Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Lord Ashcombe

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, this first group of amendments, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, and my noble friends Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, is significant and I am pleased to support it. I declare my interest as an employee of Marsh Ltd, a large insurance broker. Noble Lords might think that this will therefore not have much effect on me. They would be right, but I have other views.

Many individuals, for a wide variety of reasons, do not wish to have a permanent contract with guaranteed hours. While the Government might like to think that everyone wants guaranteed work, that is simply not the case. Flexibility for employees who desire zero-hours contracts is surely what everybody wants. In my experience, happy employees inevitably are more productive than those who are not. This goes directly to the heart of what the Government are trying to achieve—growth.

At the same time, many others would welcome the certainty and stability of fixed-hours contracts. It is essential, therefore, that we provide clarity in this legislation where ambiguity might otherwise lead to dispute or, worse still, legal action. That is why I welcome Amendment 2, which introduces a clear definition of a threshold below which it is not reasonable for an employee to request a guaranteed-hours contract. Setting this threshold at eight hours a week—essentially a day’s work—offers helpful clarity. It strikes a sensible balance between flexibility and fairness.

On Amendments 3 to 5, there also needs to be fairness in any arrangement, otherwise it will not stand the test of time. Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to allow a reference period during which both parties can assess the suitability of the arrangement before any request for a fixed-hours contract is made. This period of mutual assessment is not only practical but necessary. Mistakes can be made on both sides, and both employer and employee should have the opportunity to part ways without undue burden if the relationship is not the right fit. The 26-week period proposed in these amendments is an appropriate length of time for such assessments to take place.

As mentioned before, unhappy or mismatched employment arrangements serve no one. They can harm the individual’s well-being and morale and, in time, may undermine the company’s productivity, particularly for smaller businesses, where every member of staff has a significant impact—the smaller the company, the bigger the impact. We must remember, as we were reminded in Committee, that small businesses make up the majority of the companies in this country, unlike those I work for. For these reasons, I support the inclusion of a minimum number of hours’ work per week for a clearly defined reference period before the employee may request a guaranteed contract. I believe these amendments strike a fair and practical balance that will benefit both employers and employees.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, in this group I have Amendments 9 and 22, both of which seek to amend government amendments in identical ways. I shall speak to Amendment 9, which seeks to amend government Amendment 8, but my remarks apply equally to Amendment 22, which seeks to amend government Amendment 21. Before doing so, I offer my support to the other non-government amendments in this group; other noble Lords have already spoken well in favour of them.

My Amendment 9 is based on the premise that the Government should be trying to balance employee rights with the need of businesses to be successful and to grow. The Government want to end what they call “one-sided flexibility” but that would not be a good thing if the outcome was to destroy the labour market flexibility which is the hallmark of the UK’s international competitiveness and has been a major contributor to the country’s overall economic resilience.

Government Amendment 8 amends the provisions of Clause 1 which would have allowed the Secretary of State to create exemptions from the duty to offer guaranteed hours on a very broad basis. That power was a glimmer of light in a part of the Bill that was otherwise quite dark, especially for those employers whose businesses could be harmed by the new duty. It is clear that the Government wanted to use that new power very sparingly but it was drafted in a broad way and would therefore have offered the Government an elegant solution if they discovered that certain types of businesses simply could not stay in business if the duty applied to them.

Unfortunately, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House, for which I generally have a high degree of respect, declared that this power was “inappropriately broad”. I suspect that if the DPRRC had attended some of the debates on the Bill earlier in its passage, it would not have been quite so quick to damn this power. Even more unfortunately, the Government have chosen to respond to the DPRRC’s recommendation by making the power virtually useless.

My little glimmer of light has been virtually extinguished by the Government’s Amendment 8. This now requires that when the Government try to use the regulations to create exemptions, they have to take account of two things. The first is the benefits of workers receiving a guaranteed-hours offer. I would have absolutely no problem with that if it were balanced by an equivalent need to avoid having adverse effects on employers, but Amendment 8 goes further and says that the needs of the employers concerned can be taken account of only if they are dealing with “exceptional circumstances”. I do not know what “exceptional circumstances” means but it is probably something like a pandemic; it would not deal with those businesses which face fluctuating demand patterns as part of their natural business model. Unpredictable work demands are therefore difficult to see as exceptional circumstances.

