wishes to undermine the defence and security of our nation. We all have that at the front of our minds. My noble friend is right to point out that the public should understand that. We believe that we have the interests of our country and of our alliances—of our friends and allies—at the forefront of our minds.
My noble friend’s remark about the fact that the right honourable Sir Jeremy Quin has been involved in the review is a good example of that cross-party support. I also know that, in my time in this office, the noble Earl, Lord Minto, the noble Baronesses, Lady Goldie and Lady Smith, and many others, including the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, through his responsibility as chair of the International Relations and Defence Committee, have contributed, along with many of my noble friends who have experience. That brings together a wealth of experience and talent that can only make any report better.
On the noble Lord’s last point, an important point needs to be made. It is not only about the amount of money that we spend; we have to be clearer about what we spend it on in order to meet the threats of the future. That is an important point that the report makes as well.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a serving Army Reserve officer. Page 70 recommends only a modest increase in the active reserve of 20%, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, pointed out. Finland’s reserve—albeit it uses a different intake model—consists of over 800,000 trained soldiers, and that is warfighting readiness. Will a defence readiness Bill be forthcoming and much more ambitious and robust in respect of the active reserve?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I will make one suggestion to the noble Lord: perhaps he and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and others in this Chamber who have professional experience and expertise with respect to reserves, will set up a meeting with me about how we might more effectively reach the target of an increase of 20% by the 2030s. I would appreciate the experience and ideas that the noble Lord might have on that.
The defence readiness Bill will come after the Armed Forces Bill in the autumn. The concept of defence readiness is, again, that we face a new type of threat, not only potentially of missiles or state actors but of cyberattack and the disablement of critical national infrastructure. I do not know whether the noble Lord realises, but the Defence Secretary pointed out yesterday that the MoD has had 90,000 state actor threats in the last two years—that is an astonishing figure—and we have seen big business bodies affected by cyberattack. The defence readiness Bill will be about asking how we protect critical national infrastructure and what we need to do to prepare for something happening. Are we ready to defend ourselves, protect our population and ensure that things continue? The defence readiness Bill will help us understand that and develop the sorts of structures we need to do that. Of course, people will be at the heart of it. That Bill will come some time at the beginning of 2026.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, thanks are indeed due to my noble friend Lord Robertson and his team for this review, and to the Minister and the Secretary of State for the vigour with which they have addressed the challenge of redressing the balance in the priority we give to the defence of our nation. They ought to be congratulated. However, my experience of two comprehensive spending reviews has taught me that CSRs never fully meet the expectations of the Ministry of Defence. I speak from experience of a time in which we were spending more on defence, as a proportion of our GDP, than we are today. Having said that, can the Minister therefore give us an assurance that his department and the Treasury are looking at innovative mechanisms to supplement defence spending, potentially including peace bonds? There has to be a conversation with the British people about how we fund defence. The strategic defence review gives us an honest and clear basis for that conversation, but we have to be prepared to spend more and we have to be prepared and willing to spend more effectively. We have to use innovative mechanisms to raise the money to do so.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I say to my noble friend that, as this progresses, it may be that we have to look at innovative and different ways of funding. I am no expert on all these things, but I am not averse to looking at any novel or innovative ways in which funds may be raised.
There is a more general point to be made. The current threats mean that we have to ensure that our Armed Forces have the funds and resources that they need—I think people recognise that. Difficult decisions were made about funding the increase to 2.5%, and people accepted that because of the new threats that we face. We need to continue to make the point that there cannot be security for nations or countries without armed forces. You cannot do anything about poverty or refugees being moved and a whole range of other things unless you have security. Security delivers the stability that we need to live the lives that we want.
Lord Houghton of Richmond (CB)
I briefly add my congratulations to the authorship of this review. It is, in my view, the most considered, professional and comprehensive review that I have ever seen at close quarters. However, the spectre of fiscal pressure attends every chapter and every page. If this is not funded, it is not a review but a delusion. The reviews that I have known—as vice-chief, chief and all that—have fallen foul of the same problem: a delusional delivery through some alchemy of efficiency, technical superiority, lethality or a new design of battle. The Ministry of Defence will not be capable—it is not viable—of funding this by some internal alchemy of efficiency. As the previous speaker said, we need to find the money elsewhere. This country can easily afford the Armed Forces it needs. If it does not, it will be a laughing stock. What it cannot afford is 9 million people of working age drawing benefits.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I thank the noble and gallant Lord for the warm welcome that he gave to the report of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. I know that the direction of travel that it sets out is supported by the noble and gallant Lord, and I thank him for that. He lays out the challenge for the Government. He knows what the Government’s position is with respect to funding. People will have heard his continuous campaigning and demand for additional resources. We are, as a Government, committed to ensuring that the recommendations of the report from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, are implemented, and we will do all that we can to see that that happens.
Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and generally offer my support for the review. Everything that we have talked about has to be underpinned by good logistical and operational support. The Minister will not be surprised that I immediately looked to find where the RFA sat within the report. I was pleased to find that page 106 acknowledges the critical role played by the RFA. Is the Minister and the MoD more widely concerned—notwithstanding my noble friend Lord Minto’s point about amphibious capabilities—that the RFA has only three Bay-class vessels, aged between 16 and 25 years old, and that the newest vessel, “Stirling Castle”, has been acquired by the Royal Navy due to lack of personnel? I do not really understand what the review means when it says that the Royal Navy will be
“using commercial vessels and burden-sharing with NATO Allies to augment the … RFA … Fleet … in non-contested environments”.
Does the Minister agree with the review and with me about the essential need to support the RFA, which underpins everything?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
I absolutely agree with the point about the RFA, which is crucial. The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that the long-running dispute with respect to pay was resolved as part of our attempts to ensure that the RFA was properly supported and its personnel properly respected and given the pay that they deserve. On the issue of commercial vessels, it is about the innovative ways—that is part of the report—of seeing whether, in certain circumstances, commercial ships are required to support the RFA in its function to deliver the supplies that may be needed to support our warships. Obviously, you would do that in situations where it was safe to do so—but that would be augmenting the RFA, not replacing it. Those sorts of imaginative solutions to deal with some of the problems will give us the capacity and capability that we need.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, for his second very fine strategic defence review. He has done a service to all of us on that. I want to ask about a very specific point. In response to the changing nature of conflict, the review includes plans for several things, including a new digital warfighters group, the creation of a cyber EM command and the creation of a digital targeting web. I know that the Minister cannot be specific on timelines for that, but can he give some general indication, because it seems to me that that is a vital element of modernising our capability?
Lord Coaker (Lab)
Some of the timelines will clearly need to be clarified. On the general point, all the things that my noble friend has mentioned are critical to move from the forces that we have to the integrated force that is essential—not the joint force but the integrated force. We need to make that happen as soon as we can.
Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)
My Lords, the Minister mentioned the recruitment gap earlier. I had the privilege last week of spending the week with the Royal Gurkha Rifles, and I must say how impressed I was. We take only 250 Gurkha recruits every year, out of 12,500 keen applicants. I suggest that there is a potential opportunity there, and one that the Government might take.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
That is a good suggestion, and I will look at it and try to take it forward.
Lord De Mauley (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Council of Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations, with a bit of a history with the Reserve Forces. I thank the Minister for his call yesterday, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team. My welcome of the SDR is caveated slightly on the apparent gulf between the ambition, which it is difficult to fault, and the funding, which is more concerning. There are a number of issues that I would like to debate, but I will pick just one for this evening. The SDR places a welcome emphasis on home defence and resilience, yet it also acknowledges that:
“A more substantive body of work is necessary to ensure the security and resilience of critical national infrastructure … and the essential services it delivers”.
The Minister mentioned just now that he would address the issue of timelines. I am asking him to include in that thinking about and telling us about the timelines for that important piece of work.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
In a similar vein to my answer to my noble friend Lord Reid, some of these timelines will need to be discussed and worked out to ensure that they are deliverable. Let me say to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, that his point is well made; clearly, we need to get on with that task. There is an urgency to much of this, and we need to address that and ensure that we make much of this happen as soon as possible.
Employment Rights Bill
Tuesday 3rd June 2025
(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
Lords ChamberEmployment Rights Bill 2024-26 View all Employment Rights Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 81-VI(a) Amendments for Committee (Supplementary to the Sixth Marshalled List) - (3 Jun 2025)
Lord Hendy
“(2A) In section 189 (complaint and protective award), after subsection (2) insert—“(2A) Any such declaration may be enforced in the High Court as if it were a declaration of the High Court and, for the avoidance of doubt, such enforcement may include—(a) an Order to comply with the declaration of the employment tribunal,(b) a Declaration that any dismissal which should have been but was not subject to compliance with section 188 or section 188A is void and of no effect, and(c) in relation to any failure to comply with an Order of the High Court, proceedings for contempt of Court.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to provide a remedy for a breach of s.188 or 188A given that the doubling of the protective award appears may be unlikely to deter employers such as P&O Ferries where the value of the protective award can be calculated to be outweighed by the benefit of reduced wages over time.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 143 is intended to provide a tougher remedy for breach of the obligation, which is a very modest one, to consult in cases of collective redundancy. At present, the remedy is an award of loss of earnings capped at a maximum of 90 days, which the Bill proposes to increase to 180 days. My amendment is not concerned with that. It proposes judicial intervention to prevent the breach, or at least to restore the position prior to the breach. So, where a declaration has been made by an employment tribunal, the union should be entitled to go to the High Court to obtain an order to enforce that declaration. The employment tribunal does not itself have the jurisdiction to make such an order; indeed, it does not have the power to enforce its own orders. That is why it is necessary for workers to issue further proceedings in the county court if their employer fails to pay a tribunal award.
