Working From Home (Home-based Working Committee Report)

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

18:53

Moved by

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Home-based Working Committee Is working from home working? (HL Paper 196, Session 2024-26).

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, it is now 18 months since the Home-based Working Committee was established to conduct a special inquiry into the effects and future development of home-based working in the UK. At that time, barely a day went by when there was not a media story about working from home, so the time was very definitely right for the sort of evidence-based, in-depth inquiry that this House does so well. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, whose idea it was to have this inquiry and who steered it through the Liaison Committee.

In November 2025 the committee published its report, titled Is Working from Home Working? The Government and the Office for National Statistics both responded in February 2026. It is a pleasure to be able to debate the report this evening and I am pleased to see so many of the committee members here. They were all very committed to the work we were doing and were challenging but constructive throughout the inquiry. Despite coming at the subject from a range of perspectives, we reached a consensus on the report.

I am grateful to the many people and organisations who gave evidence, both written and in person. I put on record my appreciation for the hard work and commitment of our specialist adviser, Dr Cevat Aksoy, and our committee staff Dom Walsh, Robert Wilson, Mark Gladwell and Lara Orija.

It is evident that there has been a rapid growth in remote and hybrid working since 2020. It was of course driven initially by the pandemic, but it now represents a significant change in the way that work is done by many in the UK. Since that time, the UK workforce appears to have settled into what has been described as a new normal, where a large minority work from home at least some of the time. At the time our report was published, ONS data suggested that 13% of working adults in Great Britain worked from home all the time and a further 26% worked from home some of the time. We also found that the UK has one of the highest rates of home-based working globally. As our report makes clear, these major changes in working practices represent both opportunities and risks for the workforce, for employers and for wider society.

The committee found that government policy and data collection regarding remote and hybrid working sit across multiple departments and agencies. The committee recommended that the Government should allocate ministerial responsibility for the co-ordination across departments of data on the prevalence and impacts of remote and hybrid working.

The committee also noted that there are significant limitations with the data collected by the ONS on remote and hybrid working, so we recommend that the ONS should start regularly collecting and publishing additional data on variable levels of hybrid working. For example, when it says that someone is working from home, that could mean one day a month or four days a week. Its data does not split that up.

The Government indicated that they would consider routes to improving evidence sharing and data collection. The Department for Business and Trade specifically says that it will engage across government to shape flexible working policy and evaluate its impact. The ONS said in a separate response to our report that it was engaging with the department, but that any extension to the data collected would require sponsorship from a government department. So the first of what I suspect will be many questions to the Minister tonight is: can the Government confirm that they will support the ONS to gather data on these variable levels of hybrid working? What steps have the Government taken to capture detailed data on how different groups experience home-based working?

The committee found that home-based working has mixed effects on individuals’ physical and mental health and well-being. There was an overall perception that the impact of home-based working is positive, but that is derived mostly from self-reported evidence. There is no doubt that people with disabilities and carers may have an improved experience of work or may be able to work where otherwise they could not. However, others may be disadvantaged: in particular young people who miss an interpersonal connection, or people with unsuitable home working environments. The Government have acknowledged this evidence gap and highlighted plans for a vanguard taskforce and workplace health intelligence unit, to be established as part of their Keep Britain Working programme. These initiatives will examine how flexible work arrangements can support individuals with long-term health conditions to stay in work. Can the Minister give us a timeline for the establishment of that unit?

The committee welcomed findings that the flexibility of home-based working can benefit individuals with disabilities and with parental and caring responsibilities. The Access to Work scheme provides important support to enable people with disabilities to work, including working from home, yet the committee heard that the scheme was facing administrative and financial difficulties. The Government have stated that a consultation to inform the future direction of Access to Work has concluded and plans will be set out in due course, so I wonder whether the Minister is able to update the House on that this evening. Can she also confirm that remote and hybrid working arrangements will continue to form part of any new scheme?

The committee also heard that groups of people can face challenges in accessing and benefiting from remote and hybrid working, and recommended that the Government promote equitable access through awareness campaigns targeted at employers that focus on specific sectors, regions and demographics where prevalence is lower than it could be. The Government have said they will consider how to target communications on flexible working towards worker groups and businesses that are less likely to work flexibly now.

I ought to note at this point that the term “flexible working” can and often does include hybrid and remote working, but it also encompasses a whole range of other practices. That is an important distinction when we think about the question of equity across the workforce for those whose jobs are simply not able to be done from home, so we welcome the inclusion of flexible working opportunities as a sub-criterion in the Government’s Social Value Model procurement tool.

I turn to productivity. The committee was surprised by a lack of data on the impact of remote and hybrid working on productivity. Evidence on personal productivity was self-reported. Many workers tend towards the view that they are more productive at home—that is hardly surprising given the reduction in commuting time and the potential autonomy to manage their own time effectively. Employer views were much more mixed. Around one-third thought their workers were less productive at home, around one-third thought they were more productive, and around one-third thought it did not make much difference—make of that what you will. However, all employers focused instead on intangible but important issues such as collaboration, creativity and workplace culture. Pretty much all of them reported improved recruitment and retention. In its response, the ONS described plans to develop a linked employer-employee data infrastructure, which would include productivity measures. The ONS aims to publish a technical note and a set of exploratory statistics in the second half of this year.

Overall, we concluded that by retaining the flexibility of remote work and the collaborative benefits of in-person work, the hybrid model has the potential to be the best of both worlds, but only if it is co-ordinated and well managed. We heard that there is little value in employers establishing a hybrid working mandate unless they take steps to ensure that collaboration actually happens. We heard lots of stories of people commuting into the office only to spend the whole day on Zoom calls. Employers need to work harder to make sure that teams are attending the office on the same day and that collaboration is enabled.

It was made very clear to us that strong management skills can alleviate the potential downsides of home-based working. Several witnesses, including from professional associations, told the committee that many managers need much more training in how to facilitate effective remote and hybrid working. The committee recommended that the Government publish guidance on managing employees in these circumstances and incentivise investment in management training, such as by reconsidering the proposed cuts to level 7 apprenticeships. In response, the Government suggested that existing support for management training is sufficient. Perhaps I could gently urge the Minister to have a look at our evidence again, because it strongly suggests otherwise.

Employers that the committee spoke to generally agreed that the Government should avoid further regulatory and legislative intervention regarding remote and hybrid working. This was particularly the case with the so-called right to switch off, where there was a widespread sense that a code of conduct is preferable to legislation. Several witnesses suggested that the Government should reconvene the Flexible Working Taskforce, and the committee asked the Government to explain why it had been disbanded. In response, the Government said that they have launched a consultation on flexible working. As part of the plan to make work pay, the Government will look to establish a more structured and official-led stakeholder group. Can the Minister update the House tonight on what progress has been made in setting up this stakeholder group? The make work pay consultation on improving access to flexible working closed in April. Can the Minister provide an update on the initial findings?

We heard that employees tend to be more supportive of home working than employers. There is a preference gap of about one day: most employees would rather be in the office two days and at home three days, while employers prefer it the other way. This emphasises the importance of ongoing dialogue between employers and employees. We spent quite a lot of time discussing the industrial relations aspects of this.

We also spent a lot of time discussing employers’ back-to-office mandates. The evidence we took suggests that, while these were becoming more common, they quite often codified hybrid work rather than mandating full-time office attendance. The Employment Rights Act allows employers to reject a flexible working request if it is deemed reasonable. However, there is a lack of clarity over the definition of “reasonable”—clearly, what is reasonable to an employer is unlikely to be reasonable to an employee. The committee recommended that the Government consider the risk of litigation and its impact on the tribunal system, which is already struggling, if there is no more clarity on the definition of reasonable. I wonder why the Government consider that the tribunal data from the current system preceding the new reasonable test means that the new test will not significantly increase the tribunal system’s workload.

The committee found that remote and hybrid working have the potential to support wider government priorities relating to increasing employment levels, especially for people with disabilities and those with caring responsibilities. The committee recommended that the Government explain whether home-based working will form part of the thinking behind Get Britain Working and the connect to work programme.

