Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, and my noble friend Lady O’Grady on their excellent maiden speeches.

As a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I of course agree with its report on the Bill and that of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Both reports reflect the statement of principles in their 2021 reports, Democracy Denied? and Government by Diktat.

I want to focus on one aspect of the Bill: the sunset clause which facilitates the removal of our employment rights without parliamentary scrutiny, as there will be no draft legislation to scrutinise. Twice in recent weeks, my noble friend Lord Woodley has asked whether the Minister will retain the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. The Minister declined to say. If he sits tight and does nothing, that important suite of rights will evaporate on New Year’s Day and the noble Lord, Lord Woodley, will not be able to oppose, amend or even debate it.

The Minster claimed on 23 January that:

“UK employment rights do not depend on EU law.”—[Official Report, 23/1/23; col. 3.]


He repeated the claim on 1 February. The truth is that some do not but most do. My noble friends Lady O’Grady, Lady Crawley and Lord Monks have mentioned some. I will mention some others. The right to a safe place of work, system of work, safe equipment and competent colleagues is a homegrown common law right originating in 1837 and articulated in the case of Wilsons & Clyde Coal v English in 1938.

The Safety Representatives and Safety Committees Regulations were made under our domestic Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. Their provenance was one of the recommendations of the Piper Alpha disaster inquiry. However, the Health and Safety (Consultation with Employees) Regulations, which make similar provisions about safety representatives and safety committees where no union is recognised were made under the European Communities Act to implement EU law. In fact, most employment rights and health and safety are EU law.

I will give some examples to illustrate the scale of this. We are talking about regulations on: management of health and safety, workplace health and safety, work equipment, PPE, manual handling, display screen equipment, carcinogens, biological agents, construction, safety signs, pregnant women, drilling, mining, chemical agents, dangerous substances, explosive atmospheres, fishing vessels, ionising radiation, lifts, machinery, biocidal products, major hazards, transport, working time, work at height, temporary and mobile worksites, explosive atmospheres, young persons, physical agents, noise, vibration, and offshore installation safety cases.

Clause 1(4)(a) of this Bill will sweep away regulations made under the European Communities Act. But the regulations I have mentioned will survive because they are made under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. The fate of regulations made under both Acts such as the Control of Asbestos Regulations is not clear. The answer, however, is academic. All these statutory instruments will be caught by Clause 1(4)(b) since they were made to implement EU law, whatever their statutory foundation.

Consequently, all the Minister has to do is to sit on his hands and all these vital protections hitherto enjoyed by our 30 million workers will disappear in a puff of smoke without parliamentary scrutiny. That is unacceptable and also appears to be a flouting of the obligations we undertook to maintain and implement health and safety laws under Articles 386 to 388 and 399 of the trade and co-operation agreement.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

My Lords, I support every word just spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, and earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher.

On the generality of the issues raised by this group of amendments, I say very gently to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, that he might like to consider whether his intervention earlier damaged the Government’s case rather more than assisting it. I have been involved, in one way or another, with the processes of this institution now for more than half a century. I have to say that his description of delegated legislation, and the implications of Parliament handing it, is not one I recognise.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, this Bill is objectionable both in form and in content. As to form, I cannot possibly improve on the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. Like her, I have been a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and I absolutely support and uphold the principles that it has enunciated, in particular in relation to this Bill.

There is one point that I could add to that, which is that we have had discussions this morning about how long it would take to draft, introduce and debate statutory instruments to replace those EU-derived laws which are sought to be removed. Let me just point out that the sunset clause means that, if the Minister decides not to introduce a statutory instrument to preserve those rights, they will disappear without any debate whatever. They will just simply evaporate.

As to content, my concern is with workers’ rights. I have to declare that I have spent most of the past 45 years of practice at the Bar dealing with workers’ rights. I want to make a few very short points. First, all the labour law rights, workers’ rights, employment rights—call them what you will—that we are concerned with in the United Kingdom are UK law. Whatever their derivation, whatever their provenance, it is UK law that we are talking about. Let me remind the House that many of the laws that we have, not derived necessarily from the EU, also fulfil other international legal obligations deriving from the International Labour Organization or from the European Social Charter and the European Convention on Human Rights, which are both instruments of the Council of Europe and have nothing whatever to do with the EU.

For example, our unfair dismissal law satisfies ILO and European Social Charter obligations. The protection in Section 146 of the Trade Union Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, the protection for trade union activists against discrimination for trade union activity, has been moulded by both the ILO jurisprudence and a particular decision of the European Court of Human Rights interpreting Article 11 of the European convention—I refer to Wilson and Palmer v the United Kingdom. Likewise the protection of our right to strike fulfils clear obligations under ILO convention 87, Article 6.4 of the European Social Charter and Article 8 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. All these are treaties and particular provisions which have been specifically ratified by the United Kingdom.