When we debated this clause in Committee, my noble friend Lady Verma, who is not in her place, talked about the need for employers providing domiciliary or home care to be responsive to the actual fact pattern of demand for care. I suspect that would not count as exceptional, even though it is an intrinsic part of the business model of those who provide home care; nor would it, I suspect, apply to any of those businesses that are affected in any way by seasonal demand patterns, as has already been mentioned. Therefore, the ordinary everyday needs of businesses will be ignored if Amendment 8 is accepted without amendment. In practical terms, all the Secretary of State can take account of is the benefits to workers of receiving a guaranteed-hours offer.

Therefore, my Amendment 9 removes the constraint of needing to satisfy the exceptional circumstances limb; the Secretary of State would simply be having regard to, on the one hand, the benefits for employees and, on the other, the adverse effects on employers. I hope in that way a proper balance would be achieved in the Bill and that the Government will be prepared to rethink their Amendments 8 and 21.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Lord Ashcombe

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 24th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in lieu in this group, particularly Amendment 21B by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, asking for an ex post review of the impact on various sectors of this jobs tax. It is official government policy, confirmed by the leader in the other place, that Parliament will be given the information it needs to scrutinise legislation properly, but, shamefully, the Treasury refused point blank to give the information that we requested in order to scrutinise this Bill properly. My noble friend’s amendment is modest and reasonable, and if the Government do not accept it then that will show a complete lack of respect for Parliament and the process of parliamentary scrutiny.

I want to underline a point made by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe about hospices. At the earlier stages of the Bill, the Minister kept repeating that the Government were putting £100 million into hospices and £26 million into children’s hospices. It is clear that neither of these amounts represents additional money available to absorb the cost pressures produced by the national insurance changes. My noble friend explained that, and I hope the Government will not try to pretend that the funding situation for hospices is anything other than completely dire at the moment.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to personalise this a little, because the hospice movement is unbelievably important in this country, and I am grateful to other noble Lords for raising the point again. I suppose that my family has been very fortunate, in unfortunate circumstances, to have the benefit of two hospices, both at end of life. Both hospices face significant shortfalls in their annual running costs and live off the back of occasional big legacies. They already have to raise substantial amounts of money, and the national insurance increase puts yet more pressure on the system. We have had the increase in minimum wages, which means that they have suffered those costs in addition; doctors and nurses do not come cheap, as we know. This just drives costs up further—for the hospice closest to home, the figure is nearly £0.5 million.

So what does the national insurance increase mean? In this particular case, it means either the loss of three nurses, who conduct some nearly 4,000 visits a year in the community, preventing the need for hospital care, or losing one bed, which would be dedicated to the most complex needs for patients at the end of their life.

If hospices are forced to reduce their care to the community, what happens next? They play such a critical role in supporting the NHS, which is not subject to the increase, both in terms of community care and in easing pressure on acute beds in hospitals, as well as facilitating discharges from hospital. If the Government continue to impose financial strain on the hospice sector, more hospices will be forced to scale back services or even close. That is something we cannot live with in this country, and it would place yet greater strain on the NHS—a particularly difficult sector, as we know, and one that we are trying not to pressure any further. When salary increases for medical staff and the rises in national insurance are factored in, this particular hospice will have to raise yet another £200,000 on top of the £0.5 million that I mentioned earlier, and that hospice is but one of 200 fantastic operations in this country.

I make again the point that various noble Lords have made: the recent announcement of the £100 million funding from His Majesty’s Government for the hospice movement and the £26 million for the children’s hospices is for capital projects, which, while very welcome, does not help this particular situation—a situation that the Prime Minister singularly seemed to ignore at PMQs last week. I beg the Government to reconsider their position.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Lord Ashcombe

Committee stage
Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I want to offer a slightly different perspective on this group of amendments. All the amendments in this group, and indeed some later groups, involve a series of rather worthy things—for which there are to be reports or other consequences—to be achieved by giving a direction to Great British Energy. While I support the amendments on the basis that they are probing amendments, I find it difficult to support the structure of the amendments themselves.

It seems to me that, by using the power of direction in Clause 6, the amendments would undermine the nature of that power and subvert the effectiveness of the power of direction, which is a long-standing feature of the control framework for public corporations. Powers of direction for nationalised industries were commonplace when nationalisation took hold from the 1940s onward. I do not know whether they existed before that, but they certainly have a pedigree of nearly 80 years. The first one of which I am aware is in relation to the Bank of England Act 1946, which nationalised the Bank of England. They have been a feature of public body legislation ever since, except in relation to bodies which are created as regulatory bodies.