The amendment makes it clear that any dismissal which should have been subject to Section 188 of the 1992 Act but was not will be void and of no effect, so the obligation to continue to pay wages and to honour the other incidents of employment will continue until the employer has fulfilled its legal duty. I should add, in case any of your Lordships doubt it, that the High Court does indeed have the power to restrain dismissal and declare a purported dismissal void and of no effect. The court has often done so where the dismissal was unlawful because, in breach of contract, the power is still more apposite where the unlawfulness is breach of a statutory duty.
Finally, the amendment puts beyond doubt that the normal consequences of non-compliance with an order of the High Court will apply: that the company and any officer personally frustrating the order may be subject to proceedings for contempt of court, including fine, sequestration and, in the most egregious cases, imprisonment.
The rationale for my amendment is obvious. We are talking about a situation in which an employer has broken or proposes to break the law by throwing a significant number of people out of work without properly consulting on measures which might have avoided that situation. A very limited financial penalty is plainly not enough to dissuade lawbreakers, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, recognised. What is required is not just a more dissuasive remedy but one which prevents the unlawful situation, or at least restores the situation to lawfulness, so far as it can be restored. Only the High Court has the power to do that.
There is another reason: the need to comply with international law which the UK has voluntarily ratified. Conventions 87 and 98 of the International Labour Organization will need more detailed consideration in later amendments, but for current purposes it is enough to note that, together, they require member states—not just ratifying states—to respect and protect freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively. Compliance with international law is the eighth of Lord Bingham’s principles of the rule of law, and the importance of compliance with international law was emphasised by the Attorney-General in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute last week. It matters not whether the provision in question relates to trade, the environment, security, labour or any other matter, and compliance is not restricted to the black letter of the treaty but also required of the decisions of the bodies appointed by the treaty to supervise compliance with it.
One such constitutional body of the ILO is the tripartite Committee on Freedom of Association, which consists of representatives of government, employers and workers. On 8 November 2023, it published its decision on a complaint brought against the United Kingdom by Nautilus International, the RMT, the TUC and a number of international trade union federations. This arose out of the P&O Ferries scandal mentioned earlier this evening. At 7 am on St Patrick’s Day 2022, the employer summarily dismissed 786 seafarers, with security guards escorting them from the ships past waiting coachloads of agency staff from third-world, cheap-labour countries recruited to replace them.
The report says that the committee notes the complainants’ indication that
“while breaches of the UK law entitle claims to be made in an employment tribunal, such claims are subject to statutorily fixed (and very modest) maxima; for this reason, the company was able to quantify with precision what the cost of the dismissals would be and to assess how long it would be before that cost could be recouped from future profits generated by the poverty wages and diminished terms and conditions of the new crews. The complainants thus allege that the dismissal of 786 seafarers to replace them with non-unionized agency workers constitutes an act of anti-union discrimination. The complainants further allege that the existing legislation is insufficient to deter anti-union discrimination as in practice, employers can, on condition that they pay the compensation prescribed by the law for cases of unfair dismissals, dismiss any worker for being a trade union member with better terms and conditions under a collective agreement. The Committee recalls in this respect that protection against acts of anti-union discrimination would appear to be inadequate if an employer can resort to subcontracting as a means of evading in practice the rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining … The Committee considers that it would not appear that sufficient protection against acts of anti-union discrimination, as set out in Convention No. 98, is granted by legislation in cases where employers can in practice, on condition that they pay the compensation prescribed by law for cases of unjustified dismissal, dismiss any worker, if the true reason is the worker’s trade union membership or activities … The Committee recalls that the Government must ensure an adequate and efficient system of protection against acts of anti-union discrimination, which should include sufficiently dissuasive sanctions and prompt means of redress, emphasizing reinstatement as an effective means of redress … Furthermore, the compensation should be adequate, taking into account both the damage incurred and the need to prevent the repetition of such situations in the future … The Committee therefore requests the Government to ensure an adequate and efficient system of protection against acts of anti-union discrimination, which should include sufficiently dissuasive sanctions and prompt means of redress, emphasizing reinstatement as an effective means of redress”.
Of course, there the committee considered that the collective dismissals were in order to avoid long-standing collective agreements which provided for notice of dismissal and consultation over proposed redundancies, which it regarded as anti-union discrimination. That situation will not occur in every collective redundancy—of course that is the case—but it will be true in many, though not all, collective redundancy situations. I should add that what we are looking at here are really bad employers. The remedy that I am proposing will not be used against good employers that do their best to deal with the situation.
The tribunal remedies which the committee considered very modest were not just for failure to consult over collective dismissal but included compensation for unfair dismissal. Here we are considering the even more modest, statutorily capped compensation for failure to consult. As the committee held, what is needed are
“sufficiently dissuasive sanctions and prompt means of redress, emphasising reinstatement as an effective means of redress”.
Only an injunction will achieve that outcome. That would have stopped P&O Ferries in its tracks.
I say to my noble friend the Minister that I can see no reason not to add this remedy to those available to restrain such unlawful activity. While the increase in maximum award, from 90 to 180 days—as the tribunal has to assess compensation as what is just and equitable up to that cap—is not sufficient in itself, since injunctions are available for breach of contract, why are they not for breach of statute as well? I beg to move.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his powerful and clear speech; he has said it all. I just want to add that this issue has arisen from the P&O scandal that took place three years ago. The maritime unions are particularly concerned about this, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to provide some comfort for the arguments that have been presented. The issue of pre-emptive injunctive relief for seafarers and other workers is a crucial issue and it is possible that we will need to return to it on Report.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I appreciate the intent behind Amendment 143. After all, we are all familiar with the high-profile cases, such as P&O Ferries, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, referred in his introduction.
I cannot pretend that I was au fait with the case details that the noble Lord explained, but we have some concerns about the practical and legal consequences of what is being proposed here. It seems to us that the amendment would allow employment tribunals to declare dismissals void and as having no effect; therefore, in effect, reinstating employees regardless of circumstances.
That is a major departure from the current legal framework, where the remedy for a breach is compensation, not nullification. That obviously raises serious questions. What happens if a dismissal is declared void months later? Is the employee reinstated, and are they entitled to back pay? What if the role no longer exists or has been filled? For many businesses and many workers, that would create uncertainty and not protection.
There is also the issue of enforcement. Giving tribunal decisions the force of the High Court, and allowing contempt proceedings for breach, risks confusing two fundamentally different judicial systems. Tribunals are meant to be accessible and the High Court is not.
I also question whether this change would meaningfully deter bad-faith employers. Those who already factor in the cost of breaking the law may simply budget for this risk too. Meanwhile, small and medium-sized employers acting in good faith could face disproportionate legal exposure for administrative or technical errors. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for tabling Amendment 143.
The Government agree that employers should not be able to deliberately ignore their obligations, and it should never be financially beneficial to do so. However, this amendment would offer a disproportionate response to address the issue. First, employment tribunals have jurisdiction over the majority of employment matters, including the enforcement of protective awards in cases of collective redundancy. It would not be appropriate to amend this jurisdiction solely for collective redundancy cases and it would lead to a disparity within the legal structure governing employment rights and their enforcement.
Furthermore, Section 15 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 already offers routes for affected individuals to pursue unpaid employment tribunal awards via the county courts, for England and Wales, and the sheriff courts, for Scotland. Finally, the amendment may have the unintended consequence of an increase in scenarios where employers are forced to become insolvent in response to both paying a protective award and requiring the reinstatement of affected employees.
Responsible employers across the country already go further than the current obligations to consult collectively. They agree with the Government that collective consultation with their workforce is a valuable tool in finding solutions to some of the challenging situations that employers find themselves in. Clause 29 closes a loophole in our collective redundancy legislation which meant that P&O Ferries could not be prosecuted when it dismissed people without warning, including because they worked abroad on foreign-registered ships. This goes some way to addressing the ILO’s concerns about the lack of an effective remedy. Our measure to confer powers on Ministers to create a mandatory seafarers’ charter will also help to create a level playing field in the sector and prevent such events happening again. A couple of amendments in subsequent groups will address that issue.
Doubling the protected period means that employees who were not afforded any consultation when being made redundant will now be awarded up to 180 days’ pay. Employment tribunals can award a further uplift of up to 25% where an employer unreasonably fails to comply with the code of practice on dismissal and re-engagement. Taken together, these measures increase the potential statutory payout per person far beyond that which P&O Ferries offered to dismissed employees. This clause will provide a balanced approach that gives certainty to employers, employees and tribunals, and will provide an increased deterrence against deliberate breaches of the collective redundancy requirements, without disproportionately penalising employers which attempt to comply with their obligations.
