Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Murray of Blidworth and Baroness Kramer

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, as everyone knows, I am very new to this piece of legislation. I do not know whether “shambles” is a parliamentary term, but 27 amendments at this point, after going through the other House and now coming to this House, is completely unacceptable. A Bill needs to be developed virtually to its finish point before it enters the legislative process, not be continuously revived as it travels on through. That is not the way these Houses are meant to operate.

I was struggling to follow the Minister as he described this, not because he is unclear but because he is tackling such complexity within these regulations. I am going to go back and say to the team that they will have to read Hansard multiple times and then keep double-checking the amendments to have a feel for what is going on here. These are not just technical; it is reasonably obvious that they are not. Will we at the very least get a detailed code of conduct? People outside these Houses will have to apply all of this and will need real clarity. I work with employment tribunals, admittedly on whistleblowing issues, and I am incredibly conscious that this is the kind of thing that leads to them being flooded with even more cases—and employment tribunals are a part of the court system that does not have that capacity.

I ask that the Government rethink whether there are areas where the Bill is inappropriate or undeveloped and somehow find a way to bring all those issues very rapidly to the attention of parliamentarians. This is no way to carry out legislation, to ask us to apply sensible scrutiny when it is impossible to get to the bottom and the root of what is being presented to us.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and my noble friend Lady Coffey. It is frankly not acceptable for the Government at this stage in a Bill to lay this many amendments of this magnitude to the policy in the phase of the Bill as it is travelling through the upper House. These measures will receive no scrutiny from the elected House. It is frankly not constitutionally proper to use this method. It should be used for only minor and technical amendments, and by no measure can these proposals be put into that category. The Government should be very ashamed about this. Frankly, the correct way of proceeding would be to withdraw the Bill and start again, and to lay this entire Bill back before the Commons so that it can be properly scrutinised in accordance with our conventional norms.