Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in principle I welcome this Bill’s aspiration to enhance protection of workers’ rights, but I had one nagging doubt ploughing through this huge, red-tape-laden, unwieldy legislation: how does it fulfil its boast to modernise employment rights and make them fit for the modern world? To me, it seems bizarrely out of sync with shifts in modern workplace culture.

For example, we are told by government that more sick leave entitlement aims to reduce the number of

“infections in the workplace—boosting productivity and benefiting businesses”.

Really? Has the Minister not noticed the crisis created by large swathes of workers too readily not going into work, pleading sickness, stress et cetera? Also, surely, making flexible working a default position will exacerbate the modern fashion for working from home as a regressive retreat from collective workplace solidarity. It is hard to cultivate a one-for-all, all-for-one culture from the individualised isolation of your bedroom office—a privilege, by the way, accessible only to white-collar workers.

On trade unions, I am delighted to see the back of the ludicrous Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, which I argued against in this Chamber. But I am also worried that modern trade unions are not fit for purpose: their ideological priorities seem often to put them at odds with their members. I thought of this listening to today’s maiden speeches. By the way, I offer a warm welcome to the noble Baronesses, Lady Cash, Lady Berger and Lady Gray—this Chamber always benefits from more feisty women. But let me focus on the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, the founder of the Free Speech Union, which invaluably defends workers’ rights when facing a specifically modern form of employer mistreatment: being punished or sacked merely for expressing legal, if dissident, viewpoints.

The FSU is necessary because, tragically, too many, particularly public sector, union bureaucrats seem to have been radicalised by the toxic ideology of identity politics. Trade union officials often act as the censorious enforcers of HR departments’ equality, diversity and inclusion policies—policing their members’ speech rather than protecting their rights, which is the very opposite of the role that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, described earlier. To give one example, the UNISON conference passed a motion pledging to combat so-called “gender-critical narratives” and distributed materials that conflated sex-realist perspectives with far-right extremism.

It is no surprise that a group of nurses from County Durham—more feisty women I like—have been forced to set up their own Darlington Nurses’ Union. They are taking the NHS trust to an employment tribunal, alleging that the hospital’s HR department intimidated and harassed them when they objected to sharing their female changing room with a biological male who identifies as a trans woman. The official nursing unions were useless, simply repeating their NHS boss’s inclusion mantras.

Yesterday, Sussex University was rightly fined over £500,000 for failing to protect Professor Kathleen Stock’s free speech. Do not forget, as Professor Stock noted at the time, it was her own Sussex University union, backed by the UCU and its general secretary Jo Grady, who threw her under the bus. Things are so bad, members are taking unions to court. Two academics, Deirdre O’Neill and Michael Wayne, makers of the film “Adult Human Female”, have launched a tribunal action against the UCU for viewpoint discrimination after campus branches blocked screenings.

Meanwhile, Rick Prior, chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, is taking legal action against his union. He was locked out of his union email and suspended after a TV interview in which he suggested that many of his 30,000 rank and file officers were increasingly nervous about challenging people from ethnic minorities. I note that the Met’s professional standards department concluded that his remarks did not amount to misconduct.

These trends reflect the modern world of trade unionism. If they remain unacknowledged and the Bill uncritically extends the bureaucrats’ powers, it might not help but hinder workers’ rights.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 8th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Davies because I absolutely agree with what he says. I would add, just from my own experience, that, early in my working life, I worked in a retail organisation where there was a staff forum and where I and colleagues were organising to establish a trade union. The difference is this: that staff forum was set up by the employer. It was not set up by workers. That staff forum was funded by the employer; it was not funded by workers. That staff forum was not democratic, whereas the whole point of a trade union is that it is a democratic organisation of working people. I would hope that one of the aims we could share across this House is to see an increase—an expansion—of genuine collective bargaining, because the evidence is very clear that, internationally, we see that the demise of collective bargaining has been associated with growing inequality, worse conditions at work, a poorer share of the wealth that workers help produce and no independent democratic voice.

I would hope that, in this country, we recognise that there are many, many working people who feel they have been denied a genuine voice—an independent voice—at work and in society, and they are rightly fed up about it. If we want to tackle that—if we want to tackle inequality and the sense of powerlessness that many people feel—it is collective bargaining through the route of independent, democratic trade unionism that we all need to see grow.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak in this group and I am torn between both sides. I have some cynicism about the Opposition’s attempt at recognising non-trade unions and staff associations. I entirely understand the point that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, has just made about employer-led staff clubs, which I have been, over the years, invited to join. While they have been very pleasurably good social forums, they are very different from trade unions.

However, I am afraid that there is a danger that we can romanticise what contemporary trade unionism is, based on the very fine history of 150 years of struggle. I do not actually think that trade unions at the moment should take for granted that workers will be loyal to them, because there have been far too many instances of trade unions not being fit for purpose. Indeed, there is often a huge gap between trade union leaders and trade union members. Many members are leaving unions or not joining them, and that is not always because of evil bosses in a kind of caricatured way.

At Second Reading, I made the point—and I am only repeating it here now—that, for example, the Darlington Nursing Union has been set up because the nursing unions have abandoned female members of staff who were nurses and who have been attacked by their HR departments and their employers for their political views in relation to gender and sex. As it happens, we now can appreciate that they were simply reiterating their right to privacy as biological women—something that the Supreme Court has now at least acknowledged is the law—but they have been harassed and bullied and so on, and the trade unions abandoned them.

I made a point about the Free Speech Union. I appreciate that it is not a trade union, and nobody, least of all me, is suggesting that the noble Lord, Lord Young, who is in his place, will become the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, of future negotiations. Despite the fact that that is an unlikely role for the noble Lord, Lord Young, the Free Speech Union has been forced into existence and has represented workers who have been done over by their employers when their trade unions have abandoned them. That is the point I am making.

The UCU is one example of a university union. I was a NATFHE rep for many years in the further education sector and I have watched in horror the way that that union has degenerated and sold out its members. So, for the record, I would prefer that we did not caricature each other in a way that does not represent the contemporary time. The trade unions today are not the trade unions of old. They could do with upping their game. Similarly, I do not think the trade unions are the evil enemy of employers, as is sometimes implied by people sitting closer to me on this side of the House.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to add to what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said. We are having a good debate and I very much hope to keep it friendly. What the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, said, was really rather flying pigs.

I, obviously not like most of the Committee, am old enough to remember the 1970s. I remember the destruction of the British automobile industry by the trade unions. London docks was destroyed by the trade unions. This led, through the 1970s, to the “winter of discontent”, which led to the necessary emergence of a Government under Margret Thatcher who sought to control the trade unions and do something about the destruction they were wreaking on the British economy. We all remember that; I am not fantasising about this. This 150-year story of the great things wrought by the trade unions is really difficult to let go by without saying something.

Right now, only 22% of workers in the UK belong to unions. Why is that? It is because of the destructive nature of those unions. Let us remember that, of that 22%, most are in the public sector. Public sector workers have a monopoly in the areas they occupy and in return are being rewarded by a Labour Government. We saw the sorts of rises, which were completely unjustifiable compared with what people in the private sector were earning, that the Labour Government awarded many public sector trade union workers when they came to power.

We saw how there is—I am not saying anything we do not all know—a wonderful relationship between the unions and the Labour Party. I saw a number—I do not stand here asserting it is true, but I saw it and it seems reasonable—that, since 2011 the trade unions have given £31 million to the Labour Party. Whether that is true or not, we know the figure is of that order. This is wonderful, but it increases the size of government, because of the deals the Labour Government have to make with these trade unions. It increases the cost and complexity of government, and it increases in general the cost of regulation to all employers.

All those things destroy the economic growth which, as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, said earlier, we are all trying to achieve. I ask the Government please not to give us guff—I hope it is not unparliamentary to say that—about the positive effects of the trade unions. They are destructive.

--- Later in debate ---

I believe the Government should trust workers to take responsibility for their own employment decisions. If workers want to request guaranteed hours, of course they should have the right to do so, and the freedom to ask without fear of discrimination or retribution. By undermining this basic principle of worker autonomy, the Government are sending a dangerous message on the real value they place on workers’ rights. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, until my earlier rant on trade unions, I had not been available to speak consistently in the debates on Clauses 1 to 8, although I have been listening in or following them. I have not been able to be here because of the problems of contemporary work: a portfolio career running from one job to another and never having time to do everything I want to do.

One of the reasons I am very keen on an impact assessment on the impacts of Clauses 1 to 8 on these sectors—the subject of the amendment to which I added my name, looking at hospitality, retail and health and social care—is that I feel as though the modern employment landscape has changed so dramatically. Despite the fact that we have a Bill about modernising employment rights, I have sometimes felt that there has not been an adequate recognition of how things have changed. As I hinted at earlier, there is a rather caricatured view on a variety of sides of the Committee, as though we were stuck in the 1970s and every employee and every worker was a public sector worker with a nine-to-five job. That is just not what it is like. The contemporary workplace often needs flexibility, for the sake of the workers as much as anything. But it is an argument, and I am not going to go into the details.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt—of wherever—for allowing me to put my name to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, explained well the different issues that have been raised in the debates until now, as I understand them. On different Bills I have raised the problems in these sectors, so I will not repeat them. But I note that, in a debate on Martyn’s law—which has now become an Act of Parliament as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act—I raised the real problems that the hospitality sector is facing at the moment because it is under the cosh and overregulated. People who work in that sector feel that it is not going to survive. There are the national insurance contributions and the regulations being brought in. The retail sector, such as convenience stores, will now face a whole barrage of assaults in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill; I talked about that at great length, so I will not repeat that.

I fear that the health and social care sector has exploited care workers via zero-hour contracts; I have talked about that in the past. A modernisation of the health and social care sector is required, and I am disappointed that the present Government have not brought that forward. The one thing that I would like a Bill on is the modernisation of the health and social care sector, instead of these other Bills, which I think do some damage. Despite that, all that the amendment I am supporting calls for is an impact assessment of Clauses 1 to 8.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am delighted that consultations are occurring but, as legislators, we are asked to vote on a Bill without having seen the consultations. The Minister can tell me that there are no gaps because it will all be done for us. I do not know why we do not sack ourselves; what are we doing, sitting here, reading through line by line in Committee and discussing a Bill that we are told not to worry our little heads about? Those are the gaps.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

First, I did not say “little heads”. It is important that we continue to have conversations with stakeholders. Most noble Lords know, and I am sure the noble Baroness knows, that employment law includes a lot of regulations. Previous employment legislation puts further regulations in place. It is important and right that we speak to a wide group of stakeholders, businesses, workers, trade unions and everybody involved in this, so that we get it right.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

One last thing: to be frank, I want the Government to speak to wider groups of stakeholders than the official bodies that represent people. It is simply that it should have been done before the Bill was brought to us. I want it to be noted on the record that wide consultation work should have been done, but the Government should not have brought legislation that could have unintended consequences that damage workers’ rights, while they proclaim that it will save workers’ rights. If they had not done the consultations, they should never have brought it to Parliament to be discussed.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I hear what the noble Baroness has said. The Bill has gone through the other House and been scrutinised line by line. We have also taken the point on board here and we will continue with further consultation.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there have been some excellent debates in this group. I ask for some clarification, particularly from the Government, on something I am confused about. I am sympathetic to Amendment 74A. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, made a very useful and insightful contribution that brought another layer to the discussion. There is a danger of us talking about these things technically, yet in a rather old-fashioned way, when there is a lot more evidence and new phenomena to consider.

Amendment 74A looks at the impact on—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness, but we are not debating Amendment 74A. It is grouped elsewhere.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I have the right group; I have just said the wrong thing.

[A noble Lord]

It is in the next group.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

All right; thank you.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in what has been a very interesting debate. I will try to reflect on what I have heard as I speak; that will make my job quite difficult and probably make my speech completely incoherent, but I will do my best.

We closed last week with a couple of de-grouped Conservative amendments. I promised to reserve what I would say on statutory sick pay for this group, which means that I am unlikely to speak on the next group. Last week the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt, spoke firmly against the Government’s proposed changes. I have seen evidence of businesses arguing strongly either for the status quo or for a two-day threshold.

I am not a behavioural scientist, but I can read a room politically. The party that is sitting on a huge majority in the Commons has made it very clear where it stands on this issue, and that has been reasserted by some of the even stronger comments we have heard from the Benches opposite. Businesses have drawn the same conclusion. Many of those I talk to are seeking ways to ameliorate this, rather than eliminate it, which is probably unlikely.

I was interested to hear the noble Lords from the Conservative Front Bench speak to Amendments 71A and 71B. Their version of amelioration appears to be to reduce the amount of SSP, or at least severely limit it. We heard a different story from the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady O’Grady, who set out why SSP is important and why the rate is meaningful. To contextualise poverty, we are talking about the poorest people who are working people but still extremely poor. It is difficult to overestimate the generosity of this scheme, but that is what I have heard from several on the Conservative Benches. This is a very modest offer. With her statistics, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, set it out very clearly, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.

Before I talk to my own Amendment 74 and Amendment 73, I will deal with the others. In Amendment 75, the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt, call for a reviewer to report within two years. I mentioned there is a subsequent group which also has impact assessment amendments in it. I am not really sure why we are debating them separately. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I am going to mention 74A to 74C, which have been shunted into a separate group. Taken together, there is a slightly curious mismatch of timings: Amendment 75 is after two years, 74B and 74C after six months and 75A after a year. I agree that there do need to be impact assessments following whatever your Lordships decide, perhaps on a more systematic calendar than the ones suggested.

I am interested in the pre-emptive impact assessment. For the benefit of your Lordships’ Committee, it would be good to hear the Minister spell out the detail of the impact assessment of business on the current proposed measures. If, as the Minister says, the costs will be relatively modest, the costs of Amendment 73 or 74 would also be relatively modest, which takes me to the point in question.

As we have heard very eloquently from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, she and I have come up with very similar suggestions in terms of amelioration, which is what I was talking about earlier. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, I slightly prefer the version from noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, but that is not the point—this is not a competition. We would like to sit down with the Government and thrash through a way whereby a rebate scheme can be reintroduced. This seems to be the sensible approach. We care deeply about SMEs—they drive a huge part of our economy. This is a way of making sure that they do not get disadvantaged as employees get what they deserve as SSP. That is what I am asking for from these Benches. Very sensibly, the noble Baronesses, Lady Coffey and Lady Noakes, and others supported it. I hope that the Minister will be able to make a positive noise about that and we can sit down and have that conversation.

Today, we have heard that SSP is absolutely vital for a section of society who are already massively disadvantaged. We should not be drawing lines and pushing them further down. We should be finding ways of making sure that they are not disadvantaged even more and, at the same, we should find ways of making sure that our SME sector is not also disadvantaged.

