Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I am very happy to add my name to the two amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, having worked for many years before she came to the House on domestic abuse issues.

Nobody would disagree with the Government having this priority to reduce violence against women and girls; it is a no-brainer, given where we are starting from. The examples in the workplace of things going wrong, often in plain sight, are embarrassing, and the list the noble Baroness put before us, which I will briefly repeat in part, demonstrates that it is just the tip of the iceberg.

When I was a head-hunter, for many years I specialised in HR—sometimes known as “human refuse” or “human remains”, but otherwise known as personnel—and Harrods was known as a revolving door for HR directors. Any personnel director who looked at an offer of employment from Mr Fayed—he actually was just Mr Mohamed Fayed; he added the “al” because it makes you sound posher in Egypt—and who had done their homework knew what they were in for. Even people who took a deep breath and, for a large amount of money, took on that role rarely lasted more than 12 months. It really was supping with the devil, and it was widely known, but nobody did anything about it.

The BBC has been mentioned, as well as the NHS. The fact that female employees, surgeons included, in the NHS have reported rape—both allegations of rape and actual rape—over many years is inconceivable in principle but is and has been taking place.

The case of Gracie Spinks was mentioned. I too had the privilege of listening to her father as he spoke of his anguish at the death of his daughter. That is an interesting example. The company where the person who killed her, and who then killed himself, worked, Xbite, had a grand total of 140 employees. So, as we think through how to deal with this, how can we help organisations such as that, which had started up only five years before, to understand the co-responsibilities they have with their employees to try to protect them in the working environment? But also, how do we make that practical and effective?

I was involved, with others, in the Armed Forces Commissioner Bill which has just left your Lordships’ House. Part of the reason that the Government brought that in is precisely because of issues of abuse in the workplace. The well-known tragic case of Jaysley Beck, who took her own life after years of repeated harassment by, shamefully, a series of her superiors, is a case in point. The Ministry of Defence itself also has a major issue in this regard.

The fact is that, as many of us will know, many of us—some of us—will indeed have married, gone out with or, heaven forbid, had affairs with people that we have met through interactions at the workplace. The workplace, outside of the home, is a major cause and focus of social interaction between people, and most of us spend a significant part of our lives there. To expect that to exist in a separate bubble and compartment and not recognise the issues that can often be engendered and amplified by the intensity of a working environment is to ignore the obvious.

So, should we ignore this in this Bill? I think we all agree that this is an issue that needs to be tackled. I think we all agree that we need to do better, but I think we need to ask ourselves: is this the right vehicle by which to try and do something about it? I have come to the conclusion that the answer is probably yes, not least because of the timing of the Government’s current focus on reducing violence against women and girls. What is clear at the moment is that there is a real lack of clarity and guidance, and ownership and responsibility, on how to respond in these kinds of situations.

We have a tangle of different laws and regulations dating back as far as 1974, with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. We have the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999. We have the Domestic Abuse Act 2021. We have the remit of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We have the Health and Safety Executive, and we have the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 190. That is a complicated thicket to try and work your way through, and there are many inconsistencies in the way it is applied and an almost total lack of understanding by those employers who are perhaps trying to respond to some of the issues that their employees are raising as to how best to deal with it, because there is no clear path or clear outline of how to respond. Creating clarity in this area for both the victims and the employers is an opportunity we should not miss.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope that he/she and their colleagues will sit down with Jess Phillips and Alex Davies-Jones to try and look at this in the round, because, in a way, it would fit in very neatly with some of the other laudable initiatives of the Government to reduce violence against women and girls. I ask the Front Benches: please can we work together, politics out of the window, to try and work out between now and Report whether there are ways we can try and pull all this together, give greater clarity and improve on the unacceptable status quo?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am speaking in place of my noble friend Lady Bennett, who is not able to be here today, and she has signed both of the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes.

The noble Baroness made an excellent opening speech and has covered almost everything, but I think it is worth repeating that what we are trying to do here is provide workplaces that are safe, free from violence and free from gender-based harassment. As we heard during an Oral Question earlier, sexism and misogyny are on the rise in our society, and that impacts on women and girls—probably girls, particularly—of all ages. It is crucial that the Government take this seriously.

