Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Bousted Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, first, I say to the House authorities that we greatly appreciate the way they have tolerated the fact that we have gone way beyond the normal rising time on a Thursday, particularly as we are sitting tomorrow at 10 am. In mitigation, I note that we have tried to truncate what is a hugely important group of amendments. There are many things that we would want to probe further, so we will have to return to this on Report.

I thank my noble friends Lord Jackson of Peterborough, Lady Lawlor, Lord Leigh of Hurley and Lady Coffey for their contributions. I was interested, as always, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, although I hope that she will mitigate the damage she may have done with her remarks about one of the biggest investors in the UK, Amazon.

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

This is the second time the noble Lord has taken on my noble friend Lady O’Grady, who made perfectly reasonable comments. I do not think it is a good idea to be patronising in the House.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I am sorry about that discordant note, introduced into what has been a really useful day in Committee on this important Bill.

I hope that people outside will realise that we have been debating a group of amendments that were made at the last moment in the House of Commons. They have not had any scrutiny at all in Committee in the Commons. That is why this House has so much responsibility to ensure that, in a fast-moving digital world, we do not transgress in a way that places employers and employees in an impossible position.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport. He asked some direct questions, but we have not yet had the answers to them. It may well be that the Minister will write generally to us all to respond to the points he did not have time to answer today. I appreciate that he has limited time too, but he might like to respond in writing to us all, covering the points that he has not yet been able to deal with.