REUL Bill: Trade Unions and Workers’ Rights Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Lord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cormack's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
REUL Bill: Trade Unions and Workers’ Rights
Lord Cormack Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord has a good line in hyperbole but, as normal, he is absolutely wrong. UK employment rights do not depend on EU law. I will give him some examples. UK workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of annual leave; in the EU, it is only four weeks. We provide a year of maternity leave, with the option to convert it to parental leave; the EU minimum is just 14 weeks. Our labour standards are some of the highest in the world. We are proud of that, and it does not depend on what the EU does.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, we placed an arbitrary date on Brexit, and we got the Northern Ireland protocol. Did we not learn the lesson that to place an arbitrary date and say that all this must be done by the end of this year is flying in the face of common sense?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his view on that. I am sure we will have a full debate on the proposed sunset date for regulations. I do not think the system with the Northern Ireland protocol is the same as the Bill.