National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Jones(2 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, it is instructive to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who has a professorial exactitude that excites considerable interest in someone such as me. I thank the Minister for the precision, cogency and persuasiveness of her introduction. I rise on the principle that the Executive should be challenged and questioned. That is what a Parliament is for, and the Westminster Parliament will always acknowledge the need to challenge the Executive.
I greatly welcome the regulations. Anyone who offers a 6% or more increase must be acknowledged and thanked. I must say that the complexity of the regulations is considerable, and the weight of the document is evidence of that. Each year these regulations present themselves, but the data changes. I am grateful for the helpfulness of the Explanatory Memorandum. I know that a lot of work goes into the presentation of it and the regulations by the Minister’s departmental officials.
Can the Minister indicate how many people in Wales are on the national minimum wage? Is there a figure for the number of apprentices in Wales on the national minimum wage?
There is a need to consider the context to these regulations. The Explanatory Memorandum says that the legislation went forward and got parliamentary approval in 1998. I was present in the other place Her Majesty’s Government made those proposals, and I recollect the intensity of the determination of Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Brown. But we also experienced the angry and persistent opposition to these proposals in the other place. There was a considerable amount of anger, but now everyone would agree, I think, that it was a measure of social justice that was overdue, bearing in mind that unemployment was considerably high in the 1980s—indeed, there was mass unemployment. The memory of those tumultuous times enabled the Opposition of the day to include a national minimum wage in their manifesto and, when elected in 1997, to proceed to organise legislation.
I would like to point to paragraph 5.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum. In reading it, I acknowledge that this is a noble objective. It says:
“The Government has set a policy aim to deliver a genuine living wage for every adult worker, and the increases to the rates this year are intended to make progress towards that, both by increasing the headline NLW rate and narrowing the gap between the 18-20 NMW rate and the full adult rate”.
That has to be really good news and it deserves commendation. It is also worthwhile indicating that in paragraph 9.2 there is a reference to employers:
“These costs to employers represent a transfer to low-paid workers, and include the estimated cost on employers in the public sector. Over 3 million workers are estimated to receive a direct pay rise due to the increase to the NMW and NLW in April 2025”.
These regulations must be welcomed, and the Minister commended for her introduction.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, we have heard two spirited supporters of this statutory instrument. I will add my spirits to the support of these regulations.
As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, observed, many millions of workers have suffered a severe fallback in their living conditions as a result of a variety of measures, not least inflation, energy costs and the like. This has happened to a great degree over the past few years. Therefore, to some degree, this instrument is getting them back to a place they have slipped from. It is debatable whether it is protecting millions of workers, as the noble Baroness said, or helping ameliorate some of the problems they have. On that basis, we should be welcoming it.
In her speech, the Minister talked about the fair work agency, which will be enforcing this. It would be useful for us to find out what will be different. What will the fair work agency be doing that has not been done before? Quite clearly, this provision has been on the statute before and, as the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, pointed out, there have been many businesses that do not uphold it. How will the fair work agency be any different? What will it be doing to achieve that?
We have to put this into context. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, spoke about the aim to create a genuine living wage for everyone. To do that, we have to have businesses that are profitable and workers that have the skills to earn those wages. This measure cannot be taken in isolation. For business, there is not just this instrument, which I think most good businesses will welcome. Most good businesses are paying more than these wages already, but the cumulative effect on our businesses is already rolling up. It is the perception of that roll up that is causing the problems for the Chancellor at the moment, with very low growth and investment falling back.
I think we all welcome this measure but then we have the employers’ national insurance contribution, which we do not welcome. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I will be in the same camp on this. There is then the non-domestic rate rises for businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, which are the businesses most likely to be paying the minimum wage. They will have a huge increase in their rates, notwithstanding the small variations that can happen. The loss of the Covid reliefs will leave them paying two or three times the non-domestic rate that they are currently pay. These are the businesses that will be laying off workers because they cannot afford to pay them even the current minimum wage. There is a big discontinuity in government policy at this point.
Finally, the noble Baroness mentioned the Employment Rights Bill. There are good and bad things in that Bill; there are puts and takes. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said, only four pages of these documents are the statutory instrument. The rest is an Explanatory Memorandum, which is an example of what we want from those and from impact assessments. It is a comprehensive and well-prepared document. I hope the noble Baroness will pass that on to all her colleagues.
