Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Wednesday 14th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

My Lords, I certainly agree that our creative industries are not a contentious issue in this House. They are probably at the base of how we will get out of the recession, and will probably provide a lot of our growth in future. What is contentious is the stated intention of the Bill, as expressed in the Explanatory Notes, to promote long-term growth. It does very little of that.

It is a complex Bill. In my time as a Member of this House, I have not seen another Bill that covers such a variety of issues. It does not even cover just one department. That is not unusual in Bills, but this Bill is particularly complex. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, there are some good parts to it—but very few. I, too, agree with the bringing together of the Competition Commission and the OFT; I agree with the green bank; and I certainly agree that the issue of copyright will have to be debated very carefully. We need to get the balance right, because there are very strong arguments on both sides. It will be a difficult issue on which to get a resolution.

While I read the Bill, the words, “We are all in this together”, kept coming to me. It is not a claim the Prime Minister has used recently—probably very wisely. The Bill does nothing to contribute to that. It loads the burden of helping get us out of our present situation on to the people who are least able to bear it. Working people have already faced many challenges to their family income since the introduction of the austerity measures. Many of those measures were much needed; I would not argue against them. However, the Bill goes beyond what is reasonable and fair, even given our difficulties in this country. In many respects it sets back the relationship between employer and employee. You cannot bring about good relations through legislation; it has to be by mutual respect and by working together. The Bill, in part, strips away a great deal of the basic, decent values in the workplace that have been hard fought for, in some cases, over many years.

On my reading of the Bill, Clause 15 introduces a public interest test which whistleblowers have to meet. The noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, is absolutely right. He gave a list of areas where whistleblowing has brought to the public attention many wrongs which needed to be put right, but the amendment in the Bill will mean that people will think not once or twice but whether they should at all be a part of whistleblowing. That cannot be right. The changes that were made certainly helped make dealings much more transparent and open in both the public services and private companies.

Clause 16 will make a change in employment tribunal proceedings. At the moment, if a judge feels that a claim for unfair dismissal is vexatious and does not have a chance of succeeding, he can say that the claimant will need to pay up to £1,000 to register the claim. The Bill moves the boundaries to provide that if the judge feels that part of the claim for unfair dismissal will not succeed the requirement to pay up to £1,000 to have the claim heard can be ruled out. Many people in Britain are not members of trade unions and do not have representation and this requirement will put them off claiming for unfair dismissal. This clause will apply whether they have worked in a company for two years or 20 years. As the Bill is worded, if it is felt that part of their unfair claim will not succeed, they can be required to pay an amount of money. I suggest that most people will just walk away. We could be forgiven for thinking that that is the intention of the clause.

Much has been said about Clause 56 and later clauses in the Bill in relation to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, whom we are all delighted to see back in the House today, made a strong case in regard to the removal of the general duty. That provision in the Equality Act went through with cross-party support, not 20 years ago but very recently in the past few years. I ask the Minister: what is the Government’s intention in regard to the future of the Equality and Human Rights Commission—not what its role will be, but its future? I asked myself that question when I read the Bill and other briefing material. By 2014-15, the budget for this organisation will have been cut by 62% and 72% of its staff will have gone. The commission was formed by the merger of three independent organisations, which were brought together in the past few years. In addition, last month it shut down its helpline. It received 40,000 calls a year but is no longer available. It has to end its grant programme.

The Government have brought in a new chair and are bringing in new board members who have stronger business skills and experience. However, the organisation covers racial equality, gender equality, human rights and equality across the board, so why specify in one area when what is needed is a commission that has a range of skills? I ask the Minister whether the statement that if there is insufficient progress made on these changes the Government will move to implement more substantial reform, is a coded message to say, “We will end the Equality and Human Rights Commission, break it up and put it into different departments”. What is the long-term plan? Has the commission been given an agenda that will lead it to fail? If the Bill goes through as it stands, it will assist that failure.

Clause 57 deals with the repeal of Section 40 of the Equality Act and covers the issue of harassment of an employee by a third party. It makes the employer liable—but only after three formal complaints have been brought to the employer. When I read this I wondered whether any member of the Government has ever been in an accident and emergency unit on a Saturday night, or whether they have ever been on a bus or a train when the people working on those modes of transport have been subjected to physical violence. This is a retrograde step which will harm only one group of people—those providing services in the public and private sectors.

Clause 61 deals with health and safety. It is new: it was not introduced in the original Bill in the House of Commons until the Report stage and it has not been properly scrutinised. I advise the Minister that it will receive proper scrutiny in this House. If an employee has an accident at work, the clause will remove from the employer a liability that goes back to 1898, when people were able to claim compensation for an accident in the workplace. It removes that liability because the burden of proof will be on the employee to prove that the employer has been negligent.

When we go out to work in the morning, we all hope that we will come home to our family at night in the same state as when we left. Anyone who has worked in industry—and a number of noble Lords have—will know that industrial accidents happen to workers, who arrive at work fit and well and sometimes never go home. Many, many accidents happen. When I was a union official, certainly about a third of my time was taken up working in this area. To remove this protection and place the burden of responsibility on the employee is a retrograde step, not only for the Government—who may feel that they have not taken the right decision—but for the whole of the country. We lead the way in treating people decently, I hope. If the Bill goes through without changes, that record and many, many years of lobbying and work—much of it cross-party work, accepted by both sides not only in this House but in the other place—will be wiped away. The Bill needs to be severely scrutinised in some areas and I hope that it will leave this House in better condition than it arrived.