I hope that this provides some assurance to my noble friend, and I therefore ask that his amendment be withdrawn.
Lord Hendy (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Davies for his support. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, for his contribution. In response to him, I note that the proposal is not that employment tribunals should make a declaration that a dismissal was void and of no effect. Instead, the idea is that the High Court will make a declaration based on another declaration already made by the employment tribunal that the employer has breached the law by failing to consult—or by failing to consult properly.
The remedy I am proposing, since it is going to be in the hands of a High Court judge, will not be granted for technical or administrative errors; it will be for only the most egregious breaches.
On the point that an injunction might be granted months later, that cannot be so because delay will always defeat an injunction. Injunctions are only ever granted if the application is brought in a timely fashion, and whatever the court orders can be fulfilled.
I am grateful for the Minister’s very full response. I am not sure that the measure I propose is disproportionate —it is intended only for the most egregious breaches of the duty to consult—or that it distorts the remedies available for employment matters. As my noble friend pointed out, employment tribunal awards already have to be enforced in the civil courts and not by tribunals themselves. I am not sure about the unintended consequences. I know everything he says about The Seafarers’ Charter; my concern is with those on land. I have heard everything he says with sympathy, and on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Davies of Brixton
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment applies the provisions for collective redundancy notices for ships’ crew to ships providing a service entering a harbour in Great Britain on at least 52 occasions in the relevant period.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
My Lords, I ask noble Lords to cast their minds back three years to 24 March 2022, when the P&O Ferries chief executive officer Peter Hebblethwaite made it clear to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee that he knew that his decision to sack 786 British seafarers broke the law. He went on to explain that he knew there would be penalties to pay, but these were simply, in his view, a cost of business. He even had the audacity to say that he would make the same decision again.
My noble friend Lord Hendy has already dealt with this, but it is a crucial issue which has raised important questions about how industrial relations operate in this country. The gross premeditation of the company’s action was evident to the whole country, as private security guards boarded ferries to physically force the crew out of work, to be replaced by cheaper agency crew recruited internationally and oblivious to the circumstances.
I have been relatively modest in putting all my proposed amendments in a single group, given the extent of the degrouping of amendments that has taken place. There are three issues being dealt with here: first, the need to widen the scope of the promised seafarer’s charter, mentioned by my noble friend the Minister; secondly, the need to reduce the threshold for the application of The Seafarers’ Charter in terms of visits by ships to UK ports; and thirdly, to ensure the necessary monitoring of the effectiveness of the legislation.
On the need to increase flexibility in The Seafarers’ Charter, the key amendment is 200AD; the rest are consequential. These amendments provide the flexibility to strengthen the mandatory seafarers’ charter, in addition to standards on pay and roster patterns. They are constructive in spirit and look to explore the Government’s position on mandatory employment standards for seafarers at work today and in the future.
Back in 2023, on the first anniversary of the scandal, Labour’s shadow Employment and shadow Transport Ministers committed the party to a mandatory seafarers’ charter as a direct response to this appalling episode. In a joint article in the Independent they wrote:
“The P&O scandal was … supposed to draw a line in the sand for seafarers’ rights. But for too many low-cost operators, their business model is based on exploitation. That is why we will introduce a strong, legally-binding Seafarers Charter that smashes the business model dependent on the cruel manipulation of vulnerable workers from around the world. This will mandate an agreement between unions, government and employers on minimum protections for pay, roster patterns, crewing levels, pensions, taxation and training”.
The unions, together with many MPs and Peers, continue to support that explicit aim for the charter set out by the Labour Party.
I also understand that the RMT was given ministerial assurances only last December that there would be flexibility to add employment conditions to the mandatory charter. Regrettably, DfT and DBT officials now tell us there will be no flexibility, citing difficulties around compliance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. We are told that UNCLOS prevents the Government adding other employment conditions such as sick pay, holiday pay and pensions. This is hard to understand, and I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could explain. Even the voluntary seafarers’ welfare charter, introduced by the last Government in July 2023, includes sick pay and pension rights, as does the French Government’s legally binding seafarers’ charter, introduced on ferry routes to the UK in June 2024.
I beg the Minister to help us understand why national legislation on pay and hours of work for seafarers on international routes from UK ports is UNCLOS-compliant, but other areas of employment, including remuneration such as sick pay, holiday pay and pensions, are not compliant. If the Minister cannot do so in reply to this debate, a summary of the Government’s position should be circulated before Report. I ask the Minister to meet with the unions to explain why we have ended up in this situation. I reiterate that a public promise was made by the then shadow Secretary of State for Transport and the then shadow Minister for the Future of Work that the charter would cover not just pay and rosters but other issues, including sick pay, pensions and training.
Amendments 200AA, 200AB and 200AC deal with the threshold for application of the seafarers’ charter created in Schedule 5. We of course welcome the seafarers’ charter, but its effectiveness is set by the criteria which apply in terms of the rate at which the ships concerned visit UK ports. Clearly, the lower the figure for the number of visits required, the greater the proportion of seafarers who will have the necessary protection. In simple terms, the proposed amendments bring ships that call weekly in UK ports within scope, in contrast with the Bill, which requires more than twice-weekly visits.
I make no secret of my desire to see as many seafarers covered as possible, and not, in effect, limiting this to those who work on roll-on, roll-off ferries. Most ships that regularly work in UK waters are not that type of vessel. According to DfT statistics, over 160,000 seafarers are employed in the UK shipping industry and where possible, we must use the Bill and future legislation to equalise their employment rights with land-based workers.
The previous Government introduced a threshold of 120 calls per year in Section 3 of the Seafarers Wages Act. When that legislation was going through the Lords, the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, responded to an amendment from my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe on this matter, stating that 52 calls per year
“would catch too many vessels that we did not intend to catch and would be overreach in terms of the current settlement with the international shipping community”.—[Official Report, 12/10/22; col. GC 102.]
Baroness Whitaker (Lab)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group and will speak to my Amendment 200ABA. Our seafarers are the engine of a vital part of our trading economy, but their conditions of work are often out of sight and out of mind. Among other problems, as set out by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, the gender imbalance and isolation on most ships has resulted, sadly, in risks for women which need clear measures of protection.
Of the 23,700 United Kingdom seafarers counted in 2024, only 16% were female. These were mainly among ratings and uncertificated officers—that is, those with the least authority and power. I heard of a nasty case of rape on a cruise ship, where the victim, significantly, said that she had no help from the HR department because she was too shocked to report it immediately. She was advised that her only recourse was to leave the ship, because the perpetrator was needed on board—a not uncommon reaction. Some privately owned super- yachts require applicants for jobs to submit photographs and “be comfortable with nudity”, which gives a flavour of the work environment.
Research from the Seafarers International Research Centre at Cardiff University shows how fearful women seafarers on cargo ships are of sexual assault and how lonely they can feel in their workplace. We have now the seafarers’ charter, announced by the Government last December. This provides the vehicle for vastly improved standards for seafarers’ working conditions, but it needs to clarify that it will specify protection against sexual harassment and bullying—hence my amendment.
Our shipping force is declining, not least in the retention of women, and there are skills gaps. This has put pressure on workplace standards, resulting in seafarers in general having a higher rate of sickness and accidents than onshore workpeople. There are industry initiatives to encourage recruitment, but little thought on making workplaces safe, convenient and welcoming to women. We can attract more people into it if everyone feels safe.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for so clearly setting out the case for a range of amendments. As he made clear, the matters under discussion go to the heart of how we uphold standards for those who work at sea, an essential part of our economy and infrastructure. Of course, we are all well aware of the extent to which the events surrounding P&O Ferries in 2022 were a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities that are faced by seafarers operating in and around UK waters. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for reminding us of some pretty stark situations that are faced by people who work in this environment.
I was very pleased and proud when the Conservative Government took clear and concrete steps to improve protections, most notably through the Seafarers Wages Act 2023, the introduction of the voluntary seafarers’ charter and a broader nine-point plan aimed at promoting fairer treatment and higher standards across the sector. These reforms represent a record of action that reflects the seriousness with which we take the obligations owed to maritime workers and our determination that what happened—that unacceptable practice that we all saw and were so concerned about—must never happen again.
Today’s amendments reflect continued concern for the welfare and rights of seafarers. They raise, though, a number of detailed questions about scope, enforcement and the role of harbour authorities. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, here to reply to this debate, because we want to hear from him how the Government see these provisions fitting alongside the reforms already undertaken. We await with bated breath his reply to this important debate.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, I will first speak to government Amendments 200B and 200C. These amendments relate to Clause 54, which amends the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to provide powers to make regulations giving effect to international agreements relating to maritime employment. Amendment 200B provides that such regulations cannot be used to bring into force an international agreement, or an amendment to an international agreement which requires ratification, before the UK has ratified it. By implication, the effect of this amendment is that such regulations can be made ahead of ratification of the agreement or amendment. For the UK to ratify an international agreement, it is usual for any necessary implementing legislation to be passed or made in advance of ratification, so the amendment helps ensure that the UK can fulfil its international obligations. Amendment 200C is simply a consequential drafting amendment.