The committee recommended that the Government conduct further research into understanding the wider consequences of changing work patterns. This would encompass regional differences, urban-rural policy, transport, and the retail and hospitality sectors. The committee spent some time looking at these, but we were bedevilled by the same lack of data in this area as in a number of others. It is true to say that the broader the scope of the area you are looking at, the harder it is to nail down whether working from home was causing the issue or whether it was other changes in the economy —or, in the case of the retail sector, things such as energy prices and employment costs. It is quite difficult to tease that out.

The committee found that digital technologies are critical to facilitating access to remote and hybrid working. We recommended that the Government increase long-term investment in digital infrastructure, such as by committing to further funding of Project Gigabit. The Government should support the development of digital skills. We were all surprised to hear how many younger people, while clearly having certain digital skills, do not have the right skills to bring into the workplace, even digitally. That came as a surprise to all of us. In response, the Government said that the proposed statement of strategic priorities has established that business connectivity should be treated as a priority by Ofcom. That is not the same as household connectivity, so perhaps the Minister could clarify that. The Government also noted that digital access and the development of digital skills are being supported by the digital inclusion plan.

The committee found that future developments in remote and hybrid working are difficult to predict. Some sectors may see remote jobs supplanted by AI, while others may find that automation increasingly allows work to be completed at home. The committee has recommended that the Government set out their approach to how AI will relate to remote and hybrid working.

The committee concluded that the long-term social and economic effects of remote and hybrid working are still unclear. There are risks in the long term for collaboration, productivity and skills development. The committee recommended that further research be conducted on the long-term effects of home-based working and that the Government should provide funding for academics to complete this work, facilitating access to longitudinal data.

Our report shed light on the opportunities and challenges that remote and hybrid working pose to individuals, employers and society. However, gaps in the available data remain. We still do not have a full understanding of how different groups experience home-based working and what the long-term impact of the growth of this will be. I beg to move.

19:08

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who chaired the proceedings of the committee with considerable skill and good temper, as we were all searching for data which does not exist and may never exist, I suspect, given the Government’s priority list. She gave us a good lead all the way through, and, with the help of the secretariat, a good and practical report has been produced. I much congratulate our chairman.

The sudden expansion of working from home during the recent pandemic was, let us be honest, a huge surprise to all of us. Interestingly, and topically, I note that the BBC is going to cover the World Cup working from home in Salford—I look forward to the efforts to make Salford look like San Francisco. Workplace change is generally very slow, but, as the pandemic raged, the expansion of home working took place in a great rush. It was interesting the way that new technology came along at the same time as the pandemic struck. If you had a laptop, a smartphone or a desktop, you could hold meetings with colleagues and see them almost anywhere in the world. It spread like wildfire. Sales of the appliances soared, some bought by employers for workers and others bought by the workers themselves. No longer was digital technology restricted to people with special skills and special knowledge of technology.

This response was necessary to maintain output and economic growth—and, of course, keep down unemployment—during the pandemic. The combination of the pandemic and technology was remarkable, and we were very lucky that it stopped things from getting considerably worse than they already were. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, the impact was not general. Many jobs—for example, in health, hospitality and factories—could not be executed remotely, and face-to-face contact was still essential. Other areas, especially office-based work, were highly appropriate for remote working, and it spread rapidly in that sector, as well as some others.

From my perspective, the change has been very successful. There is no convincing evidence about productivity—although the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly talked about the range of opinions—but it seemed to me all the way through the proceedings that the quality of management was crucial. If home working was well managed, then companies were pleased with it. If it was not, they were not. The same is probably true of looking at productivity in a fixed workplace of a traditional kind. Major changes in workplace practices are often controversial, with workers sometimes being involved in disputes. Discussions about working time, overtime, and maternity and paternity leave can be contentious in workplaces. But this did not generally occur, as far as we are aware, with the introduction of working from home in the pandemic. There were some problems, certainly, but not anything significant. That was to the credit of British employers and workers, who kept up output in the teeth of a frightening pandemic. It is important to acknowledge just how well we thought they did.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also said, we seem to have settled into a new normal, where a large minority of workers now work from home, or remotely, at least for some of the time, but that is not the end of the story. Working from home is a phenomenon, but it may be overshadowed by the arrival of another one. Artificial intelligence, which is lurking just around the corner, is likely to be most powerfully felt in those sectors which have introduced working from home the most widely, particularly clerical work and work in offices. It will have a major impact on the future of work; maybe that is a subject for another report by a House of Lords committee.

I finish with one question: do the Government accept that guidance is needed in respect of the proposed code of practice, and what constitutes reasonable, as far as employers dealing with requests from workers for flexible working is concerned? We have started something here, and this will continue on a bigger scale, particularly when we see new technology coming along in the form of AI.

19:13

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I too warmly congratulate the noble Baroness on her report: thoughtful, practical, and admirably free from dogma. I think we are all going to ask her to review the report a couple of years’ time, because it is clear that we need more evidence.

As has been well said, the pandemic accelerated what the committee calls a previously “modest and gradual shift”. We have a new reality, with 13% of working adults in Great Britain working from home, 26% in a hybrid way. We do not want to turn back the clock. For carers, disabled people and parents, it has been life- changing and, properly managed, hybrid working can offer the best of both worlds. I can remember going to work and pretending that I had a very important meeting, when actually I was going to see my children’s primary school play. We have all been in situations where we were rigidly supposed to stay at our desks with no flexibility—we might work in the evening, we might do anything, but no, it was the nine-to-five commitment —but the world is very different now. At the same time, what matters is what works for both parties, and I worry that the pendulum may go too far. Employees owe their employer commitments and obligations, as well as the employer owing them to the employee.

Businesses have different requirements. They need people to come in at different times, and many people cannot work from home. If you look at the workers out in Belfast last night—the emergency services—they had to go to work. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, will know that people in the health service have to go to work. People talking about working at home can be a little bit precious about their world. The key is that it requires management, and within management the key person I would like to have seen more reference to in the report is the chief people officer, whose job is to make sure you get 110% value out of people, and not 90%. That is all about motivation, engagement and leadership; it is at the heart of productivity. The CPO’s role is about culture, engagement, and performance management—always incredibly difficult, but how much more difficult is it when people are working from home? Workforce planning is at the heart of deciding how you are going to organise jobs that involve working from home. I was talking to someone at a utility the other day. All the call centres are now organised with people working at home, but there is a requirement to come into work on a regular basis to meet colleagues, have training and raise issues. It can be done, but it requires a great deal more thought and analysis.

For some people and businesses, working from home is essential. The Minister used to work for Standard Chartered bank. If you have to be on the telephone to Hong Kong in the morning and to America in the evening, this is very difficult to do without flexible working. If tech businesses had to be constrained by the talent pool in their local area, that would be extraordinarily limiting. It is a context between the business, activity, individuals and the employers, and we should try to be unprejudiced, objective and, above all, evidence-based as we look for a way forward.

More must be said about young people, because the Milburn report, which we have all found harrowing and deeply alarming, stated that one in eight people is now not in education, employment or training. Without action, that could become one in six. Of all the people who need to go to work—to learn, listen, be exposed to the watercooler moment, and have bossy people such as me wandering around on management walk- abouts, seeing when they look miserable or out of order —young people should be able to go to a work environment whenever possible. That is very easily said.

I also believe that older people should go to work, because they become rather comfortable. They are better off, live further away, like their house, have their dog, and they are in their comfort zone. In fact, they are stuck in a rut and becoming fossilised. They need to go to work to learn about TikTok and the next generation.

Hybrid working needs good management, analysis and thought. It is here to stay. We do not yet have all the answers, but the noble Baroness and her committee have helped us to understand a few more of the answers rather better.

19:18

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate, and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for so ably chairing the committee, and for her excellent introductory speech covering the findings that most of us will probably repeat in part.

I intend to concentrate on health and disability issues. I welcome the Government’s response to the potential health benefits and risks associated with remote and hybrid working. For many, working has significant health benefits, particularly at home, but for others—those who live alone—it can induce loneliness and isolation, leading to withdrawal, anxiety and depression. The committee found that some opt to work from home and concurrently manage caring responsibilities at home in the same environment. Although findings were not definitive, this may disproportionately affect women who work from home. Constantly juggling work and caring roles is difficult and may result in stress. However, it may provide significant cost and time savings in terms of travel, thus reducing employees’ resulting financial worry.