On page 13, the impact assessment says that the aim—the Government’s preferred option—has been to minimise “administrative and compliance costs”. When we come to the Employment Rights Bill, the minimising of administration and compliance costs should be their preferred option for those rights. The little work I have already done on that Bill indicates that it is complicating things and making things harder for businesses to comply. Even where we agree with the measures in that Bill, the legalistic approach through which they will be brought about will not meet the Government’s objective, which, quite rightly, was applied to this legislation.
Registrar (Identity Verification and Authorised Corporate Service Providers) Regulations 2024
Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Jones(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, I rise on the principle that the Executive should be accountable. I shall be brief. I thank the Minister for shedding some light on these dense and complicated regulations. They are obviously of help to the department, to Ministers and to business, but I dare say the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not reading them on her recent outward journey to the People’s Republic of China.
I found the factsheet helpful, and I acknowledge the strong statements therein. It states that the requirements will
“make it challenging for individuals to create a fictitious identity, or fraudulently use another person’s identity, to set up or run a company”,
and talks about being
“registered with a UK supervisory body for anti-money-laundering purposes”.
As the Minister implied, economic crime is debilitating to the nation and, without a doubt, we have problems with it in Britain.
Who is the registrar and when was she or he appointed, for what term and at what salary? Is Companies House running smoothly, so as to cope with requests and approaches from directors and people with significant control? Are there bottlenecks or significant hold-ups, perhaps even labour disputes? Are there impediments to those who file? How many money laundering cases did the registrar take to court in 2023 and 2024? These questions are designed to be helpful. If they are not answered immediately, perhaps there might be a letter.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation. For those of us who worked on the economic crime Bills, this is a welcome development. I am interested in the timeline, because it seems some time ago that we debated the Bill, which I believe has become an Act, and we find ourselves looking to the autumn of 2025 before some of these vital identity-verification processes will reach the statute book. I certainly do not blame the Minister, because he is new to this, but what is behind the delay and how many more statutory instruments are we due? I think there are still quite a few on the stocks. When can we expect them and what functions will they unlock? When we debated the original Bill, I think we all felt this to be a real and present issue that needed immediate, or near-immediate, attention. Clearly, things are dragging on and I wonder what is causing that.
Further to the noble Lord’s comments about the functioning of Companies House, we were absolutely clear that this would be a culture change for Companies House, which will cease to be a filing cabinet and start having to investigate and verify what is coming across its desk. The previous Minister was confident that funding was in place and that the process to create that new culture was under way. We would benefit from the new set of eyes from the Minister, if not now then perhaps in a separate meeting where we can review the functioning, including the future functioning, of Companies House—a follow-on from the meetings that were so helpful during the formulation of the Bill.
Shipments of Radioactive Substances (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Jones(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his exposition. I acknowledge that this is a complex and highly technical subject, but it is important to all citizens. I note on the first page of the document that “competent authority” means,
“in Wales, the Natural Resources Body for Wales”.
On page two, some lines down, it states that “shipment”,
“means the transport from the place of origin to the place of destination, including loading and unloading, of sealed sources”.
Should we presume that this refers to a sea voyage, as opposed to a road or rail journey? The word “shipment”, on paper, seems a trifle ambiguous.
In north Wales there are two nuclear power stations: Trawsfynydd in Meirionnydd and Wylfa in Anglesey, or Ynys Môn. I believe that the former is dormant and the latter is to be replaced, although I understand that plans for the new Wylfa are now on hold, which is a cause for concern across the island. It is not my intention to query those issues as such, but can it be presumed that shipment from plants such as these—should there be a need for shipment—would begin by road or rail? As I said, “shipment”, as referred to on page 2, is a trifle ambiguous. I recollect seeing the transportation by rail southwards from north-west Wales of a flask mounted on a rail-wagon frame. The flask, which was large and possibly made of steel or iron, was engaged within the train in just one wagon and was easily identifiable to people like me in the locality as a flask connected with the plants that I have instanced.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for presenting this statutory instrument. Obviously, this is not just a consequence of the Brexit decision but of the Euratom decision, so I put it on record that we regret that it is necessary. In the debate in the other place, this was billed as the last SI connected to Euratom, although I think the next one is as well, so I am not sure how that works. I know that previous SIs have been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Teverson.
I shall raise a couple of points. First, the Minister was clear that this relates to sealed transportation, yet the Explanatory Notes are clear that it covers both sealed and unsealed transportation, so I am a little confused about that. Certainly, in the debate in the other place, the Opposition Front Bench spokesperson also expressed some concern over how these regulations extend into the unsealed transportation—“unsealed” being vials, for example—of nuclear material. I would welcome some explanation from the Minister of why he chose not to talk about unsealed transportation while the Explanatory Notes are clear on that. Perhaps he could spend some time adding detail to that.
