Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment of Schedule A2) Order 2024

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2024 Grand Committee

I conclude my speech by focusing on the Government’s ambitions to make work pay. Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay sets out an ambitious agenda to ensure that our employment rights are fit for a modern economy, empower working people and contribute to economic growth. The plan is designed to be pro-business, pro-worker, pro-family and pro-wealth creation. It will boost fairness in the workplace, ensure equality of treatment and opportunity and support low-paid workers. These reforms will strengthen the rights of workers, address the fragmented labour market enforcement framework and support workers in balancing responsibilities outside work. In so doing, the plan will help more people stay in work, make work more secure and family-friendly and improve living standards, putting more money into working people’s pockets. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords will know, this order—the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment of Schedule A2) Order 2024—was originally laid by the previous Conservative Government. It is short, so I will keep my remarks brief.

This order will increase the protective award for non-compliance with collective consultation requirements, meaning that where an employer has unreasonably failed to comply with a relevant code of practice an employment tribunal making a protective award may increase the employee’s award by up to 25%. Conversely, where an employee has failed to comply with the relevant code, their award may be decreased by 25%. The policy context for this is to prevent fire and rehire, which attracted significant media attention during the Covid-19 pandemic. This order will ensure that employers take all reasonable steps to explore alternatives to dismissal and re-engagement and that they do not use this as a threat or pressure tactic when implementing changes to employment contracts.

His Majesty’s Official Opposition welcome this statutory instrument. We hope that it will improve working practices in the United Kingdom, particularly for those who find themselves in vulnerable or precarious employment situations and need all the help they can get.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Earl’s support for these amendments to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. As I have said, this order will add the protective award for non-compliance with collective consultation requirements to Schedule A2 to the 1992 Act. This will mean that, when a protective award is made against an employer for failing to comply with their collective consultation requirements, the employment tribunal may increase the protective award by up to 25% if the employer unreasonably fails to comply with the code of practice on dismissal and re-engagement.

As I said, the Government are committed to ending unscrupulous fire-and-rehire practices through the employment Bill; we will of course return to debate that in more detail. In the meantime, I commend this order to the Committee.

UK Trade Performance

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. On the border target operating model and the new checks coming in, as part of Brexit, which the UK voted for, we need to protect our borders in all respects. As we have said before, we need border checks, especially when it comes to SPS. There will be costs to bear, but they will be outweighed by the benefits and the farming community has been very vocal in support of that measure. Let us remind ourselves of the costs if things go wrong: foot and mouth cost us £13 billion. So it is obvious that we need to do this and do it in a light-touch manner.

On stakeholder associations, I absolutely agree. I have regular dialogue with all the names given. We are in a bit of a transition with these organisations after having 50 years of being very focused on Europe. There is now a need for us to raise our sights, and there is a need for those organisations to go more global—no question about it. I am staggered as I go to our embassies and commissions around the world to find the strength in depth that we have in terms of trade teams in-country. We need to get them more joined up with stakeholder organisations. I will be happy to take that initiative forward in my portfolio.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, the Statement refers to our exporters “firing on all cylinders”, but according to the CBI and the British Exporters Association, less than 10% of UK businesses export. The Statement also refers to Unilever and Shell choosing London as their corporate headquarters, but Unilever is currently debating whether to list its ice cream business in London or Amsterdam, and Shell has made press comments about having a location that clearly seems to be undervalued, prompting concern that the company may move its listing to the US in future. My noble friend has already answered the question about how the Government will help more of our firms to export, but what will the Government do to assist and maintain UK stock market listings, not just in the FTSE 100 but, equally importantly, in the small cap index?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

When it comes to stock market listings and the operation of stock markets, that is, by definition, capitalism in the private sector, and the Government should not get involved in that particular exchange. However, the previous lord mayor led a very interesting initiative which identified that our pension funds are not investing enough in UK equities, so there is now an interesting scheme going on whereby we can see whether we can get 5% of UK pension funds invested in UK equities, which I think is a very worthwhile initiative.

When it comes to headquarters, et cetera, a number of studies have been put out recently by PwC, EY and Boston Consulting Group which have done surveys with CEOs who indicate that they still believe that the UK is one of the best places to locate their head office in Europe. Therefore, we do not see any diminution in that. Foreign direct investment into the UK now is greater than into France, Germany and Italy combined. The market, the money, talks. The money is coming in—my noble friend Lord Johnson is doing a sterling job on that. We have a strong, good economy. Foreign investment is coming in. There is dislocation of stock markets, but initiatives are being taken to alleviate that concern.

UK Tradeshow Programme Closure

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his mantra of sell, sell, sell. Mine is ABC: always be closing. The DBT is doing this. It is unfair to say that we closed this programme; it was not necessarily yielding the benefits we hoped for. We must look for value for money; we have instead gone to a more targeted approach, where the UK will take a pavilion and crowd in businesses in specific instances. Recently we have been to Mobile World, led by my noble friend Lord Offord; the World Defense Show in Saudi Arabia; Bett, the education show; and the Hydrogen show in Chile. Although the Tradeshow Access Programme looked like a good idea and was very popular among certain businesses, it was not used in the way we wanted. This approach is far more effective for getting to our £1 trillion target.

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, there are 5.5 million firms listed in Companies House, but only 9% of them currently export, which seems low, optically. What does the Minister believe is an achievable percentage to aim for and what is the Government’s strategy to reach that target?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We have a cultural issue with companies in this great nation of ours actually deciding to export. The total is about 300,000, and we have a target of 500,000—the 500 club that was inspired by my noble friend Lord Offord. We will do this in a number of ways. The UK Export Academy is an important mechanism for teaching businesses and business leaders how to export. We have 160 international trade advisers around the country whose specific task is to hold the hands of these companies when it comes to exporting abroad. We have thousands of agents around the world, underneath our HMTCs, whose job is to help them on the ground and help them find distribution partners, most importantly. We have the Help to Grow programme, the export support service, and we now have growth hubs as well. There is more we can do, but we have made a phenomenal start and are starting to see the benefits of a very coherent action plan.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Interest Rates

Earl of Effingham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Effingham (Con)]

My Lords, I speak frequently with small and medium-sized businesses, and I refer to my interests in the register. Can my noble friend say what the Government are doing to publicise the availability of help for the SME community?

[The Earl of Minto (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. The Government want the UK to be the best place to start and grow a business and to support new entrepreneurs, regardless of their background. That is definitive. In the DBT, we have officials throughout the country who run workshops and who help and advise wherever they can. The British Business Bank reaches out wherever it possibly can to help and support SMEs. Indeed, in the other place, we have an SME Minister who, with his team, is extremely active in engaging the sector.