Some companies report monitoring people’s activity at home during working hours, which may be entirely reasonable, but some home workers find that intrusive and anxiety-provoking. The Government’s response states that the Health and Safety Executive will promote its home working guidance, which should address such concerns and make recommendations for employment best practice to support people working from home while monitoring work output. Though I know little about cyber security, there are definite risks if people do not stick to the rules of their employer when working from home, which may in turn lead to loss of employment.

How many companies actually visit the working environments of home workers to ensure that their employees have the correct equipment and sufficient physical room to work safely all day? Or is this to be solely the responsibility of the worker to decide? During Covid, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, said, working from home was a huge bonus, but post pandemic many found that they had to work from home for at least part of their hours of employment, as so many companies reduced the amount of office space they provided. For some, this is an advantage: from evidence given to the committee on health, hybrid working has widely been seen as positive. However, others continue to work with inadequate desk and chair space, and are not provided with suitable ergonomically designed equipment, potentially leading to significant musculoskeletal problems.

I acknowledge that the Keep Britain Working programme is considering how employers and government will build healthier, more inclusive workplaces and refine best practice, with the aim of reducing sickness and absence and promoting employment for disabled people. Workplace adjustments and flexible working may well support those with health conditions to enter and stay in work, which is welcomed.

Conversely, it is possible that employers may encourage disabled employees to work only from home, leading to loneliness and a lack of opportunity for promotion. That may be more cost-effective for employers and reduce the cost of the Access to Work government grant scheme. However, I do not believe that this should lead to a reduction in benefits that fund individual workers’ transport to work, which support disabled people to get to work and stay in work. Can the Minister assure the House that His Majesty’s Government will continue to fund specialist equipment, through grants for ergonomic furniture, assisted software and other adapted equipment for disabled people working on company premises and at home? Similarly, is it intended to legislate to ensure that everyone working from home should be provided with the right equipment by their employer to conduct their work safely and effectively?

We did not take evidence relating to piecework at home, but we did learn about its history. Are further regulations needed to protect home workers to ensure that output numbers expected for pieceworkers by employers can be produced within the contracted hours that they are paid for at home? How will the Government ensure that all pieceworkers earn at least the minimum wage for the hours they work?

Some employees reported unreasonable expectations by employers who expected availability out of contracted hours, and associated stress as a result. People working from home report less sick leave. Are they working while unwell or are they healthier due to being able to work at home? Many home-based workers reported working much longer hours than those contracted and feeling unable to log off. Do they feel less able or less reluctant to take sick leave? No one wants home working to lead to the equivalent of sweatshop employment, with no boundaries between home and work and a lack of real human interactions. Some workers live alone in small homes, others in shared houses with multiple occupants. What are the long-term health effects associated with these challenges?

It is clear that we need further guidance on home-based working and close monitoring to ensure that the advantages of increased productivity—or decreased productivity—are known. How can the Government ensure that we develop and promote safe, healthy home-based working policies across our community?

19:25

[Lord Sharma (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, in speaking in this important debate. I was appointed Business and Energy Secretary on 13 February 2020, just as the enormity of the Covid crisis was beginning to be understood by the Government. As noble Lords know, just over a month later the UK went into its first national lockdown, with profound impacts on many aspects of our lives, including of course the world of work. My department, together with the Treasury, was of course at the centre of the Government’s economic response to the pandemic, and I have provided both written and oral evidence to the Covid inquiry through its various modules. But, having read this Select Committee report in detail, I think that it provides some really thoughtful and complementary analysis to the work being undertaken by the Covid inquiry.

When we went into the first lockdown, in my department we asked ourselves a number of key questions about the world of work in what has now become the new normal. Would working from home actually work for both employers and employees? What impact would there be on productivity as a result of home-based working, including of course the impact on the well-being of people working at home? Would we see a long-term hollowing out of city-centre businesses, which depended so much on the footfall of people going into work during the week, and what would be the impact on public transport? Would that be financially sustainable with significantly reduced work travel? A particular concern of mine was whether we would see the emergence of what I would describe as a potentially societally destabilising two-tier structure, separating those who were safe and could work at home from those who had to go into a workplace during a very difficult time.

This excellent Select Committee report—I commend and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and all noble Lords who served on the committee—has sought to answer precisely these questions, with the benefit of distance from the time of the pandemic, which of course was a catalyst for the big increase in home working. In the limited time that I have available, I want to pick up on one issue, which is productivity—a number of noble Lords have talked about this—and the impact on productivity of longer-term home or hybrid working.

I recall a conversation that I had, as we went into the first lockdown, with the UK heads of some of the major consulting and accounting firms. At the time, they all expressed real concern about the impact of longer-term home working on their employees’ productivity. I had a similar conversation a few months later with them; it suggested that the same firms were pleasantly surprised that productivity had not dropped and, in some cases, had even increased. But then, towards the end of 2020, the anecdotal view I was getting was that any gains in productivity were starting to tail off, as the benefits and synergies of collaborating in person were no longer readily available to employees.

The conclusion from this Select Committee report—forgive me, I am paraphrasing—is that when it comes to productivity the jury is still out, particularly because of the limited availability of quantitative data. I very much welcome the Government’s agreeing to the Select Committee report’s recommendations to collect data and to monitor the economic consequences of home working, including on the UK’s global competitiveness. However, I suggest that the Government need to go somewhat further in their response than just including some specific questions on home working in their periodic surveys to business.

As the Minister will be aware, the CBI, in collaboration with the London School of Economics, published a report in March this year, Remote Work and Firm Productivity. I would recommend all noble Lords to have a look at the detail of that. There is something to be said for the Government working with the major business representative organisations to periodically produce similar targeted analysis of the impact of continued home and hybrid working on the UK’s productivity levels, and, in the context of global competitiveness, to benchmark those productivity levels against what is happening in other jurisdictions around the world. I know that the Select Committee has examined productivity in the context of G7 countries, and that has been incredibly useful, but if the Government are willing to undertake further analysis in collaboration with business representative organisations, they should look at other economies as well, not just those in the G7, which have a similar structure to ours.

I agree with the Select Committee’s conclusion that we do not need any major legislative or regulatory interventions in this area. However, having the Government use their convening power to help deliver internationally benchmarked analysis on home and hybrid working—basically, which measures help in different jurisdictions and what hinders productivity—will make a real difference to both employers and employees as they navigate what we all understand is an increasingly complex world of work, not least, as a number of noble Lords have pointed out, due to the rise in the use of AI in the workplace.

19:30

[Baroness Nye (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank our committee team and specialist adviser for their excellent work on this report, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for her leadership of the committee and her introduction to this debate.

As we have heard, digital technology has grown quickly since the pandemic. This has helped organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors to find a mix of home and office working that suits employers and employees alike. It is one of the most profound structural shifts in our labour market in decades. As one witness to our committee put it, the old office is dying and the new one is struggling to be born.

There are three closely connected issues arising from this report: industrial relations, the changing role of management and the implications for productivity. It is clear that we are moving away from the cult of presenteeism and morphing towards one that values what people deliver rather than where they work.

Expectations have also changed. Many employees now see some flexibility not as an optional perk but as a normal part of their job. When that flexibility is properly agreed, it can enhance trust and improve outcomes for both sides, but, where it is imposed or withdrawn unilaterally, it risks creating tension, disengagement and conflict. Indeed, a top-down return-to-office mandate can damage morale and retention when the lived experience of employees is ignored. It was a pity that the committee was unable to hear from businesses adopting a total return-to-office mandate, despite the Herculean efforts by the committee staff to engage with them.

We heard consistently that hybrid working succeeds or fails not because of the policy itself but because of how it is managed. That success relies less on physical supervision and more on greater clarity about objectives and outputs, as well as deliberate efforts to sustain team cohesion and culture. This is a fundamental shift in management practice, and many organisations are still adapting. It is a challenge as well as an opportunity, and there is a clear need for investment in management capability.

We heard that hybrid working should be designed intelligently, so that the time together is meaningful. It should, as one witness said, “earn the commute”. If done well, hybrid working can give people more control over their work, improve job satisfaction and support more effective use of time; if done badly, it can lead to isolation and loneliness, unclear expectations and a reduction in effectiveness. There are particular risks for younger workers, where opportunities to learn informally from colleagues may be diminished.