We are not asking employers to sit down and think what they have to do from scratch, because this research has been done before. There is an excellent project conducted by the Fawcett Society that identifies five key requirements to create a workplace that does not tolerate sexual harassment: culture, policy, training, reporting mechanisms and the way that employers respond to reports. Successful and lasting change needs sustained commitment, and the Fawcett Society shows the way forward—or a way forward. Of course, that, with a great deal of other existing research, is something that the Health and Safety Executive could draw on.

The size of the problem is probably indicated by research from Scotland; there is no reason to think that the issue there is larger than anywhere else on these islands. Last year, a study reported that 70% of women in Scotland reported having experienced or witnessed sexual harassment in the workplace and that 80% of those never reported it to their employer. Those are absolutely terrible statistics. I am sure that the Government want to do something about this, not least because lower-paid and younger workers are particularly vulnerable. This is something that the Government will surely want to address because there are an awful lot of votes out there from younger people and, at the next general election, this Labour Government might need them.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Russell of Liverpool and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 127, 128 and 139, which I have signed, but all the amendments in this group have real value.

In my relatively long life, in which I have argued endlessly for human rights, I think there can be only one or two times when I have stood up and argued for men’s rights, because I feel they have plenty of them and they do their own arguing. But, of course, this is a human rights issue. It is not just men’s rights; it is women’s rights as well, because the mothers will benefit if the fathers have parental leave.

Statutory paternity leave does not support families only in their first weeks; it helps rebalance society by moving away from a statutory parental leave system, which sends a strong message that parenting is a woman’s job and that men should keep working and stay out of the home. That idea is not just present in the legislation; it is embedded and deeply rooted in many people’s prejudices. Maternity leave is already a very hard-fought and essential right, but the imbalance between maternity and paternity leave is structurally embedding gender differences that do not benefit society.

This legislation can set young families up for a stronger start by ensuring that new fathers have plenty of paid time off work in those early weeks and months that are so crucial to a child’s development. I hope the Prime Minister was listening to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, and that he will perhaps urge this House to adopt at least some of these amendments.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 76 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and Amendments 127 and 128 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Penn. I rise as one of, I think, only two fathers in this debate so far and, as it happens, a recent grandfather. I thought it would be helpful to have a little bit of balance in a discussion on a group of amendments which is about what appears to be an imbalance in the respective roles of fathers and mothers.

It seems to me that there are three key reasons to act, rather than to think and debate and dance on the head of an ever-smaller pin. The first is the early years argument. I, together with other noble Lords and noble Baronesses, will be arguing the case for early years being included and very deeply thought about in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Education yesterday said that early years was her number one priority. It is inarguable that changing our approach to paternity pay and giving fathers the opportunity to have a much greater presence in the lives of their children in the early years—and also, very importantly, in support of their partner or spouse, particularly if she is working or is attempting to work—is frankly a no-brainer. In that context, that is a very good first reason.

The second reason is that the economic arguments for this are also very strong. The report by the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, which came out only three weeks ago, and which was mentioned by, I think, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, is fairly convincing. It says:

“Building on the evidence from other countries on the impact of paternity leave, the”


Centre for Progressive Policy—one would imagine that His Majesty’s Government would be in favour of an institute with a name like that—

“has modelled the economic costs and benefits of more generous paternity leave options. This novel model was built to help policy-makers understand the labour market effects – and associated economic and tax costs – of varying paternity leave terms in the UK”.

Its conclusions were very simple:

“The modelling shows a positive economy-wide effect of £2.68 billion, driven by the gains achieved when more women move into work and work more hours”.


The second bullet point is particularly apposite to the Government’s aims and what they are trying to achieve with the Bill:

“The modelling also shows that the increase in labour market outputs for this policy option is mainly driven by those at the bottom and middle of the labour market”.


That is a policy outcome you would think was very close to the Government’s heart.

Turning to the third and final reason, for 31 years I was a professional headhunter and, as a headhunter, you become relatively expert in what I might call the psychology of attraction and repulsion—what attracts people to particular types of employment or employer, and what detracts from that degree of attraction. There is increasing evidence to show that companies that are thoughtful, progressive and transparent about the offering they are making to both fathers and mothers stand a much better chance in this labour market of attracting people of real talent who have many choices they could follow up on. Also, relating back to comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, in a previous group, an important issue is that many individuals have a degree of trepidation about working for potential employers because they are uncertain of the working environment and how it might impact on their ability to play a full part in family life.

For those three key reasons, I support not only having a long hard look at paternity leave—as the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, said, frankly, we have been looking at it for longer than is either necessary or good for us—but, for the good of families and children, just getting on with it.