Employment Rights Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare my membership and financial interests in trade unions, as I have done throughout the passage of the Bill.

I thank Members from both sides of the House for their contributions to yesterday’s debate. I look forward to another good debate today as we work together to ensure that the Bill works in practice for workers and businesses of all sizes across the whole country. Similarly to yesterday, I will use my opening remarks to explain to the House the amendments put forward by the Government in parts 4 and 5 of the Bill.

The Government are moving a number of amendments that represent a significant step forward in modernising our industrial framework. Amendments to clause 50 will strengthen the provisions of trade union access rights. They will ensure that the framework functions effectively and delivers on our commitment to modernise working practices. They will streamline access provisions by allowing a single Central Arbitration Committee member to make a fast-track decision on whether access should take place. In making a decision about whether it is a single person or a panel that will consider the application, the CAC will be required to have regard to the complexity of the case, as well as whether the proposed terms of the agreement are model terms. Various criteria will be prescribed in secondary legislation following consultation.

The amendments will also clarify that supporting a worker is a legitimate purpose for access, and they will provide a power to bring forward secondary legislation to make further provision as to how the CAC is to determine the level of penalty fines for non-compliance with access agreements. They will expand access rights, enabling access agreements to cover communicating with workers in ways that do not involve entering premises—for example, connecting digitally using technology—therefore modernising our antiquated industrial relations framework.

New clause 39, new schedule 2 and associated amendments insert new provisions into the Bill, replacing clause 51, and will address unfair practices and access arrangements in the recognition and derecognition process. The amendments will extend the application of unfair practice protections to the point at which the CAC accepts an application for recognition or derecognition, and will ensure that employers cannot increase the size of the bargaining unit for the purposes of the recognition application after the application is made. That will end the deliberate gaming of the system that we have seen in recent years.

The amendments will also delete the second test for determining an unfair practice complaint, which currently requires the CAC to consider how an alleged unfair practice may have affected workers’ votes in the recognition, or derecognition, ballots. They will extend the time limit in which unfair practices can be reported after the ballot closes to five working days. They will ensure that an employer cannot recognise a non-independent trade union after receiving a request for voluntary recognition from an independent trade union as a means of thwarting the independent trade union’s subsequent application to the CAC for statutory recognition.

We will bring forward and formalise the process for agreeing access arrangements between the employer and the union during the recognition and derecognition process. These amendments will streamline the recognition process, reduce opportunities for unfair practices to occur, and ensure that unions that seek recognition have a fair and transparent statutory route to enable them to do so.

Today’s amendments on industrial action rules will reduce the costly, complex and bureaucratic requirements on unions in relation to industrial action and ballot notices, while ensuring that employers have the necessary notice and information to prepare for industrial action. New clause 42 will simplify notice to employers of industrial action ballots and industrial action, reducing the chance of spurious challenge and making the information required more proportionate. New clause 43 will extend industrial action mandates from six to 12 months, reducing the need for repeated ballots. Amendments to clause 61 will mean that the notice period for industrial action will be set at 10 days, giving businesses time to prepare and safeguarding workers’ rights. Amendments to clause 58 will mean that the 50% ballot turnout threshold repeal will be subject to commencement on a date to be set in secondary legislation.

Turning to political fund ballots, new clause 40 and associated amendments remove the requirement for unions to hold a ballot every 10 years on maintaining a political fund. Instead, unions will provide reminders about members’ right to opt out every 10 years, ensuring transparency without imposing costly and time-consuming ballots.

The Bill will bring together the various agencies and enforcement bodies that enforce employment rights in the new Fair Work Agency, so that where employers are not doing what is right, a simplified and strengthened enforcement system will protect workers and ensure justice in the workplace. The Fair Work Agency needs the right tools to do the job. A series of amendments form a package that will give the Fair Work Agency the tools that it needs to hold all employers to account more effectively. That is fair for workers and businesses.

The Government are moving amendments to introduce new powers that are key to the Fair Work Agency’s core enforcement role. New clauses 44 to 56 create a civil penalty regime. Under the regime, enforcement officers will be able to issue notices of underpayment, and impose a penalty on employers who have underpaid individuals, in breach of statutory pay rights that are within the remit of the Fair Work Agency. As a result, the agency may be able to help workers get the money they are owed more quickly than if they had to go through an employment tribunal. Where proceedings before the tribunal are necessary, we want the Fair Work Agency to be able to support individuals and ensure that the tribunal’s time is used as effectively as possible. New clause 57 does that by enabling the agency to bring proceedings before the employment tribunal if individuals are unwilling or unable to. Under clause 58, the agency can also offer advice and assistance to individuals bringing employment-related cases before the courts or tribunals.

The Government are also moving amendments to upgrade the powers that the Fair Work Agency will need to tackle labour abuse effectively. The Bill Committee heard from stakeholders, including Eleanor Lyons, the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, about bad practices in the social care sector. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority is prevented from investigating many cases because they do not meet the modern slavery threshold. The Fraud Act 2006 covers situations that amount to labour abuse but fall short of being modern slavery. Today we are bringing forward two amendments that will deliver the Government’s commitment to give the Fair Work Agency the strong powers that it needs to tackle labour exploitation. We will enable Fair Work Agency enforcement officers to use their powers to investigate such cases, helping the agency to protect the most vulnerable in the workforce. We will also give enforcement officers the ability to issue special warnings following arrests. In practice, that means telling suspects that if they refuse to answer questions about certain items or their whereabouts, that could be used against them in court.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

Only 21 employers have been prosecuted for national minimum wage violations since 2007. The measures that the Minister is bringing forward will improve enforcement. He touched on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but he did not address the points made in the debate yesterday. Will he use this opportunity to say more about the Government’s intention to update the Modern Slavery Act?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will start with my declaration of interests, as a former member of the Confederation of British Industry and a current member of the trade union Unison.