As has been said, the committee discovered a lack of current data on productivity, but the evidence from Professor Nick Bloom showed that hybrid working has now settled into a new equilibrium—typically two or three days in the office—and was associated with some productivity gains. These gains appear to come less from direct increases in output and more from improved retention, reduced turnover and a more efficient use of time, particularly through reduced commuting. These benefits are real but not a silver bullet. They are indirect and contingent and, again, if effectively managed, they can make a positive contribution to the holy grail of economic growth.

Hybrid working can also support wider labour participation, particularly for disabled people, those with caring responsibilities and older workers. However, these opportunities are uneven, as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, has said. Many workers, especially on the front line, cannot benefit from location flexibility.

The committee heard about some unintended consequences. A parent working from home is physically at home but psychologically at work. The effects of those blurred boundaries are not yet fully understood.

Hybrid working is not just reshaping our workplaces but affecting our wider economy and society, in areas such as city centres, commuting patterns and transport systems, retail and hospitality, as well as highlighting the importance of good digital access, especially in rural areas.

Hybrid working is neither a cure nor a problem to be reversed. It is a structural change that brings both opportunities and risks. The task for Government is threefold, so I have some questions for my noble friend the Minister. How are the Government supporting flexibility, with its benefits for individuals and the economy? How are they addressing inequalities, ensuring that those who cannot work from home are not disadvantaged? How are they supporting improvements in management and organisational practice, particularly in the public sector, because that is where success or failure will undoubtedly be determined?

How the Government answer those questions will affect not just whether hybrid working succeeds today but whether our labour market is ready for the wider changes to come. Although it was beyond the scope of our inquiry, the interaction between hybrid working and the growing use of AI will become increasingly important as we seek to build a modern, fair and productive labour market for the future.

19:35

[Baroness Freeman of Steventon (CB)]

My Lords, one of the greatest challenges that the committee faced when writing this report was the lack of good data on how we work in the UK. I would like to expand on some of the points made by our excellent chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott.

Without knowing who works from home on how many days, we cannot look for associations between that and various different outcomes and possible effects at the individual, company or national level. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, the Office for National Statistics currently routinely collects data only on answers to the following questions: in the past seven days, have you worked from home, and in the past seven days, have you travelled to work? That means we cannot tell the difference between someone who works at home one day a week, or even less, and someone who works at home most of the time. Without this kind of data, we have to rely on proxy measures, and those suggest that home-based working is important to study.

We have all heard about the dramatic decreases in job opportunities for those early in their careers. They are often touted as a worrying sign of the effects of AI on the workplace, but—this is where I wish I could use graphics, because it is so much easier to illustrate data—the decline in adverts for jobs suitable for those just entering the workplace starts almost immediately post-pandemic, in late 2022, in data taken from job adverts across the UK, the US, Canada and Australia simultaneously. That is well before we could expect to see any effect on job hirings from AI.

In fact, a team from the University of Warwick, the LSE and the Ellison Institute has analysed data on job adverts and hirings and data on working from home and AI adoption. Although working from home and AI tend to affect the same classes of jobs, it looks as though it is working from home that has so far caused the around 5% decline in the share of new jobs going to junior staff. Why? Other research, in line with what we heard as a committee, suggests that managers are less likely to want to risk taking on a less experienced person when they are hiring for a job where there will not be much opportunity for on-the-job, in-person learning or supervision.

Clearly, understanding the effects of different working patterns on different groups of people, and how we can best encourage more of the benefits and mitigate the downsides, is vital. In their response to our report, the Government agreed, and in fact mentioned a broader evaluation of flexible-working policy changes and the effects of the new Employment Rights Act, and said that the Department for Business and Trade will be engaging with departments about data that they held and that they needed. Can the Minister give an update on this engagement and on what data is being used to perform these policy evaluations?

In our report, we pointed out the need for the ONS to collect more granular data on who is working at home and for how many days. In its response, the ONS said that:

“Any continuation or expansion of hybrid working questions on the”


opinions and lifestyle survey

“would require sponsorship from a government department”,

and that it was talking to the Department for Business and Trade about this data. Can the Minister provide any update on this?

One of the other quite dramatic shifts in recent years is the difficulty of getting people to complete surveys, such as those on which the ONS relies for this kind of data. Less than half of people asked to complete them are doing so. This increases the risk of bias in the type of person who does complete them, skewing the results. There are obviously big advantages to using data that we already hold about people, such as administrative data, and in being able to link data about the working patterns of people within an organisation with, say, the organisation’s performance, the promotion prospects and earnings of people with different working patterns, or productivity.

As a committee, we heard how other countries are able to use their linked employer and employee datasets to look at the effects of working from home, not to mention many other vital issues to do with employment, wages and productivity. But the UK, despite its world-leading national statistics and having the highest percentage of hybrid workers, does not yet have that. In response to our report, the ONS said that it was currently working on beginning this task, having already published a road map for its design in mid-2025. This road map suggested starting with the ONS working with HMRC to bring their data together with PAYE datasets. There seem to be lots of proposals and activity in this area from different organisations, and I wonder whether the Minister could confirm how the Government are progressing this.

I finally note that we have not had a National Statistician in post since early May 2025. I very much hope that this is a situation that will soon change, and that the Minister can reassure us all that data collection and analysis in this really important area is improving.

19:40

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for her excellent chairing of the committee. Bringing together members with different experiences and perspectives is no small task, yet she guided our deliberations with patience, skill and good humour throughout. I also thank our clerk, Dom Walsh, for his team, whose professionalism enabled us to navigate a substantial body of evidence and research, and those who gave evidence.

Having served on the committee, I can say that one conclusion stands out. The debate about working from home is too often presented as a binary choice: success or failure, productivity or inefficiency, office or home. The evidence that we received pointed to a more nuanced reality: the central issue is not where people work but how work is organised, managed and supported. Remote and hybrid working are no longer temporary responses to an emergency, such as the Covid-19 pandemic; they are now established features of the labour market. The challenge is therefore not whether hybrid working should continue but how it can operate effectively for employees, employers and the wider economy.

One aspect of the evidence that particularly struck me was the unequal distribution of opportunity. The benefits of hybrid working are most available to professional and highly skilled workers, particularly in larger cities such as London. By contrast, many people employed in healthcare, manufacturing, retail and hospitality have little access to such flexibility. We should therefore be cautious about assuming that the experiences of office-based workers reflect those of the wider workforce. Much of the evidence available came from employees rather than large employers. Employees frequently reported positive outcomes, including improved work/life balance, reduced commuting, greater autonomy and enhanced well-being. These benefits were especially cited as important for disabled people, carers and parents, many of whom found that flexible working enabled them to remain economically active.

However, the evidence also highlighted genuine concerns: social isolation, weaker workplace relationships and blurred boundaries between professional and personal life. Questions were also raised about career progression and mentoring opportunities, particularly for younger workers, who benefit from direct interaction with colleagues and managers. Microsoft reported that extensive remote working may weaken collaboration and knowledge- sharing networks.

For me, perhaps the most contested issue is productivity. Yet one of the committee’s strongest conclusions was that there is no convincing evidence that working from home either universally increases or decreases productivity. Overall, the evidence suggested that productivity depends less on location than on leadership, communication, organisational culture and effective management, as so ably highlighted by my noble friend Lady Bottomley.

However, several important questions remain unanswered. We found limited evidence on the impact of home working on consumer service outcomes, regional inequalities and equality and inclusion, and on whether remote working may conceal issues such as domestic abuse or increased caring burdens on women. As we have heard, there are also wider implications for cities, towns, transport systems and hospitality businesses. These gaps demonstrate the need for further research and better data, as articulated by the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, and others. Can the Minister therefore say what plans the Government have to address these evidence gaps and improve data collection even further?

My conclusion is straightforward: hybrid working in some form is here to stay, but its success is not inevitable. Employers should retain the flexibility to determine arrangements that suit their organisations and workforce, rather than operate under a rigid mandate set out by any Government. Government should support this transition through investment in digital infrastructure, better data collection and the sharing of best practice. Can the Minister say when the Government plan to improve full access to internet connectivity, as well as to digital skills and digital infrastructure, particularly in rural and deprived areas? Indeed, in the area where I live, there is hardly any connectivity.

To conclude, further debate should focus not on where people work but on how we create productive, inclusive and sustainable workplaces, particularly as AI becomes more widespread. Therefore, can the Minister say what action the Government are taking to ensure that flexible and hybrid working do not further entrench inequalities in the workplace?