Amendments 143A and 143AA, tabled by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, seek to amend the requirements of the collective redundancy notification provisions to apply to services calling at a port in Great Britain at least 52 times a year, rather than 120 times a year. We are, as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, related, yet again dealing with the appalling events surrounding the P&O dispute in March 2022. As with the Seafarers’ Wages Act, the frequency requirement of this measure was designed to ensure that it applied to those services with a close enough connection to the United Kingdom to justify it. Any broadening of the scope would require further consideration of the impact of bringing further vessels into it. I will come on to the proposed amendments to the scope of the Seafarers’ Wages Act, but we do not accept the proposal to amend the scope of those measures. We will apply a consistent approach to the proposed changes to the scope of the collective redundancy requirements, which has the same frequency requirement. Any change would require stakeholder engagement and full consideration of the impacts on industry. However, having listened carefully to my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, we will agree to meet the trade unions, as he suggests, where a number of the issues that he has raised tonight can be further discussed, including the requirement for a summary of the Government’s position before Report.
Amendments 200AA, 200AB and 200AC, also tabled by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, seek to apply the measures under the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 as amended by this Bill to weekly services rather than those calling 120 times a year as drafted. The existing minimum frequency requirement for the new remuneration and safe working declarations is consistent with the requirements under the existing Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023, which was brought into force on 1 December 2024. It is important that this measure be limited to services with a close enough connection to the UK to justify intervention in their working practices; the current requirements in the Seafarers’ Wages Act and in the Act as amended in this Bill have been designed with this in mind. Extending the scope of this measure would require careful consideration of the international law implications of bringing into scope less frequent services to the UK, as well as the impacts on the market. With these considerations in mind, we think that the existing scope strikes the correct balance. It would also not be right to accept this amendment without undertaking a full public consultation, which cannot be done in the timescales required to make this change as part of the Bill.
Amendment 200AD and the consequential Amendments 200AE to 200AK would go beyond the existing powers in the Bill to make safe working and remuneration regulations. It would provide further powers to specify conditions relating to sick pay, holiday pay, pensions and other training, and to require harbour authorities to request the associated declarations from operators, following the approach taken by the Government in relation to the remuneration and safe working regulations.
Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for her amendment. In introducing the group, I should have said that I strongly support what is proposed there. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for his measured comments and I thank my noble friend the Minister for agreeing to a meeting— I am sure it will be useful. Maybe I am an optimist, but I also thank him for a slight glimmer of hope that there will be some movement in relation to the measures. Some might express doubt, but I am a natural optimist, and I hope that the meeting will be constructive and that we will also be able to address the issue of information, as well as the specifics of the charter. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
“(f) a higher education provider as defined by—(i) section 3(10) of the Higher Education Research Act 2017;(ii) section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992;(iii) section 56 of the Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992;(iv) Article 30 of the Education and Libraries (Northern Ireland) Order 1993.”
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 143B standing in my name, regarding outsourcing measures and their applicability to higher education providers across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Universities, like other employers, are preparing for the enactment of the Bill and will be adapting to the new legislative expectations around workers’ rights. I want to stress from the outset that universities wholeheartedly support the Bill’s objectives to ensure fair employment practices for workers. They do, however, have some technical concerns about Clause 30. I hope that, through Amendment 143B, my noble friend can provide helpful reassurances to the higher education sector—so this is a probing amendment.
As noble Lords will be aware, Clause 30 outlines expectations that contracting authorities must treat any employee transferred from a contracted body no less favourably in the terms offered than core employees. Many universities consider themselves to fall within the definition of “contracting authority”, meaning they may inadvertently be caught by this clause. This is of great concern to the higher education sector and, so far as I am aware, does not appear to have been scrutinised in the Bill so far.
The enormous financial challenges facing universities are well documented, and I know are of grave concern to many Members of this House. The potential imposition of further costs for universities from Clause 30 should therefore be of concern. For the many universities that constitute as contracting authorities, there are likely to be significant cost implications, as well as increased difficulty in finding contractors as a result of this clause. Crucially, unlike with public bodies, these additional costs for universities will not be met by the Government.
In addition to the financial implications, there is also the potential for policy divergence across the UK. Given that Scotland and Wales will be able to set their own regulations and code of practice, there may be inconsistency in arrangements, which could discourage agreements with suppliers. This would have a particular impact in the complex environment that the higher education sector operates in and could have a significant impact on its moves towards greater efficiency.
I would appreciate assurances from my noble friend on three questions. The first is whether, and in what circumstances, universities will be considered to be contracting authorities for the purposes of this legislation. Has my noble friend’s department or the Department for Education made an assessment of the likely impact of Clause 30 on the university sector? Secondly, are the outsourcing measures defined in Clause 30 applicable to pension provision? Where employees are transferred to another organisation, will their pension arrangements form part of the requirement that they be treated no less favourably? Thirdly, what consideration will be given to the impact on shared services where many providers, including across UK nations, will work with the same body as a key driver of efficiency efforts? If my noble friend is unable to provide assurances from the Dispatch Box today, a letter would be very warmly received.
I urge my noble friend and her department to engage closely with the higher education sector to ensure that the implementation of Clause 30 does not inadvertently undermine the financial sustainability and operational flexibility of our universities. While of course we have to remain steadfast in our commitment to fair employment practices, we must also ensure that the legislation takes full account of the distinct nature of the higher education sector and supports our universities to continue their vital work.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of my noble friend Lady Warwick on an issue that, as far as I am aware, has not appeared anywhere else but is of some importance. There is growing unease in the higher education sector about the potential implications of Clause 30. Universities UK has said it is frustrated that its letters to both officials and Ministers—they would be the same thing, I imagine—remain unanswered. UUK is probably being a bit polite in saying that it is frustrated; I suggest that it is unacceptable for a letter from any UK-wide organisation not to receive a response. If nothing else, I hope my noble friend will be able to give an assurance in her reply that she will ensure that Universities UK receives a considered response to its very legitimate concerns.
As my noble friend said, the higher education sector is concerned at the potential impact of measures proposed in Clause 30, which relate to outsourcing, on current arrangements within the sector and on the viability of steps that universities have taken or are planning to take in order to stabilise their financial position. Many universities consider themselves as falling within the definition of contracting authorities and may therefore be inadvertently caught in this clause of the legislation.
As originally introduced, the public sector outsourcing provisions applied to contracting authorities in England only. However, Ministers introduced an amendment in Committee in another place, and provisions now apply to contracting authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. Again as my noble friend said, the major point on which clarification is essential is whether and in what circumstances universities will be considered to be contracting authorities for the purposes of this legislation.
There is also the question of whether the planned separate outsourcing rules for different UK nations will or even might create complex and prohibitive arrangements for universities. As an example, if an institution is working across the UK nations—a good example would be the Open University—that could mean it is subject to two or more sets of outsourcing rules, potentially providing a conflicting legislative framework for its operational practice. I hope my noble friend will be able to clarify how the Government envisage such separate outsourcing rules will operate, and that in doing so she will provide reassurance to many in the higher education sector who, as my noble friend Lady Warwick said, are very supportive of the Bill in general but fear that universities could become victims of unintended consequences.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, for her introduction to her Amendment 143B. We think it is important to recognise the unique position of higher education providers when considering worker protection in public sector outsourcing. Because universities and similar institutions operate outside the traditional public sector framework, they possess a level of autonomy that sets them apart from government bodies, so applying the same regulatory requirements to these institutions clearly risks imposing unnecessary burdens that could affect their ability to focus on their core missions of education and research.
The amendment seems to us to thoughtfully acknowledge that difference by excluding higher education providers from the scope of these specific worker protection provisions. Such an approach would allow the focus of these protections to remain on core public sector organisations, where procurement processes are more standardised and closely tied to government accountability. At the same time, it would respect the operational independence of universities.
The fair treatment of workers remains an essential principle across all sectors, including higher education. Encouraging good employment practices within universities should continue through other means, but the amendment recognises the practical realities faced by these institutions. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answer.
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 my noble friend Lady Warwick for her thoughtful contribution to this debate on Amendment 143B. We fully recognise the need not to impose disproportionate burdens on smaller procuring organisations such as universities. However, it is important that we consider fairness and equality of treatment for all workers providing key outsourced services to higher education providers—for example, cleaning and catering services—so that they receive fair and equitable employment conditions comparable to both those transferred from the public sector and those working for local authorities or departments that provide the same services. As a result, there would need to be compelling arguments to exempt higher education providers.
Secondly, it is essential that we first consult with key stakeholders and seek their views before deciding on the ultimate content of the reinstated code and the extent to which certain public authorities, including higher education providers, are required to follow its provisions. I can assure my noble friend Lady Warwick that we will carefully consider the particular issues relating to higher education providers and the difficulties they might experience during this process. However, our view is that to carve out higher education providers completely on the face of this Bill at this stage would not be right.
My noble friend highlighted the particular financial challenges currently being experienced by universities. We are committed to creating a secure future for our world-leading universities so that they can deliver for students, taxpayers, workers and the economy. The Office for Students will continue dedicating significant resources to ensuring the sector’s financial sustainability. The DfE has appointed Professor Edward Peck as the substantive chair of the OfS, where he will play a key role in strengthening this commitment while also expanding opportunities in higher education. We have also made the tough decision to increase tuition fee limits in line with inflation. As a result, the maximum fee for a standard full-time undergraduate course in the 2025-26 academic year will increase by 3.1% from £9,250 to £9,535.
