Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to congratulate the four noble Lords who made their maiden speeches today. They were excellent.

In passing this Bill, the House will restore the UK’s reputation as a nation which supports fair treatment of ordinary people in the workplace and the right of unions to take democratically determined action where necessary to oppose bad employment practice and to repeal the most egregious aspects of the previous Government’s anti-trade union legislation, which my noble friend Lady Jones rightly called punitive in her introduction to the Bill in this House today.

In 1919, the UK was a founding member of the International Labour Organization. Despite this proud history, the previous Government severely damaged the UK’s record on employment rights, passing legislation which attempted to curb the ability of unions and union members to secure better working lives for ordinary people. The ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations repeatedly commented on the previous Government’s flouting of commitments as an ILO member.

In 2022, the committee noted with regret the then Government’s belief that the measures they had put in place to protect striking workers from employer retribution were sufficient. It urged the Government to review the legislation, in full consultation with workers’ and employers’ organisations, to strengthen the protection available to workers who staged official and lawfully organised industrial action, and to provide the committee with information on the steps they had taken in this regard. No action was taken by the then Government on this recommendation.

In 2023, the committee noted with serious concern the development and implementation of minimum service level guarantees. It made clear its expectation that, in preparing their regulations and other guidance including codes of practice, the Government would ensure that any minimum level guarantees imposed on industrial action in the transport and education sectors were indeed minimum and ensure the participation of the social partners in the determination and, where no agreement was reached, ensure that it was determined by an independent body that had the confidence of all the parties. No action was taken by the previous Government on these recommendations.

In May 2023, the Joint Committee on Human Rights found that the minimum service level legislation, which made it easier to sack striking workers and left unions at risk of million-pound fines, did not appear to be justified and needed to be reconsidered. The committee found that it would be possible to introduce minimum service levels in some sectors in a way that was more likely to be compliant with human rights law. The then Government took no action to respond to the committee’s concerns.

In May 2024, in a landmark case taken by UNISON, the Supreme Court ruled that UK trade union legislation was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights in failing to prohibit detriment short of dismissal for taking part in lawful industrial action.

This sorry history of blatantly anti-trade union legislation, whose clear and unlawful purpose was to take away individual and collective rights at work, shows why the Bill being debated in this House today is so necessary. That is why I support this Bill and commend it to this House.