Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

I very much thank the Minister and her officers for all the time they have given us over the last year in being able to get this clause on the statutes tonight. I also thank my colleagues in the other place, in particular Lou Haigh and the Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, for the work they have done and encouragement they have given us in this House to continue with the campaign.

I also thank the Diversity Project and Zelda Perkins’s group for their work with us over a longer time than we have today. Non-disclosure agreements need to be properly regulated and not permitted to continue in the way they have been, with their chilling effects.

This is especially so when the disclosure ban applies to the context of an employee and an employer and relates to harassment, bullying or discrimination, including impartiality and sexual harassment, which is one of the worst things that can happen to anybody and ruins their life completely. I am really grateful to everybody who has been kind enough to work with me over these months and years.

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak on behalf of my noble friend Lady Kennedy, who, due to recent surgery, cannot be here this evening, but also on behalf of other women around the House, all of whom have pressed for amendments on the issue of NDAs being used to silence women who experience sexual harassment in the workplace.

I know that my noble friend Lady Kennedy worked closely with the courageous Zelda Perkins on her campaign to change the law. We all want to pay tribute to our noble friend the Minister for the vital role that she has played in bringing the Government on board to change the law with the amendments—our warm congratulations to the Minister.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on this excellent amendment, and I join the thanks to Zelda Perkins and her colleagues for their tireless efforts to bring it to this point. I have a few questions for the Minister about the Government’s intentions, or present thoughts, regarding the secondary legislation. In particular, is it right that employers will not be permitted to suggest confidentiality? Will there be mandatory independent legal advice? Will confidentiality be time limited, or at least have an opt-out? Will the excepted individuals to whom the victim can speak include someone the victim knows, a friend or a relative, not just independent professionals? Will non-disparagement clauses also be caught by this amendment?

Steel Industry

Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Round Oak Steelworks was a steel production plant in Brierley Hill, West Midlands, close to where I grew up. Many of my classmates’ fathers worked there, meaning that I was often asked as a child, “Can we come round yours to play? My dad’s on nights?”—because my dad did not work nights. During the Industrial Revolution, the majority of ironmaking in the world was carried out within 20 miles of Round Oak. At its peak, as in Scunthorpe now, thousands of people were employed at the works. The steelworks were the first in the United Kingdom to be converted to natural gas, which was supplied from the North Sea. The works were nationalised in 1951, privatised in 1953 and nationalised again in 1967, although the private firm Tube Investments continued to manage part of the operations at the site. The works went through other ownership in later years. The steelworks finally closed in December 1982, making the remaining 1,300 workers redundant. Gone were not only the jobs making steel but all the ancillary work that went with it, supplying goods and services to Round Oak. That provided work to thousands more local people. With it, went the social network and community fabric of the sort that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, referred to in Corby and my noble friend Lord Reid so eloquently spoke about in Glasgow.

After the closure at Round Oak, unemployment rates locally reached 25%, which was shocking, even for the early 1980s. I am therefore pleased to support our Government’s efforts in this Bill to preserve steel production in Scunthorpe and the once-proud industry in our country and jobs, and to try to avoid the devastating and long-lasting effects of mass local job losses—and with it the sense of community and support that existed where I grew up, and no doubt exists in Scunthorpe, which has a similarly long history of steel-making.