Finally, I stress that the code is being designed to be flexible so that it does not impose undue burdens. There are a range of options available here that could be pursued, for example by specifying to which bodies the code should apply or applying the code only to higher-value contracts, which could exempt low-value procurement activities such as those often carried out by educational establishments that may have fewer procurement resources. These are the sorts of issues that the consultation will examine in detail.
I am very conscious that my noble friends Lady Warwick and Lord Watson asked very specific questions. Given the lateness of the hour and the very specific nature of them, I think it would be helpful if we could write and put that on the record to provide, I hope, the reassurance that the higher education sector seeks. It is for that reason that I ask my noble friend to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her reply and her attempt to reassure me and other Members of the Committee. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Watson of Invergowrie for his staunch support for what I am trying to do here. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for his support; it was thoughtfully put, and I appreciate it.
I understand that the Minister is seeking to reassure me that she is very aware of the need to support the future of our universities. I do not think she really addressed, though, the issues around the impact on the different nations and the way in which that could affect the competitive advantage of the universities and the way in which they are seeking to increase efficiencies. I hope that, in writing to me, she will also undertake to meet the higher education sector once it has digested the detail of her response—I appreciate that my questions are technical. I hope she will undertake to do that because I think that would be enormously helpful and the most reassuring thing that she could do. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I am proposing that we remove Clause 31 from the Bill. That would remove the power of the Secretary of State to require largely private sector employers with more than 250 staff to develop and publish equality action plans showing what steps they are taking in relation to the gender pay gap and supporting employees going through the menopause. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who is, sadly, not in her place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, who is in her place, for their support.
This is a probing amendment because I am not at all clear exactly why this clause is deemed necessary or indeed exactly what it entails. On the latter point, I note with some dismay that much of the detail is to be left to regulations in terms of the content of an action plan, the form of an action plan, what manner it will take and even its frequency. There is no detail at all on what sanctions employers face if they do not comply with the yet not detailed regulations. It is very difficult to scrutinise such vagaries, and I fear it reduces the issue to nothing more than a virtue-signalling clause to claim that something positive is being done—action is being taken. What action? We do not know.
What we do know is that here is another clause that requires workplaces to create more paperwork. I fear that the noble cause of women’s equality is being reduced to bureaucracy. I am a tad cynical because, since 2017, employers have been required to publish gender pay gap data annually. Now the demand is for actionable steps, yet what is the problem that we are trying to solve here?
The implication is that more needs to be done to crack down on gender discrimination in the workplace, but I am not convinced that that is such a major problem today as is inferred. Which actions would be deemed acceptable might help us understand what this clause is trying to do, but it is never considered. For example, we are frequently given a reference statistic that men earn roughly 20% more than women. But such figures are misleading, as this is an on-average figure reached through combining part-time and full-time earnings and takes no account of age or employment sector.
Are women continually disadvantaged in the workplace in 2025? When we compare how much women and men are paid for doing the same number of hours each week, there is virtually no pay gap. Of course, it would be illegal to pay men more than women. To illustrate the complexities of age, occupation and hours worked, it is worth noting that women in their 20s earn more than men of the same age—not just like-for-like but also on average. Even for all women under 40 working full-time, the pay gap is negligible. Indeed, it was acknowledged by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, when she was a Government Minister bringing in the pay gap notices. She said then:
“We’ve virtually eliminated the gap for full-time workers under 40 and the gap for the over-40s is shrinking too”.
If we only look at these issues in a technocratic way, do we not we miss nuances?
You could say that a decline in jobs traditionally associated with men earning more is actually a decline in old industries, because there has been a decline since 1979, when 40% of GDP was those old industries in which men earned more. But I am not sure that is something to celebrate. In other words, if you only view equality through the gender pay gap, you could actually end up arguing for the suppression of men’s pay or celebrating its decrease.
More to the point, what are employers being asked to action here, when many of the changes are broad social and cultural shifts, rather than sexist employment practices? It is true that, in the past, the labour market was rigidly segregated according to sex. As a consequence, men and women in their 50s and older today entered a labour market in which women were often not treated fairly. There was a cultural situation where women were more likely to take considerable time out of work to raise a family. This alone explains pay differentials that are still being felt today. But, as I say, as young women are earning more, these things are less of a problem. If we end up thinking that the reason the pay gap exists is older women and those differentials, I am not keen that we end up dumping older female employees so that, on paper, the gap is narrowed. I am not suggesting that anyone is saying that, but I am saying that we should not deal with this in a technical fashion.
I now arrive at something in which I have more expertise: older women. We arrive at the menopause part of the new section to be inserted by this clause. My concern here is that the Bill may end up amplifying the problems caused by the menopause for female employees, unintentionally presenting menopausal women as victims unable to cope. This could re-stigmatise the menopause—the opposite of what is intended. We should remember that the menopause is a natural life stage that all women go through and experience, and they all experience it differently in its duration and symptoms.
I worry that some of this has led to awareness raising that can mystify the menopause and turn it into an imagined horror story. I remember talking to a group of young students some years ago. I made a quip about being menopausal and they all said, “Oh no—how awful. That’s grim. How are you coping? Are you feeling all right?” They seemed terrified at the prospect. The menopause suddenly appeared to be an insurmountable series of anguishes that they would never cope with. Inevitably, they had been on a well-being course that had given them awareness training on the menopause. Do we want such attitudes becoming embedded in attitudes to female staff in the workplace, along with the association that, if you are menopausal, you are a delicate flower who needs to be worked around?
What exactly will employers be required to do to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the specific needs of menopausal women? I have read activist demands that include the widespread availability of cooling fans; menopause champions and ambassadors in every workplace and department to encourage anti-stigma dialogue across the workforce; therapist sessions, including the availability of therapy dogs; and training courses for HR and management to look at everything from thermostat levels to developing menopause-sensitive language codes. To be honest, lots of these ideas stray dangerously close to condescending women. It might well be that this is not what the Government have in mind at all, but we have no idea if that is true because there are no details in the Bill—in fact, the details are all deferred until after the Bill is passed.
Do not get me wrong—I have been a vocal supporter of improving access to HRT on the NHS and, as a woman of a certain age, I am rather too familiar with some of the debilitating symptoms. But we should be wary of the calls, for example, for menopause leave and time off, with no questions asked, when using the word “menopause” would be enough to mean that—without any evidence and based on lived experience—employers are just meant to accept that there is a problem. There is a danger of green-lighting a mission creep not dissimilar to the crisis of so many not in work citing mental health problems—and I am really pleased to see that the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has raised this. That is a new social problem, and I do not want the menopause to become another one.
Again, possibly none of this is what the Government intend, yet we are using legislation to demand that employers must take steps to support employees going through the menopause. That seems completely inappropriate and unjustified, and it is bound to lead to mission creep if this legislation is used to that end, with this clause in it.
I will make two quick points as a PS. Can the Government please be careful with their language? Usually, it is the Government lecturing people like me on the Back Bench about watching our words and what language we use, but, whether we like it or not, the word “gender” has been corrupted by ideology. The pay gap that the Government seek to tackle is between the two sexes—a fear that biological women may be discriminated against as women. I am not being pedantic or referencing the culture wars here; I have been at a number of official corporate events over recent years where businesses were patted on the back for helping women break through the glass ceiling and for their work on the pay gap only for the examples of success given to be trans women—that is, men who identify as women—on corporate boards. I want to avoid that con happening.
Baroness Lawlor (Con)
My Lords, I am against Clause 31 standing part of the Bill. The 2010 Act protects against gender and other types of discrimination. It replaces earlier Acts, as your Lordships will know, including the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
The principles of equality are commonly supported. The aims are those on which people agree and under which employers are bound. Section 78 of the Equality Act stipulates that:
“Regulations may require employers to publish information relating to the pay of employees for the purpose of showing whether, by reference to factors of such description as is prescribed, there are differences in the pay of male and female employees”.
We have an Act that is commonly agreed on and obeyed, and known by those to whom it is addressed.
Clause 31 proposes to add a new Section 78A after Section 78, which stipulates:
“Regulations may require employers to … develop and publish … an ‘equality action plan’”
in respect of gender and equality,
“showing the steps that the employers are taking in relation to their employees with regard to prescribed matters related to gender equality, and … publish prescribed information relating to the plan”.
This will oblige more compliance, more bureaucracy and higher costs on employers—and it is unnecessary because we have the law.
We have just been listening to the discussion of the strategic defence review. We are going to have to spend a lot of money on defence. There are going to be lots of demands on the public purse. To oblige more compliance and bureaucracy on employers at a time when things are tight will not be a great help to the other demands on the public purse. It is not only about compliance and bureaucracy; much worse than that it leads to something beyond the principles of the Equality Act. It prompts institutions in practice to devise and interpret action plans that result in a 50:50 balance between men and women, and steps will be taken to achieve that level playing field and to discriminate positively.
