Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (Amendment) Order 2013
Debate between Lord Monks and Baroness Turner of Camden
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend, who has expressed regret. I, too, regret this decision. I am not surprised that there is trade union opposition to it; I would be surprised if there were not. It seems to me that this decision affects not just individual workers but families as well. If this takes place where 100 employees are involved, this means that we are talking about larger companies. This may very well be in places where there has been substantial unemployment because of the decline of manufacturing industry in many areas—a decline for which we should of course thank previous Conservative Administrations, in particular the Thatcher Administration. There are many places where manufacturing industry provided the local population with jobs over a long period, but this is no longer the case, and individuals who face redundancy in such circumstances need a longer period to adjust to that redundancy and to find alternative work.
The Government say that we have a flexible workforce, as though this is something to be very proud of. I am rather suspicious of that view because it indicates that some of the employment rights that we have worked for over the years are in danger. The Government support the disappearance of some of these rights on the grounds that it makes for a more flexible workforce. I do not support that view at all. It is regrettable that the Government are moving down this path. We shall have to look very carefully at the way it operates, and the Government have said that they will watch to see how it pans out. It is not likely to be welcomed by the workforces when they discover that they suddenly do not have the period to adjust to redundancy that they once had. That is entirely regrettable.
Moreover, we could well be entering a situation in some of these areas where more workers enter into benefits, to the discomfort of the Government, who wanted to get people off benefits but who then of course talk about the taxpayer having to bear the brunt of benefit claimants. What else do they expect if they are making it easier for workers to be dismissed? I regret this decision by the Government, and I hope that my colleagues will also regret it.
Lord Monks
My Lords, I, too, rise to support the regret Motion that has been moved by my noble friend Lord Young. The present rules on the period necessary for consultation are designed, in part at least, to provide an opportunity for employers and unions to explore alternatives to redundancy. These alternatives could be short-time working or transfers to growing parts of the business. They could be used to help those workers who are to be made redundant to find alternative work with another employer.
If the minimum period is to be cut in half, these opportunities are inevitably reduced. Staff will be laid off more quickly. The wages bill of an employer will be cut correspondingly. However, the cost, as has been demonstrated by my noble friend Lord Lea, will be met by those who are being made redundant. The impact assessment makes it absolutely crystal clear that this is a straight transfer from employees to their employer and, as my noble friend Lady Turner has just reminded us, to the state, too, if people go into unemployment more quickly than would otherwise be the case.
This is the latest salami slice of employment rights. I remember that in the 1980s Jim Prior used to refer to a step-by-step approach when he was legislating against trade unions. Now, with Vincent Cable and the coalition Government, we have a slice-by-slice approach going on. The measure before us is justified mainly by anecdotal evidence, and by the cries of some—but by no means all—employers that redundancies in the UK are too expensive. I see that there are also some allegations that the UK has gold-plated the EU directive which underpins this law. In fact, by easing the obligations of employers, one makes UK employees more vulnerable to being fired when multinational companies are cutting their staff. We in the trade union world already feel that British workers are uniquely vulnerable because of our so-called flexible labour market, which, as my noble friend Lord Young has claimed, reminds us that we are the third least regulated labour market in the OECD.
The inconvenient truth is that the consultation arrangements in other European countries as a whole are more extensive than ours. In the Netherlands, for example, the authorities can extend the period of consultation to find alternatives to redundancy above the minimum figures to which the Minister referred. Could we perhaps add that provision to what the Government propose? I note that in Germany, where no agreement is reached in the works council, the issue can be referred to arbitration. Is that something which the Government have actively considered?
I can only come to the conclusion that the Government are intent on weakening the worker hand in difficult situations. This is not the road to building up high productivity and high-quality partnerships at work. It is not the right road to building successful economies—as successful, perhaps, as some of these other economies on the other side of the North Sea to which I have referred and to which the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, keeps trying to drag the attention of that side of the House when he talks about the need for Britain to emulate some of the practices that apply in those countries that are coming though the recession, and coming along more strongly than we are.
Perhaps I may ask a specific question about the minimum threshold of 20 employees per establishment. This, as the Minister probably knows, led to some anomalies which were exposed in the recent closure of Woolworths stores. Most of the stores did not employ 20 people and, because it was looked at as an establishment issue, rather than the undertaking of Woolworths as a whole, there was no proper opportunity for consultation. That anomaly is crying out to be tackled, and a move should be made from establishment to undertaking.