--- Later in debate ---

I therefore urge the Minister to continue to consider the potential conflicts between these provisions and look for ways to align them, in order to avoid creating undue burdens on businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I should have spoken in the other debate—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

But I will carry on. I also want to refer to the issue of absenteeism, but I feel as though I have wandered into the skivers debate, and I do not necessarily want to be involved in that.

I am not worried that sick pay will create a nation of skivers or everybody phoning up and saying, “I am off sick”. But I am confused—maybe the Minister can help me here—about what seems to be a conflict in government priorities concerning our attitude to work and, in a way, our attitude to sickness. There seems to be some tension between the discussion around reforming the welfare system and PIPs, for example, and the concerns raised in that debate about ever greater numbers claiming disability benefits, especially for mental illness. I thought that the questions asked by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary—quoting experts and evidence on the problem of overdiagnosis and of encouraging a culture in working-age adults, especially young people, of feeling incapacitated and dependent on the state in a demoralising way, such that they are written off—are in fact a very mature way of looking at that discussion that we should consider.

We also have to acknowledge a phenomenon that we discussed quite a lot during the passage of the Mental Health Bill. Being unwell, particularly mentally unwell, has now become integral to many people’s identities. The figures given in the earlier debate—when I meant to speak, and when the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, and others made the point about huge numbers of people now being off work as a result of disability due to mental ill-health—indicate that there is an increase not in mental ill-health but in a new cultural phenomenon of people feeling unable to cope in some capacity.

I raise this issue in relation to the Bill because, although the Government are having a mature and interesting discussion on welfare in the other place, I cannot see that it does not conflict with the statutory sick pay provisions and debate we have had on this Bill. On Amendment 74A, which calls for an impact assessment regarding absenteeism, I am concerned in a different way about absenteeism. If Liz Kendall and Wes Streeting are incentivising or encouraging people who have been on long-term sick leave to return to the workforce—maybe to all those care home jobs that have just been created—will they willingly do that, or will they take advantage of this new flexible sick pay from day one? Is that likely to happen? I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, made this point. In what way would they be encouraged to employ somebody who has been on long-term sick leave if they must say, “Come and work for me—by the way, you can have sick pay from day one”, when they have taken all that time trying to persuade them to get back into work? At the very least, it becomes a bigger risk for the employer to take on such people: the very people the Government want to get back into work and who, for their own sake, should be in work, because the alternative is not doing them any good.

We need to be honest in this discussion. Sick pay was hard-fought for for all those years, but we live in a different time, when sickness is viewed differently. It is almost like a badge of honour in some instances, but it has also become a way of coping. To give your Lordships an example, when I was a further education teacher, some 25 years ago, it was the first time I had come across people taking time off for stress-related sickness. It was often when there had been a political dispute or some big row at work, or a disciplinary action had been taken. Instead of it being dealt with politically, people went on stress-related sick leave. Fair enough—that was fine when it was one or two people. But at one point, a third of the staff in a further education department of humanities were off on stress-related sick pay. As you can imagine, it was a dysfunctional department.

So I agree with the Minister when she said earlier that we are hoping that a happier workplace is going to have less stress. I get that point, but I genuinely think that something else is going on. That form of sickness has become a means for people to express their problems in a range of ways, and they lose the habit of work. My concern is that the Bill, particularly in respect of some of the less flexible ways this issue is being dealt with—in this instance, sick pay—will incentivise those regressive ways in which people are retreating from the workplace.

There is a report out today that says that Gen Zers, or whatever the term is, believe that the workplace itself makes them ill and that workaphobia has to be taken into account. I know that these concepts seem a bit flaky, but it is an academic study, so I am citing it. It says that what needs to be considered is that is why young people should be treated with leniency about not going into the workplace, because they find going into the workplace and interacting far too stressful. It is that kind of nonsense, to be frank, that I hope that we will not encourage inadvertently by this Bill.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I focus particularly on Amendments 83 and 84, which purport to deal with a hypothetical “banter ban”. I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Young, said about these amendments because I have been struggling to understand why they are thought necessary. I regret to say, with the greatest respect, that I am still none the wiser.

The wording in those two amendments does not need to be included in the Bill because most overheard conversations that someone who hears might not like would already fail the test of unlawful harassment in the Equality Act 2010. Most overheard conversations would not fall under the definition of harassment in Section 26 of that Act. That would include the example given by the noble Lord of a blind person at a football match. To be caught by the definition, something an employee hears at work and finds objectionable or offensive would need to be relevant to a protected characteristic and would also need to have

“the purpose or effect of … violating”

the person’s

“dignity, or … creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

If this were put to the test, it would not just be about the employee’s subjective perception. If a case like this ever ended up in court, which is highly unlikely, the court would also have to take into account all the circumstances and would need to decide whether it was reasonable for the overheard conversation to have had the effect of violating dignity or creating a

“hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

In other words, the subjective is balanced against the objective, and context will always be crucial.

The average everyday chat in the pub or elsewhere would not pass these tests, however much someone dislikes what they hear, so the Bill would not require employers to take steps to prevent conversational expressions of opinion on, in the words of the amendment,

“a political, moral, religious or social matter”.

Of course, in some circumstances, third parties do abuse and harass employees. It happens with depressing regularity, notably in hospitality, which the noble Lord seeks to exclude from the Bill altogether. It can happen when abuse is obviously directed at an employee by way of a pretended or fake conversation that is obviously expressly designed to be overheard and to offend. That is the whole point of this clause. Instances of obvious direct harassment and abuse of employees by third parties would, rightly, be protected by the Bill under current definitions.

It is important to note that steps to prevent this would not place an onerous burden on employers. As my noble friend the Minister said in her introduction, regulations will set out steps that employers should take, but many employers already take relevant steps to prevent this sort of offensive behaviour. For example, your Lordships will be very familiar with signs on public transport or in healthcare settings warning that abuse of staff will not be tolerated. That is very familiar to all of us.

The broader point here is that the Bill’s purpose is to require employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent their staff being harassed and abused by customers or members of the public. It is not about preventing or regulating private conversations or restricting free expression. I suggest that Amendments 83 and 84 would not add anything and are not needed.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the whole of Clause 20 should not stand part and should be dropped from the Bill. The amendments that I have put my name to are mitigating, in case this very dangerous clause is not dropped, but I remain hopeful that the Government will realise—despite what the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, just argued—that this clause will, no doubt unintentionally, be not only bad for business and a range of public-facing institutions but detrimental to workers.

I appreciate that the Government are seeking to reassure and dampen down the public unease about this clause with their suggestions that campaigners are hyping up the threat that it could pose to free speech, but I have yet to hear a convincing positive argument for why legislation is being used to create this sweeping new duty that will significantly expand all employers’ liability for third-party harassment of their employees. It is unclear why, if any employee has evidence of harassment as just described, they do not call the police. Should this not be left for criminal law to deal with, rather than extending employment law?

This clause puts the onus on employers to plan for, prevent and police alleged problematic interactions—a task they are simply not qualified to do, and indeed should have no right to do. This clause amends the Equality Act by reinstating liability for harassment of employees by third parties. As we know, that was in the original 2010 Act, but, when the then coalition Government consulted on the matter, there was such negative feedback that it was kicked out in 2013. Why has it now reappeared, with no consultation?

Moreover, this new duty is considerably more onerous. For example, there are no exemptions. One of the amendments that I have put my name to tries to at least carve out especially vulnerable sectors. As we have heard, employers would be liable for any single act of harassment by a third party. In the previous iteration, employers would have been liable only if the employee was harassed for a third time. Again, an amendment has been tabled to remedy this. To date, the Government have not presented any evidence that would justify ignoring the reasons why the original liability was rebutted, so what has changed that demands it?

Superficially, protecting employees from harassment sounds fair enough to all of us, but a lot hinges on what we consider harassment to mean. First, one confusion to clarify is that the content of this clause is sometimes bundled together with the issue of sexual harassment, giving it a moral force that is not merited. To be clear—as others have been—Clause 20 covers liability for third-party non-sexual harassment.

There is then the common-sense notion of harassment in people’s minds. This is understandable but misplaced. Lord Sumption, in Hayes v Willoughby in 2013, said of harassment that it is

“an ordinary English word with a well understood meaning”,

going on to describe it as

“a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct targeted at another person, which is calculated to and does cause that person alarm fear or distress”.

If only that was the definition. Unfortunately, Lord Sumption’s wise thought that harassment has a well understood meaning is not true in the 2025 era of lawfare.

Section 26 of the Equality Act defines harassment as

“unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic”.

The EHRC guidance sets out that this can include “spoken words”, “banter”, “jokes”, “written words”, “imagery”, “physical gestures”, “facial expressions” and “posts on social media”. That is a very broad catch-all list of forms of harassment that employers will now have to protect their employees from when encountering third parties.

Harassment under the Equality Act includes indirect harassment. I cannot see any way for an employer to seek to comply with this when they will be compelled to take all reasonable steps to prevent their staff encountering, or even overhearing, those conversations, jokes and remarks that they might find upsetting in view of their protected characteristics. Harassment cases taken to employment tribunals increasingly concern conduct having the effect of harassment, rather than behaviour intended to have that effect. The motives or intentions of the third party are irrelevant.

I have noticed that, in response to previous speeches raising concerns about this clause, the Government have argued that it will not be enough for the claimant simply to claim that someone’s conduct is offensive, and that there will be an objective test in which the reasonableness and facts of the individual situation will always be considered. But in every iteration of harassment—in law; in codes of conduct, including our own, here in the Lords; and, for example, in all elements of the regulation of hate speech—a key factor is the perception of the claimant. That is unduly subjective—something I have raised as a problem on numerous occasions, only to be told by Government Ministers that victims’ feelings are a core component. I would be more than happy if the Government were proposing amending equality law to tighten this up and narrow down indirect harassment, but, in the present circumstances, Clause 20 is a minefield and opens the door to egregious and boundless litigation across the board.

I want to consider who these third parties are. Maybe in the Government’s mind they are lairy, drunken, rich businessmen shouting abuse, or some mythical, anti-social, boorish bigots roaming around public-facing establishments hunting down hard-pressed staff to harass. In reality, who is it who goes to the football or the rugby and may fall foul of the law, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, illustrated? It is other workers who relax on their days off by supporting their sports clubs, and who do not mince their words while doing so.

Who do the Government think frequents pubs? These third parties could well include workmates who go for a pint after a long shift and may want to let off steam by moaning about their bosses, only for a member of the bar staff to take their lively views personally and feel harassed. They could be a group of care workers, gossiping away as they get their nails done and discussing the local grooming gang scandal, to which someone who works at the beauty salon takes offence. What about a bunch of apprentices on a night out at a comedy gig who join the heckling banter and perhaps shout something that a staff member or steward says insults their protected characteristic? What about the ex-police officer reading a Brexity book in the cafe and chatting to a staff member about it, and so on?

In other words, beyond some abstract legalese, third parties in the flesh are fellow workers trying to spend their private time unassailed by undue, back-door state regulation of their speech and leisure.

I note that, in universities, third parties are not just external speakers but students, who are now considered consumers and customers. Already, without this clause, there is a growing phenomenon of university management imposing rigorous speech codes on the student body in the form of anti-harassment policies under the guise of dignity at work and study policies. Many of us who are campaigners for free speech, such as those at the Free Speech Union, or my colleagues at the Academy of Ideas and Living Freedom, are working with students to roll back these policies that are a serious threat to academic freedom. Clause 20 would not only justify such censorious policing of students’ speech but would, in effect, necessitate it, as it would be remiss of any university not to take steps to minimise the liability risk of students offending academic staff and making them feel unsafe and complain of harassment.

Finally, I am concerned about the disproportionate effect that this will have on groups in society who hold dissenting views, expressions of which are too easily and regularly misrepresented as harassment. Surely any businesses that operate venues as part of the hospitality industry will seek to manage their liability through a risk-averse approach to any potentially contentious gatherings booking their premises. You can just imagine the conversations: “Oh God, no. Those evangelical Christians want to book a room again. That could be seen as harassing our gay staff”; “Oh, damn—that pro-Israel group wants to hold a meeting here, but lots of the catering staff are pro-Palestinian migrants. It is a bit risky”; “Drat. That bolshy Women’s Rights Network and Let Women Speak lot have arranged to meet here with all those customers wearing ‘Women = Adult Human Female’ T-shirts. That is bound to wind up our right-on, trans-ally bar staff. Just tell them we’re fully booked”.

In other words, Clause 20 could lead to overly cautious, “better safe than sorry”, informal blacklists. It could radically change and toxify the relationship between businesses and their customers. It is no longer “the customer is always right”, and you can forget about improving customer service; now customers are third-party harassment risks to staff.

We live in an era of divisive cancel culture. This misplaced assertion of the right not to be offended threatens social cohesion. We as legislators should seek to dismantle this culture and not add to it, as Clause 20 absolutely does.

--- Later in debate ---

Do noble Lords think that this has had a chilling effect on free speech in this place?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I would like some clarity. There is some confusion over what the definition of harassment is in law. If you asked whether I was for the harassment of employees and workers, I would of course reply that I am not, but we have to look at the way the law defines harassment, particularly indirect harassment and some of the issues that were raised.

Despite the noble Lord, Lord Fox, imagining that we have all been whipped up into some synthetic rage by the noble Lord, Lord Young, because we are incapable of working out for ourselves what we think about a piece of legislation, there is concern about free speech. I am confused about what the Minister is saying free speech is. She keeps saying that we cannot allow unacceptable behaviour. Is that part of the legislation? What unacceptable behaviour is she referring to? Is it detailed in the law? Which things is she talking about? It is one thing to say that a football team has rules, but have the Government come up with a new behaviour code in this Bill that society must adopt? If they have, I have not seen the details.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

There is harassment, and what we are debating now is third-party harassment. Obviously, tribunals would have to take into account the practicality of enforcing third-party harassment, and I have been trying to set out the grounds on which it would be considered either reasonable or unreasonable. That would have to be considered case by case, but nevertheless the issue is very different from an employee’s absolute right not to be harassed directly in the workplace.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friends Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral in proposing this impact assessment and thank my noble friend Lord Hunt for making the case so persuasively from the Front Bench. I shall simply pick up on a few points that were made in the amendment and his speech. The amendment asks for an impact assessment on free speech. Proposed new subsection (1) asks for an assessment of Sections 19 to 22 of this Act on employers. Proposed new subsection (2) says:

“The assessment must report on … the impact of sections 19 to 22 on free speech”


and include

“an assessment of the likely costs to employers”

of these sections, which must include types of occupations at risk and proposals for mitigations.