Take the example of academic shortlisting, where, in order to achieve a 50:50 balance, things can be so ordained at the shortlisting stage in order to appoint women, and as they are so ordained, discrimination takes place against men and appointments are made not on merit but on gender. This results in action plans under which men are discriminated against. It is also unfair for women because, once positive discrimination comes into play, women too suffer. The women who are appointed are perceived to have been appointed not because they come first on merit, or in a fair competition, but on account of their gender.
I shall comment briefly on new Section 78A(4), which sets down that
“matters related to gender equality include (a) addressing the gender pay gap, (b) supporting employees going through the menopause”.
New Section 78A(4)(a) is too broad. Take the case of a male and female employee appointed at entry level to similar positions. They start with the same salary, but one may do far better than the other, be given far more responsibility and be promoted eventually to a higher role. How is the gender pay gap to be addressed, given that the talent, resourcefulness and ability of one employee naturally results in more responsibility and higher payment?
The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has already mentioned new Section 78A(4)(b), which has no place in the workplace. It is discriminatory in its assumption that women need special help at certain times of their life. It also violates the professionalism of a good workplace in treating the personal as public, and it puts the employer into a discriminatory role in requiring special support for a select group of employees, rather than acting as a dispassionate employer who treats all employees well and fairly.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I also support the proposition that Clause 31, on equality action plans, should not stand part of the Bill. We meet tonight with the knowledge that the OECD has downgraded the UK’s likely GDP for this year and next year. Less than an hour ago, the Minister said, I think I am right in saying, that it was not the intention of the Government to impose any onerous obligations on businesses as a result of the Bill. This is an example of exactly that.
I am very concerned about this clause, because it is very widely drawn and relies disproportionately on regulations that will be tabled, or laid before the House, once the Bill becomes an Act. I pay tribute to the very powerful intervention of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the thoughtful comments of my noble friend Lady Lawlor. Is it really the duty and responsibility of a Minister in the sixth-biggest economy in the world, a mature economy of 68 million people, to impose by ministerial fiat, in primary legislation, the minutiae, the weeds, of
“the content of a plan”
for every business that has more than 250 employees,
“the form and manner in which a plan or information is to be published; when and how”
that plan is published, and, in new subsection (5)(d)—maybe I am being obtuse, but I do not even understand the meaning of this—
“requirements for senior approval before a plan or information is published”?
What does that even mean? Does it mean the chief people officer, the chief executive, the managing director or what?
It would be much better were the Government to use their energy, and the good will that is behind significant parts of the Bill, to work with people such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, ACAS and others to develop professional, timely briefings for employers. But they are not doing that. They are instead insisting, in the Bill, that they will direct these equality action plans, irrespective of what type of business is being transacted and whether it has a workforce of 251, 25,000 or 250,000.
In fact, the clause does not even define “employee”, “employer” or “descriptions of information”. It fails to define them and says that those details will be reserved for regulations to be laid after the Bill gets Royal Assent. New subsection (7) is also very opaque when it states:
“The regulations may make provision for a failure to comply with the regulations to be enforced, otherwise than as an offence, by such means as are prescribed”.
Again, that is very loosely drawn. We do not know what it means or what sanctions will be in place and available for Ministers to lay down in regulations. New subsection (6) states:
“The regulations may not require an employer, after the first publication of information, to publish information more frequently”.
It does not say “must not”, so Ministers can still use regulations to enforce periodic publications of and changes to these regulations.
For all those reasons, this is an unnecessary clause. It will add costs and administrative burdens. It will certainly take a significant amount of time, for instance, to get in specialists in human resources as consultants to draw up these plans on perhaps a 12-monthly basis. It will take a lot of administrative time and take away from employing people, for the bottom line and profit, which will impact employability. For that reason, I support the proposition that this clause should not stand part of the Bill.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I rise to express a view that I did not think I would be expressing in your Lordships’ House. I am utterly appalled by this proposition and the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who, lest there were any doubt, has given the clearest possible indication of her political journey from the extreme left to the extreme right, which is there for all to see.
It is an absolute disgrace to suggest that to seek to help women in the workplace gain equality is somehow to treat them as victims. I did my university dissertation in 1974 on the Equal Pay Act, when the gap between men and women was 25%. Half a century later, it is down to something like 7% or 8%. Yes, that is a huge improvement, but the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and others who have spoken have said, “Well, that’s okay. We can leave it there. We don’t want to push it any further, because it’s going to burden industry with costs”. What about the women who are burdened with wages lower than they are entitled to get for the job they do on a day-to-day basis?
It is well known that inclusivity in the workforce increases levels of production, is good for problem solving and enhances job retention. I am talking not just about gender issues but wider diversity. The speech that the noble Baroness made and others have echoed will be cheered to the rafters by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, because it is exactly the sort of thing they have been saying, and I think it is a very dangerous line for Members of this House to push. It is a perfectly legitimate expectation in a Bill such as this that an equality action plan is something that employers should be expected to have. Many already do—they do not need to be told. Good employers have one in place and are benefiting from the standard of output they are getting from employees who are more satisfied because they are clearly better valued. To suggest that we just leave it there is absolute nonsense.
I will not talk about the menopause, but I just could not believe what I heard—that, somehow, women are being painted as victims. As a man, it is difficult for me to comment, but there is a broad spread of opinion that the issue has to be dealt with by employers. To be perfectly fair, some employers do, but others do not, and there should at least be the opportunity for women who want to take advantage of this to be able to do so. To try to slam that door in their faces is an absolute disgrace.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, what a relief to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Watson—I thought I was going to be on my own with the comments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Lawlor, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. They were prophets of doom and living in another world.
Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friends Lady Lawlor and Lord Jackson of Peterborough because they rightly question whether this clause is necessary to establish what we all agree should be the vital place for equality of opportunity.
It is vital in the workplace that merit should win the day, but there should also be equality of opportunity. Women and men should have equal opportunities, fair treatment and the freedom to thrive regardless of their background. So I hope all those who have spoken, including the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, would agree that we all support equality of opportunity, not just in principle but in practice.
Therefore, it is right that every time there is another step, particularly when it creates more paperwork and more bureaucracy—as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, put it—it is important that we just question whether this is the right way to proceed, particularly, as my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough pointed out, because this is really giving the Government power to do whatever they want to do whenever they wish to do it, by regulation. We do not know what the Government will do because they have not yet consulted on the power that we are about to give them. It is exactly what this House has always preached long and hard against. We should not give Henry VIII powers to the Government to do whatever they would like to do by statutory instrument.
I would have thought that my successor as chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie—would know that more than anyone else. Giving the Government this power has to be justified. My noble friend Lady Fox of Buckley does not need me to defend her against the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, as he saw her move across the political spectrum, but she is right to question this in the way she did. As my noble friend Lady Lawlor put it, we are, in a way, promoting positive discrimination, which undermines achievement on merit.
I hope that the Minister will give very serious thought to explaining exactly what is proposed, rather than wait for the secondary legislation. Let us know, straightaway and in detail, what additional equality action plans are being proposed. We have to pause for a moment to worry about the serious and often unintended consequences that policies such as these can have, particularly for women on the margins of the labour market. The principle behind the measure is commendable —to close the gender gaps, to support women through challenges such as the menopause, and to shine a light on structural inequalities—but, in practice, these kinds of top-down mandates too often result in box-ticking compliance, statistical quotas and public relations targets, and never in real progress.
What gets measured drives what gets managed. When employers are judged by headline figures—gender pay gaps, representation in senior roles—there is an inevitable temptation for them to focus their efforts where the optics are best improved, on high-status, high-visibility roles. As a result, employers might feel pressured to hire or promote individuals with certain characteristics into elite positions just to improve those diversity statistics, rather than genuinely supporting a larger number of people, who are often the minority, who hold lower-paid, insecure or part-time roles and who would benefit most from meaningful reform.
Regardless of sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, merit should always be the basis for the advancement of an individual. I worry that we risk a situation where the beneficiaries of an equality policy are disproportionately those who are already relatively privileged, while those in cleaning jobs, care work, warehouses, and food processing and service are pushed further to the margins. Even worse, if statistical appearances become the basis of legal or reputational risk, employers may become reluctant to hire minority women at all into lower-paying roles for fear of what the data might suggest. That is not progress; it is perverse.
I warmly applaud the fact that this debate is taking place. Equality is not achieved by engineering the statistics; it is achieved when every person, regardless of sex, class, race or role, has access to fair work, safe conditions, proper pay and genuine opportunity to get on in life. I ask colleagues to consider: will these equality action plans bring meaningful change for working-class young men, people from ethnic minorities and women on zero-hours contracts, or will they largely serve the HR departments of large organisations by helping to polish their diversity reports while little changes on the ground? We cannot effect equality by appearance; we must demand equality by substance.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for initiating this probing debate on Clause 31. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, highlighted—I like to call him my noble brother after all these years of working together—it enables us to put forward a very strong case. One can always be concerned about Henry VIII powers and secondary legislation, especially when employers are not consulted and the objective is to undermine good industrial relations. I remind my noble brother about the debates we had on the strikes Bill, which was precisely about those issues of unintended consequences.
