Employment Rights Bill

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, the purpose of this amendment is to probe the extent to which the new category of seafarers, “GB-linked ships’ crews”, should benefit from other employment rights apart from the one bestowed by the Bill, which gives them a right in relation to consultation over collective redundancies, as a consequence of the P&O Ferries scandal. I understand that there have been discussions between the unions representing these seafarers and the ministerial team. In the light of that, I shall leave it to the Minister to set out the situation. I beg to move.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Having raised these issues at the beginning of Committee, I just want to say that, following the favourable response of the Front Bench to the idea of arranging a meeting at which they can be discussed, I very much look forward—at least, I hope I can—to the reply of my noble friend the Minister.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hendy for moving his amendment.

Amendments 123 and 124 in my name relate to Clause 54, which provides powers to make regulations giving effect to two named international conventions and to give effect to international agreements as they relate to maritime employment. I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee for its thoughtful consideration of these powers, and its recommendation to amend the procedure for new Section 84A(2) from first-time affirmative to affirmative for all uses. I wrote to the committee on 7 July, setting out our response in full.

These amendments will change the parliamentary procedure applicable to regulations made under the power in new Section 84A(2) of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, giving effect to international agreements as they relate to maritime employment. The amendments mean that all uses of the power to give effect to future or unspecified international agreements will now be subject to the affirmative procedure, and not just the first use. They will mean that Parliament has greater oversight of these agreements and amendments to them.

I turn to Amendment 122A tabled by my noble friend Lord Hendy. The amendment would specify that the statutory rights to which shore-based workers in the UK are entitled also apply to ships’ crews working aboard services that enter ports in Great Britain 120 or more times per year, or that operate

“between a place in Great Britain and another place in the United Kingdom”.

The scope of services covered follows the approach taken in Clause 29, where the Government have sought to ensure that those employed aboard these services are captured by the requirement to provide proposed notification of collective redundancy.

I thank my noble friend for this amendment on the application of employment rights to seafarers, and the maritime trade unions for their continuing engagement on these issues. I hope to be able to provide some clarity today, but we can also commit to continuing ongoing discussion about how we can ensure that seafarers are receiving robust protections.

The Government want to see stronger employment rights for seafarers. That is why, in addition to the broader changes to employment rights, we have included a package of maritime-specific measures in this Bill. As my noble friend knows, we are closing the loophole that meant that P&O Ferries could avoid prosecution for failing to provide advance notice of proposed collective redundancies. We are also providing powers for a mandatory seafarers’ charter, which will allow us to set a higher minimum standard for wages and for how long seafarers can spend at sea without a break. This will establish a level playing field that will help prevent the undercutting of working conditions in the way that P&O Ferries sought to do.

The new power to give effect to the Maritime Labour Convention, and other international agreements as they relate to maritime employment, is also important. Where international agreement is needed to improve protections, we can implement those changes.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Davies of Brixton]

264: Schedule 7, page 262, line 27, at end insert—
“Pensions Act 2004
26A Section 259 of the Pensions Act 2004 (Consultation by employers: occupational pension schemes).” Member's explanatory statement
This amendment, together with another amendment to Schedule 7, seeks to include employer obligations to their employees relating to pensions within the scope of legislation subject to enforcement under Part 5.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to come on to the subject of pensions at 10.30 pm. However, I know not to try the patience of my noble friends or even the noble Opposition. In truth, the amendment, although it comes up here and refers to enforcement and the fair work agency, is really about the place of pensions within the Bill. My contention is that pensions are not given adequate consideration, and I am using this as a mechanism to press my noble friend the Minister to expand on how the legislation will reflect on pensions.

Of course, we get the Bill. One wonders how legislators coped before the introduction of “word search”, because there are 300 pages, 157 clauses and 12 schedules; and a use of word search tells us that “pension” appears 19 times in such a massive piece of legislation, and quite a few of those are where it forms part of “suspension”. The Bill fails to give any serious consideration, as far as I can see, to the place of pensions as an important element in the terms and conditions of employment.

That is where I started from. I looked at particular ways that pensions should be addressed in the Bill. The amendments we are considering now—Amendments 264, 265 and 324—are tabled as a sample to press my noble friend to explain.