When a lawyer is consulted by a worker or employer on the subject of employment rights because some problem, dispute or issue has arisen, the lawyer does not look to see what the provenance of the law is; the lawyer looks at what UK law has to say about the problem. Let me give the Committee a hypothetical example—I am sure I have done many of these cases in the past. A worker falls off scaffolding at height and is injured. They want to sue. They sue on the basis, of course, of clear, homespun English common law—the failure to provide a safe place of work and a safe system of work, part of UK common law since Wilsons and Clyde Coal v English in 1938—but they also rely on the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations and the Work at Height Regulations which originated from EU directives in what was known as “the six pack” in 1992.

Let me give the Committee one other example from my own experience. Six years ago, I represented the National Union of Mineworkers over the closure of the last deep mine pit in the United Kingdom at Kellingley. The dispute was over the compensation payable to the redundant miners. Of course, they were entitled to their redundancy pay and, indeed, an agreed enhancement. Their redundancy pay derived clearly from UK law. There is no EU input into redundancy payment, which has been part of our law since the Redundancy Payments Act 1965. However, they also claimed because they said—and were ultimately proved right—that there had been inadequate consultation with the union over the closure of that pit and the laying off of all those men. That derives from Section 188 of the Employment Rights Act, the provenance for which is EU law. Is the Minister going to tell us that that protection and that requirement for consultation before collective redundancy—the noble Lord, Lord Fox, referred to P&O Ferries, and that was the law that P&O accepted that it had broken in that case—is going to be repealed? Or perhaps it is simply to be a subject on which the Minister will not introduce any protective statutory instrument or further legislation but will simply sit on his hands and it will disappear on 31 December this year.

We are debating Amendment 1 at the moment, but Amendments 2, 17, 21, 23—which the noble Lord, Lord Fox, referred to—and 25, and Amendment 40 in the name of my noble friend Lord Collins, set out a raft of employment laws which those who tabled those amendments seek to protect. They are just a few of the employment laws which have a provenance from the EU. It might be recalled that, at Second Reading, I identified a whole raft of health and safety laws which fall into that category. There are others which have not so far been identified, one of which is, of course, the Section 188 to which I referred to a moment ago.

Those seeking to preserve specific rights, as the amendments this morning are seeking to do, are faced with a dilemma of trying to identify what rights need protection when faced with a blanket sunset clause which will remove the whole lot unless protection is given. As my noble friend Lady O’Grady and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, have intimated, it should be incumbent on the Government to identify what is proposed to be repealed and what the justification for it might be. I call on the Minister to do that in his speech and tell us what the Government are going to get rid of. The fact is that those who voted for Brexit, for good reasons, no doubt, surely did not vote for the removal of all these rights in the workplace or the uncertainty about whether those rights would subsist after 31 December 2023.

There is one final matter before I sit down, which is a point alluded to by my noble friend Lady O’Grady. The trade and co-operation agreement that was ratified by the United Kingdom in 2021 includes two articles, Article 387 and Article 399, which require the United Kingdom to preserve certain rights guaranteed by international treaties which it has ratified and to implement them. There is an enforcement mechanism if the United Kingdom does not do those things. I tell the Committee that the European Parliament and the European TUC are already urging the European Commission to initiate that enforcement mechanism by reason of this very Bill that we are discussing today. It does not add to the reputation of the United Kingdom that we should already be breaching a treaty that we ratified only two years ago.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, could I raise one point on delay? I am trying to visualise a situation in which officials are considering a particular set of regulations—let us not identify them—that are complicated. Therefore, the possibility of delaying a decision on those regulations is under way. We get to 30 December 2023: no statutory instrument has been laid, because they are still considering whether to delay consideration. How is this to be considered “scrutinised by the House”? There will be nothing there to scrutinise—there will be no statutory instrument—and the House will be thinking that this set of regulations will disappear on 31 December.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I will give my noble friend the Minister a couple of thoughts to take away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 27 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I have always had great reservations about extending the sunset clause by any time at all, and I am quite surprised that nobody has mentioned this. The Bill gives the Government astronomical powers to use secondary legislation not only to amend EU law but to create completely new laws. I have great worries about doing this for any longer than is absolutely necessary. We have to think very carefully about whether we want to extend this period at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Benyon, has said—at least, it has been attributed to him— that, by default, if we cannot think what else we are going to do with these laws, we will keep them. If the Government keep just to the sunset clause of the end of this year, they will have to keep virtually everything—I do not know why anybody has an argument with that—and they can then revise it under primary legislation later if we do not have this extension at all. We have to very seriously think about this.

The real solution to all this is, of course, Amendment 44 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, which says that we must have a sifting system to decide what we do with all this legislation. An awful lot of it can go through under secondary legislation, particularly if we are keeping it, but, at the same time, some bits of legislation will make major changes to EU law, and that should be done under primary legislation. If we have that as a sifting system—I am not sure I agree with the mechanism that he suggests, but I agree in principle with his amendment—all this falls by the side, because we then have a system where all this can be dealt with. We can extend the period beyond the end of this year and it can all be dealt with sensibly like that. As long as we are viewing this amendment on its own, I certainly could not support it and would advocate for saying that we should have sudden death at the end of this year, concentrate the minds of everybody and either keep this law or get rid of it, but do not muck about with it for endless years to come.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

I shall speak to Amendment 63, to which I added my name to those of the three noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly, Lady McIntosh and Lady Finlay. Amendment 63 would protect health and safety by requiring a health and safety assessment of each piece of legislation which will, or may be, repealed or revoked by the Bill. I shall confine my comments this evening to a subset of legislation which might have an impact on health and safety, and that is the law relating to health and safety at work. Obviously, I support the arguments so eloquently advanced by the noble Baronesses, but I should like to advance a different argument. It is a matter that has been raised in debates on the Bill a number of times, but in general terms: the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. I should like to deal with that specifically in relation to health and safety at work.