19:46

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the committee for its work and its recommendations, and in particular very grateful to the chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for a very comprehensive introduction.

I have some form on this. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, I remember the days back in the 1980s and 1990s, when we were struggling with employers to introduce flexible working patterns. The Government were opposed to changes—they did not like it—yet we managed to persuade them that it was the right way forward. In turn, it was a way that saved the Civil Service; we had so many vacancies that we could not fill, but we retained women who were going to leave because they were offered flexible working hours, and we recruited many more women into the Civil Service because they had the opportunity of working in that way. It spread throughout the public service—and now the NHS would not operate without the kind of flexibility that was then introduced there.

There are big changes now, and it is quite interesting. I was not on the committee. Had I been, I would have raised the issue of looking at what we did here in the House. I find it amazing that we worked so well and transformed ourselves when we were working from home, and I would be interested to know whether we are keeping up to date the evidence that we produced of our working activities. When we are considering the need to decant, I wonder whether we have explored the alternative possibility of working from home and a repeat of what we did during Covid. It worked extraordinarily well indeed. We may have a hybrid variation on that theme, but I am sure it would save an awful lot of money, as is presently being talked about, being spent on restoration and renewal.

I was particularly interested in the committee’s point about productivity, like other noble Lords. We have to look at AI there, and I will be interested to see what work the Government are doing on AI and its link with home working. There are so many areas in which I think we could be using AI to assist with people working from home. There is a whole long list. It can have a role as a coach for home workers. It can be used as a costing and output companion, which is an important change and quite a worrying one. It can record the work completed and objectives achieved, assist in prioritisation of objectives and help overcome obstacles that people face. It can summarise and report, and it can identify training needs and monitor well-being as well as burnout risks. In short—and this has all come from AI—there is a whole range of activities that could be undertaken that would assist in a way that management would have been expected to do in the past.

AI would not need to be used simply as observing hours worked. We need to find mechanisms whereby we can calculate the cost of working in a more up-to-date fashion than we do at present. If you ask AI who is doing this, you will find that McKinsey, Accenture and the major companies of that ilk are doing this kind of work and producing models. They are quite expensive, but they will very much be the way that we will operate in the future. Are the Government doing work in this area and are they starting to run any experimentation to see how we can move it forward?

19:50

[Lord Fink (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on securing this debate and on her exemplary chairmanship of the committee. I also thank our excellent clerk and staff team who supported the members of the committee, on which I served, and those who gave evidence to the inquiry. It was a pleasure to be part of the committee and, above all, I learned a great deal from the witnesses who gave evidence to us. Those insights helped to produce what I believe is a balanced and thoughtful report, and I am thankful for the opportunity to discuss the issues more widely today. I refer to my registered interests and note that many of the companies in which I have an interest operate in a variety of styles, from fully office-based to hybrid and home working, so I have no real dog in this fight.

To avoid duplication and to save time, I will focus on just four issues. The first is information. I love getting proper stats for things, especially important areas of policy. I continues to amaze and shock me how much money we sometimes spend on areas where we just do not have the evidence to make the decisions that we make, and when the evidence could be available at relatively modest cost. I welcome the Government’s commitment to improving the evidence base. Can the Minister say in summing up, or in writing, how they intend to do so? Will they consider enhancing ONS surveys or sponsoring additional ones? If hybrid working is here to stay, surely we need 21st-century statistics to understand it. At present, our data tells us far too little about how people are working, how they are being managed and what impact this is having on productivity and opportunity, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned.

The second is lack of training. One of the strongest messages we heard during the inquiry was how many organisations moved to home and hybrid working at extraordinary speed during the pandemic. They did so out of necessity, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, pointed out, and with impressive success given the scale of the challenge. But, understandably, few had the opportunity to retrain managers or redesign systems for supervising, developing and supporting staff working in different ways. In too many cases, more effort went into procuring video conference facilities than training staff, which was ironic. As a consequence, some of the difficulties that have since been attributed to home working may in fact reflect shortcomings in management practices rather than shortcomings in home working itself. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development told the committee that organisations investing in line management training reported much better productivity outcomes, while many business leaders emphasised the importance of effective mentoring and collaboration, particularly for younger workers.

Good management has always mattered, but it matters even more when teams are dispersed. I discovered this myself when in business. If we are serious about improving productivity and increasing labour market participation—for all the inclusivity reasons mentioned of trying to widen out the workforce as much as possible—for home working and hybrid systems to really work, investment in management capability should be seen not as a luxury, but an economic necessity. I therefore hope the Government will consider whether more can be done to encourage and support organisations in developing the skills to make hybrid working a real success. I am not calling for a large new spending programme; rather, I wonder whether existing schemes, such as Help to Grow: Management, could place greater emphasis on leading hybrid teams, looking at best practice that could be shared and bringing together business organisations to develop practical guidance. Such measures need not be expensive, but they could yield significant benefits for productivity, staff retention and economic growth. Will the Minister please consider this? It would take very little cost to do, just organisation.

Thirdly, I have observed that home working was popular with almost all staff, and even many people who worked hybrid wished to go fully remote, but this is an example of being careful what you wish for. Many businesspeople I know would say that any job that can be done totally remotely is more susceptible to being made redundant, either through outsourcing to a cheaper country or using AI. Expecting to be employed in an expensive part of Britian while working totally remotely is probably an unrealistic expectation for the long term.

Fourthly and finally, something that needs to be considered is the impact on young people. For school and university leavers looking for their first employment role, it is in many cases becoming much more difficult for them to integrate into a team where remote working is the norm in terms of training, team working and work ethic. Indeed, as another noble Lord pointed out, the fact that people are hiring fewer young employees as a response to them having to work unsupervised indicates that there is a problem here. Young people learn an amazing amount by mimicry—you have only to go skiing and watch a young ski class all waggling and following the instructor to see that. Without help, they cannot learn. Will the Minister provide reassurance that the Government will consider how to assist young people who are being disadvantaged by the reduction in office-based working?

19:56

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for her amazing, herculean efforts to pull together such a difficult subject. I start, however, by offering a data point that I am not sure would have surfaced in the research. I started a small karaoke chain, Lucky Voice, which I may have mentioned to your Lordships before; we have a few venues around London. A very strange thing happened in the resurgence when we came back after Covid. Suddenly, Sunday nights, which had been dead before, became extremely popular and one of our biggest nights in the week. We could only assume that it was because people felt as though it did not matter whether they had a terrible hangover when working at home. I am not sure whether that contributes positively or negatively to productivity, but I offer that small piece of data to noble Lords.

More seriously, I felt that I had to speak in this debate, for two main reasons. First, as a disabled person, working from home and the flexibility that it has given me has transformed my working life and gives me the flex and ability to manage my working in a way that I had never thought possible. I hope that, as the report so clearly lays out, we allow that for as many disabled people as possible.

Secondly, I had a very dear friend, now departed, named Dame Stephanie Shirley, who I do not think was mentioned in report but, as many people will know, really was the godmother of home working. She built a company in the late 1960s—all women, all working from home and doing things in the most extraordinary way. She showed that, with good leadership and good management, as many noble Lords have said, it really is possible to build an extraordinary business entirely with remote workers. The women working with her, the software engineers, were not doing easy-peasy software projects; they were building things such as the black box for Concorde or the Polaris submarine missile control panels. I was lucky enough to know her in her later life—she died two years ago—and she always said the same thing: “Why have we been so unimaginative in moving this on? How can it be that, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we had these new models of working that enabled new categories of people to work, and yet we have not moved it on?”

Far be it from me to go against my great heroine, but I find that somewhat challenging. Despite being disabled and having had so many improvements in my own life from working, I wish to raise two concerns. They are in the report, but I would like to double down on them. The first is the anxiety I have about creating a separate class of working citizens, particularly among the disabled population. While it is miraculous to be able to be offered the opportunity to work, we all know that your career paths are formed by taps on the shoulder, someone seeing you in a meeting or someone actively being your mentor and being able to show you the opportunities that might arise. We also know that that is far harder if you are a disabled person full stop, let alone if you are a disabled person working from home. That can also be true for many other vulnerable categories.