I want to comment on this amendment in the context of universities. I spoke earlier in Committee about the mitigations a university might take in its rules and in the checklist that it hands out to potential candidates for a place who want to come to that university to study and who are asked to abide by certain arrangements or rules. These rules will, if the employer and the university follow what they are required as trustees of a charity to follow, protect the costs: whatever endowment of funds the university has, it will have to follow caution. I have no doubt that undergraduates or graduate students coming in for postgraduate work will be asked to promise not to complain, or be overheard doing so, or speak ill of lecturer A, whose lectures they may not approve of, may think are no good or whatever, as happens in normal intercourse in a university.

One of the standard things you will hear as undergraduates leave the room is, “What a rotten lecture that was” or “Isn’t it interesting that such a subject didn’t touch on the kernel of the matter?” or whatever they think is important. This is the sort of education we want to impart. We want students to question and challenge. We want them to make the case against what they have heard and to think about it. To make an employer liable for a student doing what a university education should encourage—we encourage it at school too—seems to me silly. We should have an impact assessment of what will happen and what sort of steps a university will take to curtail that freedom to argue or to criticise an employee of the university. We should ask for an impact assessment. It would not be very difficult to consult universities and find out exactly how they would get around this potential liability as employers.

The same goes for mitigation and the costs which will be incurred. For example, take the costs to an institution such as a university of fighting a claim in an employment tribunal. The member of staff concerned, against whom the criticism has been made, will be on tenterhooks all the time. They may be distracted, may have to continue to give evidence to the employer, and so on, with a lot of back and forth. As for the employers, think of the staff costs, counsel charges, legal charges, administrative costs and committee costs they will incur, and the time that will be spent on that rather than on running their universities to do what they ought to do—to educate undergraduates and do research. This is the most moderate request for an impact assessment that I have heard. Noble Lords would be well advised to agree that we need an impact assessment, both on free speech and the likely costs—particularly the costs of going to a tribunal and waiting for all that period.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I, too, have my name on Amendment 97, which would introduce yet another impact assessment. I know that so many impact assessments have been proposed in relation to the Bill that it has become a bit of a cliché, but I am especially concerned that this one is taken seriously because the third-party harassment sections of the Bill are ill thought out in a way that could lead to unintended consequences.

One noble Lord a few moments ago asked why there was a desire for an impact assessment rather than thinking of the potential positives of the Bill. The response of the Government in relation to concerns about Clause 20, for example, which is to say that there is nothing to see here—no problem at all—is an insufficient way of responding to some quite detailed scrutiny that has been put forward. If there is any exaggeration of the potential problems, an impact assessment should be able to resolve that for us.

I will focus largely on Clause 20, looking first at its potential cost to employers. That is especially important given that the Minister’s counter to my remarks earlier was that Clause 20 will be good for business. The Government’s own assessment advises that the total economic impact of complying with Clause 20 will be under £10 million and will have negligible economic impact on businesses. That is irresponsible; some might go so far as to call it misinformation. For example, that assessment says that the cost of familiarisation with the Bill and its ramifications will be £30 per medium business and only £19 per small microbusiness. I am not sure where these woeful underestimates come from or what they are based on, but if noble Lords have never met an employment lawyer, I can assure them that that is an unlikely figure.

We need a serious cost-benefit analysis. Let us consider what this section of the Bill requires businesses to do. Employers must show that they have taken all reasonable steps; that sets a high threshold for preventive action, as we heard earlier. Let us think what that means. There are direct costs for the initial implementation of anti-harassment policies, including familiarisation with the new regulations and checking exactly what their legal liabilities will mean. As we have seen during this debate, it is not necessarily as clear as day what the Bill requires.

As we have been arguing, if you are a small microbusiness trying to concentrate on being a business and trying to grow bigger, having to study the Bill and work out what your liability will be could be quite time consuming, nerve-wracking and so on. They will have to seek out third-party and legal advice—no doubt, there will be lots of consultants queuing up—because, as responsible businesses, they will want to safeguard themselves from the financial risks of not complying. One of the main risks they will be trying to ensure they do not have to deal with is the possibility of employment tribunals.

In what seems like an entirely arbitrary figure, the Government predict that only 30 employment tribunals a year will come from these clauses. There is no explanation as to how the Government reached that figure, and it is certainly completely at odds with industry experts who expect that Clause 20 alone will see an increase in employment tribunals of 15%—in other words, an additional 14,750 cases a year. As we heard earlier in a different context, already in 2023-24, employment tribunal courts received 97,000 cases, up from 86,000 the year before. That is an increase of nearly 13%. More and more people are forced into employment tribunals for a variety of reasons.

This Bill threatens to create even more cases—an unknown figure because it is a new provision. The Government are saying that it will be only 30 a year, but that is just making it up. There is, at least, an attempt in this amendment to try to work it out. According to the chambers of commerce, the cost of one employment tribunal is, on average, about £8,500, and if a claimant is successful, there is no financial limit to the compensation in a harassment case. Imagine you are a business worried about what is going to happen: this clause will lead to risk-averse and overcautious behaviour, not detailed in the Bill, to try to avoid being held liable. Some of us fear that this is what this kind of over-regulatory, precautionary approach will lead to.

Businesses will not be able to be slipshod about their potential liability. Smaller SMEs and microbusinesses —often with no dedicated HR or EDI offices—will need to think about employing new staff dedicated to protecting them from claims and giving them advice. The idea of a whole new generation of HR and EDI staff roles in every business in the country is frightening enough, but, anyway, it has nothing to do with their core businesses. Let us also note that the average salary of an EDI officer in the UK is £42,084.

I want also to stress why an impact assessment must include which occupations might be at particular risk of third-party harassment claims through no fault of the employer and the impact, specifically, on free speech. These parts of the amendment are very important because we were asked earlier in a different group why there had been a focus on hospitality, sport and universities. There may be other sectors but, in a way, this is an assessment to see which sectors would be affected. It also asks for an impact assessment on free speech. As we have heard, the Government simply deny that there will be any impact in relation to free speech. I disagree, but let us scrutinise it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made the point that we should not worry about free speech because it is protected by the convention on human rights. She cited a number of clauses. It is true that, on paper, none of us should be worried about free speech; our free speech in this country is fully protected. And yet, daily—I stress, daily—there are more and more instances, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, who is not in her place, indicated earlier, in which free speech is under stress in this country. More and more people are walking on eggshells and are, in many instances, getting sacked or disciplined for speaking their minds in workplaces, so I am not convinced by “Nothing to see here, don’t worry about it, all is well”.

Earlier, the noble Baroness—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness; I will be brief. I want just to respond to her point, because she referred to what I said earlier. I am not trying to suggest that there are not challenges and there is not, on occasion, over-policing of people’s freedom of expression. Believe it or not, I probably read the same newspapers as the noble Baroness. I was trying, perhaps inadequately, to make the point to the noble Lord earlier that we have overarching legislation in the Human Rights Act which guarantees free speech and does so in a way that is legally and constitutionally stronger than any amendment noble Lords could pass to the current Employment Rights Bill. If that is not working, then we need to enforce it better. I am just suggesting that, as a matter of law, we have the protection for free speech; we just need to enforce it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I am all for enhancing in any way the free speech duties required by the law, and I am happy to talk to the noble Baroness in a moment about how we can do that.

Earlier, the Minister said that the Government were on the side of workers and not the abusers, and she got a lot of, “Hear, hears!”. I would like to point out that the people who are worried about these clauses are not on the side of the abusers against the workers. That characterisation is not particularly helpful in a Committee in which we are trying, in good faith, to understand the implications of this set of clauses. Imagine that you are an employer and you hear these proposals; you will think, “Oh, my God, if I don’t completely over-comply, I’m going to be accused, demonised, as on the side of abusers, not on the side of my employees”.

It is therefore very important that this impact assessment is done to reassure those of us who are worried. If the Government feel that we are over-worrying, then a detailed impact assessment, which we have not had for these clauses, would help to reassure us properly, with facts and evidence, rather than assertion and soundbites.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I have a brief point to make about the impact on minority businesses, which may need extra assistance, and to ask whether the cost has been taken into account in an impact assessment. If it has not, I highly recommend that the Minister consider the many thousands of businesses across the country which will have to comply. If there is not a fully programmed impact assessment incorporating all those businesses, she will undoubtedly find that a lot of them will come out on the wrong side of implementation.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation to raise some problems with these amendments. I have to say that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, made an absolutely brilliant, compelling case for her amendments and has been amply backed up by others. However, I still think that, if you look at what these amendments would do, there is a danger here.

We have already discussed, in our debates on recent groups, mission creep in relation to the concept of harassment; we have talked about it a great deal. I am concerned about subsection (2)(a) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 100, which relates to

“the prevention of gender-based violence and harassment of those in the workplace including the prevention of physical, emotional, and psychological abuse”.

Bringing that into the law would introduce a very wide and broad set of rules into the workplace.

I am absolutely sympathetic to taking on some of the problems that we have seen in workplaces—for example, people being stalked at their workplace or being stalked by fellow workers, as well as the kinds of domestic abuse that have been described, with the Harrods example of rape and so on—because all of those things are terrible. However, we should not shy away from the fact that it will be quite difficult to legislate on every aspect of every intervention between employees in a workplace if we are going to broaden it out to emotional and psychological issues. That is one problem: it is overly subjective.

The use of the phrase “gender-based violence” is in danger of confusing us as well, because we now know that there is a confusion between gender and biological sex. We should not shy away from the fact that that language has been confusing for some time. We need some clarity, not muddying. If we call it “gender”, this could turn workplaces into sites of perpetual ideological grievances and finger-pointing.

Let me give noble Lords an example. Proposed new subsection (3C), which would be inserted by Amendment 99, says that the aim is a “gender-responsive approach”. This, it says,

“means taking into account the various needs, interests, and experiences of people of different gender identities, including women and girls”.

I point out that women and girls are not a subsection of gender identities. Gender identities are, “Have ’em if you want ’em”, in my view. If we are serious about tackling violence against women and girls, do not throw them into this mix. We certainly cannot have gender identity created as a legal category by a well-intentioned amendment that would, in fact, undo the clarity we have recently had. These amendments completely conflict with the Supreme Court’s clarification of the distinction between biological sex as fact in law and gender identity, which is, I am afraid, often not just what people choose but part of an ideological activism that has, I would argue, been incredibly damaging to sex-based rights for women—often in the workplace.

We need to be very careful about proposed new subsection (3B) in Amendment 99. It talks of

“the duty of every employer to provide training to all employees on recognising and preventing violence and harassment in the workplace, with a focus on gender-responsive approaches”.

I get worried when the bosses are asked to provide training that is not about how you do your job, because training has become the vehicle that is often used not to protect employees from harassment but for viewpoint conformity and as an insidious form of harassment of anyone who does not conform.

We have to consider what this training consists of. I do not want to just say, “Oh yes, training, that is a good idea then”. The danger of training is that it can introduce all sorts of problems; and, in fact, training was the way that in most workplaces we now know that people misunderstood equality law. It was via training, informed by third-party organisations involved in the gender issue, that they started to adopt what has been called, by some KCs, “Stonewall law”. That is why so many organisations are now saying, “We were doing what we thought was legal”.

To finish, I will show the Committee how complicated it is. I hope noble Lords have read that incredibly moving and harrowing interview with Karen Danson, one of the eight Darlington nurses who are taking legal action against their employer, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, after they were forced to share a changing room with a male nurse who identifies as a woman and calls himself Rose.

As Karen explained in the interview, she had been abused as a child. She goes to work, where, as a nurse, she has to get to changed. In walks Rose, wearing only boxer shorts that are full of holes—details do matter in this instance—who keeps asking Karen why she is not getting changed. Karen, understandably, feels very disturbed. These amendments are about sexual harassment in the workplace. Karen and her colleagues go to their bosses and HR and say, “This is our changing room. We do not want to get changed in front of this man, however he identifies. What will you do about it?” What did HR say? It said that the nurses were the problem, called them transphobic and said they needed to be re-educated in trans inclusion; in other words, they were about to be sent on a training course.

I make my point that if you are the wrong kind of victim in a workplace in an ideological sense, you could be the victim of the training which tries to get you to accept “right” things, rather than protects your rights. I really admire the spirit of the way that the amendments were introduced. However, they are absolutely wrong-headed and we should reject them.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

I will just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that the greatest danger we have is that the Bill passes and yet we have groups of people in the workplace who are not in any way protected, or not sufficiently protected, either from violence or from harassment. I thought the case was brilliantly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, backed up by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.

I say to the Minister: carpe diem. Here is an opportunity to make sure that there is not a gaping omission in the work that the whole Bill is attempting to do to provide proper protection in the workplace. I find it quite ingenious that the approach here is to try to use the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. If the Minister has a better way of doing it, I am sure that everyone will be very eager and willing to listen. It contains within it the capacity for both investigation and enforcement. When we talked in previous groups, it was very evident that investigation and enforcement are very often the vital missing elements in the arrangements that we have set in place today. This seems to me to have been a very sensible approach to try to find an organisation that is appropriate and has the relevant kind of teeth.

I will not attempt to expand on the case as it has been made so eloquently. I am sort of filling in on this Bill when others have been called away—in this particular case to a NATO meeting. But I would have been very pleased to add my name to these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 101B, which seeks to amend the Equality Act 2010, I will also speak to Amendment 141A, which seeks to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996. I declare my interest as the general secretary of the Free Speech Union.

These amendments would protect job applicants and employees from being discriminated against by employers for their political opinions or affiliations, provided those opinions are not

“unworthy of respect in a democratic society”,

incompatible with

“the fundamental rights of others”,

and are not connected to a

“party, group or organisation which is proscribed for the purposes of the Terrorism Act 2000”.

In the Telegraph on Monday, a government spokesperson said these amendments are not necessary because:

“Any employee dismissed because of their political opinions can already bring a claim of unfair dismissal at any point”.


Well, they can. But whether they are successful or not depends on whether their political beliefs satisfy the Grainger test—a reference to a case in which an employee sued his employer, Grainger PLC, for discriminating against him because he believed in manmade climate change. It was established in that case that, in order to enjoy protected status under the Equality Act, a belief had to satisfy five separate conditions. This is the Grainger test:

“The belief must be genuinely held … It must be a belief and not … an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available”—


remember that one because I am going to come back to it.

“It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour … It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance … It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, be not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others”.


Noble Lords will notice that the test I am proposing is a simpler alternative to the Grainger test. It is, in essence, just the fifth limb of the Grainger test.