In conclusion, the Government should stop this slicing away of employee rights. They should start promoting better relations and high productivity, and you do not do that by making firing easier.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Debate between Lord Monks and Baroness Turner of Camden(11 years, 12 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Monks
I support this amendment. Clause 7 is one of the key clauses in this part of this rather complex Bill, and I object to it. It rips up, rather contemptuously, several decades of history in the employment field.
There is general agreement that worker and employer representatives on tribunals do a good job. The original idea was from the Conservative Party, way back in the 1960s. From my experience over many years, I know that presidents of the Employment Appeal Tribunal have often said that the views of lay members were crucial. Lay members had a sense of what was going on and a feeling for the issues in the workplace from which judges would inevitably be rather distant. Often, judges followed the view of the lay members. They made sure it complied with the law, checked that there was nothing wrong and would adjudicate if there was a disagreement between the two, which often there was not. Very often, there was consensus between the employer representative and the worker representative. They were not a marginal presence sitting on the edge of the legal proceedings; they were right in the middle of them and central to them.
I acknowledge that times have moved on and tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal have become more legalistic than we hoped. We hoped there would not be eminent QCs and eminent juniors on the kind of case that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, referred to, that these things would be sorted out more cheaply and informally before a tribunal and that we would see everything done in a much less legalistic and more cost-effective way. However, over many years, the legal profession has colonised the tribunal system to a regrettable extent.
The lay members on the employment tribunals, originally, and on the Employment Appeal Tribunal have tried to push that back a little, keep its feet firmly on the ground and keep the costs of the whole exercise down. Clause 11 says that we are giving up on that and that the legal profession can have the lot, at least the ones that manage to get round the Grand National course and actually get their case there without falling at several Becher’s Brooks on the way. Inevitably, when they do get there, the whole thing will be more legalistic. That is not a criticism of the judges—I have seen some very fine ones in the Employment Appeal Tribunal, and elsewhere—but the whole experience of the EAT will be much changed and made much weaker than needs to be the case.
I have been thinking about how judges might operate this, because the Minister would say, “Well, if he wants one, the judge can have a couple of wing people—even four, we are expanding it”. It could look like the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. “Why do we need an extra two?”. I do not know where that came from, as we have never felt that one from each side was not enough. I would be interested to know where it did come from.
I can see the first judge who comes forward after this Bill goes through saying, “I think I need two lay helpers for this particular case”. I do not think that many judges will feel comfortable doing that. Such judges would be regarded as a wimp by their peers, who will ask, “Why do they need a couple of people holding their hand when dealing with these cases? What effect is this going to have on the budget, if we have to pay some expenses for the lay members? Is this not all about cost savings, economies and making sure that the cuts work effectively in this area?”.
I am interested in the Minister’s reply to these points. I hope that the Government will pause before they go further down this road. They have already done it, in a way, to employment tribunals. The same provision is already there and I suppose it will be argued that this is a logical continuation. However, it is the continuation of a bad practice; and it is in the peak body this time, which makes it qualitatively different.
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, we have got on to talking about Clause 11, which I opposed at Second Reading on the basis that it was quite unnecessary. I did not really understand why the Government decided to proceed along these lines because the tripartite system that we have works extremely well. The lay people who serve in it are highly respected and in no way put off by the somewhat legalistic environment. They are quite well able to look after the whole situation as concerns workplace arrangements—they know about workplaces, which is why they are appointed to serve on the tribunal.
I still do not really understand why the Government believe that a judge sitting alone on unfair dismissal cases is likely to be more competent. Do they expect him to find more ways to go against the employee? Have they decided that they want a judge sitting alone because the decisions are more likely to be the kind that the Government would like? We know that they are not very keen on tribunal hearings anyway. I want to know why the Government think that this is a good idea.
In the document that the Government have already issued, they have indicated that the points at issue would be legal points, which is why it would be a good idea to have a judge sitting on his own. However, I remind the Government that they have already introduced LASPO, which means that there is no access to legal aid in employment cases. In fact, the individual who is not represented by someone he can afford to appoint to look after him, if he does not have a union to support him, will be entirely on his own and will have no access to any form of legal aid because LASPO has decided against it, as far as employment cases are concerned. An unfortunate individual such as this would have only himself to rely on before a judge sitting on his own. That is not a good idea. It would be far better to have lay people still operating, and I very much hope that the Government will reconsider their position here because it is not fair. It means that individuals will very often, if they are taking up their case themself, be left without anyone to represent them. That is not a good idea if they are going before a judge sitting on his own who is guided simply by legal principles, not by what happens in a normal workplace.