Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Palmer of Childs Hill and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the thoughtful contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Russell of Liverpool.

I think I was responsible for some of the curveballs on illegal e-bikes and e-scooters that have peppered this Chamber in recent years. I regard their operation as dangerous, especially for elderly people and the disabled—“a Wild West” is the phrase I used before I became a Minister and learned my P’s and Q’s.

I hope the Minister will agree to the request from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for a discussion on what can be done to tackle the current loopholes, even if nothing can be done in this Bill. It is an important matter and we should try to progress a solution.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 323E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is a curious but important proposal, addressing a very real challenge in the evolving world of work. The noble Lord, Lord Russell, pointed this out, as has the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hendy.

The amendment seeks to clarify that substitution clauses in app-based platform work, such as food delivery, courier services and private hire transport, are valid only where the right to substitute is genuine, viable and actually used in practice. As many of us will know, much of our employment legislation was developed in an era when the labour market looked very different. The rise of app-based platforms and the gig economy has created new forms of work that do not always fit into the traditional categories of employment or self-employment, as has been said by previous speakers.

This amendment seeks to clarify one such grey area: the use of substitution clauses in platform work. It rightly asks whether these clauses are, in practice, genuine and workable, or whether they are being used to deny individuals the worker status that they would otherwise be entitled to. The noble Lords, Lord Russell and Lord Hendy, and others have explained in detail how that works in practice.

The broader point is that the Government must ensure that our workers’ rights framework is not stuck in the past. It must be up-to-date and dynamic enough to reflect the modern patterns of work and provide reasonable security for those engaged in them.

Too often, the flexibility of gig work is celebrated without enough attention being paid to the insecurity that can come with it: uncertain hours, low pay—which has been mentioned, including lower pay than the normal driver—and limited recourse to rights. Ensuring that the legal definitions we rely on are not open to exploitation is a vital step in protecting workers and maintaining fairness in the labour market. As other noble Lords said, this amendment may not be the final word on the matter, but it makes an important contribution to a conversation—the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, used the word “discussion”.

I give my compliments to the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others for this conversation—or discussion. I hope that the Minister and the Government will see that there is a gap in employment legislation that needs to be looked at. We ought to deal with people, such as couriers and drivers, who are substituting to people paid even lower wages—and then scooting in front of you at the traffic lights, trying to push up the number of deliveries or collections they are making—in primary legislation, not in a statutory instrument somewhere down the line. I hope that the Government will look at this before we get to Report.