Employment Rights Act 1996 (Protection from Detriment in Health and Safety Cases) (Amendment) Order 2021

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes. We make up what might be called one of the smaller unions in your Lordships’ House, being the two Australian-born women in it. It is seldom that I can with so few qualifications welcome a statutory instrument in Committee. It is such an important statutory instrument for workers who have been trapped in often low-paid, dreadfully insecure, exploitative employment, fearing for their safety. When this comes into effect, they will be in a better position.

The background to this statutory instrument is interesting. Huge credit, as others have said, goes to the International Workers’ Union of Great Britain, with subsidiary credit to our judges, increasingly forced into defending the legal rights of the vulnerable in our society against the inaction—or outright oppressive action—of the state and big business. Of course—dare I say it—credit also goes to the two EU directives that the court held should also extend to those who are known as limb (b) workers.

The chief credit, however, goes to the International Workers’ Union, with which I have been delighted and honoured to work with for many years, from some of the delightfully musical protests with the University of London cleaners to the ground-breaking pickets by City Sprint bicycle couriers back in 2015. Seldom have I used the hashtag “campaigning works” with the good- news hashtag with such pleasure as in this case.

However, given the general level of agreement in this debate, and the clear legal framework here, this seems an appropriate time to ask the Minister about the Government’s plans for further protections for workers—about which the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, was inquiring —particularly insecurely employed workers and particularly in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a number of noble Lords alluded to, that has left so many workers in a parlous and desperate financial situation, making them even more vulnerable to exploitative employers.

Given the important role of that innovative union in securing this statutory instrument, what consideration have the Government given to removing some of the restrictions that make the UK the most difficult place for workers to organise in western Europe—a situation that has existed for decades under Governments of multiple political hues? Given the low pay and un-unionised status of workers in some of the most deprived areas of the nation—South Yorkshire, with its low wages and high levels of job insecurity, comes to mind—strengthening the possibility for unions to co-ordinate and organise workers and secure their rights would be a positive way forward in delivering the Government’s levelling-up agenda.