Amendments 264 and 265 relate to Schedule 7 and enforcement of labour legislation. There is labour legislation on pensions: there are obligations on employers to consult trade unions in certain circumstances—that is covered by Amendment 264. Amendment 265 in effect applies to automatic enrolment, where it is an inherent part of the labour contract that people have that pension. Enforcement agents are going into companies. If they are going in, it seems a wasted opportunity if they do not check for compliance on these particular issues as well as the other issues specified in the Bill. At heart, my amendments are a request for my noble friend to explain whether these issues and pensions more generally should not be included throughout the Bill.

My Amendment 324 appears very late on; it has been promoted from the “miscellaneous and general” part of the Bill. It seeks a definition of “remuneration”, which appears 75 times in the Bill but is not defined anywhere. It could well be defined by other legislation and judgments in the courts, but there seems to be a total lack of consistency. I could point to particular judgments and international standards where remuneration is defined in one way or another, but there is no overall consistency. Yet remuneration is clearly a crucial part of the Bill and there is a lack of clarity about what it means. I really hope that it is obvious; I am raising the issue only because I want the Bill to include pensions. You cannot understand someone’s remuneration if you do not know what pension they are being offered; it is part and parcel of the package. To look at some elements but not pensions seems wrong.

I urge my noble friend to make a positive response that the Bill will be looked at in detail again for places where pensions should have their proper role. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

I always have tremendous respect for the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, in particular his knowledge of pensions, because he, like me, is an actuary. Whereas he is a true actuary, I am just an honorary fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, so I always respect his views.

I am not sure there is very much I can say in intervening between him, his Secretary of State and the Minister. All I will say is that his amendments represent a shift from a consultative culture to a more legalistic and punitive model. That would be a shift at great cost. Like him, I believe that people are entitled to proper pensions and proper security. Like him, I fought on many occasions to ensure that that is an enforceable right.

I do not want to anticipate what the Minister will say, but we have to consider the employer’s perspective. We all want to see businesses offer generous, flexible benefit schemes—things such as pension contributions, healthcare and travel allowances—but if those are brought into tight regulatory definitions and packages, and enforcement frameworks, I worry that some employers might feel discouraged from offering them at all. I await the response of the Minister.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his contribution, and my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton for tabling Amendments 264, 265 and 324.

I respect my noble friend’s concern for upholding rights relating to pensions. The power in Part 2 of Schedule 7 would allow us to extend the fair work agency’s remit to cover enforcement of pensions legislation in the future, but it would not be appropriate to make this expansion to the fair work agency’s remit at this time. Changing how pensions are enforced would be a significant undertaking, requiring careful consideration, consultation and planning, not least regarding how the fair work agency would interact with the current Pensions Regulator. Therefore, I must respectfully resist these amendments.

Amendment 324, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, seeks to ensure that pension arrangements are covered by the definition of remuneration. While I understand my noble friend’s concern here, this amendment is not necessary and its introduction would have far-reaching implications across the Bill. While pension arrangements are already covered by some of the provisions in the Bill, it brings forward issues around sectoral collective arrangements, which I am sure my noble friend would not want to frustrate. So while I appreciate the intentions of my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, I respectfully ask him to withdraw Amendment 264.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his remarks. I am unpersuaded but, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 264 withdrawn.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 73 in my name regarding SMEs and an SSP rebate scheme. I have made a drafting error by calling it four days when it should have been three days, in compliance with the law today.

Occupational health is a key factor in both helping people to stay in work, to try to prevent some of the illnesses, and to get back into work quickly, and for some time it has been a key part of the strategy of a successful business to do that. But I am also very conscious that SMEs in particular are not always well displaced currently to access, which is why expanding that capability has been a key part of DWP’s more recent strategies, which the present Administration have continued.

Sickness rates are significantly lower in the private sector than in the public sector, but what is common to both is that there is an increasing prevalence of the primary reason for sickness pay: people being off sick due to mental well-being. I am conscious that this is often not an easy situation to challenge or interact with if you do not have the experience to do so, and that is why increasing occupational health is needed.