So what is wrong with the Grainger test? For one thing, it is overcomplicated and leaves too much room for the personal political views of the members of a tribunal panel to creep in. That is why it has led to some arbitrary and biased decisions. For instance, the tribunal has ruled that anti-Zionism is a protected belief, while a belief in Zionism has not been granted that status, at least not yet. A belief in manmade climate change is protected—that was the judgment handed down in Grainger plc v Nicholson—but climate scepticism is not, and that has been tested in the tribunal. A belief in democratic socialism is protected but a belief in conservatism is not, and that too has been tested. In the case of Ms K Sunderland v The Hut.com Ltd—a Free Speech Union case—the tribunal ruled that a belief in a small state, low taxes, freedom of expression and as few controls on an individual’s freedom as are consistent with human rights was not protected.

That is one reason why the Free Speech Union currently has five cases in which employees have been dismissed because of their links to Reform UK. One such case is that of Saba Poursaeedi, who is in the Gallery as I speak. He lost his job at the Hightown Housing Association because he was due to stand as a Reform candidate. He was told that Reform’s policies on immigration, net zero and housing were “in direct conflict” with the values of the Hightown Housing Association—as clear a case of discrimination against someone for their political views as you could hope for. He is taking Hightown Housing Association to the tribunal but, given the judgment in Ms K Sunderland v The Hut.com, he may not be successful. That is one reason to accept these amendments: to level the playing field so that many people with right-of-centre political beliefs enjoy the same protection as people with left-of-centre political beliefs.

Another difficulty with the Grainger test is that it disadvantages open-minded people who, as the late Lord Keynes did, change their minds when the facts change. Remember the second limb of the Grainger test:

“It must be a belief and not … an opinion or viewpoint based on the present state of information available”.


Do we really want the Equality Act to encourage dogmatism and punish open-mindedness in this way? Why should someone’s belief be undeserving of protection if it is susceptible to changing if the facts change?

The amendments would bring the Equality Act into line with the European Convention on Human Rights. Articles 9, 10, 11 and 14 provide a higher level of protection than that granted by the Equality Act, particularly Article 10, which protects freedom of expression, including the expression of political views. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, would no doubt point out if she was in the House, if there is a discrepancy between the Equality Act and the convention then its shortcomings will be corrected by the courts eventually, since, as per the Human Rights Act, our courts must interpret legislation in a way that is compatible with convention rights.

However, bringing a claim before the employment tribunal is a time-consuming process and one that can be extremely expensive. The Free Speech Union helped a man to bring a case for unfair dismissal against Lloyds Bank to the tribunal two years ago, and it cost over £85,000. Not only can it be eye-wateringly expensive but it takes a long time, given the current backlog of cases. Mr Poursaeedi’s case has been scheduled for July 2027, more than a year hence. In the meantime, he and other victims of discrimination based on their political beliefs are awaiting justice. Why not short-circuit that process, bring the Equality Act into line with the convention and ease the burden on the tribunal at the same time, as well as protect people now from being discriminated against in this way, by accepting my amendments?

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I put my name down on Amendments 101B and 141A, tackling employment discrimination on the basis of political opinions, because I wanted to probe whether the Government can see that it is a real, contemporary issue that needs to be tackled, however they do it. We know from the history of the labour movement that in the bad old days, as it were, attacking people’s employment rights, sacking them and suspending them were used by employers to discipline the workforce, and they were often focused on people who had the wrong views in the workplace. Often, the trade union organisers who were involved in left-wing parties and so on were the ones who were targeted, and we had McCarthyite-type purges, red scares and anti-trade union blacklists of individuals in workplaces—shocking, but those were the bad old days and it would not happen today, except that I think we are witnessing something similar today even if the political opinions of the victims might be very different and it might take a different form. This is an under-discussed phenomenon, and I hope the Government will see that the Bill is a way of tackling it.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

Debate on whether Clause 31 should stand part of the Bill

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am proposing that we remove Clause 31 from the Bill. That would remove the power of the Secretary of State to require largely private sector employers with more than 250 staff to develop and publish equality action plans showing what steps they are taking in relation to the gender pay gap and supporting employees going through the menopause. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who is, sadly, not in her place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, who is in her place, for their support.

This is a probing amendment because I am not at all clear exactly why this clause is deemed necessary or indeed exactly what it entails. On the latter point, I note with some dismay that much of the detail is to be left to regulations in terms of the content of an action plan, the form of an action plan, what manner it will take and even its frequency. There is no detail at all on what sanctions employers face if they do not comply with the yet not detailed regulations. It is very difficult to scrutinise such vagaries, and I fear it reduces the issue to nothing more than a virtue-signalling clause to claim that something positive is being done—action is being taken. What action? We do not know.

What we do know is that here is another clause that requires workplaces to create more paperwork. I fear that the noble cause of women’s equality is being reduced to bureaucracy. I am a tad cynical because, since 2017, employers have been required to publish gender pay gap data annually. Now the demand is for actionable steps, yet what is the problem that we are trying to solve here?

The implication is that more needs to be done to crack down on gender discrimination in the workplace, but I am not convinced that that is such a major problem today as is inferred. Which actions would be deemed acceptable might help us understand what this clause is trying to do, but it is never considered. For example, we are frequently given a reference statistic that men earn roughly 20% more than women. But such figures are misleading, as this is an on-average figure reached through combining part-time and full-time earnings and takes no account of age or employment sector.

Are women continually disadvantaged in the workplace in 2025? When we compare how much women and men are paid for doing the same number of hours each week, there is virtually no pay gap. Of course, it would be illegal to pay men more than women. To illustrate the complexities of age, occupation and hours worked, it is worth noting that women in their 20s earn more than men of the same age—not just like-for-like but also on average. Even for all women under 40 working full-time, the pay gap is negligible. Indeed, it was acknowledged by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, when she was a Government Minister bringing in the pay gap notices. She said then:

“We’ve virtually eliminated the gap for full-time workers under 40 and the gap for the over-40s is shrinking too”.

If we only look at these issues in a technocratic way, do we not we miss nuances?

You could say that a decline in jobs traditionally associated with men earning more is actually a decline in old industries, because there has been a decline since 1979, when 40% of GDP was those old industries in which men earned more. But I am not sure that is something to celebrate. In other words, if you only view equality through the gender pay gap, you could actually end up arguing for the suppression of men’s pay or celebrating its decrease.

More to the point, what are employers being asked to action here, when many of the changes are broad social and cultural shifts, rather than sexist employment practices? It is true that, in the past, the labour market was rigidly segregated according to sex. As a consequence, men and women in their 50s and older today entered a labour market in which women were often not treated fairly. There was a cultural situation where women were more likely to take considerable time out of work to raise a family. This alone explains pay differentials that are still being felt today. But, as I say, as young women are earning more, these things are less of a problem. If we end up thinking that the reason the pay gap exists is older women and those differentials, I am not keen that we end up dumping older female employees so that, on paper, the gap is narrowed. I am not suggesting that anyone is saying that, but I am saying that we should not deal with this in a technical fashion.

I now arrive at something in which I have more expertise: older women. We arrive at the menopause part of the new section to be inserted by this clause. My concern here is that the Bill may end up amplifying the problems caused by the menopause for female employees, unintentionally presenting menopausal women as victims unable to cope. This could re-stigmatise the menopause—the opposite of what is intended. We should remember that the menopause is a natural life stage that all women go through and experience, and they all experience it differently in its duration and symptoms.

I worry that some of this has led to awareness raising that can mystify the menopause and turn it into an imagined horror story. I remember talking to a group of young students some years ago. I made a quip about being menopausal and they all said, “Oh no—how awful. That’s grim. How are you coping? Are you feeling all right?” They seemed terrified at the prospect. The menopause suddenly appeared to be an insurmountable series of anguishes that they would never cope with. Inevitably, they had been on a well-being course that had given them awareness training on the menopause. Do we want such attitudes becoming embedded in attitudes to female staff in the workplace, along with the association that, if you are menopausal, you are a delicate flower who needs to be worked around?

What exactly will employers be required to do to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the specific needs of menopausal women? I have read activist demands that include the widespread availability of cooling fans; menopause champions and ambassadors in every workplace and department to encourage anti-stigma dialogue across the workforce; therapist sessions, including the availability of therapy dogs; and training courses for HR and management to look at everything from thermostat levels to developing menopause-sensitive language codes. To be honest, lots of these ideas stray dangerously close to condescending women. It might well be that this is not what the Government have in mind at all, but we have no idea if that is true because there are no details in the Bill—in fact, the details are all deferred until after the Bill is passed.

Do not get me wrong—I have been a vocal supporter of improving access to HRT on the NHS and, as a woman of a certain age, I am rather too familiar with some of the debilitating symptoms. But we should be wary of the calls, for example, for menopause leave and time off, with no questions asked, when using the word “menopause” would be enough to mean that—without any evidence and based on lived experience—employers are just meant to accept that there is a problem. There is a danger of green-lighting a mission creep not dissimilar to the crisis of so many not in work citing mental health problems—and I am really pleased to see that the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has raised this. That is a new social problem, and I do not want the menopause to become another one.

Again, possibly none of this is what the Government intend, yet we are using legislation to demand that employers must take steps to support employees going through the menopause. That seems completely inappropriate and unjustified, and it is bound to lead to mission creep if this legislation is used to that end, with this clause in it.

I will make two quick points as a PS. Can the Government please be careful with their language? Usually, it is the Government lecturing people like me on the Back Bench about watching our words and what language we use, but, whether we like it or not, the word “gender” has been corrupted by ideology. The pay gap that the Government seek to tackle is between the two sexes—a fear that biological women may be discriminated against as women. I am not being pedantic or referencing the culture wars here; I have been at a number of official corporate events over recent years where businesses were patted on the back for helping women break through the glass ceiling and for their work on the pay gap only for the examples of success given to be trans women—that is, men who identify as women—on corporate boards. I want to avoid that con happening.

--- Later in debate ---

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, and to my noble brother opposite, that we are taking a delegated power, mirroring the approach taken for gender pay gap reporting. The use of regulations in this way will enable us to share as much detail to employers as possible while maintaining flexibility, which is essential to good employment practices. We are aware that most employers think of equality and inclusion as a whole. That is why we are aiming to reflect how employers already work by proposing a single plan covering both the gender pay gap and the menopause. For these reasons, we believe that equality action plans will benefit women in the workplace and that this clause is vital to strengthening the opportunities available to women. I therefore beg to move that Clause 31 stands part of the Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke, some of whom were more sympathetic than others to what I was trying to raise.

The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, made an important point when he talked about the importance of accurate data. I agree, but data and statistics are not flat lines; they are complicated. I tried to indicate, without boring your Lordships with lots of statistics, that the gender pay gap number in relation to statistics is to do with age, the past, the change in relation to young women, and so on, which nobody has come back on. In fact, there are books written, and I have papers, and I have read them all—I will not bore your Lordships now—but I suggest that this is not the key issue facing women at work today.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, came back on a lot of the points in terms of the aspirations, and I agree with him. However, the Government are overcomplacent about the problems of delegated powers and legislative oversight, which I also raised as a substantial part of my complaint. There was no comeback. I supported the Government when they were in opposition. They constantly raised these issues, and I went along with them and supported them.

Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, suggested, I thought this was a modest proposal, but somehow I have managed to be accused of fuelling Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, and this was called an illustration of my political journey from far left to far right. I will not do a full critique of the attack on me, which was very personal and personalised, but I would like to point out something.

I was and am a member of the left, and the fact that the Labour Party and the left have moved in a different direction from mine does not necessarily mean that I am the one who has moved to the right. I spend a lot of time talking to ordinary working-class people—women and men—who are tearing their hair out at the attacks on the living standards that they are going through under this Government. Therefore, to be lectured about not understanding the fight against inequality, and the idea that anybody who stands up and challenges an orthodoxy on a potentially bureaucratic plan—by the way, I never mentioned employers and costs; I said it was an insult to women that we got reduced statistics and bits of paper, which was a different point. But anyway, it is crucial that we should challenge the orthodoxies of gender equality when they are presented in this way without being treated as though one is a far-right pariah. It is unworthy of the nature of this House, which is to debate and scrutinise, in my opinion. I simply try to do that.

I still want to push this—more so now than before—on Report, but for now I will not oppose this clause standing part of the Bill.

Clause 31 agreed.

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[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friends on this side of the House have commented on this amendment in far better terms than I could, but I will make a supplementary point. I was very surprised to see this amendment, because one of the perennial themes that we have heard throughout all stages of the Bill in this House has been a complaint about the alleged level of extra bureaucracy that it is supposed to impose on employers. Yet here we see a veritable feast of form-filling and requirements to report on those forms at regular intervals. I suggest that this amendment is not needed; it is surplus to requirements because it places unnecessary burdens on employers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. It is very important that we do not suggest that giving a helping hand to those who have been politically deprived of equality equals equality. It can also equal tokenism. Working-class people, women and people from ethnic minorities have been promoted to positions in authority, and people basically point them out and say, “Look at them: they succeeded”. That is the opposite of equal treatment, and condescension is not a good look.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, I can hardly follow my noble friend Lady O’Grady in being the TUC’s first woman general secretary, but I was the first woman leader of Newport City Council after decades and the first woman leader of the Welsh Local Government Association—and am still the only one.

I was also a public service employee for 35 years, when I taught in schools in London and south Wales, so I know about positive action. When I became a public service employer, as the leader of Newport, what I tried to do with positive action was to actively take a range of measures and initiatives to encourage people from communities that were underrepresented. We wanted them to bring their talents, experiences and expertise to our organisation, and we wanted them to join us.

Our selection process was no different: through the use of positive action, we did not seek to remove competition; rather, we wanted to allow everyone the same level of opportunity. That final selection for a post was always made on the merit of the applicant. We built our workforce so that it reflected the rich diversity and complexities of our community of Newport and we attracted the best talent from the widest pool of people.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I want to emphasise that, in a period of mass disillusion with mainstream parties, opt-in was actually a very important way of putting those parties on their guard that they had to inspire people to want to opt in. Relying on inertia, or not being in a situation where you feel you need to go out and win the support of people to opt in politically, is very dangerous, because it will create the kind of complacency that we have seen mainstream parties of all sides show over recent years.

I note that it would be dangerous—and I am sure that nobody is implying this—for the party of government, the Labour Party, to assume that it is any longer the party that represents the working class. Long gone are the days when that claim could be made, and I think that it would be better for that party to consider how it can inspire ordinary working people to support it, both at the ballot box but also in relation to something such as political funds. I had every sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Prentis of Leeds, talking about the difficulties of campaigning when you do not have enough money. Tell me about it: I have been doing it for years. I have not had a political fund to help, mind.

