Business and Planning Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain [V]]

Amendment 77 is also in the names of my noble friends Lord Hendy and Lord Monks, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. It promotes much closer employee-employer co-operation and requires the Secretary of State, within six months of the Act being passed, to lay before Parliament a strategy for employee-employer co-operation with regard to businesses implementing the Act’s provisions. In producing this strategy, the Secretary of State must consult trade unions and other organisations that represent employees, relevant businesses and any other persons the Secretary of State considers appropriate.

Surely the Government cannot possibly object to close partnership between employers, trade unions and —where no unions operate in businesses—employees. Will that not better help keep business running safely, rebuild the economy and support those businesses badly damaged by the Covid-19 crisis? Everyone acknowledges that this crisis is by far the greatest Britain has faced since World War II. Unless the Government extend open arms to trade unions and employees to work in partnership to overcome the crisis, they are disabling themselves and everybody else.

Trade unions have already demonstrated in practical ways their value in helping employers to work through this crisis while ensuring the health and safety of staff and customers. Take, for example, the communications sector, which has been crucial to keeping the nation connected and supporting economic activity through the lockdown. The Communication Workers Union, for which I should declare that I worked for 14 years before being elected a Member of Parliament, has played a critical role in sustaining our postal and telecoms services and helping businesses to open up safely where they were initially forced to close.

They have secured agreements with Royal Mail, British Telecom and a range of other employers on the adequate provision of PPE and social distancing measures, higher levels of protection for riskier front-line roles, the introduction of thorough workplace risk assessments, the safe use of vehicles, home working for office-based staff with suitable equipment, support for the clinically vulnerable and comprehensive safeguards for staff and customers in high street retail outlets before they opened in the middle of June.

The amendment also exemplifies what a missed opportunity the Bill represents. Yes, it provides a range of measures to help businesses develop new ways of working as the country recovers from Covid-19—but what a narrow range, and what tunnel vision. Paragraph 72 of the Explanatory Memorandum reports that representations have been received from the trade union Unite about the difficulties bus and truck drivers face in getting medical reports to keep their driving licences valid. Difficulties are understandable in current conditions, of course; not all today’s tailbacks are on motorways. Some are outside GPs’ surgeries.

However, what neither the Bill nor the Explanatory Notes acknowledge is the call by Unite the Union’s leadership for the Government to involve the country’s 100,000 trade union health and safety representatives in helping with test, track and trace and in finding safer ways of working that deal with the ongoing risks from Covid-19. Independent evidence shows that workplaces where unions are recognised have half the accidents of those where unions are absent. Have the Government even acknowledged Unite’s offer? There is, seemingly, no response to it in the Bill.

Clause 14 is a small step in the direction of helping businesses to adjust to safer ways of working, but what the British economy needs are giant strides towards a bolder objective—more productive ways of working—which is what this amendment is designed to achieve.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy recognised long ago that the way that work is organised and how people are managed are key factors in determining workplace performance results. None of that wider awareness is visible in the Bill. The Covid-19 crisis is also a chance to make workplaces more productive by encouraging closer co-operation at work and by challenging both sides of industry to boost productivity by working in partnership. The Bill, again, fails to grab that chance.

The crisis has shown that many established ways of working are past their sell-by date and that working people often have much more to offer than established working practices allow them to contribute. They are trapped in traditions and wrapped in routines that stifle creativity and dull initiative. Instead of work that they find fulfilling and rewarding, with opportunities for advancement, too many employees feel locked into undemanding humdrum jobs and are prisoners of rigid rules, hierarchical structures and narrow horizons.

The problem stems from both sides of the bargaining table. Too many managers cling to a command- and-control approach, fearful of sharing information with employees and too many union representatives, while talking a good game about teamworking and joint endeavour, although not necessary pursuing it. By working together, unions and employers can deliver big improvements in performance, boosting productivity and profitability, lifting living standards and improving job prospects. For instance, a mutual pledge on co-operation and a problem-solving approach to employment relations can free up management time, promote effective teamworking and improve dignity at work.