I will try to introduce a few points of consensus to the debate. I am old enough to remember when Conservative Members such as the former Member for Harlow were writing pamphlets for think-tanks such as Demos with titles like “Stop the union-bashing; why conservatives should embrace the trade union movement”. Of course, that was an echo of something that Harold Macmillan famously used to say in the 1950s: “We used to think that we could not have a modern industrial society without trade unions. I still think that.”

I think we would all benefit from a little acknowledgment that industrial relations in this country have not been in a good place. In 2023 more days were lost to strikes than at any point in the past 30 years, and the Office for National Statistics calculated at the back end of 2022 that 2.5 million days had been lost to strike action. That is not a record that any one of us in this House should be proud of. It is incumbent on all of us to modernise industrial relations in this country, so that we are not divided in the workplace in this way.

As such, I welcome the measures in this Bill. I hope that the Minister will seize the moment—not only the fact that we have the Bill, but the advent of an industrial strategy that will introduce governance arrangements that get businesses and unions around the table to talk about economic growth in our country. That is a big opportunity; it is a big moment in which we can bring our country together around a modern industrial strategy. I hope that once the Minister has got this Bill done and has had a little bit of a rest—maybe gone on holiday for a bit—he will think about how the Government will then publish a modern industrial strategy for the future, backed by the restoration of some of the data that we used to have in this country, such as the workplace employee survey. We had that until about 2012, when it was stopped. We need to be more thoughtful about harmony in the workplace, because that is in the interests of the constituents we serve.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

The right hon. Member used the term “modernising industrial relations”, which sounds a little like a euphemism. Taking him at his word, however, is he not therefore surprised that the pay rises that have been given to doctors, train drivers and a number of other unions since this Government came in have not been accompanied by any requirement for increased productivity? If we are to have modernised industrial relations, surely the increased pay that unions want should be combined with the productivity gains that this country needs.

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Member will no doubt have heard the remarks made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the weekend. I suspect that the hon. Member, like every Member of this House, will see some pretty radical steps taken in the comprehensive spending review to improve the efficiency of the civil service. Of course, the civil service grew very significantly in the years after covid, and now it has to be reinvented for new times. I am confident that those productivity gains will come.

My second point was to draw the House’s attention to some of the evidence taken by our Select Committee. That evidence is contained in our report, which I commend to all hon. Members. What struck me about the evidence we heard from the most productive firms in the country, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, was that those are world-beating companies—some of the most productive companies in our country—and what characterises the workplace arrangements of all of those companies is that they have very long-standing, robust and deep partnerships with good trade unions. Those trade unions help make decisions, help de-conflict things and help businesses thrive and succeed. That is why stronger collective rights are important.

We also took evidence from companies where, I am afraid to say, there was not that harmony, such as Amazon. It has had to call ambulances to its warehouses 1,400 times in just five years. We on the Committee received whistleblower evidence from workers who were literally having to urinate into bottles because they did not dare take time out from their tasks to go to the bathroom and back. We heard all kinds of whistleblower complaints about injuries being sustained, and pay is rising much more slowly than sales.

When we had executives from that company in front of us, they could not—or would not—tell the Committee why strike action had been taken by workers in their firm. If a company executive cannot explain to a Select Committee of this House why so many of their workers are on strike, that is not a story of harmony or a recipe for success. That is why the measures that the Minister has brought forward in this Bill to improve the opportunities for trade unions to organise—in a way that was recommended by the former Member for Harlow, actually—are a good thing.

The Minister has gone some way in recognising recommendations made by our Committee, such as improving the window in which complaints can be heard beyond 24 hours, bringing in template access agreements and strengthening the role of the Central Arbitration Committee in dispute resolution. There is just one further step that I suggest, which is the subject of amendment 282. We suggest that access rights for trade unions should include digital access rights, because in the modern workplace, of which Amazon is a case in point, there simply is not an opportunity for workers to get information about the opportunities to join a trade union and make a fair choice one way or the other in the way that there could be in the modern economy.

My final point is about enforcement. The first factory Act passed by this House was the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802. It was celebrated in parliamentary history as an Act that failed because there was no enforcement attached to it. Enforcement of this Bill is essential if it is to succeed, but labour market enforcement today is much too weak. Just 21 employers have been prosecuted for minimum wage enforcement since 2007, despite the fact that we all know that abuses of this sort are taking place in our constituencies.

Spending on labour market enforcement has been flat since 2014, and we are well off the International Labour Organisation target of one labour market inspector for every 10,000 workers. New clause 82 in my name would require the Secretary of State to set out a road map for reaching that ILO target, for ensuring there is greater use of penalties where appropriate, and for much stronger partnerships between the Home Office, the police and the Fair Work Agency. We cannot have a situation in this country where the best of British firms are being undercut by the worst labour market practice.

In conclusion, I welcome this Bill. Some of the amendments that have been tabled would improve it, but ultimately we have to remember that if we want to create a genuinely pro-business, pro-worker economy, the measures in this Bill are long overdue.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.