Employment Rights Bill

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to welcome the maiden speeches of four new colleagues, each of whom will clearly make powerful contributions in the years to come in your Lordships’ House.

I start off by chiding the Whips somewhat. Many speakers today have gone beyond the four-minute limit, which is perfectly understandable. This is a Bill of 300 pages, 157 clauses and 12 schedules. There is much to say. I wonder why we are finishing at 7 pm this evening when we are sitting tomorrow and those noble Lords who normally leave on a Thursday to go home do not have to do so today. It would have been better if we had a bit longer for this debate.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannan, talked perhaps a little pejoratively of those speakers who wait until the end, listening and nodding sagely. Well, I have nodded sagely to some of the contributions that I have heard—mainly of course from this side. I see that the noble Lord is now nodding—sagely, I hope. For what it is worth, I do regard him as the finest orator in the House currently. But, having said that, I agree with hardly a word that he says. To paraphrase perhaps Ella Fitzgerald or, more recently, Bananarama, “It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it”.

When I looked at the list, I saw the number of Tories down to speak and thought, “That’s interesting, they’ve come round to our view on unemployment rights”. Unfortunately, having heard the contributions, that is not the case for far too many. I would definitely accept the noble Baroness, Lady Morrissey, from the Benches opposite. Employment rights actually means employer rights. That is the big divide that we have heard in the debate today.

Some of the doom and gloom almost defies description. Some noble Lords who were here, as I was, 25 years ago, at the time of the national minimum wage, thought that the economy would crash, that there would be mass unemployment, that employers would never be able to pay that. Well, here we are, 25 years later, and the national minimum wage, and indeed a figure beyond it, is now widely accepted. So those sorts of comments are not justified.

Because of the spread within the Bill, we have had many briefings, as my noble friend Lady Goudie said. We have all had them: in my case from the National Education Union, through the Law Society and even UKHospitality. We cannot possibly do them justice in this debate.

One of the briefings that I found most moving was a briefing in person this week from the TUC. We heard from workers who came to tell us what they thought the Bill would do for them in their situation. I remember particularly an USDAW shop worker, Fionulla Rhodes, who told us how some of her colleagues go to work in fear. That is an intolerable situation. We heard from Ceferina Floresca and Garfield Hylton, GMB members at Amazon, about the appalling tactics of that company when the union was trying to organise a ballot to legitimise the union. They reached the threshold and just as they got beyond it, what did Amazon do? It employed 1,000 new workers to move the threshold further away. This Bill will stop these sorts of abuses and will give to people like Fionulla, Ceferina and Garfield not just protection at work but dignity at work. That is a huge step forward.

There is not much time to say anything else. I enjoyed the contributions from many colleagues. The noble Baronesses, Lady Prosser and Lady Chakrabarti, mentioned the Equal Pay Act. My university dissertation, in 1974, was on the Equal Pay Act and now, half a century later, although progress has been made, so much more still needs to be made. This Bill will undoubtedly help to redress the balance, addressing a lot of the imbalance in employment legislation over the past four decades. Next, we will be going into Committee, and I remind noble Lords that in Committee they will have up to 10 minutes to speak on amendments.

Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap. I would have had my name on the list, but I did not expect to be here for the start of the debate. I declare an interest, in that this year, I shall clock up 50 years of membership of the union that is now Unite—that is the fifth name the union has held over the years, through a number of nominal mergers, although it did not always feel like that. I was also a full-time official of the union for 12 years, before becoming an MP.

As an MP, I participated in 1992 in the passage of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act in another place, an Act probably best remembered for ending secondary picketing and the closed shop and introducing strike ballots, although it also provided some protections for workers in industrial disputes. But it is appropriate that that is the Act my noble friend Lord Woodley seeks to amend through his Bill.

I will not go into the various arguments as there is not time for that. Certainly, I agree that the whole issue of “fire and rehire” should be cast into the wilderness, except in the very rare cases my noble friend mentioned. However, I want to say something about the code. My noble friends Lady O’Grady and Lord Browne said that it was toothless and a waste of time, and that is true. My noble friend Lord Browne said that it comes into use only in industrial tribunals. As a full-time official, I remember representing members at many industrial tribunals. I am not a lawyer, and it was a real uphill struggle. It is always an uphill struggle, unless you have a top-class lawyer—like one or two noble Lords here today—to represent you. So that is not normally a situation in which it is easy to get a meaningful decision. The code is really a waste of time.

It is important that emphasis be put on the whole question of what companies seek to get away with and think they can get away with. It has to be made absolutely clear that those practices are totally unacceptable. The code will not assist with that, but this Bill would, and I look forward to contributing to discussions in Committee.