Employment: Terminal Illness

Lord Razzall Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I share the general commendation for the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for bringing forward this very important issue. When I put my name down to speak in this debate, I asked several business colleagues what they thought: what steps should be taken to prevent workers being dismissed from their jobs following diagnosis of a terminal illness. To a man and woman, they said, “That would not happen”. They could not envisage circumstances in which it would happen.

Clearly, there is a mismatch between where we are in the law and what people think ought to be the case. Obviously, nobody in their right mind would think that anybody should be dismissed, even if they have a terminal illness, if they are capable of carrying on doing their job. Nobody in their right mind would think that anyone should be dismissed because they have been injured or hurt in the course of performing their employment duties.

As always in these cases, the devil is in the detail. The example of Jacci Woodcock exemplifies why. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, described very well his relatives’ position, not that I have ever met them. I come from a corporate law background, and, in that world, there were standard service provisions in employment contracts under which, if anyone was incapable of doing their job through ill health, for a period, they had full pay, then for another period they had half pay. After that period was at an end, they had no pay. I suspect that the reason that his relatives had not dealt with this issue was because they came from a world of service contracts that made all those provisions.

Again, the devil is in the detail. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, has been very creative in suggesting how the situation can be made certain through the use of statutory instruments rather than primary legislation because, as we all know, with the Government’s obsession with Brexit, the chance of getting any primary legislation on the statute book this side of 2080 is pretty remote.

I urge that the noble Lord’s suggestion be adopted. As the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said, the remarks of Mr Clark today are very opportune: the Government are looking at what to do to improve and tidy up the whole area of employment. This is a very worthwhile commitment to what he is trying to do.