In this new world of data that we are going to track, I really hope that we can track the impact on disabled people of working from home particularly, to see whether there are the same career progressions and promotions and the same economic uplift as for everybody else, as they deserve.

The second area has already been mentioned, but I want to make it explicit. This is London Tech Week; the reason I am wearing this ridiculous pink suit is that I am at so many events this week—it is completely manic. The buzz and the excitement, and of course the inevitable interest in AI, are just extraordinary. The Minister was there on Monday doing a splendid job of bigging up UK tech. However, the world that is described in the report looks back at the reflections that came out of Covid and designing the world of home working from that period. We should be thinking about the world as we approach the era of AI. I do not have the answers to that, but I think it is partly what the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, was talking about on connectivity.

To me, the biggest shift is going from a world where you have a set of skills in your job to one where you are going to be expected to constantly learn, and if you are not constantly learning you will be at a disadvantage. What does that look like in a world of flexible work, and how can we encourage companies to continue to help people learn to see the opportunities around them, especially if they are not in the office? That presents a whole new set of challenges, and in my opinion there has to be a rebasing: it cannot be just about your location. It has to be about where your learning is.

20:00

[Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, and the members of the committee for this timely report. As noble Lords have said, it comes at a very prescient time, not only because of challenges around AI but because employers around the country are grappling with this fundamental question: what is best for their organisations and the people who work for them?

I come to this debate from three perspectives. First, I am an employer and manager as chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland. Secondly, I am someone who could not easily get through the week without flexible working, balancing as I have to my responsibilities in Glasgow with my duties in your Lordships’ House. Thirdly, I am a parent of those grown-up children whom Alan Milburn has been talking about, facing challenges finding employment.

As the report acknowledges, the world of Teams and Zoom has undoubtedly opened up employment opportunities for many disabled people, but I sometimes wonder whether part of that success stems from the fact that, on a Teams call, we are all simply head and shoulders on a screen. Visible differences are less obvious, and perhaps discrimination becomes less likely when somebody’s wheelchair is not the first thing that you see. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly highlighted the challenges around Access to Work, not only the stresses and strains that the scheme is under but the whole understanding by those who administer the scheme of what is needed to support disabled people to get into and stay in work.

Home working can indeed save significant time, money and stress but, as the report acknowledges, it is not without its challenges. Not everyone has an ideal home environment; people may be sharing limited space or struggling with unreliable broadband. For others, a local coffee shop or a co-working space might seem a practical alternative, but that raises questions around confidentiality and data protection when sensitive information is handled in public spaces. As a manager, I have experienced the issue of sick leave, as the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, mentioned. When people say to me, “Can I work from home today because I’m not feeling too well?”, I need to know, “Can you work or are you too sick to work?” It is really hard if they are just choosing to work from home, and I struggle with the idea that you can look after small children and work at the same time.

The committee rightly highlighted concerns about isolation and the difficulties of mentoring remote workers. These issues apply to all employees, including disabled people. Disabled employees deserve not only to secure employment but to be fully integrated members of the team, with the same access to mentorship, development and informal learning opportunities as anybody else. Getting the job and proving you can do it is only the beginning. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, described much better than me, all people benefit from social interaction, workplace creativity and a sense of belonging, regardless of whether they are disabled or non-disabled.

My own experience is that people can often be more productive at home, particularly when they are undertaking tasks they understand well: work that is routine, clearly defined or familiar. However, when an organisation is seeking to challenge or change its culture, redesign services or develop new ways of working, those subtleties are much harder to absorb remotely. Some things are simply easier to understand when people are together, and Parliament is a wonderful example of that.

As many noble Lords have acknowledged, some roles cannot be fully home-based. The noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, referred to the NHS. I want to give a shout-out for NHS Scotland. In remote areas such as Orkney and Shetland, it trailblazed hybrid working long before the pandemic forced the rest of the NHS to catch up. At Cerebral Palsy Scotland, while our clinical therapists do deliver virtual sessions, in-person, hands-on, multidisciplinary working has a greater clinical impact and, so they tell me, provides greater professional satisfaction.

I have also seen situations where some teams can work flexibly while others, particularly those in customer-facing or manual roles, have no option but to be present every day. If that disparity is not managed carefully and sensitively, resentment can develop. I believe it goes far deeper than just the chief people officer. It can be damaging for morale, well-being and organisational culture.

The report seeks to articulate what the Government should do. Apart from the call for more data, and I would love an answer to what constitutes “reasonable” in some of these things, I am with my noble friend Lady Manzoor: the Government should do very little. Employment law, regulations and policies are already substantial, and a top-down approach is unlikely to succeed. The last thing many businesses need is additional prescription.

The report recognises that one size does not fit all. The key is flexibility. I know how much I value having control over my working time, but employers have to be supported to determine what works best for their organisation, while employees have to understand their organisation’s goals and agree how best they contribute to achieving them. This is a matter for employers and employees together. It is not, in my view, something with which government should overly concern itself. I thank the committee once again for its report and for bringing this important debate to the House.

20:07

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I join the chorus of congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, and her committee for the excellent and relevant report. To inject a personal note, I am honoured and excited to be back in your Lordships’ House, this time hopefully for life.

I have had several stints working from home in my life. In the 1980s, I was a freelance photographer. My office was a desk, an electric typewriter and a phone in a bedroom. There was a slight temptation to sleep in the day. If I wanted to communicate with someone, I picked up the phone or went and saw them. There was no diversion from the internet and no email. I lived in a shared house and when work was slow, my housemates, who had jobs in offices, used to describe me as a puppy because when they returned home, I would jump up and yap at them.

This seems to be the group missing from the report: those who are not part of the gig economy, or hybrid working as we now know it, but people such as photographers, TV and production people, event organisers, art restorers, craftspeople and many others who work on projects on location but have an office at home. These are people for whom renting an office is an unnecessary expense and who like the flexibility of working from home. I suspect this is a much larger group of people than we realise, often in the multibillion-pound creative industries we hear so much about.

I also suspect that these people are mainly at the older end of average, and I would be really interested to hear from the Minister whether this discrete group appears as a sector in any research. But, as the report says, for the young, we need to be careful. Working from home is often seen by employers as bunking off. Scott Galloway, the business guru, puts it bluntly:

“It’s difficult to get your butt up every morning, put on a tie, blow dry your hair, put on a pantsuit, look reasonable, get on municipal transportation and get into work. And you know what? It’s worth it, especially for young people. Before you collect dogs and kids, get into the office”.


As a teacher, I say that lockdown was a reminder of how working from home can be a chore. Zoom lessons are grim: you need the reactions and human interactions to make a lesson work.

Jimmy Carr talks about the fact that people are not just working from home, they are living from home and even ordering their food to home. There is a danger of young people at home never leaving work. They miss interactions, such as chats by the kettle. Face-to-face meetings are much more efficient, plus it allows one to read the temperature and mood of a company. Many relationships start at work; we are a tribal species.

I am also sad that Thursday nights are now the new Friday nights, because everyone works from home on a Friday. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, Sundays are now fair game as well.

I leave the last word to Susie McDonald, the CEO of the healthy relationships charity Tender, who said:

“Employers should consider that an offer to all employees to work from home may not mean freedom and flexibility to all. For those experiencing domestic abuse, working from home may mean increased and unrelenting control, violence and monitoring by their abusive partner. The workplace can be a vitally important space to seek specialist support and make decisions about the future. For victims of domestic abuse, working from home may be the very antithesis of freedom”.

20:12

[Baroness Featherstone (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank our excellent chair and fellow committee members for what I found to be quite a fascinating inquiry.

The extraordinary circumstances of the pandemic transformed home-based working from a relatively niche practice into a normal part of working life for millions of people. The question for our committee and the apt title for our report is: is it working? The answer is that it can work very well, but only if we pay attention to how it is managed and to who benefits from it.

One of the strongest messages I took from the evidence was that home-based working has the potential to widen opportunity. As has been said, we heard compelling evidence about the benefits for disabled people, carers and others whose participation in the labour market may previously have been limited by rigid working patterns. That was an important finding. At a time when policymakers are rightly concerned about economic inactivity and labour shortages, greater flexibility can help people remain in or return to work, and it can open doors that might otherwise remain closed.