It all sounded very admirable, but it really did sound as though the noble Lord was discussing not so much UNISON but an activist campaign group, a particular group around particular issues. That is fine. I have no objection to that: I am involved in some of those campaigns, although not all of them. I have to go out and raise the funds in order to be able to carry on campaigning for things I believe in. I do not think it is right that trade unions use their political funds to pursue what are political issues beyond the issues of trade unionism. Trade unionism is a particular thing. It can inspire great political revolutions over the years, I agree, but it is not a hobby-horse for trade union bureaucrats to pursue the particular political issues that they enjoy or agree with.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I shall primarily speak to the amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Cash in respect of political funds, but I will say in passing that I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Burns, and the excellent speeches of my noble friends Lady Coffey and Lady Finn not just erudite but very compelling.

There is a challenge to try to understand what has significantly changed that has led the Government to make these epochal amendments to what has been accepted by Governments of all persuasions—including, as has been said, the Blair and Brown Governments—which will radically alter industrial relations.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I have tabled a number of probing amendments to Clause 61. As I alluded to earlier, I take the view that the amendments are not unhelpful but should be seen through the prism of fairness, balance, proportionality and reasonableness. There is the possibility that, as drafted, it could plausibly be argued that the Bill’s balance is very much in favour of not just employees and union members but unions themselves as corporate bodies and organisations, rather than employers.

We are on our eighth day in Committee, and we have discussed on a number of occasions the less than benign economic circumstances faced by many businesses, including small businesses. The situation is deteriorating. Pretty much every week, there is worse economic data than one would hope for, particularly for the jobs market and the levels of employment and potential unemployment.

Therefore, anything that the Government do—and certainly this Bill represents a very far-reaching change to the employment relations regime—to make things more difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises, and businesses generally, to employ people should be a cause for concern for Members of your Lordships’ House.

I will briefly go through the amendments. Amendment 224 would qualify the right to time off for union officials with a reasonableness test. I can see that most relationships between employers and union representatives are positive, based on mutual respect and it was ever thus. Therefore, this will not be a problem for the vast bulk of employers. However, when I was a local councillor, I had to rely on the Employment Rights Act 1996 to enforce my right to attend a number of meetings held during the day—in my case, at Ealing Borough Council, although I was an alternate member of the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority, which met across the road at County Hall. As a young working man, it was sometimes very difficult to get time off, and I understand that we went in the right direction in guaranteeing the right to time off. Equally, reasonableness is key, and this amendment speaks to that.

Amendment 225 would qualify the right to the provision of facilities for union officials with an appropriateness test. Again, this reflects a real-world experience of the discrete circumstances affecting a business at the time that the request is made. It might not be appropriate for a business to provide a room, audio-visual facilities or materials. This would be easier for a big company, which has a bespoke budget for HR training et cetera, than for a much smaller commercial entity, which might struggle to provide a similar level of facilities for trade union officials.

Amendments 226, 227 and 228 would reverse the burden of proof in disputes over the reasonableness of requested time off for union activities, and therefore there would be more of a balance for making the case for facilities being provided. I do not want to delay the Committee at this relatively late juncture; the amendments stand on their own merits.

Amendment 229 would qualify the right to time off for union learning representatives, again with a reasonableness test. In past debates, I mentioned my admiration for the Workers’ Educational Association and the great work it did in empowering working people to improve their life and their life chances, which is very important. However, a reasonableness test makes sure that it can be accommodated in a way which will not undermine the commercial viability of a business, while at the same time assisting individual workers and their representatives to deliver education and training outcomes.

Amendment 230 would qualify the right to the provision of facilities for union learning representatives, again with an appropriateness test.

Amendments 231, 232 and 233 would reverse the burden of proof in disputes over the reasonableness of requested time off for union learning representatives. It would be for the union representatives to explain why their request for facilities and learning resources was reasonable rather than the other way round.

These are probing amendments. I know I have said it before, but it bears repetition that these are not wrecking amendments. They do not alter substantially the kernel of the Bill, which is—and I take Ministers on their word—to improve the working lives of people, as in the report, Make Work Pay. I accept that premise and that Ministers sincerely want to do that, but these amendments are an attempt to rebalance between the workforce, their representatives and employers in a fair and equitable way. On that basis, I beg to move Amendment 224.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I oppose the question that Clause 62 should stand part of the Bill, with the intention of removing provisions which compel employers to allow time off for trade union equality reps. To note, I am not opposed to trade union facilities time per se, and I am actually not objecting to Clause 61 in relation to learning reps.

My concern is specifically on the nature of equality as has been interpreted by the trade unions in recent years, the divisive nature of their adherence to identity politics, for example, and the ideologically contentious implementation of prescriptive policies, often setting one group of workers against another. Trade union priorities under the auspices of fighting for equality have been skewed, to say the least.

The wording in this unfeasibly long clause states at subsection (12)(b)(i) that:

“‘equality’, in relation to a workplace, means … the elimination of discrimination, harassment and victimisation … in accordance with the Equality Act 2010”.


You would think I would have nothing to disagree with there, yet, time after time in the last few years, what we have actually seen is the discrimination and victimisation of women workers that has been at best ignored and too often actively abetted by trade unions’ own version of inclusive equality. They have in fact ignored the Equality Act.

Let me use as an example an incident that happened in May 2024 at Epsom and St Helier University Hospital. A black female nurse, Jennifer Melle, indirectly called a six-foot transgender patient “Mister” while on the phone to a consultant. The patient, whom I will call Mr X, was having treatment on the ward, having been transferred from a male prison. He was chained to two guards. Mr X is serving a sentence for luring young boys into sex acts on the internet while pretending to be a woman. For Ms Melle’s alleged misgendering, Mr X, the convict, violently lunged at her, screaming, “Do not call me Mister, I’m an effing woman”, and then called her the N-word, screaming it at her. He of course used the full words in those instances, and he screamed that word at her three times.

After her shift, Jennifer went home shaken but resilient about the reality of unpleasant abuse at work. She was then contacted by her hospital trust. You might think it was a welfare check—but no. There was no mention of support after the racist attack. Instead, she was issued with a written warning, and the trust reported her to the Nursing and Midwifery Council to investigate her fitness to practise, because she posed a risk to the public, it was said, and the reputation of the NHS for not using the patient’s preferred gender identity. Only when Jennifer went public and the story hit the media did the trust say it would investigate the racist abuse. But by then, it had suspended Jennifer for telling her story. Then, they moved her to another hospital, demoted her to a lower grade, and she lost pay et cetera.

Now, I would have assumed that this shocking story would be a huge equality-at-work story for the trade union movement to take up: an ethnic minority female, a front-line health worker, a victim of explicit racist harassment and male violence, all over the papers, and then gross discriminatory employer behaviour. But no, not a dicky bird: a deafening silence in the nursing unions and the TUC. Maybe Nurse Jennifer was, as an open evangelical Christian, rather than a trade unionist, the wrong kind of victim.

Recently, we heard that another nurse, Sandie Peggie, a Royal College of Nursing member for 30 years, has been forced to sue her union for its failure to support her or provide legal assistance when she was suspended by NHS Fife. Her crime was that she challenged the presence of Dr Beth Upton, a biological man, in the women-only changing rooms at Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy. That Nurse Peggie’s legal action is necessary should shame the trade union movement. As Mrs Peggie’s solicitor, Margaret Gribbon, explained, her client expected the union to

“exercise its industrial muscle to challenge the decision which was adversely impacting her and other female union members”.

She alleged that she

“spoke to the union about the issue of single-sex spaces in February last year”.

In relation to this amendment, how can we mandate employers to provide generous facility time for trade union equalities work with such a risible attitude to the real-life attacks on equality at work, as evidenced? When Nurse Peggie is forced to take legal action to get justice from her own union, I am not sure I want any more union equality officers. Susan Smith, of the For Women Scotland organisation that brought the successful Supreme Court action, notes:

“We imagine this is likely to be first of many such cases. Sadly, it seems that only financial penalties will persuade the unions to step up, do their job, and represent women in the workplace”.

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[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for their amendments relating to the provision of facilities to trade union officials and representatives, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, for speaking to them. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, for initiating debate on Clause 62, to which I will also speak.

In Amendments 224 to 233, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, he seeks to amend Clause 61 to maintain, as he argues, a reasonable balance of obligations and responsibilities between employers and employees. Like the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, I take the amendments at face value: they are probing and not wrecking, and the noble Lord is trying to understand the appropriate balance. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, that the clause already seeks a reasonable balance of obligations and responsibilities between employers and employee representatives. The paid time off that trade union representatives receive is often insufficient to fulfil all their trade union duties. Many union representatives use significant amounts of their own time to support workplace relations. Indeed, in some sectors, in some companies, in some firms, their trade union activity is carried out very much on a voluntary basis rather than it being about people having full-time release and doing nothing towards the organisation apart from conducting trade union duties.

The Government want to rebalance obligations and responsibilities by ensuring that union workplace representatives are able to take sufficient paid facility time and have sufficient access to facilities to enable them to fulfil their union representative duties. While the clause grants trade union representatives the right to facility time and accommodation and other facilities from their employers, it does so by having regard to a relevant code of practice issued by ACAS. The ACAS guidance will help employers to implement these measures and will be updated in partnership and through consultation with both employers and trade unions. It will therefore help to ensure that a balance of obligations and responsibilities is secured, and ACAS is a very appropriate and worthy organisation to undertake that role.

Greater facility time will lead to improved work representation and better industrial relations by giving trade unions and workplace representatives the freedom to organise, represent and negotiate on behalf of their workers. This will result in more mature industrial relations and increased co-operation between employers and unionised workers, leading to beneficial outcomes for businesses and the economy. This is a framework to promote more co-operation and understanding at work, not more scope for conflict.

Amendments 234 to 236 concerning Clause 62, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, require that a performance condition must be met before facility time for equality representatives is provided by public sector employers. This would make the provision of facility time contingent on the employer already meeting certain performance standards, although the amendment is not specific about what those standards are.

We fully recognise the importance of strong public sector performance and accountability. However, linking facility time for equality representatives to performance conditions is both disproportionate and counterproductive, as it would create a barrier to improvement and creating stronger industrial relations. These amendments would require the Secretary of State to certify that a public sector employer is meeting relevant statutory performance standards before facility time can be granted. Together, they would pose heavy administrative burdens on both employers, who would need to apply and provide evidence, and central government, which would have to assess compliance for every employer.

I hesitate in suggesting this, but in speaking to other amendments on the Bill in Committee, those on the Benches opposite have been very quick to point out the administrative burdens that they assume are being placed on employers across all sectors by various measures in the Bill. The kind of burdens that this amendment would place on the public sector would not be tolerated by them on the private sector. More fundamentally, they would risk delaying facility time precisely for those organisations most in need of support and undermine the very purpose of equality representatives. Furthermore, a Secretary of State-led certification process would create legal uncertainty and potential disputes. It could also harm industrial relations in the public sector.

Finally, I turn to the opposition of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, to Clause 62. This clause inserts new Section 168B into the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 and requires that an employer must permit an employee who is

“a member of an independent trade union recognised by the employer, and an equality representative of the trade union, to take time off during the employee’s working hours”

for specified purposes. However, this applies only if

“the trade union has given the employer notice in writing that the employee is an equality representative of the union”,

or will be undergoing or has completed training to become an equality representative. Sufficient training is that which is sufficient for fulfilling the purposes of an equality representative role, having regard to a relevant code of practice issued by ACAS or the Secretary of State.

Clause 62 also requires that the employer must permit the employee to take paid time off during working hours to undergo training relevant to their role as an equality representative and, where requested, provide the employee with accommodation and other facilities to enable them to fulfil their role, having regard to the relevant code of practice issued by ACAS. Should an employer fail to permit the employee to take time off or to provide the employee with facilities as required, the employee may present a complaint to an employment tribunal, at which it will be for the employer to show that the amount of time off that the employee proposed was not reasonable. So far on those grounds, it is as for any other recognised rep status.

Trade unions have long fought for equality: from Grunwick to the Bristol bus boycott, to campaigning on Section 28, to recently standing up for retail workers—mostly female—who have to cope with violence in the workplace, particularly from customers. It is important to recognise, as, it is fair to say, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, did in her remarks, that equality reps have a key role in raising awareness and promoting equal rights for members, as well as in developing collective policies and practices that enable organisations to realise all the benefits of being an equal opportunities employer.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave some specific examples. I join with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, in saying that the cases the noble Baroness recounted, of Nurses Jennifer and Peggie, were horrific experiences you would not want to see anyone encounter. However, I am unsure that using that single brush to tar the feathers of the whole equality reps proposal is proportionate. There may be some correlation, but I am not sure that there is causation.

Clause 62 recognises a trade union equality representative as a person appointed or elected in accordance with the trade union rules, in a manner consistent with the Equality Act 2010. I contend that equality reps have a key role to play in raising awareness and promoting equal rights for all members, as well as in developing collective policies and practices that will enable organisations to realise all the benefits of being an equal opportunities employer. It is pure speculation but, had equality reps been in place in local authorities in earlier decades, and had there been more awareness of inequality in women’s pay, those local authorities facing significant equal pay claims today might not be facing them. Who can say?

I am not sure how rhetorical the questions were from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on the sort of equality. For the purpose of the clause, it is defined in the Equality Act 2010.

Turning to Amendment 237—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as the Minister asked a direct question, I might as well answer it now. I gave individual examples. I am sorry if the personalised examples made it sound as though they are one-off cases. I was simply trying to bring alive trends, not say, “Nurse Peggie”. There are loads of them, but I only had 10 minutes. They are trends, but I have brought them alive, I hope.

I ask the Minister to reflect on two things. As the Equality Act 2010 defines equality, I used the example that many trade unions are saying that they will refuse to acknowledge the Supreme Court clarification of what equality means under that very Act. They are going to defy it in the name of equality—trans inclusion and so on. How do you square that circle?

Secondly, the Minister read out the points about training. In part, I was challenging whether the Government care what the content of that training is. My argument was that the training being used in the name of equality is divisive and may not be helpful in the workplace, and is in fact likely to turn worker against worker, rather than the reverse. Do the Government consider any of that, or do they just hand it over to the reps?

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I will try to address those points now. Of course we care whether reps, when undertaking any role—whether it is health and safety, learning, or workplace negotiation—comply with the law and are trained in a suitable manner. That does not mean we should necessarily be scrutinising every single thing they do, because one would not expect that in the normal way of things.

I certainly did not mean to belittle the examples the noble Baroness gave, and I am sure they are not the only ones. But at the same time, one cannot make the generalisation that this is endemic across all workplaces where there is union representation. I will also speculate —as we are sort of speculating here—that the engagement and involvement of equality reps might prevent the kind of activity the noble Baroness outlined in the case of Nurses Sandie Peggie and Jennifer. That is counterfactual speculation; one cannot say either way, but it is worth positing if we are serious about discussing this.

