Working From Home (Home-based Working Committee Report)

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who chaired the proceedings of the committee with considerable skill and good temper, as we were all searching for data which does not exist and may never exist, I suspect, given the Government’s priority list. She gave us a good lead all the way through, and, with the help of the secretariat, a good and practical report has been produced. I much congratulate our chairman.

The sudden expansion of working from home during the recent pandemic was, let us be honest, a huge surprise to all of us. Interestingly, and topically, I note that the BBC is going to cover the World Cup working from home in Salford—I look forward to the efforts to make Salford look like San Francisco. Workplace change is generally very slow, but, as the pandemic raged, the expansion of home working took place in a great rush. It was interesting the way that new technology came along at the same time as the pandemic struck. If you had a laptop, a smartphone or a desktop, you could hold meetings with colleagues and see them almost anywhere in the world. It spread like wildfire. Sales of the appliances soared, some bought by employers for workers and others bought by the workers themselves. No longer was digital technology restricted to people with special skills and special knowledge of technology.

This response was necessary to maintain output and economic growth—and, of course, keep down unemployment—during the pandemic. The combination of the pandemic and technology was remarkable, and we were very lucky that it stopped things from getting considerably worse than they already were. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, the impact was not general. Many jobs—for example, in health, hospitality and factories—could not be executed remotely, and face-to-face contact was still essential. Other areas, especially office-based work, were highly appropriate for remote working, and it spread rapidly in that sector, as well as some others.

From my perspective, the change has been very successful. There is no convincing evidence about productivity—although the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, rightly talked about the range of opinions—but it seemed to me all the way through the proceedings that the quality of management was crucial. If home working was well managed, then companies were pleased with it. If it was not, they were not. The same is probably true of looking at productivity in a fixed workplace of a traditional kind. Major changes in workplace practices are often controversial, with workers sometimes being involved in disputes. Discussions about working time, overtime, and maternity and paternity leave can be contentious in workplaces. But this did not generally occur, as far as we are aware, with the introduction of working from home in the pandemic. There were some problems, certainly, but not anything significant. That was to the credit of British employers and workers, who kept up output in the teeth of a frightening pandemic. It is important to acknowledge just how well we thought they did.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, also said, we seem to have settled into a new normal, where a large minority of workers now work from home, or remotely, at least for some of the time, but that is not the end of the story. Working from home is a phenomenon, but it may be overshadowed by the arrival of another one. Artificial intelligence, which is lurking just around the corner, is likely to be most powerfully felt in those sectors which have introduced working from home the most widely, particularly clerical work and work in offices. It will have a major impact on the future of work; maybe that is a subject for another report by a House of Lords committee.

I finish with one question: do the Government accept that guidance is needed in respect of the proposed code of practice, and what constitutes reasonable, as far as employers dealing with requests from workers for flexible working is concerned? We have started something here, and this will continue on a bigger scale, particularly when we see new technology coming along in the form of AI.

UK-EU Customs Union

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, for that absolutely excellent speech, revealing her rich experience in many areas across both the European Union and localities in the UK. She has already made one significant mark on our work: I was not aware that you could have two locations in your title. I am sure there are precedents for it, but the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, has certainly established that. I am pretty sure that, if the citizens of Jewellery in Birmingham and Southall in Ealing get to read that speech, they will be very proud of their girl for what she is achieving on their and other people’s behalf in this country.

We are proud of her on these Benches, too. She is going to bring a fresh perspective on a number of things, including housing and inequality, and perhaps on the EU as well. She was not exactly on any party line with her remarks at the end, but her basic pro-Europeanism shone through very strongly. We look forward to further speeches to come, which again will make us think and take us forward. We have a new colleague who will be a big hitter in this Chamber. While I am on my feet, I wish the other noble Lords who will be delivering their maiden speeches today all the very best for the future. If they do as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, they will be doing very well.

I follow the noble Lord, Lord Newby, in a number of ways—not all ways—and I appreciated his opening speech very much. It set the scene for this debate very well and the scene for the country more generally. I, too, like him, remember vividly in the EU referendum that not everyone on the leave campaign thought that leaving the EU necessarily meant leaving the customs union and the single market. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, was among those who initially thought that. Reference has been made to Boris Johnson’s famous remarks that we could have our cake and eat it, keep the benefits and still leave—one of the biggest whoppers told in that very bitter campaign.

Now, we are faced with reality, and a hard reality it is, too, as the evidence of the costs of leaving the EU continues to pile up. I am not going to repeat all the statistics that were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, other than to say that goods exports are still languishing below pre-2019 levels. I am particularly concerned about small firms, bewildered still by increased paperwork and customs-related red tape.

Nor are non-EU countries filling the gaps. The new trade deals have so far been disappointing. The one with India is unfortunately not yet in force. Others, such as the one with Japan, replicate the EU arrangements; Canada is more interested in a deal with the EU than with us; and the deal with Australia is very good for Australia, but reflects a desperation on our part to get some agreements over the line. As for a deal with the US, as Mark Carney said at Davos recently:

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition”.


I acknowledge warmly that the US has helped rescue us and other Europeans in the past, but can we still rely on it, given the capricious behaviour of the present White House Administration? Well, nobody is too clear about that.

So it seems to me that this can be used in a number of ways, with a number of opportunities as well as a number of threats. It can be used to open a new chapter with the EU, as we huddle together with our neighbours and allies and try to make common cause on a wider range of issues. Defence is an obvious priority area at the moment, but trade should also be another. Prime Minister Carney’s call for medium-sized powers to come together should be heeded and used by the UK as a way to approach our problems in a new way. We need that new way and we need it quickly: we need this reset of key relationships, as the Government are at last exploring.

As the excellent Library briefing for this debate reminds us, the Office for Budget Responsibility reckons that UK imports and exports are both 15% lower than if the UK had remained in the EU. That is a heavy blow to our growth prospects.

I live in hope that people on the other side of this House will begin to acknowledge that the history of our brief time outside the EU has not been good; it has been bad. There have been failures all around, and it was precipitated by us leaving the EU. I look forward, not backward. I do not want to replay old arguments, but I hope that the reset will be bold and wide-ranging. It should challenge those in the Conservative Party—and, I guess, the Reform party too—to recognise the reality that we need a new deal with the EU and perhaps follow up the Carney speech.

There are four major claimed benefits of Brexit, as set out recently by the Conservative Party leader, particularly the freedom to negotiate our own trade deals.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

Order. We have quite a tight time limit, and everybody wants to hear from my noble friend and for her to be able to respond, so if my noble friend could finish—

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

I finish with an appeal to the other side to open their minds and maybe open their hearts a little bit, recognise the situation we are now in, not the situation we were in, and take the country forward on that basis.