Ensuring that women can remain in and progress in work is crucial—vital—to economic growth, and yet the national gender pay gap remains at 13.1%. We know that women often face barriers in the workplace that impact their pay, progression and economic participation. Eight in 10 menopausal women say that their workplace has no basic support in place. This lack of support is a barrier and can lead to a significant loss of talent and, just as importantly, productivity.
This is not new. As a trade unionist, I, and my noble brother opposite, know full well—we have heard about all the legislation that has been brought in—that real progress has been effected in the workplace by supporting and amplifying that legislation and giving people the tools to ensure that that legislation has an impact. As a trade unionist, I have seen many initiatives that have delivered better facilities and ensured that women can remain active in the workplace.
I remember a campaign in the 70s and 80s about breast cancer. Many women would not even dare talk about it, but the trade union movement launched a campaign for workplace screening and opened up a debate, so that people could acknowledge the risks and address them, rather than live in isolation and fear. It is important that women are able to talk about the menopause openly and can address it. Breast cancer does not make women victims. We should all be focused on how we can deliver for women. That is really important, and there are many examples.
Since 2017, large employers have been required to publish gender pay gap data. The additional publication of an action plan is precisely to do what the noble Lord opposite has said. How do we see and assess the impact? The additional publication of an action plan has been encouraged, but it is voluntary. However, analysis in 2019 discovered that only half of employers reporting data were voluntarily producing a plan on how they can make improvements. What the noble Lord described is what has happened: they produce the data and do nothing. That is why this legislation is so important, and the next step for improvements for women in the workplace is to make that mandatory.
Of course, we recognise and applaud the best employers, which already recognise the value of supporting women to thrive and are already taking action—many noble Lords addressed that. Following their lead, large employers will be required to detail the actions they are taking to improve gender equality and support employees during the menopause. The intention is to motivate employers to take meaningful action, to break down the barriers and help all women to thrive.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke, some of whom were more sympathetic than others to what I was trying to raise.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, made an important point when he talked about the importance of accurate data. I agree, but data and statistics are not flat lines; they are complicated. I tried to indicate, without boring your Lordships with lots of statistics, that the gender pay gap number in relation to statistics is to do with age, the past, the change in relation to young women, and so on, which nobody has come back on. In fact, there are books written, and I have papers, and I have read them all—I will not bore your Lordships now—but I suggest that this is not the key issue facing women at work today.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, came back on a lot of the points in terms of the aspirations, and I agree with him. However, the Government are overcomplacent about the problems of delegated powers and legislative oversight, which I also raised as a substantial part of my complaint. There was no comeback. I supported the Government when they were in opposition. They constantly raised these issues, and I went along with them and supported them.
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, suggested, I thought this was a modest proposal, but somehow I have managed to be accused of fuelling Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, and this was called an illustration of my political journey from far left to far right. I will not do a full critique of the attack on me, which was very personal and personalised, but I would like to point out something.
I was and am a member of the left, and the fact that the Labour Party and the left have moved in a different direction from mine does not necessarily mean that I am the one who has moved to the right. I spend a lot of time talking to ordinary working-class people—women and men—who are tearing their hair out at the attacks on the living standards that they are going through under this Government. Therefore, to be lectured about not understanding the fight against inequality, and the idea that anybody who stands up and challenges an orthodoxy on a potentially bureaucratic plan—by the way, I never mentioned employers and costs; I said it was an insult to women that we got reduced statistics and bits of paper, which was a different point. But anyway, it is crucial that we should challenge the orthodoxies of gender equality when they are presented in this way without being treated as though one is a far-right pariah. It is unworthy of the nature of this House, which is to debate and scrutinise, in my opinion. I simply try to do that.
I still want to push this—more so now than before—on Report, but for now I will not oppose this clause standing part of the Bill.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom
“Use of positive action in the workplace(1) In this section—(a) “P” is a public sector worker who reasonably thinks that the application by P’s employer, in relation to P’s employment or a working practice, of sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010 has caused or risks causing detriment to P,(b) “R” is P’s public sector employee, and(c) P reasonably thinks that R is responsible for the detriment in subsection (1)(a).(2) A Minister of the Crown must by regulations make provision for—(a) forms through which P may anonymously question R on any matter relevant to subsection (1),(b) forms through which R may answer questions by P, and(c) such forms to be made publicly available.(3) Within six months of the passing of this Act and every three months thereafter, R must publish a report setting out―(a) the number of forms received under subsection (2), and(b) a summary of the nature of the complaints to which they relate.(4) A Minister of the Crown may by regulations require R to report on the use of sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010.(5) This section does not apply to activities undertaken by R under paragraph 1 of Schedule 9 of the Equality Act 2010.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment introduces a mechanism for public sector employees who believe they have been disadvantaged by their employer’s use of positive action under sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010. It would require the Government to create a process allowing such employees to anonymously question their employer and requiring employers to respond.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 145 standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. This amendment introduces a mechanism for public sector workers who reasonably believe that they have been subjected to detriment as a result of their employers’ use of positive action under Sections 158 and 159 of the Equality Act 2010. It does not seek to outlaw such action, nor does it obstruct efforts to promote fairness. Rather, it seeks to ensure that fairness extends to all employees, not only those whom the state or the employer happen to deem underrepresented.
We must confront the uncomfortable truth that some public bodies have begun to apply positive action in ways that no longer reflect the careful balance envisaged by Parliament when the Equality Act was passed. We have now entered territory where lawful positive action shades into unlawful positive discrimination —where the scales of justice have been not merely tipped but turned. For example, let us consider West Yorkshire Police, a force whose conduct in this area raises urgent and serious concerns. It has come to light through both media investigation and internal whistleblowers that recruitment processes have been operated in a manner which in practice delays, restricts or even excludes applications from white British candidates. Candidates from certain ethnic minority backgrounds were allowed to apply early and, in some cases, were mentored through the process by dedicated positive action teams. Meanwhile, white British applicants were told to wait until a general window opened, often for as little as 48 hours. This, we are assured, is not discrimination but rather the fair operation of the law. I do not agree. This is not the spirit nor, arguably, even the letter of the Equality Act. It is a distortion of the law, and it demands redress.
What makes this all the more troubling is that these actions are being taken not by private corporations but by the state, or at least by institutions that act in the name of the state and are funded by the public purse. The taxpayer in this case is being forced to subsidise policies that they might find discriminatory and from which they may be excluded. There seems to be something especially perverse, indeed, almost Orwellian, about that.
This is not merely an abstract concern. West Yorkshire Police, for example, reportedly spent over £1.4 million in recent years on equality, diversity and inclusion staff—more than any other force in the country. That is public money. It is money earned by ordinary citizens, some of whom now find themselves effectively barred from entry into public service not because they lack ability but because their ethnic background does not satisfy an internal diversity target. When questions are raised, when whistleblowers from within these forces speak up, what happens? We hear of them being silenced, reprimanded or warned not to interfere. We hear of secret job listings marked “hidden” in the system, visible only to certain candidates. We hear of candidates greeted with hugs and reassurances that their interviews are merely a formality. That is not recruitment, and it is not equality. It is institutional manipulation.
The amendment before your Lordships seeks to restore a measure of transparency and accountability. It proposes a system by which a public sector worker who reasonably believes that they have been harmed by the operation of positive action can submit a formal question anonymously to their employer. The employer, in turn, must respond. Moreover, employers will be required to publish data on such queries, allowing Parliament and the public to monitor the use and potential abuse of these provisions. This is not a punitive or burdensome requirement; it is the most basic form of procedural fairness.
Let us be clear. This amendment does not challenge the principle of inclusion; it does not deny that discrimination has existed; but it says unequivocally that the answer to past unfairness is not the imposition of new unfairness, that the pursuit of diversity must not come at the expense of justice, and that inclusion must include everybody. Equality before the law is not a suggestion or a secondary consideration to be weighed against modern ideological preferences. It is a constitutional principle that underpins this very Chamber. When we allow it to be weakened quietly and gradually by well-meaning policies that turn into arbitrary practices, we invite division, resentment and, ultimately, more injustice.
The Minister may say that everything that I have described—the delays, the exclusion of white British applicants, the unequal mentoring and the hidden vacancies—is perfectly lawful under existing legislation. He may say that this is precisely how the Government intend for positive action to operate in the public sector. However, I sincerely hope that is not the argument that is to be advanced. Alternatively, the Minister may offer reassurance to the Committee and to the public that existing law already contains sufficient safeguards, and that what we have heard from West Yorkshire Police, Thames Valley Police and others would not and should not be permitted under any reasonable interpretation of the Equality Act. If that is the case, I would welcome that clarification. I would also welcome assurance that there is already a functioning system of redress for individuals who believe that they have been mistreated on the basis of how positive action has been applied.
If the Minister agrees with the points that I have made—that West Yorkshire Police should not have discriminated against white applicants and that there is no mechanism to stop this—then I very much look forward to the Government accepting this amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
I came into this debate by chance, but it seems to me that this is part of a very undesirable development: an attack on the principle of equality, diversity and inclusion policies. These principles are at the heart of my politics. I have fought for racial equality ever since I was a student, when I went on marches against Enoch Powell and what he stood for. I thought that the response of the Labour Government in the 1960s—to make racial discrimination illegal—was very important. In more modern times, when I was chair of Lancaster University and looking at the question of student admissions, I always thought that we should make allowance for the fact that some working-class people had not had the best chance in life and take this into account in admissions procedures Therefore, I rather regret what the Opposition Front Bench is trying to do, which is to undermine the political acceptability of these policies.