Why is occupational health so relevant to this? It used to be the case that with statutory sick pay you could reclaim from the Government the amount of money that you had paid out. You might have paid out a lot more—100% of earnings or similar—but all businesses used to be able to get a rebate for the statutory sick pay element. I know that because I used to fill out the claims myself when I was working in industry. Over time that was whittled down, and it was finally abolished in 2014. Instead, the Government at the time created the Health and Work Service, which was designed to be referred to by SMEs for people who have been ill for a few weeks—again, almost as a provision facilitated by government.

One of the challenges is that this is continuing to be part of an issue. Many businesses, particularly small businesses—certainly in submissions made to me—are particularly worried about this starting from day one of people being unwell. As a consequence, it is important that we should investigate the opportunity to get a rebate scheme for SMEs to try to keep the status quo as it is today.

It is in the interests of government to support SMEs. As we have already heard, the statistics show that, unfortunately, payroll employment is falling. When in office I was very pleased that we saw it increasing. Indeed, I am certain, in wanting the Government to succeed in their ambition to get to 80% employment rate, that they need SMEs to be taking on people to work. As I have explained, I do not think the Bill will help with that, but one modest way to go towards alleviating some of the issues would be to introduce a straightforward rebate scheme for SMEs.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett, and in support of more being done on statutory sick pay. I welcome the Government’s commitment to strengthen statutory sick pay by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period, but they must go further to ensure that people with mental health problems have a secure safety net when they need time off work, and a pathway back into work when they recover.

The UK has one of the least generous sick pay schemes in the OECD in terms of rates and length. It forces people to remain in work while they are unwell, which risks them becoming more unwell and eventually falling out of work. Because statutory sick pay is inadequate, people who rely on it often carry on going into work when they are unwell. This can risk them becoming more unwell, to the point where they fall out of employment altogether. We need a sick pay system that provides real security, is more compassionate, gives people the time they need to get better and supports them to return to work when they are ready.

Reforming statutory sick pay is beneficial to the economy, to businesses and to people with mental health problems. As my noble friend has emphasised, presenteeism—going to work when unwell—is costing UK employers £24 billion a year, according to figures produced by Deloitte. It reduces productivity and business competitiveness, as well as aggravating a person’s illness. Introducing a flexible statutory sick pay model that allows for partial payments alongside wages would help people to gradually return to work after a period of sickness, or allow them to reduce their hours when needed without being signed off completely. Not only is this beneficial for the employer, as employees are able to return to work sooner part-time, but it keeps the employee connected to their workplace and reduces the likelihood that they will fall out of employment altogether.

Extending the length of statutory sick pay being paid from 28 weeks to 52 weeks will enable more people to stay in employment, reduce rehiring costs for businesses and prevent people falling out of employment and needing support from the benefits system. Ultimately, we need to see a higher level of statutory sick pay, and I see no reason why, when you are sick, you should get any less than the national minimum wage.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, my main concern with the changes to statutory sick pay in this Bill is the impact on smaller businesses, which is why I support the amendments in this group in the names of my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, which provide for rebates for SMEs. Of the two amendments, I prefer that of my noble friend Lady Coffey because it clearly undoes the harms that Clause 10 will cause.

I could not find much data on how much businesses actually pay in statutory sick pay, but I suspect that, unless an employer is unlucky enough to get an employee who has long-duration sickness, most will be paying relatively little at present, because absences are mainly for less than four days. What the data does show is that most sickness absences are for minor illnesses, which are unlikely to exceed three days. The average days lost per worker per year in 2023, which is the most recent data I could find, is just short of eight days. Among smaller and micro-businesses, that falls to around five days.

Extending the days for which payment is made is likely to increase the number of days lost to sickness, as the current incentive to work if the illness is mild will simply disappear. The Government say they have no idea what the behavioural impact of the changes will be—whether positive or negative—but I am prepared to bet that there will be far more short-duration absences, which will qualify for statutory sick pay, than there were before.

