Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

I thank the noble Earl for proposing his amendment. I look forward to playing a continuing role in supporting freelance workers, specifically those in the creative industries, to secure their safety and indeed dignity at work.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Caine. She made some terribly important points; they are literally about matters of life and death.

I have added my name to Amendment 259, alongside the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I apologise to the noble Earl for not having also signed Amendment 287; I certainly would have done so, had I caught up with it sooner. I previously backed a similar amendment from the noble Earl to an earlier Bill under the previous Government.

I declare my position as beneficiary of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, with which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is associated. I published one book with the society last year, and I have another one coming out this year.

Amendment 259 is about unionisation and collective bargaining in the arts and cultural sector, and it calls for alternative, appropriate models for the sector. I hope the Labour Government see sense and come back in support of the amendment. They believe—I hope—in the values of collective bargaining and of workers being able to get together to fight for appropriate conditions, whether it is health and safety, pay or work security.

I declare another position—or, perhaps, a situation—in that, 20 years ago, I reviewed a lot of London fringe theatre on my own website. Speaking to some of the actors and the other creatives involved in those performances, I learned that the conditions under which they were employed, or hoped to get paid, were often very precarious. I very much doubt that that situation has improved.

The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, spoke about the insecurity of Covid and what followed it. The Republic of Ireland saw that situation and took a step to deal with it: it introduced the universal basic income trial, which ran from 2022-24 and paid creative workers a weekly stipend of €325 for three years. We still have not had the formal impact assessment of that, but I have heard a great many anecdotal reports about the more stability and reduced stress for creative workers. Realised from anxiety, they had time and headspace to open up new possibilities and create trajectories. They spent time researching, experimenting and taking risks and really saw the benefits in their creative practice. What we are proposing here is not going as far as a universal basic income but is a collective bargaining approach that strengthens the position of creative workers within their sectors and organisations, particularly freelancers. This would surely be a positive step at least heading in that direction.

Finally, it might feel as if we are addressing something that has been an issue for a very long time. There is a very famous painting called the “Poor Poet”, done in three versions by the German painter Carl Spitzweg. It shows a garret room with a leaking roof. There is no fire or bed, only a mattress on the floor, and the poet is tucked underneath every bed covering because he cannot afford to heat his room. That has been a long-term stereotype, but it does not mean we have to continue that.

More practically, in the reality of Britain in 2025, many people cannot even manage to access conditions such as that. There is a real issue—and no one else has brought this up yet—about access to the creative sector being open to a wide variety of people from a wide variety of groups in our society, not just to people who can access the bank of mum and dad when things go a bit wrong and can afford to work as an unpaid intern for years. If we are going to have a creative sector that truly harnesses the talents of all our society, opens opportunities and—if I have to put it this way—is great for the economy, then surely all the amendments in the group, but particularly the amendments on collective bargaining and the freelance commissioner, would take us some steps down that road?

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, I address Amendment 287 on the creation of an office for a freelance commissioner in the name of my noble friends Lord Clancarty, Lord Freyberg and Lord Colville of Culross, who has managed to beat our limited motorway system but arrived just too late to speak, sadly.

I am somewhat conflicted about this thought-provoking amendment, in that I have argued at Second Reading and in Committee against the overreach of the Bill and its sheer complexity and burden on employers, especially for small and micro businesses. On the noble Baroness’s comment, I do not want to be seen to be adding baubles to the Christmas tree. However, I agree that year by year the arguments grow for the establishment of a freelance commissioner, partly because the number of freelancers is growing and will continue to do so. The current 2 million plus freelancers will easily rise to 3 million within the next 10 years in the UK alone as employers shed staff from payroll, weighed down by the combination of increased national insurance contributions, national minimum wages increasing much faster than the rate of inflation and all the new rules and regulations coming in this very Employment Rights Bill.

Just look at the recent and alarming drop reported last week by the ONS of 274,000 workers coming off payroll during the past 12 months. We do not yet have the data to track how many of them are transitioning to freelance or self-employment. Indeed, as my noble friends have pointed out, the data on this area of freelancing and self-employment is poor and not up to international standards, and that is a real problem when we are trying to assess exactly what their contribution is to the economy.

I am going to muddy the water slightly, but you could argue that there is a need for an independent commissioner for the self-employed. We have been talking about freelancers, but there are 4.2 million self-employed people, including freelancers, in the UK. Those numbers are going to increase given the impact of technology, digital communications, AI and, particularly, the practice of working from home. I accept that there are key differences between freelancers and many self-employed people, for example, sole traders or those running their own businesses or partnerships, perhaps with just one or two contractors, but freelancers, although independent and project-based, are also self-employed and are treated just the same way for tax purposes by HMRC.

I accept that freelancers and the self-employed are not as valued or appreciated by Governments of all parties as they should be. This was brutally exposed during the pandemic with furlough and other schemes. If we want to develop a proper entrepreneurial spirit and environment in this country, we should do much more to value and look after those who create their own jobs and face up to all the risks and jeopardy that that involves. That includes freelancers, not just in the creative industries, but in other sectors where they are prevalent, which are as diverse as construction, professional services and agriculture. The Government need to give Amendment 287 serious consideration and, while doing so, think through how the interests of all the self-employed, not just freelancers, should be represented.