I should add, without wanting to stray too far from my brief and, indeed, land myself in some kind of legal hot water, that the Government’s expectation is that all organisations will comply with equalities law in every manner while carrying out their duties. Whatever equality law clearly specifies, we expect all organisations, employers and trade unions to follow that.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am getting snarky comments from the Tory Front Bench. I object strongly to that.

I am speaking in support of Amendment 238, even though the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, needs no support at all. This would establish

“a clear positive right to strike (and take action short of a strike)”.

As the noble Lord pointed out at the start of his introduction, from the early 1980s onwards, we have had one set of anti-union laws after another, and there are now decades of them. Conservative Governments have introduced anti-union laws, and Labour Governments have mostly kept them. The result has been declining union membership and that the power of working people has been taken away. The UK has gone from being a country where income inequality was not that bad, and was even falling in the 1970s, to one where inequality has been rising sharply ever since. That means more billionaires and more money for the top 1% of earners, while more people exist on low incomes and live their entire lives owning nothing but debt.

Our economy has stopped working in the interests of the majority of people. Working people have less power but businesses and capital have more. That is one reason why in this country millions of pounds now disappear to offshore tax havens. The right of working people to withdraw their labour is a fundamental right, but it has been eroded. This amendment on the right to strike is another little step towards restoring the balance of power in the workplace. Without these little steps, which enable working people to stand up for themselves, this country will continue to get worse for the majority of people who do the real work.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want briefly to commend the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for putting this amendment forward. I have a lot of sympathy with it. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, has explained some of my reasons for supporting it.

I just wanted to note that it is very tempting when rights are being taken away to want to consolidate them via the law and constitutionally. I felt it myself in relation to civil liberties, which I think are under attack: the right to protest and in particular free speech. I keep wishing there was a First Amendment, because then it would be there and they would not be able to attack it.

However—this a good faith question—when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, justify it in relation to international treaties, ECHR, the Council of Europe and so on, I started to worry that maybe this would become one of those treaties where it would be, “You can’t touch this” and you would end up treating it technocratically, as it were. Rather than it being fighting for the right to strike, it would be fighting for the principle of the right to strike with ordinary workers, rather than simply referring to defending it in the law. So can the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, even though he does not stand a chance of getting it through, reassure me that this is not just an attempt at ring-fencing a right, but then neglecting to fight for it in real life? I commend him and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for raising this, because I really do feel that rights need to be protected under this Government as much as any other, I have to say.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, these amendments, proposed by the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Woodley, are I think as people have outlined. I have been on the wrong end of that legislation on a number of events—official strikes, unofficial strikes and secondary picketing. As a shop steward you are responsible for taking those actions for a company; there are consequences and I have suffered consequences from that.

It is not that I agree with the rights being taken away, but I think times have changed and unions have moved on now. The right of anybody to remove their labour, if they are pushed to it, should be a universal right, but it should be used very sparingly and in very special circumstances. It is all very well rushing to legislation and quoting the European Court, but we live in the real world and when things happen to people at work and people are treated badly, sometimes we have not got time to go and contact the KC and get case law. We just do the things that we used to do and take that action straight away. Sometimes that resolves the matter fairly quickly, because a reasonable employer will see the action you have taken as a direct result of another manager doing something that was not in agreement. So I get the thrust of this.

I have had notes typed and I have been writing my own notes, but I think the top and bottom for me is the amendment is seeking to restore a trade union’s flexibility in choosing which members to ballot and removing some procedural requirements and obligations to notify employees in advance of ballots. I think that time has gone as well.

Reinstating rights for prison officers, the group currently subject to significant legal limitations, is one I would like to slightly explore. The intent behind these amendments is to strengthen trade union rights and promote collective bargaining. The concern is potentially around impact, industrial relations and public safety, especially with the actions of prison officers. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and to the Government that the way to protect prison officers is not to enshrine the right to strike but to remove the reasons why they would want to strike. That really is about improving the Victorian conditions that we have in 2025 prison systems, where people go into prison and come out worse criminals or nine out of 10 as drug addicts or whatever.

Governments, instead of trying to give extra law for prison officers, should be looking at the root cause. I know there is a prison plan being built and we are trying to get more education into prisons—if you want to speak to the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, he can give you chapter and verse on that, as I have listened to him doing. I hear why it is being done, I understand why it is being done and I know that it is not got a hope in somewhere else of getting through. But I thank the noble Lord for bringing it forward, because sometimes it is good to realise that things that we used to do are perhaps today not even politically correct to do. Human rights and the rights of people who go every day to work, to earn a living and support their family, need airing and need protecting. I know this is a probing amendment, but I thank the noble Lord for bringing it because it is interesting. Now and again it is good to be reminded of how it used to be and how it can be now.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with almost everything that my noble friend said. When I was growing up, my father, who was in business, suffered the three-day week, and I understand the impact it had on his business and many like his. I also understand that productivity needs to be improved and increased. We need to look at what is happening across the world to be competitive enough.

I know that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, has a business and understands business. If he were sitting on this side of the Chamber, I suspect that he would be arguing in the same vein as we are. It would be right and proper not to shirk away from proper impact assessments and proper comparative assessments of what is happening across the world, because we all want a competitive country where we are leading at the helm. Denying and disagreeing just for the sake of denying and disagreeing does not do this debate any good.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, unusually, I completely agree with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Deben; he and I are both surprised by that. That is not because I am a business owner—that has never been my shtick—but because I am worried about the unintended consequences of the Bill. I too simply want an opportunity to check—and if I am wrong, that is fine.

This group of amendments is very important because it will give the Government a chance to think again, to assess and to reflect. It does not have to be a U-turn; it can straightforwardly be something that is accepted at this point in the Bill that would then mean that those of us who are nervous about the Bill’s consequences can be proved right or wrong.

I am particularly concerned about the impact the Bill will have on productivity, and Amendment 311 is therefore key. I am concerned that the Bill is not doing what it says on the tin and will have a diametrically negative impact on workers’ rights, jobs and wages. I am interested in Amendment 312, which simply asks for real wage impact reporting.

Of course, the big amendment that would cover all the things that have been argued for so far is Amendment 319, which calls for an impact assessment of the regulatory burden of the Bill on businesses. In the past, people who have complained about overregulation have been considered to be on the right of politics—the idea is that those people are so irresponsible that they do not want any regulations and are prepared to take risks. I have never understood it like that at all.

I was therefore delighted to find that I agreed with the Government and the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, when he made some tub-thumping speeches about the problems of

“the regulators, the blockers and bureaucrats”

stopping investment and growth. He called them an “alliance of naysayers”, which I thought was good, because I have always been worried about this. I am not from the Tory fold, but that goes along with what I thought. I was genuinely excited that the Labour Government were embracing this way of understanding what can get in the way of economic development and growth, which is necessary for workers to have jobs, wages and rights under an industrial policy that we are hearing about today—all the infrastructure things.

Last December, the Prime Minister infamously blamed Britain’s sluggish growth on

“people in Whitehall … comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.

As we have been going through the Bill, I have felt like I am in the tepid bath of managed decline at the heart of Whitehall and Westminster. Therefore, I urge the government representatives here to remember their own Prime Minister’s words when deciding how they should approach the Bill, rather than just being partisan.

Between 2015 and 2023, the Conservative Government set themselves the target of a £19 billion reduction in business costs through deregulation. Instead, the Regulatory Policy Committee watchdog calculated that even exempting most Covid regulation, the regulatory burden increased by £18.4 billion in that period. I am saying this because people keep declaring that they are going to tear up the regulations getting in the way of growth, industrial capacity and so on, and then, the next minute, unintentionally, regulations grow. The Bill is so jam-packed with regulations that workers’ rights do not stand a chance of breathing.

One of the fears I have about the Bill, which I have raised in a number of amendments and which I hope Amendment 319 will address, is that it is a recipe for huge amounts of lawfare. Day one rights and protection from unfair dismissal both sound progressive and admirable, but the Government’s own analysis predicts a 15% rise in employment tribunal claims. There are already huge backlogs of between 18 months to two years, even before the Bill is enacted, so there is a real threat of a litigious clogging up of the system. Of course it is important that employees are treated fairly. As I have argued throughout consideration of the Bill, I am not frightened of trade union and workers’ rights at all, but I am concerned about this growth, encouragement and incentivisation of the use of lawfare.

I have just read a fascinating report, which I will send to the Ministers, entitled The Equality Act isn’t Working: Equalities, Legislation and the Breakdown of Informal Civility in the Workplace, produced by the anti-racist, colourblind organisation Don’t Divide Us, which assesses the unintended consequences of the Equality Act. Nobody thought this would happen, but it has led to a real fractiousness in the workplace: people are suing each other, all sorts of things are going wrong, and, in many ways, it has clogged up the system. The last thing we need is the Bill adding to that burden, leading to lawfare and people taking matters even further by suing each other.

Either an impact assessment is going to show that some of the concerns raised are overhyped, or in some instances ideological or raised by nay-sayers; or the Government can take the opportunity to say, “We never intended the legislation to do this, but we have seen that in some areas, it needs to be tweaked to make sure that it is not over-regulatory, damaging workers’ rights and wages and so on, in which case we are prepared to be honest and hold our hands up”. That is the very least legislators should do when they introduce a law that is going to bring huge change the whole business and workplace arena.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, as somebody who does business from time to time and tries to encourage business, not least through my deputy chairmanship of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council, which is trying to grow business right across the Commonwealth, it strikes me that the Bill comes at an unfortunate time. Of course, we should always look at regulation, and there will always be an argument about what is over-regulation and what is under-regulation. But at a time when so many jobs are threatened by AI, we should surely be looking at a low regulatory framework. I urge the Government to take this into consideration during any impact assessment.

The Minister knows about business. He is a businessman and has a successful business, and I too suspect that he identifies with many of the points we are raising, although he cannot say it. But it strikes me that, just at a time when people are very fearful about their future and the uncertainty of having a job at all, let alone when they get older, so they can raise a family, have a mortgage and so forth, we should be looking at ways to encourage businesses to employ more people. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said that he saw every good reason not to employ more people. That is really bad news. If businesses are now saying it is simply not worth the candle, that will contribute to the unemployment that will surely follow as many of these jobs are replaced by AI anyway. So I urge the Government to look at that.

Equally, at a time when many countries around the world, not least in Asia, are spending much more money, time and effort on advanced mathematics and the other things you need nowadays for coding and so forth, we in this country seem to be lowering the standards, particularly in mathematics—dumbing down at a time when we should be raising up. So by all means, let us properly protect our workers, but let us not overregulate to the extent that we do not have any workers to look after or to regulate.

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[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to every noble Lord for their contribution, and I have listened intently to each and every one of them. I thank noble Lords for their kind words about my previous business career.

We return to the important issue of impact assessments. I appreciate the continued efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe and Lord Hunt of Wirral, here. It will be no surprise to your Lordships’ House, given the number of separate debates—I think there have been about eight now—we have had on this topic, that the Government view these amendments as unnecessary. Let me recap. We have already published 27 impact assessments, available on GOV.UK, which have been updated where needed as policy has been added to the Bill during passage.

Academics at Warwick University, Oxford University, MIT and UCL all find a positive relationship between job satisfaction and productivity in their research. For example, Simon Deakin, professor of law at the University of Cambridge, said:

“The consensus on the economic impacts of labour laws is that, far from being harmful to growth, they contribute positively to productivity. Labour laws also help ensure that growth is more inclusive and that gains are distributed more widely across society”.


All this evidence is laid out in our impact assessment, which was developed in consultation with external experts. Business supports the view that this will be good for productivity. In a survey undertaken by the Institute of Public Policy, seven in 10 employers said that strengthened employment rights will boost productivity, compared to just 7% who disagreed, and six in 10 employers thought stronger employment rights would have a positive impact on business profitability, while fewer than two in 10 disagreed.

We have worked hand in hand with businesses, trade unions and civil society to understand the impacts of this Bill—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

There is no doubt that people who are happy at work are likely to contribute positively to the workplace. Nobody, I think, is arguing against that and wants miserable workers with no rights. However, what we are trying to explore is not whether people will have job satisfaction but whether they will have jobs. It is about the unintended consequences of the Bill that might mean that people are not employed; or, indeed, that new jobs are not created because productivity will not go up; or that it becomes too risky to employ, for example, young workers, and so on.

With all due respect to Warwick University’s academics—I went there and I know some of the people who wrote that research, and I am sure that they are happy in their workplace—the truth is that if some piece of legislation ended up unintentionally closing down Warwick University, they would not be happy and productivity would not go up. That is what we are concerned with. It is not a theoretical academic argument about how being happy at work makes you work harder—I know that. But if there is no work, then you are not going to be happy, you are not going to do any work and productivity will go down.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that contribution. If she can be a bit patient, I have some more positive news for her.

We have worked hand in hand with businesses and trade unions, as I said earlier, to understand the impacts of the Bill on industry and will produce further analysis as required under the Better Regulation Framework. It is worth noting that more doors are opening than closing. In the first quarter of 2025, the UK saw 90,000 businesses created, up 2.8% on last year, while business closures fell by 4.4%. This Government are backing British businesses and British workers, and our Modern Industrial Strategy, published yesterday, is making that real. To give one example, we have boosted the British Business Bank’s capacity to £25.6 billion, unlocking billions for innovative firms, especially SMEs. For the first time, the British Business Bank will be able to take equity in fast-growing tech companies. This has never happened before. That is helping crowd in tens of billions of pounds more in private capital, fuelling growth, creating jobs and driving long-term prosperity. I hope that gives comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Deben.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in a previous life, I used to work in further education with many young people who were non-traditionally successful. In more current times, I have worked on matters relating to prison reform and I am very interested in former prisoners gaining employment. In all the instances of working with young people who did not have traditional qualifications or were trying to get into work, or with former prisoners, you were in a situation where you were talking to local employers and asking them to take a punt—a risk—on people. You would say, “Look, the worst that can happen is that you try this person out, it doesn’t work out and no one’s lost anything, but actually I’ve got every faith they will be brilliant”, and so on and so forth. You had to say, “Take a risk”, and I am afraid that in all the responses from employers they are saying, whether we like it or not, that the Bill—if enacted as it is presently constituted —will mean they become risk averse and will not take risks on a former prisoner or a young person who is a bit of a scally. So it is key to assess social mobility.