If I am right that most SMEs do not currently pay much in the way of statutory sick pay, the changes in the Bill will straightforwardly increase their costs. An average small business of between 10 and 49 employees has about 20 employees, which means that the average for a small business will be to pay for at least 100 days of sickness that they do not currently have, which would amount to around £2,000 in additional costs each year, even if no additional sick days were taken, which I doubt. That is not a huge amount per business, but it adds up to many billions of pounds across the whole economy. It also, of course, comes on top of the jobs tax and the very significant increases in the national minimum wage, which leads me to the likely real consequences of this change on top of the others. Put simply, SMEs will not hire workers unless they absolutely have to. We can already see evidence of that from the surveys of smaller businesses and in the weakening labour market—my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom gave us an up-to-date view on that. It is only going to get worse.

Furthermore, all those groups that we as a nation want to get back into work, in particular those who are long-term sick, will simply not be attractive to employers. Any hint of an illness record in a job applicant’s background will count against them, because no employer would want to take on the additional costs that would automatically come with that employee.

I am sure that I do not need to remind the Committee that SMEs employ nearly half the private sector work- force. A reluctance to hire among SMEs will kill growth and opportunities for many of the groups that we need to be employed in this country. There is a simple way to solve this problem, set out in Amendments 73 and 74. The Government would be wise to go down that route.

Employment Rights Bill

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morrisey, on raising an extremely important issue which I hope we will pursue in detail during the progress of the Bill. I welcome the Bill, and I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on her introduction of this important, excellent and timely legislation. I could spend my whole four minutes pointing out the Bill’s excellent content; I hope she will forgive me for raising three issues which the Committee will need to look at closely.

First, I will go through the Bill line by line, as they say, to check that pensions are given their due place within the legislation. Secondly, on statutory sick pay, I urge all noble Members to read the excellent briefing from Mind pointing out the importance of statutory sick pay in tackling the scourge of mental ill-health, particularly the way it should be structured to facilitate return to work, removing cliff edges.

The third issue which we will need to look at carefully in Committee is Part 3, the section on collective bargaining. Although the word “negotiating” appears in the introduction to each clause, I still need to be convinced that the provisions within each one deliver the grounds for proper negotiating. It is quite clear that it does not fulfil the definition of “free collective bargaining”, and we are going to need to look at that in some detail.

I heard the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, at the beginning of the debate. I want to contest the idea that it is only those who have been successful in business who know anything about how the economy works. I stand on this side of the Chamber surrounded by giants of the trade union movement. As a former lowly assistant at the TUC, I am staggered by the quantity of expertise and knowledge that is available to speak in support of this Bill.

Of course, it is not just the general secretaries or the senior officials but the whole layers of paid and lay officials who work on behalf of their members. That does not get the publicity that it should, but they work tirelessly on behalf of their members. It is that experience in companies, in undertaking day-to-day industrial relations, which has informed this Bill. That is why it will be a success. People suggest that it is going to be against economic growth, but economic growth depends on workers. It depends on them having good conditions of work and security—that is why the Bill is in favour of economic growth.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill and thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for her clear introduction. It represents a significant improvement on the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill that we had such fun discussing last year under the previous Government. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, for his handling of the Bill at that stage and look forward to continuing these discussions.

However, there are some concerns on which it would be good to have some reassurance from the Government, so I welcome the opportunity to discuss potential improvements during the Bill’s passage through the House. It is also worth bearing in mind the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, that this is a fast-moving field and there is a continual danger of fighting the last war. I think that is certainly the case in relation to AI. So, time in Committee will have to be spent considering whether there is more that needs to be done because of the way the world has developed.

I am pleased that the Bill no longer covers information for social security purposes. I am not so pleased that it is going to reappear through the separate fraud, error and debt Bill. That is, of course, a discussion for another day; we have not seen it yet. My Government announced it two months ago and we have not yet seen it, so fingers crossed they are having second thoughts.

My prime concern with the Bill, and where I want to ensure that there are adequate safeguards, is individuals’ health data and what the provisions in the Bill mean for patients and for the public. It is notable that one of the key stated purposes of the Bill is to

“build an NHS fit for the future”,

which is of course one of the Government’s five missions.

My noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, who is not in his place, set out the issues very clearly. Nevertheless, I will repeat them, because I think that the point is so important. We have the problem that data regulation can slow down the pace of data sharing, increase risk aversion and make research and innovation more difficult. That is all true—it is true of all data, but particularly of health data. However, patients and the public rightly expect high standards for data protection, particularly when it comes to their health data, and I am worried that the effects of the Bill are not as strong as might be wished. This will need close examination during its passage through Committee. To get this wrong would damage public trust, negatively impact patient care, complicate the running of the health service and have a harmful effect on academic research and our life sciences industry. We must do our best to ensure that any concerns are misplaced—I hope that I am wrong.

Under current data protection laws there are transparency obligations, which means that information needs to be provided to the data subject that explains the use of their data. Reusing data for a different purpose is currently possible, but under limited circumstances—for example, the UK Health Security Agency. The main point of concern with the Bill, however, is with Clause 77, which, in the words of the BMA,

“will water down the transparency of information to patients”.

I suggest that we have to take the concerns of the BMA most seriously on this, which I am highlighting, but also on the other points it has made. What we have is a situation where data collected for one purpose can be reused for scientific research. In those circumstances, there is not necessarily a requirement to tell the data subjects about it. The definition of “scientific research” is very wide. It can be commercial or non-commercial. It can be funded publicly or privately. It also covers technological development, which is broadening the idea of scientific research.

Clearly, this is thought to be a good thing. It will remove barriers for valuable health research—timely availability of data is something important when you are undertaking research—and it is always possible that, during the course of the research, you can identify things which were not in the original proposal. All that is right, but there is a risk of data being reused for activities that data subjects might not have supported, have no control over and have no knowledge that it is happening. This feels like it contradicts the “no surprises” Caldicott principle. It is unclear to me at this stage who exactly is going to have oversight of all the data reuses to check that they are ethical and to check that the right standards are being applied.

The consequence is a real risk of the loss of patient and public trust in data use and sharing within the health sector and more widely. To reiterate, patients and the public rightly expect high standards of data processing to protect their confidential health data. I have serious concerns that the Bill, in its current state, runs the risk of diluting those standards and protections.

The underlying policy priority for the Bill, as I understand it, is to stimulate innovation through broadening the definition of “scientific research”. However, there is concern—for example, that expressed by the Ada Lovelace Institute—that, as currently written, the provisions in the Bill are susceptible to misuse. We must ensure that the Bill explicitly forbids the mass reuse of personal data scraped from the internet or acquired through social media for AI product development under the auspices of “scientific research”, with the potential for considerable public backlash. Voluntary commitments from the tech industry to protect people from the potential harms of AI models are welcome, of course, but are not good enough. Only hard rules enshrined in law can incentivise the developers and deployers of AI to comply, and empower the regulators to act.

Another unknown at this stage—I hope my noble friend can guide us here—is how far the Bill diverges from EU standards and potentially puts at risk the free flow of personal data between the EU and the UK. This free flow is critical to medical research and innovation and must be maintained.

I am also concerned about the issue of making data anonymous. It is incredibly difficult to make medical data anonymous. It is valueless in most cases if you do not know how old the subject is or their pre-existing conditions, and as soon as you have that sort of data it is open to manipulation. I believe that to counter those problems we need to expand the use of so-called trusted research environments. This is a well-developed technique in which Britain is the leader. I believe it should be a legal requirement in this field. The Bill does not go that far. It is certainly something we should discuss in Committee.

This is a system where the information—the subject’s data—is kept within a locked box. It stays within the box. The medical researchers, who are crucial, come up with their program, using a sandbox, which is then applied to the locked-away data. The researchers would not get the data, they would just get the results of their inquiry. They do not go anywhere near the data. This level of protection is required to achieve public support. The outcome of the research in these circumstances is identical but the subjects’ medical information—crucially, but not only, their genetic information—is kept away and kept secure.

Finally, another point of concern that has been mentioned by a number of speakers is automated decision-making. The Bill removes the general prohibition on automated decision-making, placing responsibility on individuals to enforce their rights rather than on companies to demonstrate why automation is permissible. Even with the new safeguards being introduced, people will struggle to get meaningful explanations about decisions that will deeply affect their lives and will have difficulty exercising their right to appeal against automated decisions when the basis on which the decisions have been made is kept from them.

With those concerns, which I am sure we will discuss in Committee, I support the Bill.