It can also help to democratise opportunity geographically. Talent is spread across the country far more evenly than jobs have traditionally been. If used well, home-based working can allow people to access opportunities without having to move to where those opportunities are concentrated. That has the potential to benefit individuals, families and communities well beyond our major employment centres.

Having spent much of my political life concerned with equality, I have learned that the biggest barriers are often the ones nobody intended to create. That is why I found myself asking a different question throughout the inquiry, a bit like the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox. If some groups make greater use of home-based working than others, what happens to their careers over time? If women continue to carry a greater share of caring responsibilities, and therefore make greater use of flexible working arrangements, are they promoted at the same rate as those who spend more time at the workplace? Are they likely to move into leadership positions? Are they seen in the same way as men by senior managers? We do not actually know.

What surprised me about the whole inquiry was how little we actually know. Again and again during the inquiry, we came up against the same problem: a lack of robust evidence. We heard strong opinions, anecdotes and assumptions. What we do not yet have, as many have said, is enough high-quality data to understand the long-term effects of home-based working on career progression, pay and opportunity.

That matters, as others have said, because careers are not built solely through formal appraisal systems; they are built through relationships, sponsorship and informal advocacy. They are built through being known, being trusted and being remembered when opportunities arise. Many of us will recognise that some of the most important conversations in our careers happened before meetings began, after they ended, in the pub or simply because we happened to be in the room. If visibility becomes opportunity, and opportunity becomes promotion, we need to understand who benefits and who may be left behind. A policy can appear entirely fair on paper and yet produce unequal outcomes in practice.

The report highlights another crucial issue: management. Successful home-based working requires much more than laptops and video calls. It requires managers who focus on outcomes rather than attendance; who set clear expectations; who stay connected with their teams; and who build trust through regular communication, support and accountability. It also requires employers to invest in the management programmes and skills needed to lead effectively in a more flexible working environment. Many witnesses seemed to say it was more ad hoc than actual practice. Good management can make flexible working a success, but poor management will undermine it.

For me, one of the most important conclusions of this inquiry is that the debate should no longer be framed as a choice between home and office because the world has moved on now. The real challenge is to ensure that flexibility expands opportunity rather than narrows it; that it supports participation without creating new barriers to progression; and that it works not just for those fortunate enough to have access to it, but as fairly as possible across our workforce.

Home-based working is going to remain a permanent feature of modern working life for the time being. Our task now is to ensure that it delivers not just flexibility and productivity, but fairness and opportunity too.

20:17

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I start by declaring my interest as a partner and practising solicitor with DAC Beachcroft.

What an interesting debate this has been. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. I have served with her on committees before. She has great skill, and this report is a testament to her success. It is also a fact that so many of the members of her committee have contributed to the debate, which does not often happen—and it has been of great advantage. It has also been marvellous to hear from my noble friend Lord Sharma about how it all started around the time that he was in the Cabinet. That gave the whole debate a degree of context.

I very much welcome the report and the opportunity it provides to examine, as my noble friend Lord Monks pointed out right at the start of the debate, one of the most important shifts in working practice of the modern era. He is quite right to highlight the fact that we are now facing further shifts through AI, and I found his speech very valuable.

I will begin with what should be the foundational principle underpinning our approach: the Government have to take a step back and allow private sector employers to determine the working practices they believe are best for their businesses and their workforce, whether that is full time, fully remote or some hybrid arrangements in between.

As my noble friend Lady Bottomley of Nettlestone pointed out, the role of the chief people officer has become so important. It was good to hear a number of views about flexible working, although I say to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe—whom I call my noble friend—that I hope that his idea of Parliament working from home full-time is not to be taken too seriously. I also enjoyed the revelations from the noble Lord, Hampton, on some of his practices in the past.

It has been an entertaining and interesting debate, but I will try to join other speakers in looking at the whole picture. Across the length and breadth of this country, different approaches work for different sectors, firms and communities. Employers have had to adapt, often at pace and at significant cost, particularly since the pandemic turned working life on its head almost overnight. What the report rightly recognises—and what the Government should take to heart—is that there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Employer flexibility is what matters most, and it should be remembered that businesses operating in a free market have every incentive to create the most productive workforce they can. They do not need the Government to tell them how to arrange their own affairs.

I worry that the Government seemed to have moved in the opposite direction. Through the Employment Rights Act 2025, Ministers have introduced a strengthened right to flexible working, making it considerably more difficult for employers to introduce that concept. This provision is expected to come into force in 2027, subject to consultation, yet the Government have confirmed—as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, pointed out in her introductory speech—that the legislation does not intend to provide a definition of “reasonableness”. One must ask: what precisely is the point? If the threshold test is “reasonableness” but Parliament declines to define what “reasonable” means, all we have done is transfer the question from the employer’s boardroom to the employment tribunal. We have not resolved it; we have simply moved the uncertainty—and at considerable cost to businesses and to a tribunal system already operating under severe strain, as many have pointed out. The report warns of the prospect of “years of litigation”, if the legislation is not defined clearly and effectively. That is not a fringe concern raised by business lobby groups; it has been raised by the Select Committee itself.

It is worth reminding the Chamber what currently exists in the ACAS code of practice. An employer may reject a flexible working request but only on one of eight specified grounds, including

“the burden of additional costs … an inability to reorganise work amongst existing staff … an inability to recruit additional staff … a detrimental impact on quality … a detrimental impact on performance … a detrimental effect on ability to meet customer demand … insufficient work available for the periods the employee proposes to work … planned structural changes to the employer’s business”.

These are not arbitrary barriers erected to frustrate workers—far from it; they are carefully calibrated, operationally grounded reasons that reflect the genuine commercial judgments an employer must be able to make. Why are the Government seeking to erode that flexibility? What evidence exists that the current framework is insufficient to protect workers who have a legitimate case?

My noble friends Lady Manzoor and Lady Bottomley turned to productivity. Considering what effect any future changes in legislation will have on productivity must surely be a central priority for any Government serious about growth. The picture the report paints is—to put it mildly—inconclusive. Boosting productivity across the labour market is one of the great challenges of our time, but there is insufficient data. As the eminent scientist, the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, asked: where is the data? Why do we not have sufficient grounds on which to base our judgments? The ONS already admits that there is insufficient data, so we look to the Minister to make sure that we have the necessary data.

Another element ran through the debate. I had the opportunity to bring forward employment legislation—it was 42 years ago, so I am sorry to raise it. I introduced a scheme called Access to Work, which we have touched on several times in this debate. With that scheme, we sought to make it possible for people with a disability—people from various backgrounds—to have the necessary equipment to enable them to work alongside people who did not have any disability. In many ways, the question that we are now asking and that this report highlights is: what are we going to do to meet the challenges not only of flexible working but of artificial intelligence? How will we make sure that young people today have the opportunities they need?

My noble friend Lord Fink raised the question of young people. Can the Minister think through the need for solutions to be found by the Government? Mr Milburn will produce his report later this year. Now with over 1 million people not in education, employment or training, there are serious problems ahead if we are to give opportunities right across the field, in particular to young people. I hope that the Minister will do more than the Government did in their very brief response to the report. I also hope that she will be able to bring us up to date with what the Government said in paragraph 9 of their response; namely, that they

“will take forward a number of priority actions, including strengthening cross-government research and analysis efforts, and exploring how best to target information and advice to line managers”.

What does all that mean? That was several weeks ago, so what has happened since? It also states that they will

“establish a more structured, official-led stakeholder group”.

Has that group now been established? If so, can the Minister give us a full report on what has been achieved so far? This report requires a much more detailed response.

If there is a case for this Select Committee to continue, it has been made. I am sorry to say this to all its members present, but I think that this work is so valuable that it needs to continue. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from the Minister.

20:29

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to respond for the Government, and I will address the key themes that have emerged through this thoughtful debate. I, too, start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, not only for securing the debate but for her skilful chairing of the Home-based Working Select Committee and for its report. I am also very grateful to the noble Lords on the committee who led the inquiry, many of whom are here today. It has made a valuable and timely intervention. It has improved our evidence base on this emerging area. I agree with every previous speaker that the richness of the debate today has been exemplary.

We heard compelling arguments that flexibility around when or where someone works can open up opportunities for people who may otherwise face difficulty securing a job, staying in work or progressing through their career. It can be particularly helpful for people navigating responsibilities in their home lives, whether that is caring for others or managing health conditions.

