Employment Rights Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Ashley Fox Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Would everyone please ensure that all electronic devices are turned off or switched to silent mode? We will now continue line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The grouping and selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room and on the parliamentary website. I remind Members about the rules on the declaration of interests, as set out in the code of conduct.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Mundell. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I seek your guidance on the status of a document circulated to Members by the Scrutiny Unit. It says it is submitted by a Professor Mitie, but I believe that the document is in fact from Mitie, the organisation, and perhaps we do not know its author. Could I ask that we be told who the author is? It is Professor Somebody Else, I suspect. The document also has tracked changes in it, and I seek your guidance on whether those are comments inserted by the Scrutiny Unit or, perhaps, by the author. It is sometimes difficult to know when documents are circulated at the last minute.

[The Chair]

Thank you, Sir Ashley, for giving notice of that point of order. The issue you have raised is obviously on the record. It will be raised with the Scrutiny Unit and there will be a report back to the Committee on the outcome of that inquiry.

Clause 72

Enforcement of labour market legislation by Secretary of State

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[Sir Ashley Fox]

The Minister is talking about granting officials of the state extensive powers currently reserved to police officers. Can he tell us how many additional officials will be granted those additional powers?

[Justin Madders]

What we are doing is transferring existing powers and responsibilities from the existing agency. There are no new police-style powers being created for these officers; it is simply a transfer over to the fair work agency.

Clause 72 is key to delivering the much-needed upgrade to the enforcement of workers’ rights so that it is more effective and fair for workers and businesses. It brings together enforcement functions currently split between several different enforcement agencies and gives the fair work agency the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing labour market. I commend the clause to the Committee.

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[Steve Darling]

I know from my surgeries and casework in Torbay that discrimination is sadly alive and well. I ask the Minister to reflect on some of the evidence from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which talked about the provision leading to fragmentation and the possibility of some of its standard work falling between two stools. What reassurances can the Minister give that the good work will proceed appropriately either through the fair work agency, or in a partnership approach with the Equality and Human Rights Commission?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I want to speak in support of new clause 23 and to ask the Minister whether he is familiar with Parkinson’s law. It states that the number of workers in any public administration will tend to grow over time, regardless of the quantity of work done. The corollary is that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Although Conservative Members are in favour of the creation of the fair work agency, there is a risk that, over time, it will seek to have more staff and more power, will consume a great deal more of taxpayers’ money and resources, and will impose more on employers’ time, without great result. That is why a review is necessary. We want to ensure that any new authority is lean and efficient. We also want the Government to take the same approach to regulations.

Unfortunately, the Bill is a hefty document. It will impose £5 billion-worth of costs on employers, which will probably result in fewer people being employed, higher inflation and lower growth. It is therefore perfectly reasonable for the Opposition to ask the Government to reflect after 18 months and ascertain whether they can find anything in this weighty tome that they could do better or more efficiently.

The working time directive is immensely complicated and imposes burdensome record keeping on employers. In the past, it has resulted in retained firefighters in rural areas having to count the time when they sit at home, not doing anything, as working time. It has been a difficult and troublesome measure, and perhaps my party should have done more to simplify it when we were in office, but that is not an excuse for the Government to say, “Because you didn’t do enough, we intend to do nothing.” It is reasonable for us to ask the Government, at the end of 18 months, to take another look and see whether they can do anything to reduce the burden on businesses.

[Justin Madders]

I am beginning to wonder whether the Opposition’s support for the fair work agency is as strong as I thought. They now appear to want to make sure that creating it is the right thing do, despite its featuring regularly in Conservative manifestos and despite the support of the breadth of stakeholders who gave evidence to the Committee. The current Director of Labour Market Enforcement made it clear in her evidence to the Committee that the creation of the fair work agency would make her role much easier and more effective. She spoke about the recommendations in her most recent report:

“The ones that relate to having a better joined-up approach, to greater efficiency and to better sharing of information among bodies are the things that I think the fair work agency will do a lot better.” ––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 28 November 2024; c. 153, Q159.]

I think that almost half of the recommendations from her most recent report contained an element of that.

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[Greg Smith]

I hear what the Minister says in his explanation of the clause. Often, advisory boards are perfectly good and useful bodies, but I return to my earlier point that where a power rests with a Secretary of State, the accountable body to which any Secretary of State must submit themselves is the House of Commons, where they are a Member, or the House of Lords, in the rare case that they sit in the other place. Parliament is the advisory body—the critical friend—that the Secretary of State should submit themselves to.

However, accepting that an advisory board is going to be established, I want to ask the Minister about its make-up. While the Bill seems to be quite clear, there are some gaps, and some unanswered questions that the public, businesses, employees and the trade union movement will no doubt wish to have answered.

Probably the clearest definition in clause 75(4) is that in paragraph (a):

“persons appearing to the Secretary of State to represent the interests of trade unions”.

I think we can all understand that that means representatives of the trade union movement.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

There are 10 of them over there.

[Greg Smith]

There is my first question, prompted by my hon. Friend: does that include right hon. and hon. Members of Parliament who themselves are members of trade unions? Could that be the case?

We are less clear on paragraphs (b) and (c). Paragraph (b) states:

“persons appearing to the Secretary of State to represent the interests of employers”.

That is a far less easily defined body of people. On the one hand, I can hear some potentially arguing that that is the representative bodies that gave evidence to the Committee, such as the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors. That would be a legitimate answer, until somebody came forward and made a compelling case that, as an individual employer, they should be considered to sit on the board.