There is a danger here. I have seen it from some people in my own party who say that, in response to the alleged great Reform upsurge, we should start abandoning EDI. That would be catastrophic for a social democrat like me, who has always believed in these things. I hope that the Members opposite will withdraw their amendment.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I would gently advise the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, to have read the amendment before he pontificates down memory lane on his great campaigns of the past for equality.
This amendment is about fairness. It ill behoves his party to lecture us on equality when it needed the Supreme Court to tell its own Prime Minister what a woman was. We will take lessons on equality from many people but not from a party that was found to be institutionally racist by the Equality and Human Rights Commission not that long ago.
Let us move on from there because, if noble Lords read this amendment, they will see that it is an amendment that speaks of fairness. All it says, very simply, is that anyone who construes a situation where they have felt themselves personally discriminated against should have a proper, legal and transparent opportunity to question the decision of a person who is taking a big decision in their life: whether to appoint them to a post or not. It is not draconian and does not include fines; it is merely an occasion for that person to challenge a decision taken by authority in a fair, open and transparent way.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
I hardly know where to start.
Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)
Certainly, I believe that everybody at work—whatever background they come from and whatever their class, sex, gender or sexuality—should have the right to be treated fairly. I believe that our legal system, our Equality Act, precisely provides that protection for people, but that we can build on it through equality action plans and so on. But I have to say that maybe some noble Lords opposite also need to consider people’s real experience.
I was elected as the first ever woman general secretary of the TUC. Clearly, we were not a movement that rushed things, because it took an awful long time to get to that point. I have enough self-awareness to know that it was not because there were not talented women, black or white, who could have been elected and who had the talent, skills and ability. There was something else going on, and I hope that there would be enough honesty in this House to recognise that black people and women face real barriers that will not be overcome unless we take positive action.
The other point I would just like to reflect on is that, whenever I spoke about seeing more women playing active roles in not just the trade union movement but in public life, including, by the way, lending my support to women who were arguing that we needed more women in the boardroom—I supported that principle—I was always fascinated that, whenever I raised those issues, people, largely men I have to say, would start talking about merit. Well, I have to say, when I look at the upper echelons, I do not always see in those male-dominated and white-dominated ranks people who got there on the basis of merit. I have never seen an advert for a position on a board. I have never known any board member to go through an open recruitment process to get that position. It has very often been a case of a tap on the shoulder.
If we look at how many judges and newspaper editors we have, and specifically at race, sex and gender, yes, the picture has progressed, but we still have a very long way to go. Therefore, I think this amendment is a little disingenuous in trying to suggest that people who have been held back for years because of their class background, race or gender, if given a helping hand and a bit of encouragement to go for it, will somehow cause a meltdown of society.
Achieving what my noble friend said is, quite rightly, part of my history and our history. I hope that it is part of our progress as a country that we value equality. We know that ultimately it is good for all of us, and long may we keep struggling to achieve that goal.
Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friends on this side of the House have commented on this amendment in far better terms than I could, but I will make a supplementary point. I was very surprised to see this amendment, because one of the perennial themes that we have heard throughout all stages of the Bill in this House has been a complaint about the alleged level of extra bureaucracy that it is supposed to impose on employers. Yet here we see a veritable feast of form-filling and requirements to report on those forms at regular intervals. I suggest that this amendment is not needed; it is surplus to requirements because it places unnecessary burdens on employers.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I will be very brief. It is very important that we do not suggest that giving a helping hand to those who have been politically deprived of equality equals equality. It can also equal tokenism. Working-class people, women and people from ethnic minorities have been promoted to positions in authority, and people basically point them out and say, “Look at them: they succeeded”. That is the opposite of equal treatment, and condescension is not a good look.
Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, I can hardly follow my noble friend Lady O’Grady in being the TUC’s first woman general secretary, but I was the first woman leader of Newport City Council after decades and the first woman leader of the Welsh Local Government Association—and am still the only one.
I was also a public service employee for 35 years, when I taught in schools in London and south Wales, so I know about positive action. When I became a public service employer, as the leader of Newport, what I tried to do with positive action was to actively take a range of measures and initiatives to encourage people from communities that were underrepresented. We wanted them to bring their talents, experiences and expertise to our organisation, and we wanted them to join us.
Our selection process was no different: through the use of positive action, we did not seek to remove competition; rather, we wanted to allow everyone the same level of opportunity. That final selection for a post was always made on the merit of the applicant. We built our workforce so that it reflected the rich diversity and complexities of our community of Newport and we attracted the best talent from the widest pool of people.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an interesting debate on positive action, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for initiating it. It raised important issues but, when the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, spoke of straw-man debates, I thought he was a good example in the issues that he raised, because we are not talking about positive discrimination here. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, acknowledged, all Governments have supported positive action, for very good reasons.
The positive action provisions in the Equality Act 2010 enable, in a work context, both public and private sector employers to prioritise the recruitment of and promote people who have protected characteristics that are underrepresented generally or at certain levels in their workplace.
This is permissible only where the available candidates are considered equally qualified for the particular role. In other words, it is a tie-break based on workforce diversity. We therefore do not accept the premise of the new clause that another employee has suffered an unjustified detriment by not being selected. Of course, we are absolutely clear that it is illegal to positively discriminate, and I will give reasons.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, raised something that I read in the Daily Telegraph about West Yorkshire Police. One of the things that, sadly, many of our newspapers fail to do is to issue the full statement. I thought West Yorkshire Police issued a commendable statement. It said:
“In West Yorkshire Police, we are committed to improving equality, diversity, and inclusion within the organisation, and strive to be more representative of the communities we serve.
Our Diversity, Equality and Inclusion team supports and consults with those with different protected characteristics such as sex, disability, sexual orientation, and race to ensure their views can influence and improve the service the force delivers. They also work to improve the wellbeing of everybody in the organisation and inclusivity overall.
The most recent census found that 23 per cent of people in West Yorkshire identified as being from an ethnic minority background. Our current police officer representation from ethnic minority backgrounds is around nine per cent. To address this under-representation, we use Positive Action under the Equality Act 2010. Our use of this was recently reviewed by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services in an Activism and Impartiality inspection and no issues were identified.
Positive Action allows people from under-represented groups who express an interest in joining the force to complete an application, which is then held on file until a recruitment window is opened. No interviews are held until the window is officially opened to all candidates. Enabling people from under-represented groups to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from this pool of applicants”.
I think that is the point that my noble friend Lady O’Grady was making. It is a pity that the Daily Telegraph did not report the full statement from the police because I think it sets this whole thing in perfect context.
A detriment arises where someone is treated unfairly by their employer—for example, where someone is promoted over them who is clearly a weaker candidate. If the reason for that was based on a protected characteristic, it would be unlawful positive discrimination under the 2010 Act and would be rightly challengeable, but this is not the situation under positive action. I think that has been extremely well illustrated by West Yorkshire Police in terms of how it adopted that policy.
We also have doubts as to whether the processes envisaged could be truly confidential. This could have undesirable implications for both the successful candidate and the complainant. Lawful recruitment decisions are confidential for good reason, and opening them up to this kind of probing risks creating interemployee bad feeling, particularly in smaller departments where the identification of people by inference or guesswork is easier.
The Bill is about improving employment rights, not creating new and unnecessary conflicts. Positive action can work effectively only as part of a confidential recruitment process, where transparency is often good for equality. What is proposed would, I fear, work against that, and as such the Government cannot support the proposed new clause.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
I thank the Minister for that comprehensive answer, and I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this quite lively debate. I have to say I was disappointed that the greatest lady of them all who did not need a helping hand did not get a mention, so I will mention her: Margaret Thatcher.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that we are not seeking to undermine anything in this; I was very clear about that. I want to make it clear that, as I said in my opening remarks, this amendment does not seek to outlaw such action, nor does it obstruct efforts to promote fairness. It just seeks to ensure that fairness extends to all employees, not only to those whom the state or the employer happens to deem underrepresented.
I am grateful to the Minister for his extended quote from the Yorkshire case, but I also mentioned the case in Thames Valley. A tribunal there ruled that the three white police officers who won a claim after they were passed over for promotion were overlooked by Thames Valley Police because of their race and an ethnic-minority sergeant was promoted—this is the killer line—
“without any competitive assessment process taking place”,
which is precisely not the spirit of the laws that we have just been discussing.
Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)
That is why we were asking these questions and laying this amendment. It is good to have it out in the open. The amendment sought not litigation but clarity. It sought not courtroom battles but a simple mechanism for transparency and accountability. It would have been a route for asking questions and a structure for reporting. It would be a reminder that positive action must remain within the bounds of the law and fairness, and not become a euphemism for sanctioned discrimination. However, I have heard the arguments from the Minister and, not least because of the lateness of the hour, I am content to withdraw the amendment.