The Minister was clear that this is one-way legislation, which it has to be in that it applies to imports from the EU into the UK. It was clear that this affects about 100 concerns in the UK. On reciprocal travel, I am not aware that there is much material of this nature travelling in the opposite direction, but what is BEIS’s analysis of the traffic in the opposite direction, and what impact would that have were the European Union not to reciprocate in equal measure to the way we have gone about continuing the Euratom process?
The noble Lord behind me—I am afraid I do not know his name—
Lord Fox
I guessed it was Wales. The noble Lord mentioned competent authorities, and obviously the ONR is a competent authority to handle this kind of material. What extra competence is required of the environment and natural resource agencies highlighted in the Minister’s speech to manage this process?
Finally—again, this came up in the other place—there was some confusion between the Minister and some MPs in the debate over the ability of this process to continue to track radioactive material as it moves around the United Kingdom. The Minister seemed clear that it was competent to do this, and that was brought into question. The Minister promised to write to the Opposition Front Bench spokesperson on this subject. I am not aware that that letter has gone out but, given that the Minister in the other place saw fit to write on this subject, it would be helpful if the Minister could let us know the content of that letter to underline the competence or otherwise of this process to continue to track these materials as they travel throughout the United Kingdom.
Carriage of Dangerous Goods (Amendment) Regulations 2019
Debate between Lord Fox and Lord Jones(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Jones
My Lords, I restate my question: how many shipments, if any, are by road annually? I presume that transportation is inevitably through urban centres. Is the Minister able to give us any detail or information of any responsible kind? The proposals on page 7, looking at emergency plans, are clearly well-considered and very sound, but who oversees them? What arm of the British state is responsible in the end for these emergency plans, when one takes into account the chain of command?
I referred very briefly to the village of Rhydymwyn in the county of Flintshire, where the dosages were first suffered. I conclude by telling the Committee that there was an upshot in 1979. It was a general election, and as a Minister I found myself in the wilds of Meirionnydd, not a million miles from Blaenau Ffestiniog. I was hunted in that locality by the constabulary, on the basis of urgent representations made by officials from my department at that time. They had established that in the proximity of Rhydymwyn, which was making something like mustard gas but deep in the bowels of the buildings, there was the beginnings of a trace of atomic energy. The point was: my officials told me that the road outside that factory had shown evidence of collapse, and very dangerous substance material was feared to be leaking. It did not happen, but that is the context of these words.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument. I am enjoying the novelty of dealing with one that is not related to Brexit, so it is almost like a holiday among all the others.
I have three points to make. First, I welcome the extension of the definitions of an emergency. Some of those are quite subjective in their description—for example, “quality of life”. I wonder what work has gone on to make sure that an emergency is indeed an emergency, and that transporters are not exposed to unwarranted legal action through what would be described as a loose definition in the Act. What impact analysis has been done on the litigation risk around the looseness of the term?
It was very helpful that the Minister brought up the issue of whether this was in order around the Transfrontier Shipment of Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel (EU Exit) Regulations 2018. He mentioned that these regulations would in the event automatically be nullified—“nullity”, I think, was the word he used. How is that nullifying process triggered? Is it part of an overall Bill where a group of SIs or parts of SIs are triggered? My sense is that only a part of this SI gets nullified; or is all of it nullified? What is the mechanism for the triggering of its nullification?
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, paints an interesting picture of his home village. I cannot help thinking that it must be very beautiful and he is hell-bent on keeping people out with tales of mustard gas and atomic leaks.
Lord Fox
There is another point to consider. Essential to this is the definition of an emergency worker. Is it someone who is predetermined as an emergency worker? We have heard of the heroic efforts of ordinary engineers and ordinary people during the massive meltdown of the Japanese reactor, and we know that in Chernobyl heroic individuals took it upon themselves to be part of an emergency exercise. Although there is a definition of emergency workers in the SI, it is clear that, if there is an emergency—let us hope it never comes to pass—individuals will become de facto emergency workers by their proximity to what is happening. They perhaps are not covered by these regulations. In any case, how do you limit these people to 500 millisieverts when they are in the middle of an emergency? They do not necessarily have monitoring equipment to hand; they are dealing with an emergency. While this is a useful limit, no emergency is planned, so unless these people are already wearing the necessary monitoring equipment, they will not be monitoring the dose; and if they are accidental emergency workers—if you follow my drift—they will not have that monitoring equipment either. I would welcome the Minister’s response to those three points.