In addition to that group of people, one of the key ways in which work contributes to social mobility is often through young entrepreneurs or young people who, again, might not be conventionally the kind of people who will pass the Civil Service exam, will not necessarily fit in as an ideal employee and might be slightly eccentric or risk-takers, but who will set up their own micro-business. We know that they are the kind of people who might well be successful, although sometimes they might not be.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, there have been a lot of amendments tabled about micro-businesses—not SMEs, as they are traditionally still quite large businesses whereas micro-businesses have around 20 staff, or even two, three or four. If you talk to young entrepreneurs—the sort of young men who drop out of college but set up semiconductor manufacturing organisations, like some people I know, a builders’ business or a small hairdressers’ business—they realise that many parts of the Bill, which I have opposed throughout, will affect them. They do not have huge HR departments, they are not lawyers and they do not know what they are going to do, but they will be held liable for swathes of regulatory rules mandated by the Bill about the way they run their micro-businesses.

Those people are part of the great success of social mobility. They start out and make a success of it, but now it might not be worth it. They are not always poor and impoverished people. It can be young people making good through small businesses.

If it is the case that this is scaremongering about the worst fears or people just being paranoid, fair enough. But this Labour Government, of all Governments, should want to assess whether the Bill inadvertently, not intentionally, damages social mobility via employment. I therefore urge the Minister to accept this harmless but important amendment.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who covered quite a few of the points I planned to make. I want to speak specifically about young people.

Speaking very recently in front of a committee, Employment Minister Alison McGovern said that

“the situation for young people is a big worry for me at the moment”

and that:

“A lot of our young people—nearly 1 million—are effectively on the scrap heap”.


Those are not words I would have chosen myself; they are her words to a cross-party committee.

We have heard a lot of statistics during today’s debates. I will just add a few more. There are 1 million people not in education, employment or training, which includes a lot of young people. In addition, we have massive numbers of people receiving sickness benefits. All these young people will be a risk for employers.

The Minister is quite right that there has been an uptick in new businesses starting, but there is a serious downturn in the number of jobs created; unemployment is rising year on year, month on month since this Government took power; and the tax rises in the Autumn Budget are beginning to really kick in. We have seen that in the written submissions by numerous business organisations to the Government, other groups and Peers in this Chamber, begging—pleading—with us all to make their case about the significant costs they are already facing due to the national insurance rises. We can see it in real time. This amendment is a request to monitor the situation and come back with an impact assessment on perhaps the most vulnerable people in our society.

To show that these young people really want to succeed and want to have an opportunity, I will read the Committee a couple more numbers that the Minister is probably already well aware of. Some 60% of young people under the age of 30 would love to start a business, 9% of them have done so and 18% more of them would like to do so this year. These are the most vulnerable young people in our society. They are our future, as our demographics are getting older, and we are going to become more and more reliant on the economy that they generate. I have said it before, and I will say it again and again in this Chamber: Governments do not create growth; businesses create growth. We are now looking to these young people to start businesses and take risks on employing others. I urge the Government to, at the very least, come back having monitored that there is no impact on them and no further impact on the loss of employment that could ensue.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Carberry of Muswell Hill (Lab)]

I will make a brief comment on Amendment 1, which would replace a right to have guaranteed hours with a right to request. I very much fear that it undermines the purpose of the Bill, which is trying to deal with the problem of zero-hours contracts where employees do not have predictability over their hours.

I appreciate that the desire of the amendment is to reduce the burden on employers in working out what the guaranteed hours would be, only to find that an employee declines the offer. However, I do not think that that is likely to happen very often. Obviously, it is impossible to know what proportion of employees would turn down such an offer, but we do know from surveys—and most recently from a poll that the TUC did last year—that the majority of workers on zero-hours contracts consistently say that they would prefer to have guaranteed hours. It is therefore very unlikely that large numbers of them would turn down an offer once it has been made.

Perhaps more seriously, the amendment does not take account of the imbalance of power in workplaces and the characteristics of employees who are working on zero-hours contracts. The latest figures from the ONS tell us that zero-hours contract workers are much more likely to be young and to work in elementary occupations. They are much more likely to be working part-time and in low-paid sectors. These are the least empowered workers in the workforce; they are unlikely to understand their rights, even if the employer has complied with the requirement to find information. They are the least likely to be represented by a union and the least likely to know how to exercise their rights. The right to request guaranteed hours, in those circumstances, is not a real right at all.

How many of those workers, vulnerable as they are, might come under pressure not to press for guaranteed hours? The vast majority of employers do right by their employees, but many do not. The formulation of the amendment leaves open the path for some of the worst employers not to offer guaranteed hours to workers on zero-hours contracts. I do not think that the amendment does the intention to serve those workers any favours at all.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but especially Amendment 1. As we start Report, and the first of several groups focusing on zero-hours contracts—although I will speak only on this group—I want to emphasise why getting the wording and balance right in this part of the Bill is important for proportionality and to avoid unintended consequences.

Many of us were originally supportive of the Bill’s commitment to tackle the rise of zero-hours contracts, especially in retail and hospitality—and tackling the way in which they have been used exploitatively is certainly welcome. But in Committee the Government acknowledged that there needs to be the offer of some flexibility, which is what certain cohorts of workers want.

On Amendment 1, the TUC briefing on the Bill complains that the vast majority who ask for guaranteed hours are turned down. Surely the point of Amendment 1 is the requirement that they will not be turned down. What is actually happening here is that there is a shift to a right to request guaranteed hours on to the employee, which I would have thought reassures the TUC. It empowers the employee but avoids an overrigid imposition of the Bill’s requirements on businesses, regardless of the situation. These sorts of details matter, now that we are finalising what will be in the Bill. I am not sure how helpful it is that, for example, some in trade union and government circles have briefed recently that getting into the details amounts to being, to quote the Deputy Prime Minister,

“on the side of bad bosses, zero-hours contracts and fire-and-rehire”.

We are here to make law, not to make headlines, and law means accepting that the devil is indeed in the detail. The Government know that there are lots of worries about unresolved aspects of the Bill. Indeed, Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, quoted in the FT recently, assures us that he is “absolutely certain” of addressing businesses’ concerns over the statutory probation period. Pertinent to this group of amendments, he says there is “more than enough room” to reach an agreement on guaranteed hours. He says:

“I have to have the bill passed first before we go into the implementation”,


but I suggest that is the wrong way around. If there is more than enough room to reach agreement on things such as guaranteed hours, let us put this in the Bill.

In other words, in trying to pin down how a new right to guaranteed hours should be framed in regulations, these amendments bring clarity. They are meant to help the Government. I am worried that too many important details are being kicked down the road, hence avoiding democratic debate and scrutiny and creating a real mood of uncertainty among employers. We have had warnings from business about the Bill harming an already fragile economy and so on, but these kinds of concerns are trickling down to workers too.

I work with a lot of young people at the Academy of Ideas, and the initial warm enthusiasm for the Bill has gone rather cold. I have been talking to one young man who wrote a missive for us on hospitality and how much it has done for him. Omar is concerned that what he thought was going to be in his interests might turn out not to be. He says: “Hospitality is an industry that has been flexible enough to rely on youth employment and allowed many of us a way into work. It has taught me many useful lessons, and has built my confidence as a person. Now I fear that the legislation will reduce the opportunities and misses the mark”. On this amendment, he just wants the right to be able to ask for hours, but he does not want anything that disrupts the flexibility of hospitality in doing so. That echoes the balanced way in which the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, moved the first amendment in this group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 30, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, which builds on something that I raised in Committee. I have been asked to do a statement for the Covid inquiry regarding the economic response and so have been going through a variety of notes from five years ago. One of the most successful things that we did then was to support employers in the deployment of statutory sick pay by ensuring that people could stay at home and not be spreading coronavirus at work.

For me, that reinforced something that made sense for the country as a whole and its public health and was fair. It was fair to businesses that, while the country was being asked to do something and they were being asked to do something as employers, the Government helped with the cost.

Part of this entire debate is the fair work agency and it being fairer for employees—and apparently it will be fairer for employers, around productivity. I do not want to repeat all that I have said on this but I recall that, when there used to be a rebate, it was recognised that this was the bare minimum, with many employers paying a lot more than the statutory sick pay rate. It was about co-working and recognising that, as a mature country, we believe that people should continue to be paid when they are off ill, and that the Government have an interest in that too. That is why I was particularly keen to sign Amendment 30, although I am conscious that some of its finer details could be worked out further.

Amendment 28 was tabled by my noble friends on the Front Bench. Of the variety of changes that are happening through this Bill—many of which, I remind the House, could have been done through statutory instruments—statutory sick pay from day 1 has come up time and again with most of the employers that I have met or heard from. The impact is genuinely worrying, particularly for people in the hospitality sector, the retail sector and so on. Going straight to day 1 is a step too far backwards. That is why I am supporting my friends on the Front Bench.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in the evidence and analysis document that the Government very helpfully gave us last week, it notes that up to 1.3 million employees will get a new entitlement to statutory sick pay and that that will increase the amount of sick pay that workers receive by around £400 million a year. At face value, this is in many ways a very positive step forward. However, that same document brought up some cultural issues. I would like the Minister to reflect on whether day 1 statutory sick pay will help to tackle those issues.

The document notes that

“stress, depression or anxiety accounted for 17.1 million working days lost in 2022/23, equivalent to a loss of £5.2bn in output per year”.

Is there a danger that an unintended consequence of day 1 sickness pay would be people being encouraged to too easily see themselves as not fit for work? Can the Minister answer that? The same document says that:

“Measures to improve worker wellbeing will result in happier, healthier and more productive workers, which could be worth billions of pounds a year”.


That seems rather far-fetched. It might mean that people will more easily go on the sick, not because they are shirkers but because we are creating a culture where that is the norm.

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[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my register of interests. I ask noble Lords, when considering my amendments, to spare a thought for the great British pub. A year ago, the Chancellor promised to “turn the page” for British pubs. As she pulled a pint in the Humble Plumb in Southampton in June 2024, Rachel Reeves said that Labour would revive this “important institution”—I think we can all agree that pubs are important institutions.

Yet no sooner had she said this than she raised national insurance contributions for employers and lowered the threshold at which they are paid from £9,000 a year to £5,000. At the same time, she announced that business rates relief for hospitality brought in during Covid would be cut, while the minimum wage would rise by 6.7%. UKHospitality, which represents pubs, bars and restaurants, has estimated that the total extra cost for its members from the Budget measures announced last autumn will be £3.4 billion a year. This impact has already been felt, with 69,000 hospitality jobs lost since last autumn. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, roughly one pub is set to close every day this year—the Campaign For Real Ale is even more gloomy. If BPPA’s forecast comes to pass, it would take the number of pubs in Britain to its lowest level in a century.

What are the Government doing to save what they call an important institution? Gareth Thomas, the Business Minister, has said:

“We are determined to make the UK the best place in the world for businesses to start and succeed, and that includes our great British pubs”.


He went on:

“We’re working with industry to slash red tape … to ease the pressure on pubs and help them grow as part of our Plan for Change”.


Yet, far from slashing red tape, Clause 20 will add a whole new ream of it. As I am sure noble Lords are aware, Clause 20 amends the Equality Act to make employers liable for the harassment of their employees by third parties, for example, customers and members of the public. It does not cover third-party sexual harassment, mind you—employers are already liable for third-party sexual harassment thanks to the worker protection Act—but non-sexual third-party harassment. I have called this the “banter ban” because I believe it will mean employers will be liable for jokes, remarks and expostulations overheard by their employees—banter—that they find offensive or upsetting by virtue of their protected characteristics.

Why do I say this? We know from the way that the definition of harassment has constantly been expanded by the employment tribunal that it now encompasses overheard conversations—you can now sue your employer for failing to protect you from overhearing something uttered by another employee. The Minister will argue that Clause 20 requires employers only to take “all reasonable steps” to protect their employees from harassment, and expecting employers to protect their employees from overhearing remarks made by customers or members of the public is not reasonable. In short, the Government will argue, the tribunal will not hold employers liable for indirect, non-sexual harassment of their employees by third parties. This is a false alarm, faux outrage.

I wish I shared the Minister’s confidence about that, and note that UKHospitality is not so sanguine, which is why it supports Amendment 43, which would absolve employers of liability for indirect third-party harassment. If the Minister really believes that indirect third-party harassment—overheard remarks, banter—would be out of scope, why not accept my amendment? This would be a huge relief to beleaguered publicans who will not have to worry about employing “banter bouncers” to eavesdrop on customer conversations and will help reduce the increased insurance premiums which Clause 20 will inevitably mean.

The Minister will say that plenty of service providers and businesses already ask customers to treat their employees with respect and to not say or do anything that could be construed as harassment. The vast majority of customers follow this advice, I agree, but the fact that these guidelines are being voluntarily observed is a reason to not make them mandatory, not a reason to make them mandatory. Is it not preferable that customers should observe good manners out of consideration for workers, rather than fear of being penalised for non-compliance?

If noble Lords cannot bring themselves to support my amendment, or at the very least abstain on indirect harassment, I hope that they will consider seriously Amendment 44, which would create a carve out for

“conversation or speech involving the expression of an opinion on a political, moral, religious or social matter, provided the opinion is not indecent or grossly offensive”.

How could any noble Lord possibly object to that? Do we want people in pubs to be constantly looking over their shoulders and lowering their voices if they express an unfashionable or contentious point of view, or do we want them to enjoy the same right to speak openly and freely on political, moral, religious or social matters that we enjoy in this House?

Every pub is a parliament; let us not turn every pub into a library and accelerate the disappearance of this beloved institution. Let us remember what Samuel Johnson said about the Great British pub:

“As soon as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude. There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn”.


I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

In the Mirror newspaper last week, Clause 20 hit the headlines. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner claimed that reforms protecting employees from third party harassment would not chill free speech, and she rubbished claims that innocent workplace banter is the target. She said:

“Nobody should be abused while doing their job, but we’ve seen a horrific rise in violent abuse and harassment of shop workers and other public facing staff”.


She went on to describe those of us worried about the unintended consequences of this clause as resorting to

“spreading made-up nonsense”.

I feel the need to counter this misinformation because I fear Angela Rayner may herself be influenced by misinformation about what is in her own Bill.

I was especially alarmed when the TUC general secretary Paul Nowak told the newspaper that those of us opposing Clause 20 are

“insulting people’s intelligence by pretending that protecting workers from harassment is the same as banning banter”.

But actually, it is—and that is not my decision. It is present in the way equality law has been interpreted in employment tribunals, as has just been described, associating harassment with banter. Whatever the Government, Angela Rayner or the TUC think is in the Bill, it does not set out what constitutes harassment or, rather, what does not.

Therefore, in Committee, the Minister directed us to the definitions of harassment used in equality legislation, which is then interpreted in employment tribunals. It is important to note that under the Equality Act, as interpreted, harassment includes indirect harassment, which, as the EHRC guidance states, can include the following: spoken words, jokes, written words and posts on social media, physical expressions and gestures and, yes, banter.