The Government recognise that the benefits of flexibility extend beyond surmounting those particular barriers at work. When implemented well, flexible working can support improved well-being, strengthen the work/life balance and enable people across the labour market to remain productive and engaged in their roles. It is also associated with tangible benefits for employers, including higher levels of staff motivation, stronger loyalty and improved retention.

That is why the Government are changing legislation to improve access to flexibility. The reforms we have introduced through the Employment Rights Act will make it more likely that flexible working requests are considered and are accepted where they are reasonable. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned, the reasonable tests have been in place for over 20 years. We will ensure that when the flexible working reforms are finalised, there will be guidance specifically for employers on the reasonable test, and that will be subject to a further public consultation before the reforms take effect.

However, it is important to distinguish between flexibility as a broader concept and the specific question of home working, where the evidence landscape is more nuanced, as many noble Lords have mentioned today. For many, the pandemic necessitated a rapid shift to remote working, and we heard the various perspectives from the noble Lord, Lord Sharma, and my noble friend Lord Monks. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, put the consequences of the changes that it has made so poetically. Pre pandemic, around 12% of workers reported working from home some or all of the time, compared with around 39% today. The scale and pace of change have inevitably constrained the depth and consistency of the evidence base, and the longer-term impacts are still being understood.

The committee’s report, and many noble Lords today, underlined the gaps in evidence on home-based working. We are committed to improving the UK’s evidence base, in partnership with other government departments and business. We agree that it is important to monitor the effects of the changing ways of working over the years ahead, through both research and data collection.

The noble Lord, Lord Sharma, stressed the importance of working with business representative organisations and other economies. We already take it into account where it is comparable. As we discussed, there are already issues with data clarity, even within the UK. That is an important point and, where it is comparable, we will look to take that forward.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Freeman, and the noble Lord, Lord Fink, highlighted the importance of closer collaboration with the Office for National Statistics. We are engaging with the ONS to strengthen the evidence base, including collaboration on future data collection and research. This includes working through a cross-governmental analytical network to identify evidence gaps and develop more robust and comprehensive data over time.

The department is engaged with academics at the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence who are looking at developing linked employer/employee data in the UK. We will continue to explore opportunities to feed into this and benefit from that work. Many noble Lords mentioned the importance of that link.

While the ONS is operationally independent of the Government, the work is progressing on the linked employee/employer dataset, which links workers to their employers using pay-as-you-earn real-time information to track employers and employees over time. The ONS anticipates that a technical note and a set of exploratory statistics will be published later this year.

Many noble Lords talked about the balance that needs to be struck in making sure there is increased flexibility, including home-working arrangements, and that it works for employers as well as employees. The noble Baronesses, Lady Fraser and Baroness Manzoor, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, set out why decisions about working arrangements should ultimately sit with employers and employees. I agree that a one-size-fits-all approach would not be appropriate. That is why the Government are focused on expanding access to flexibility where it is feasible, encouraging dialogue between employees and employers, while making sure that businesses do not have to accept requests that are not reasonable or will not work in practice.

I listened carefully to noble Lords who rightly drew attention to the potential risks of home working. Several noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Manzoor, Lady Scott and Lady Watkins, highlighted the potential impacts of home and hybrid working on productivity, well-being and business performance. The evidence on these factors is complex and still evolving.

We recognise that the evidence on home working and productivity remains mixed and difficult to measure, with impacts varying by role and working arrangements. As many have underlined today, there is a very important nexus with good management, and it is important to support that. As the noble Lord, Lord Fink, and the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, rightly emphasised, the Government have a role. We already provide some support and training in this area, such as the Help to Grow management programme, and we will consider whether further support is needed as reforms take effect.

My noble friends Lady Nye and Lord Brooke also noted the importance of public sector practice. The line manager capability programme was developed to improve the quality of line management across the Civil Service, including managing dispersed teams. Some noble Lords highlighted the importance of health and safety. Noble Lords are aware that through the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, employers have the same health and safety responsibilities for people working at home as they do for other workplaces. To improve understanding, the HSE recently promoted its home worker guidance through a multichannel communications campaign, which ran for eight weeks, from February to April this year. These efforts saw a doubling in visits to the web pages based on the previous eight weeks.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Lane-Fox, and the noble Lords, Lord Fink and Lord Hampton, highlighted the experience of young people. We know that face-to-face time can be vital for training and career progression. The changes we are making will not stop employers determining that some work needs to be done in person.

I also want to acknowledge the important contributions that highlight the distinct value, opportunities and challenges of home working for disabled people and those managing health conditions. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and others, drew attention to the Access to Work scheme. The Access to Work scheme can help disabled people and people with physical or mental health conditions start or stay in work. We have said that it requires some improvements to ensure that it can deliver a timely, efficient and value-for-money service. Reform in this area is complex. We are taking the time needed to consult widely, collaborate and gather evidence from disabled people, employers and representative organisations, and we are continuing to refine policy options. Ministers will announce next steps when they are fully developed in that area.

Many others have also highlighted the importance of the Keep Britain Working Vanguard phase. That is currently considering how employers and government can work together to reduce health-related economic inactivity and build healthier and more inclusive workplaces. That phase is well under way. We are working with 150 employers in 11 regions, and we have begun our work to get the Workplace Health Intelligence Unit up and running to support the outcomes of that Vanguard scheme.

Many noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Manzoor and Lady Scott, highlighted the importance of digital connectivity and skills, and indeed skills in AI. The Government recognise the importance of access to a fast and reliable broadband connection and are committed to ensuring that 99% of premises receive gigabit coverage by 2032. At the end of 2025, over 1.3 million premises in rural and hard-to-reach communities had been upgraded to gigabit-capable broadband through government-funded programmes over years. The UK is now one of the fastest builders of gigabit-capable broadband networks in Europe.

Many noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Freeman, and my noble friends Lord Monks and Lord Brooke, highlighted the uncertain nexus with the development of AI and how the home-based and flexible working we have seen develop post Covid will interact with that. These are very important questions, and I will make sure that I raise the point about flexible working and home working with the AI and the Future of Work Unit, so that when it continues its research it can make sure that the committee’s report and the points made today are considered in future deliberations.

Noble Lords highlighted the importance of delivery of these reforms. We are continuing to work across government to make the dispute resolution system more resilient, ensuring that the measures in the Employment Rights Act can be effectively enforced. This includes a mix of measures and longer-term reform, so the system is fit for purpose for the current landscape of employment rights and equipped to respond to future changes.

A number of important questions have been raised on how the increase in home working is supported in practice, including through workplace support and guidance. In particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, is right to underline the importance of chief people officers, other HR professionals, and the role of line managers in considering how there might be scope for flexible working, given the organisation’s way of working, and how that is communicated with employees. We have listened to calls to engage with external stakeholders as we develop and iterate new guidance about the upcoming flexible working reforms. We have already been working to deliver this with a series of questions in our recent flexible working consultation, looking at the types of guidance line managers, employees and employers will need as these changes take effect. In parallel, officials have held 10 round-table discussions during the consultation to learn more about the guidance and resources that could be most helpful.

We will continue to build on this work, and we will establish a more structured, official-led stakeholder group. This will bring together stakeholders and business leaders to advise and support implementation while helping the Government drive culture change and shift narratives around flexible working. Once again, I would like to thank the noble Baroness and her committee for their report, and I would like to thank noble Lords for all their contributions today.

20:43

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for engaging so comprehensively with the committee’s report and for some useful updates, and I am sure the committee would join me in that.

We have had an excellent debate, and not just because noble Lords all said nice things about me —although I am not complaining about that. Every contribution has been thoughtful and insightful and has added something to the work of the committee, which, as I think noble Lords can all see, worked very hard over a long period of time to produce this.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks, started by reminding us of the pandemic and the incredible pivot that the workforce in this country made—indeed, it happened in this House. It is worth reflecting that that was only six years ago. In the sweep of history and the way that labour markets change, that is a very short spell of time.

What we were trying to do in this report was, in a way, to provide a comprehensive snapshot—but it is an entire album, is it not?—of where we are now. We think it will be useful to policymakers now and, on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in looking not just backwards but forwards. To make a cliché, you cannot look forward unless you know where you have come from, and I think we have done a good job in saying that. I thank everyone who has taken part and I commend the report to the House.

Motion agreed.