An agreed undertaking to find more flexible ways of working that suit both employer and employees can cut customer order lead times, boost motivation and morale and improve the work-life balance. A shared resolve to boost training and personal development can make continuous improvement a reality, ease the take-up of new technology and enhance employability and pay. A mutual commitment to accident prevention and risk avoidance can streamline production, boost reliability and make workplaces safer. Surely that is priority No. 1 in the Covid-19 crisis.

Both management and unions need help if we are to be able to grasp this opportunity to create a new framework for co-operation at work. Something like President Roosevelt’s National Labor Relations Board could even up the balance of power between bosses and workers and encourage union recognition. It could help poorly paid key workers and the nearly 4 million people in insecure jobs to get a fairer deal.

The Government should build on the success of Ministers’ recent sector-by-sector meetings with trade union and business leaders by backing sectoral bargaining. This could put a floor under pay and conditions of employment, raise standards and stop responsible employers being undercut by irresponsible rivals and workers being exploited unfairly. I have every intention of returning to this issue with my noble friends on Report unless, as I hope, the Minister can accept our amendment or at least embed in the Bill a version of it.

[Lord Hendy (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hain for moving this amendment and I agree with everything that he said in support of it. I shall add just one point—the essential modesty of the amendment.

Last month, 30 June marked the 70th anniversary of the ratification by the United Kingdom of Convention No. 98 of the International Labour Organization, one of the two most fundamental conventions in international labour law. It has not merely been expressly ratified by no fewer than 167 nations but is also considered to be part of customary international law. Article 4 of the convention calls on ratifying states to take measures

“to encourage and promote the full development and utilisation of machinery for voluntary negotiation between employers or employers’ organisations and workers’ organisations, with a view to the regulation of terms and conditions of employment by means of collective agreements.”

Article 6 of the 1961 European Social Charter—of the Council of Europe, not the EU—was ratified by the UK 48 years ago and makes similar provision.

In addition to compliance with domestic law, the rule of law requires states to comply with such ratified provisions of international law. As the late Lord Bingham put it in his well-known public lecture on the rule of law in 2006, the existing principle of the rule of law

“requires compliance by the state with its obligations”

in international law—the law that, whether deriving from treaty or international custom and practice, governs the conduct of nations. I do not think that that proposition is contentious.

This modest amendment does not ask, as the UK’s binding international legal obligations do, for machinery for collective bargaining to be established in the present context. It merely asks for the Government to provide a strategy for collective co-operation. It is a point of principle shared by me and noble friends that workers should be involved in important decisions of the businesses that employ them, as that is to the mutual benefit of both, as my noble friend has just pointed out. Many such decisions will arise in relation to this Bill. For myself, I am unable to discern any rational objection to the amendment and I look forward to hearing the Minister on the subject.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain. It underscores the principles of the machinery for voluntary negotiation, partnership and co-operation. Surely the Minister will see fit to support it. It would encourage good work between employers and employees to ensure better productivity, better performance and better output levels, bringing benefit not only to the business and the employer but to the employees, because they would be directly involved in the decision-making.

You have only to look at the work that Unite has been doing in the whole coronavirus operation with test, track and trace. I looked at the German model of work councils, which are very much about voluntary negotiation between the employee and the employer, giving due recognition to the work of both but underscoring the principle of better output and better performance. They boost profitability, lift living standards and enhance the job prospects of all the employees directly involved.

I am very content to support this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Hain because it would bring about better working relationships and better co-operation, which, particularly at a time of a pandemic, are urgently required.

