Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

In the spirit, though, I would appreciate an answer, to get an understanding of Amendment 53, on why these measures are deemed to be added to the unfair dismissal.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, as everyone knows, I am very new to this piece of legislation. I do not know whether “shambles” is a parliamentary term, but 27 amendments at this point, after going through the other House and now coming to this House, is completely unacceptable. A Bill needs to be developed virtually to its finish point before it enters the legislative process, not be continuously revived as it travels on through. That is not the way these Houses are meant to operate.

I was struggling to follow the Minister as he described this, not because he is unclear but because he is tackling such complexity within these regulations. I am going to go back and say to the team that they will have to read Hansard multiple times and then keep double-checking the amendments to have a feel for what is going on here. These are not just technical; it is reasonably obvious that they are not. Will we at the very least get a detailed code of conduct? People outside these Houses will have to apply all of this and will need real clarity. I work with employment tribunals, admittedly on whistleblowing issues, and I am incredibly conscious that this is the kind of thing that leads to them being flooded with even more cases—and employment tribunals are a part of the court system that does not have that capacity.

I ask that the Government rethink whether there are areas where the Bill is inappropriate or undeveloped and somehow find a way to bring all those issues very rapidly to the attention of parliamentarians. This is no way to carry out legislation, to ask us to apply sensible scrutiny when it is impossible to get to the bottom and the root of what is being presented to us.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and my noble friend Lady Coffey. It is frankly not acceptable for the Government at this stage in a Bill to lay this many amendments of this magnitude to the policy in the phase of the Bill as it is travelling through the upper House. These measures will receive no scrutiny from the elected House. It is frankly not constitutionally proper to use this method. It should be used for only minor and technical amendments, and by no measure can these proposals be put into that category. The Government should be very ashamed about this. Frankly, the correct way of proceeding would be to withdraw the Bill and start again, and to lay this entire Bill back before the Commons so that it can be properly scrutinised in accordance with our conventional norms.

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These amendments incorporate technical and clarificatory adjustments to ensure that the measures on zero-hours contracts in the Bill are comprehensive and will accurately deliver the policy intent set out in Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay, the delivery of which was a clear manifesto commitment of this Government.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, could he answer my question on whether or not there will be a code of practice? I can see many businesses struggling their way through all this stuff. I think his attempt to clarify the complex algorithm illustrates the need for such a code very powerfully.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question, which I have written down. In response to an earlier grouping, my noble friend the Minister said that the Government would publish detailed guidance on the government website, which I hope will give some clarity on that.

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[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I was prepared to put my name to this amendment because I believe that the whole nature of the creative industries, and theatre and festivals in particular, depends on flexibility. Let me give noble Lords an example. When I joined the board of the Royal Opera House, there were in place at the time union restrictions which meant that several operas in the repertoire would go beyond them because they could not possibly fit into that time. The unions and management got together and worked out a flexibility that would allow operas—Wagner’s, for example—to go beyond the hours without penalising people. It is a give-and-take situation. The arts need the flexibility that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is suggesting in his amendment, and I simply rise to endorse it.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am going to stick with being very brief. We have had three exceptionally powerful speeches. Amendment 16 is, in a sense, tackling a subset of a debate that this Committee has already had on Amendment 7 in the name of my noble and good friend Lord Goddard. I hope that the Government are beginning to accept that not all work comes in steady flows; it can have peaks and troughs and be disrupted by events way beyond anybody’s control. I hope that the Minister is going to take this away and work out how the current drafting needs to change in order to make the necessary allowances, whether it is for theatres, festivals, farmers or food and drink. A whole series of activities that experience those irregular patterns must be incorporated into this Bill.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, that we need to brief as we have debated this area already. But we do have a great debt of gratitude to my noble friend for bringing forward this amendment. He was, of course, a distinguished Minister for the arts. I do not think people have yet recognised the dangers of one size fits all.

We are very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I join with him in wanting a detailed impact assessment, particularly for the instance he gave of front-of-house workers. I do not believe that the effect on creative industries has been properly assessed so far as this Bill is concerned, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, said, there is a need for flexibility.

The theatre industry has only just now recovered—or perhaps it has not yet recovered—from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The last thing it needs now is to be hit by this crude instrument of a Bill, which makes no allowance for the unique nature of the work that it does, and the flexibility that is necessarily inherent in how it delivers for audiences. I really do want to hear from the Minister the extent to which theatres—the larger groups, such as ATG and Delfont Mackintosh, but also small and independent theatres—have been consulted. To what extent have they been consulted about the effects of this Bill?

I will finish off with five questions for the Minister. First, does the Minister accept that the right to guaranteed hours as drafted risks reducing work opportunities for the very people it claims to support, such as students, carers, disabled workers, et cetera? Secondly, can the Minister explain how theatres and other seasonal or project-based employers are meant to reconcile guaranteed hours with programming closures, touring breaks or production gaps?

Thirdly, what modelling have the Government done to assess the potential job losses or reduced shift allocations that could result from this policy, and will they please publish that modelling? Fourthly, why have the Government ignored the clear expert evidence submitted by the Society of London Theatre and UK Theatre to the Public Bill Committee? Finally, does the Minister seriously believe that this legislation embraces inclusion and opportunity for the creative sector, when the sector itself is warning that it will do precisely the opposite?