As we have heard, employment tribunals hear many cases relating to workplace banter, with 57 cases in 2024. If we look at human resources literature, we see that it is full of advice to employers on managing banter in the workplace between their employees. One horrendous suggestion put out to employers was to monitor conversations and attempt to pick up or pre-empt any problems. Another suggestion was to send people on—wait for it—appropriate conversation training sessions. I have just been sent the details of a consultant—there is always a consultant behind all this—who is an inclusive language and banter specialist and runs workshops at £495 a shot. One of his first workshops is “What does the term transgender mean to you?”—I will not say what it means to me out loud or I might get done by the banter police. Anyway, cisgender is a term that I do not think we want to be put into the hands of the banter police.

We are not raising this issue to cause a fuss. The problem is that it is in the Bill. I have always argued against this broad and elastic definition of harassment; it is problematic because it undermines free speech, as I have made the case for many times in this House and in Committee. I also want to emphasise that it risks trivialising genuine cases of harassment and diluting the impact of genuine anti-harassment policies that require serious attention.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 16th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, currently only a fully certified trade union representative or a colleague has the statutory right to accompany an employee to a hearing. In practice, this leaves the vast majority of workers in the UK—77.7%—to navigate proceedings alone or, worse, to be accompanied by an inappropriate companion, who may frustrate the process or cause inadvertent detriment to the worker’s case.

We all receive briefings from numerous organisations, which contribute to our debate. The last one I received today was on this issue, so I read it to see how I could incorporate it in my speech. It was from the TUC and said that only the trade unions could possibly represent people, which confirms my words and adds weight to this amendment. An amendment to the Bill is desperately needed to guarantee that all workers, regardless of their membership of a trade union, enjoy the right to be accompanied by a dedicated and trained companion during workplace disputes. This would ensure transparency, fairness and due process, as trained companions ensure that both employees and employers have a robust safeguard against unfair treatment and misunderstanding.

This sensible amendment would give rights to people who are very often not in a trade union-recognised organisation. The trade unions can still represent, but they do not have to be the only people to represent. This amendment, I feel, fills that gap. I beg to move.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 99 seeks to remove the restriction that only trade union representatives or a work colleague may accompany an employee to a disciplinary or grievance hearing. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, Lord Ashcombe and Lord Londesborough, for supporting what is a modest and practical but important change to employment law. It would give workers the right to be accompanied to a hearing by someone they trust, somebody of their choosing—perhaps a family friend, a carer or a person from the relevant industry. It is about fair play and equal treatment, ends a one-size-fits-all effective union monopoly and is simply empowering and modernising.

My amendment is similar to Amendment 98 proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, which would expand the list of those who could accompany workers to include trained and certified companions. I support the principle behind the noble Lord’s proposal but fear that its certification regime is unnecessarily complicated, could result in delays and inconsistencies and could create bureaucratic barriers, especially for staff cohorts such as young employees unfamiliar with the bureaucratic paraphernalia of such procedures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a useful debate on Amendments 98 and 99, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley.

On Amendment 98, the law already provides that when workers are invited to attend a disciplinary and grievance hearing, they are entitled to bring a companion who is either a fellow worker, an official employed by a trade union or a workplace trade union representative who the union has reasonably certified as having received training in acting as a worker’s companion at a disciplinary or grievance hearing.

As we have heard, and perhaps in response to the critique by the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, employers can allow workers to be accompanied by a companion who does not fall within the above categories. Some workers may have a contractual right to be accompanied by persons other than those listed—for instance, a professional sports body, partner, spouse or legal representative.

As my noble friend Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway helpfully reminded us, the existing legislative provisions seek to keep disciplinary and grievance procedures internal to workplaces to better ensure that the heat is taken out of the situation and that they are used as conciliatory opportunities to resolve tensions and maintain a good employer-worker relationship. As my noble friend said, this could involve a workmate who knows the context of the situation, understands the employment —and probably both parties to the grievance—and can provide real insight to the situation and focused support.

The inclusion of professional bodies, which may include legal representation in the legislation, may jeopardise the involved parties’ ability to engage in amicable conversation, with the concern that discussion may be significantly restrained as a result, with neither party willing to accept fault. The Government are rightly concerned that this will result in an increased likelihood of a failure to reach a suitable outcome for both the worker and employer. As my noble friend Lady O’Grady said, we want systems in place that are quicker, cheaper and more effective at reaching resolutions.

However, this in turn, as part of the proposal, would increase the cost of hearings for both parties, as the processes and the meetings themselves become more protracted and reduce the chances of a mutually beneficial outcome. The involvement of legal representatives may be particularly costly for smaller businesses, which may not have legal resources readily available—we have heard much already today, if not in previous debates in Committee and on Report, about that issue. Additionally, the introduction of legal expertise at these hearings may limit the ability of ACAS to mediate an ongoing dispute, as legal arguments may already have been heard during an internal hearing. It is worth noting that an amicable solution between the parties is the fastest way to deliver justice and the amendment may have the inadvertent effect of increasing the likelihood of tribunal claims being made, although of course that is not its intention.

Of course I understand that certain organisations, including those that provide legal services, would benefit. However, as previously noted when discussing similar amendments, an employer already has the existing ability to nominate an organisation to accompany their workers if they set this out in the workers’ terms and conditions. This is a solution in search of a problem. ACAS estimates that there are 1.7 million formal disciplinary cases in UK organisations each year.

It is rare that I ever say this, let alone from the Dispatch Box, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, in that the approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, in his amendment would be unduly cumbersome. It would complicate a law that has been in place for over 20 years and, if accepted, will require that the employer checks secondary legislation for every case to see who is a responsible body and whether the individual has been certified as having been trained. These are additional administrative burdens that the Government are keen to avoid. Indeed, the Opposition Front Bench has been keen to point out when they see fault in our proposals in other places—erroneously, I should add.

On Amendment 99, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, the Government believe that strong trade unions are essential for tackling insecurity, inequality, discrimination, enforcement and low pay. If Amendment 98 was a solution in search of a problem, Amendment 99 is an opportunity for the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, to bash a problem, in her view—namely, trade unions.

I am a former trade union official. I have also worked in a number of private sector roles as a manager. Unions are a good part of our industrial landscape, as we have heard across the House. I join with others across the House in saying that it would better if more people were members of trade unions. They are far from perfect, but although the cases that the noble Baroness raises undeniably raise issues about the trade unions she talked about, they do not undermine the day-to-day work of many trade unions and, in particular, of trade union reps. In the workplace, day in, day out and across the country, they work with employees and businesses to make workplaces safer, to ensure that employees are properly educated and skilled, and to help those employees access their rights at work, which we deem fair and necessary.

Trade unions have an important role to play in supporting workers during the process of a disciplinary or grievance hearing. Union officials allowed to accompany a worker, as prescribed in the existing framework, must be certified as having received training in acting as a worker’s companion at disciplinary and grievance hearings. By opening this role up to anyone the worker chooses, the amendment risks introducing individuals into the disciplinary and grievance hearings process who are not familiar with the workplace in question or, indeed, with the employment rights framework.

As I noted when speaking to the previous amendment, this is again likely to lead to a reduced likelihood of successful mediation of these disputes. The role of the recognised union representative allows the relationship between the employer and representative to be developed over time, thus increasing the likelihood of an amicable solution that does not go to a full legal process. This amendment could lead to the involvement of a family member or friend in disciplinary grievance proceedings, which may, in practice, cause more problems than solutions, given the sensitive nature of such a personal relationship.

In closing, it is unclear to the Government where the demand for expanding this right is coming from and which workplaces specifically would benefit. In the consultations we have undertaken in government and prior to being elected, with both businesses and trade unions, the need to expand this right has not featured from either side in the workplace.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I think the Minister may have answered his own question there, because if the consultation was with trade unionists about whether there was any need for non-trade unionists to go in, then they would give you one answer. I want to clarify one thing: it is true that I have never been a trade union official, but I have been a rank and file trade union member for decades. I am not anti-trade union, but I do not think the world stops and starts at trade unions.

I want to ask the Minister whether he understands that, at the moment, the statutory right to be accompanied by a trade union official is not in-house. The way the law is phrased is that any trade union official, even one from a union that you have never joined and from a completely unrelated sector, can accompany you—that is the way the law is. I wanted to know whether that is fair or whether that wording could change. What is wrong with, say, a Citizens Advice caseworker or what have you? The numbers of people who are in the trade unions just do not tally for people to be accompanied fairly at the moment. Unless there is an 80% increase in trade union membership, it is obviously two-tier and discriminatory at present.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

To respond to the first point the noble Baroness made, perhaps I did not enunciate clearly enough, but I said that in the consultation the demand for change did not come from either trade unions or employers.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

This is the final word. This is not a trade union rights Bill; this is the Employment Rights Bill. It is casually known as the workers’ rights Bill. There are millions of workers who are not in trade unions for a variety of reasons, including your own Minister Angela Rayner, as I just noted. I simply suggest that when you ask employers or trade unionists whether there is a demand for this then rank and file workers are being ignored. I suggest that you acknowledge and empower them.

[Baroness Nichols of Selby (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to put the record straight, because we have heard much about the Deputy Prime Minister not being in a union. She is in a union. She is in the union called UNISON and has been for a number of years. I did not want noble Lords to go home tonight thinking that no one would represent the Deputy Prime Minister.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

The speeches that have been made in this debate about an important issue are clear, and I strongly support those made on this side of the House. Because of the exigencies of where the issue arises in our consideration of the Bill, I have tabled manuscript Amendment 147A. Noble Lords may well be scratching their heads, but it is a manuscript amendment, which has been circulated separately, on a different subject, but it comes up at this point of the Bill. It has been brought to my attention by my union, Unite, and I need to declare that, but it is an issue of concern to all unions.

The unions strongly support the provisions in the Bill which introduce paid facility time for equality representatives. This is an important development and it is something for which unions have campaigned for some years. However, there is concern that there are some technical problems with the provisions in the Bill, which is why I need to raise them now. We are looking at Clause 62, which creates the right for paid time off for this new initiative of equality representatives in certain circumstances. It appears to me that there is a deficiency in the Bill, in that it says they are entitled to this time off for the purpose of consultation, but it is quite clear that these representatives will also be involved in negotiating. My manuscript amendment seeks simply to add “negotiating” in front of the existing provision in the Bill that says that these equality reps are involved in the process of consultation. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will be able to give a favourable response to what is essentially a technical issue, but one which I need to raise now.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I feel in something of a time warp, because I opposed Clause 62 in Committee and tried to get it dropped, but I want to go back to the discussion we were having on Amendment 147. I support this amendment, because I genuinely think there are very good reasons why the trade union movement should not be frightened of this amendment, and I do not understand the changes that have happened. All the amendment does is to try to retain, at least notionally, control in the hands of trade union members: they should decide where they want their dues to go and whether they want them to go into a political fund. What could possibly be frightening about that?

It means that, at least in theory, the trade unions will have to be kept on their toes and justify why members should opt in, and therefore not assume or assert that their union’s political activity—which, to be fair, is often far removed from rank and file workers’ interests—is on behalf of their members. It simply puts unions in a position in which they have to convince their members to opt in.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I hope that the devastating interventions that we have heard so far will make the Government rethink. They deserve the ridicule being poured on them. I just want to make two additional points.

Clause 113 completely undermines the Government’s idea that the Bill is all about enhancing workers’ rights by empowering them to have more control over their employment protections. When we scratch further, the real power is being accumulated by agencies and quangos; in this instance, it is the Secretary of State disguised as the fair work agency. It is an indication that workers are almost a stage army to the accumulation of power by the centre. I worry that the Government are using workers’ rights to colonise more aspects of people’s lives on the basis that the Government think that they can act on behalf of workers because they know better—that is outrageous. I want them to consider what this would mean for an individual woman at work. A female worker says no, but the Secretary of State comes up and says, “I don’t care; we don’t need your consent. You don’t want to go to a tribunal? We are not interested in what you as a woman think as a worker. We are going to act on your behalf because we know better than you”. It is an absolutely flagrant and outrageous attack on worker autonomy.

My other question relates to what the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said in Committee in response to a discussion about the overburdening of employment tribunals. He said that we will find that the fair work agency will pick up a lot of the work of the employment tribunals. The noble Lord implied that a lot of the work of the employment rights tribunals, which were clogged up, could be picked up by the agency and that fast-track routes would be used. I therefore cannot understand why, in this instance, the Government are piling more work on to the employment tribunals. They seem to be wallowing in this lawfare. If they do not want the Bill to be exposed as not in the interests of workers but more in the interests of quangos, this clause should be dropped before we come back.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I have not spoken on the Bill before and I apologise for entering these debates at this late stage. Indeed, I start by saying that I have considerable sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, to leave out Clause 113. As he and others have said, it would enable the Secretary of State to take proceedings without the consent of the worker concerned, even against that worker’s will, which I agree is a very odd position.

I have considerable hesitation in doubting the analysis of all those who have spoken before me, eminent lawyers and colleagues among them, but I am bound to say that I take issue with the categorisation of this clause as “bonkers”. The reason I take that view is because, on reflection, I can see circumstances where the Secretary of State might legitimately wish to take proceedings before an employment tribunal where the worker concerned did not want to do so. That might be because the worker was concerned about the risk of losing, or did not have the time, resources or simply the inclination to become involved in contested proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I said at the beginning that I am not a legal person. But there must be something that will happen: a whistleblower or somebody will inform somebody of someone’s condition that they find intolerable, it ends up with someone and somebody has to deal with it. If you go to see the person and they do not want to get involved, are frightened, are unsure or do not know their rights, who scoops that person up and just asks the question? Maybe it is not worth pursuing, but what is wrong with just asking the question?

I ask the Minister to confirm this flexibility that we need to understand the powers. Will they be used proportionately and transparently? We need to hear that. The Government need to tell us how this legislation will work practically. If they can explain, and perhaps not allay all the House’s fears but begin to give some clarity to the thinking behind it, because this is something that has been thought out quite seriously, the House should listen to that.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

This is Report.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I was just going to ask a question, as others did. As we are passing law, is it not the case that—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

As it is quite late and we still have a lot of business to do, it is worth respectfully pointing out not just to the noble Baroness but to other noble Lords that the Companion is pretty clear about the rules of debate on Report. At 8.145 it states:

“On report no member may speak more than once to an amendment, except the mover of the amendment in reply or a member who has obtained leave of the House”.


We have a lot of business to go through. People have had the opportunity to state their case. Perhaps we should proceed with Front-Bench wind-ups.