Business and Planning Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I have no doubt that my noble friend Lord Blencathra would indeed go through in the way he suggests. I will be very brief. I am concerned entirely with the issue of pavement licences, and I raised these matters in Committee a week ago. When new constraints are imposed or new freedoms given—even if for only a very brief period, relatively speaking—it is important that we should know precisely where we stand. That is why I have said, in my Amendment 17, that the Secretary of State should have no discretion on whether he prescribes conditions: he must prescribe conditions. I have gone on to say, in my Amendment 18, that he must have regard for those who will be inconvenienced by these new freedoms and conditions, specifically people who are disabled physically or who are blind or partially sighted.

I am afraid I have not received the letter to which my noble friend Lord Blencathra alluded in his speech, and I therefore look forward to hearing what my noble friend the Minister has to say. I agree with both my noble friend Lord Blencathra and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, that this is one occasion—there are few, but this is one—where it might be helpful to have an earlier ministerial intervention than normal.

I want to feel assured at the end of this debate that people who are physically disabled, blind or partially sighted are not going to be inconvenienced by the new freedom that has been granted to people to spill over on to the pavement. In earlier debates, we heard how very dangerous that can sometimes be. We must always have uppermost in our minds the proper protection of those who are not always able to protect themselves and who, perhaps unlike my noble friend Lord Blencathra, do not drive mini tanks fearlessly along the road or on pavements.

[Lord Hendy (Lab) [V]]

I will speak to Amendment 4 and endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Hain said in his powerful speech in support of it. As he pointed out, the striking thing about this amendment is its modesty. All it requires is consultation of relevant trade unions and businesses over the granting of pavement licences. As was pointed out in Committee, for 70 years and three weeks since it ratified ILO Convention 98 on 30 June 1950, the United Kingdom has voluntarily assumed the obligation to encourage and promote collective bargaining. The United Kingdom fortified its commitment to collective bargaining when it ratified a similar obligation in Article 6 of the European Social Charter in 1972.

The need for collective bargaining, particularly at sectoral level, was brought home when we learned of the appalling conditions and pitiful rates of pay—often less than half the national minimum wage—in the sweatshops of the Leicester garment industry. We saw that need again in the agricultural sector, when an outbreak of Covid-19 among workers at a vegetable farm revealed the appalling living and working conditions among the workers there. We know that, in agriculture, conditions and pay are so bad that it was found necessary to fly pickers in from Romania earlier this season, since British workers, even faced with unemployment and the terrors of universal credit, were not prepared to put up with them.

The answer in these and other sectors was explained long ago in the other place by Sir Winston Churchill, who in 1909 introduced legislation to make sectoral collective bargaining mandatory. I will read three sentences from his speech that day:

“It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions.”


He continued:

“where you have what we call sweated trades, you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst”.

He concluded by saying:

“where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”—[Official Report, Commons, 28/4/1909; col. 388.]

Hence, the Trade Boards Act 1909 was introduced and passed.

My noble friend Lord Hain referred to Roosevelt and the New Deal. Part of that was the National Industrial Recovery Act 1933, which introduced sectoral collective bargaining widely in the United States. It is in these circumstances that I stress the modesty of the amendment my noble friend proposes today. There can be no sensible reason not to adopt it, and I commend it to the Minister.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, in supporting the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. This is not only a very sensible and modest amendment; it will provide a new framework for co-operation between businesses and employees, as the noble Lord said. Why not allow employees to have a say over the implementation of pavement licences, as they will be directly impacted upon and charged with the responsibility of ensuring that—shall we say—the letter and spirit of the law is adhered to?

Employees have discharged many responsibilities during the whole Covid pandemic. However, there is absolutely no doubt—and there is evidence-based research to prove—that when employees, employers and businesses co-operate, it boosts performance, production and profitability, lifts living standards and enhances job prospects. We can look to Germany and the role of work councils, which we talked about last week when considering a similar amendment in Committee.

I have no hesitation in supporting this amendment in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Hain, Lord Hendy and Lord Monks. I commend it to your Lordships’ House and ask the Minister to give dutiful consideration to accepting it.