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[Steve Darling]

I am concerned about the heavy weather that colleagues on the Opposition Benches are making of this. For me, this measure is about driving a positive culture in employment, and the board’s balance is entirely appropriate. I welcome the clause.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

I have a number of concerns about the establishment of the advisory board for the enforcement of labour market rules. I do not believe that such an advisory board is necessary and I am convinced that its creation would represent an expensive and bureaucratic exercise that would be redundant at best and a tool to disguise the Government’s intentions behind a veil of unnecessary consultation at worst. Let me explain why.

Let us first address the central issue: the need for advice. It is not as if there is a shortage of expert opinions on labour market matters; far from it. If the Secretary of State is seeking guidance from trade unions, he need look no further than the extensive and loud representation of trade union interests on the Benches behind him. There seems to be no shortage of trade union representatives in key positions, be it MPs with close ties to the unions or those with—

[Michael Wheeler]

Does the hon. Member accept that there is a difference between “member of” and “represents” when it comes to trade unions?

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Yes, I do. Indeed, “funded by” trade unions is another distinction. The point I am making is that this advice is available for free. There is no need for the Secretary of State to commission a board and pay representatives of trade unions to give him advice. The notion that three members of trade unions are needed on the advisory board seems, to put it bluntly, quite redundant. The Secretary of State can obtain that advice from any number of trade unions, their experts, or any of the MPs that sit on the Government Benches, who will all freely give it. Let us not forget that there are already plenty of independent experts contributing to various public bodies and providing high-level advice to the Government—there is certainly no shortage of them dotted throughout Whitehall.

If the Government require business perspectives, they certainly need not search too far for that advice either. If they wanted to, they could listen to the CBI or, if they preferred, to the Federation of Small Businesses, which provide ample insights and recommendations on policy matters relating to labour and employment. Those bodies represent businesses large and small, and have extensive networks of experts available to advise on any issues regarding the labour market. The problem—I suspect the Federation of Small Businesses would agree—is that the Secretary of State does not listen to them, so what difference would it make if he were to put one of them on a board of nine or 12? Do we need more voices from the same sectors giving advice?

Who might we see the Secretary of State appoint to this board? I am sure Sir Brendan Barber would get a look in, or perhaps Baroness Frances O’Grady. I wonder what Len McCluskey is up to these days—I am sure he has vast experience in employment rights matters.

[The Chair]

Mr McCluskey is now a constituent of mine.

[Sir Ashley Fox]

Mr Mundell, you are as fortunate as Mr McCluskey.

I am sure that those are just the independent experts that the Secretary of State will be considering appointing to this board. This highlights another crucial point: the Government designation of independent experts is incredibly vague. The Government define “independent expert” as anyone who is neither a trade union representative nor an employer representative. There is no requirement in the Bill for someone to have any particular expertise; they just must not fall into one of those two categories. Nowhere does it say that that expert cannot be a member of a trade union; nowhere does it say that they cannot be a former leader of a trade union; nowhere does it detail what qualifications or experience these experts are expected to bring. Let us not forget that these experts will be paid substantial sums of money—potentially hundreds of pounds per day—and the Government want us to take it on trust that they will be appointing the best people for the job.

As is often the case with such bodies, it is not a risk, but a total certainty that the advisory board will be appointed disproportionately to represent one end of the political spectrum. I suspect the Government will make every effort to ensure that those appointed align with the views they already hold—or, if we have a board of nine, that at least eight of them are firmly in the camp of the Labour party. The most likely outcome in my view is that this board will be packed with individuals whose perspectives on labour markets are perfectly aligned with Government policy and with the trade unions that this Government represent. It might be more straightforward for the Government simply to ask the TUC for instructions on how to go ahead, rather than to go through this cumbersome and expensive process. It would certainly cost the taxpayer less, and I would argue it would be more honest too. The fact is that this board’s purpose seems more to provide a cover for a Government agenda that is already in place than to genuinely provide diverse input. It looks like an expensive way to present the façade of consultation without delivering anything meaningful at all.

If the idea of this surplus of readily available advice was not bad enough, we have not started to talk about the cost of setting up this quango and the board. Having served on two public bodies, I know that advisory bodies are expensive and time-consuming ventures that require significant administrative resources in terms of staff, time and finance. Not only do the members of those bodies need to be compensated—perhaps the Minister will advise us whether they will be paid £300 a day, or £400 or £500 a day—but there is also the cost of setting up the selection process, conducting interviews and managing the day-to-day operation of the body. We are talking about at least nine members being appointed—probably more—which will consume considerable amounts of civil service time and taxpayers’ money. The selection process alone will involve a long list of procedures: advertising positions, longlisting, shortlisting, interviewing, and ultimately appointing the individuals—all, inevitably, to end up with the appointment of the nine people that the Secretary of State wanted to appoint in the first place.

What will this board ultimately do? It will advise the Secretary of State on drafting a strategy. We all know how these things go: the result will be a glossy document full of attractive photographs, distributed widely to people who will never read it, and it will have little or no practical impact on the ground. It will be yet more time and money wasted by this Government. We do not need more reports or strategies; we do not need an advisory board. Labour market rules are already there and they need to be enforced. The person responsible politically is the Secretary of State. He should take responsibility for the political decisions he makes in enforcing those laws, and not hide behind an advisory body.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Anna McMorrin.)