The power of direction was never conceived as a mechanism for giving routine instructions to public bodies, which is what all the amendments in this group and the subsequent groups are trying to do. In fact, throughout the history of nationalised industries, the power of direction has almost certainly not been used. In relation to the Bank of England, I asked the previous Government fairly recently whether they would like to give up the power of direction over the Bank of England and whether they had used it since 1946; the answer was that they had never used it since 1946, but they definitely wanted to keep it. The fact that a power has not been used does not necessarily have any meaning, because it is designed as a backstop power for use in extreme circumstances. The mere fact of its existence can be a powerful weapon in the hands of the Government of the day.

It should be an uncontested fact that the Government ultimately call the shots in relation to public corporations, however much operational independence they claim to be handing over to them when they set the bodies up. The board of a public body should be very wary of not following the wishes of the Government of the day, unless those wishes conflict with their legal and statutory objectives.

I will always defend the ability of the Government to give directions to a public body, because public bodies should not be above the Government of the day. I think there are far too many public bodies, but if we have to have them, we must have an effective power of telling them what to do when necessary. I would definitely not want that core power to be diluted by being cluttered up with a lot of more day-to-day matters, which is partly what the amendments in this group and subsequent amendments do.

The concerns of my noble friend on the Front Bench and indeed other noble Lords who have drafted these amendments would be better met by placing specific requirements in the Bill, rather than by cluttering up the power of direction which has a very special place in the control framework for public bodies.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support my many noble friends in their amendments in this wide-ranging group. I declare my interest as an insurance broker in the energy industry for Marsh.

In the Labour manifesto under the section entitled “Make Britain a clean energy superpower”, its second mission to rebuild Britain, there is a plan to create 650,000 jobs by 2030. This will obviously need to include the supply chain, as the number of jobs required for running energy projects will never reach this amount.

In the Great British Energy Founding Statement, we learn:

“Backed by a capitalisation of £8.3 billion of new money over this Parliament, Great British Energy will work closely with industry, local authorities, communities and other public sector organisations to help accelerate Britain’s pathway to energy independence. That means installing thousands of clean power projects across the country, crowding in investment for next-generation technologies, and providing vital support to accelerate large-scale projects”.


For new money, we can read taxpayers’ money.

When taxpayers’ money is being spent, it simply cannot be thought of as a blank cheque, in this case with a large upper limit. It is imperative that there are checks and balances in the system to ensure that money is spent wisely to the benefit of the country. I suggest to the Minister that some of these measures might include the following: the need to demonstrate the benefit in each venture towards the £300 saving so heavily touted in the run-up to the general election; the need to demonstrate the benefit in each venture towards the creation of 650,000 jobs on the back of this clean energy drive and again touted in the run-up to the general election; and the need to ensure that grid connections, as have been mentioned, to connect the new generating assets are available as and when needed, something that has been very difficult to achieve in the past. That would also prevent ludicrous curtailment payments. The costs from NESO to do this are enormous—I believe I am right in saying some £40 billion a year until 2030.

The measures also need to show the net effect of carbon emissions and the reductions being made as the years progress, which is what this Bill is all about. However, it is especially important to consider not only scope 1 emissions, being direct greenhouse gas emissions that occur from sources that are controlled or owned by an organisation, and scope 2 emissions, being indirect greenhouse gas emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat or cooling but also—and possibly most importantly—scope 3 emissions, being the greenhouse emissions resulting from activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organisation but that the organisation indirectly affects in its value chain. My noble friend Lord Hamilton talked about one specific example. In my opinion, this has specific reference to solar panels, which are manufactured predominantly—some 85%—in China, and wind turbines, of which 60% are manufactured in China, which has certainly not demonstrated any restraint in curbing emissions. Then, there is the subsequent voyage to the final destination. Let us not forget what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said.

There is also the need to show a reduction in imported energy—both via electrical interconnectors and hydrocarbons as LNG or by pipe from Norway and the continent—balanced against the production of our own North Sea gas and being allowed to continue to search for more off our abundant coasts.

Further, there is the need to show that a significant percentage of the materials used in any work done is generated in the UK and the need to demonstrate that we are becoming more self-sufficient in power generation—something we have not got to yet. Finally, but of no lesser importance, there is the need to demonstrate financial return to the benefit of the taxpayer.

In a number of these amendments, various timeframes have been suggested to produce a fair audit trail for Parliament and the taxpayer. Without them, who will know the real benefits of all this expense? Does the Minister agree that measurement provides results and therefore helps to determine the way forward?