Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Lawlor

Report stage
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 144 in this group. We discussed the same amendment in Committee. If we do not have a number, it means that, essentially, one employee could trigger union recognition. Surely that is not something we should impose on small businesses.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, this set of amendments is a proportionate response to the Bill’s Schedule 6 to ensure that we have clarity in the Bill for all parties about the threshold to be met in respect of a union seeking recognition to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of a group of workers making a request for recognition. As matters stand, employers, unions and employees know that the threshold for recognition is 10%. This is established under Schedule A1 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, on trade union recognition for the union or unions seeking recognition to be entitled to conduct the collective bargaining on behalf of a group of workers.

The 10% threshold is set out in paragraph 36 and reinforced throughout Schedule A1 in the subsequent paragraphs that my noble friend’s amendments seek to reinstate. That includes paragraphs 45 and 51 on competing applications, paragraphs 86 to 88, and paragraph 14 on applications. As your Lordships know, this Bill substitutes the words “the required percentage”, including for paragraph 45 on the validity of applications. We know that the required percentage may be 2%, but it has become almost a euphemism for whatever a Minister may decide post consultation and impose via statutory instrument in whatever circumstances we may imagine. It may be that the union masterminding the Birmingham bin chaos, which finds its members fleeing to another union, wants the Government to get a 1% or 0.5% figure in the instrument—or else it would withhold its support from the Labour Party.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Lawlor

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the Minister’s introduction to my amendments. I accept that the Government want to go for 2% as the lower limit, but I found the Government’s explanation of my other two amendments, which require a minimum of three people, very strange. The Minister said, “It’s not the way it’s been done before, so we shouldn’t change it now”. If she were to apply that principle to the Bill, we could strike the whole thing out and be done with it.

The reason for proposing the change is that it is sensible. It is just not sensible to put a company, particularly a small company, in a position where one employee can trigger this process. A minimum of three is not a big figure; it is just saying that there needs to be more than one, and three seems to be the right place to start. I know it is not the way that it has been done; that is why I put in an amendment.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I will say a few words in support of Amendments 215AZZB to 215AZZD, tabled by my noble friend Lord Sharpe. These are to Schedule 6 and I am responding to the Government’s amendments to this schedule, which qualify who may take part in a ballot, to ensure that those workers in the union before the close of the ballot may vote. These amendments address those who join after the application date but before the close of the ballot and newly hired workers within the bargaining unit. Amendment 215AZZD aims to ensure that the CAC is satisfied that the exclusion of new employees would not materially affect the outcome of a ballot or undermine democratic fairness. Amendment 215AZA would ensure that new workers who join the bargaining unit after the application date are not automatically disregarded for the purposes of recognition.