I shall read to the Committee the relevant words of the trade and co-operation agreement, beginning with Article 386. It is only a few sentences; no one need fear that I shall keep them here for hours. Article 386.1 states:

“For the purposes of this Chapter, ‘labour and social levels of protection’ means the levels of protection provided overall in a Party’s law and standards in each of the following areas”.


It sets out a number of areas, of which paragraph (b) is

“occupational health and safety standards”.

Article 387.2 states:

“A Party shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, its labour and social levels of protection below the levels in place at the end of the transition period, including by failing to effectively enforce its law and standards.”


So the United Kingdom has signed up in a treaty to not weakening or reducing its occupational health and safety standards in a manner which might affect trade or investment. Bearing in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, said earlier this evening about the objective of the Bill being to reduce costs—one would add, in order to make British industry more competitive—it is clear that this article is engaged.

There is just one more article to which I draw attention, Article 399.5, which says:

“Each Party commits to implementing all the ILO Conventions that the United Kingdom and the Member States have respectively ratified and the different provisions of the European Social Charter that, as members of the Council of Europe, the Member States and the United Kingdom have respectively accepted”.


There, the commitment of the United Kingdom is the implementation of ILO conventions and European Social Charter provisions ratified by the UK. I can assist on what those are in relation to occupational health and safety; there are only three passages that I need to share with your Lordships. First, there is ILO Convention No. 187, the Promotional Framework for Occupational Safety and Health Convention 2006, which was ratified by the United Kingdom. Article 2 of it states:

“Each Member—


each member state, that is—

“which ratifies this Convention shall promote continuous improvement of occupational safety and health to prevent occupational injuries, diseases and deaths, by the development, in consultation with the most representative organizations of employers and workers, of a national policy, national system and national programme.”

Article 3 says:

“Each Member shall promote a safe and healthy working environment by formulating a national policy … Each Member shall promote and advance, at all relevant levels, the right of workers to a safe and healthy working environment … In formulating its national policy, each Member, in light of national conditions and practice and in consultation with the most representative organizations of employers and workers, shall promote basic principles such as assessing occupational risks or hazards; combating occupational risks or hazards at source; and developing a national preventative safety and health culture that includes information, consultation and training.”


Article 4 says:

“The national system for occupational safety and health shall include among others … laws and regulations, collective agreements where appropriate, and any other relevant instruments on occupational safety and health”.


The European Social Charter is even clearer. Article 3, which was specifically ratified by the United Kingdom, on

“The right to safe and healthy working conditions”,


states:

“With a view to ensuring the effective exercise of the right to safe and healthy working conditions, the Contracting Parties undertake … to issue safety and health regulations … to provide for the enforcement of such regulations by measures of supervision … to consult, as appropriate, employers’ and workers’ organisations on measures intended to improve industrial safety and health.”


It is quite clear that, if the current raft of provisions on health and safety at work, some of which I listed at Second Reading, is revoked or diminished, we will be in breach of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The only way we can avoid that is by the Government exempting health and safety at work in the same way as they propose to exempt the financial sector through Amendment 45. Will the Minister give that assurance?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, we have had almost an hour on this topic.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, also in the interests of brevity, I will just say that there is real fear and concern that we will end up with a massive mishmash of legal confusion in this area. That concern is very real in the world of work, in particular in areas such as equality—not least in equal pay for work of equal value and protection for insecure workers, where so many advances have depended on EU-derived legislation and case law. Previous judgments will no longer be binding, and issues will have to go through the judicial system again. As Michael Ford KC wrote in the Financial Times:

“Workers and employers will be back at square one. The whole lengthy and expensive process of appeals will have to be repeated. Even the most enthusiastic lawyer views such a … task with dismay.”


Having to argue those key points again will be costly and cause delays. Frankly, that usually benefits those with the biggest wallets.

The Bill hands huge powers to, and puts enormous pressure on, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, which have been instructed to depart from case law informed by EU law if they consider it right to do so. Of course, the chances are that there will be an avalanche of requests from lower courts or tribunals making references to higher courts about departing from retained EU case law. The result will be workers and employers spending more time in court—in a system that already has huge delays—in a desperate attempt to find out what the law now means.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

I will make a short point about Amendment 61A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty. In the amendment, he seeks to exclude from the effect of Clause 3 employment rights and health and safety at work. At the end of Tuesday, I sought to demonstrate that health and safety at work was a protected area which could not be repealed or amended under the Bill because of the protection given by the trade and co-operation agreement, which my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned this evening. I will explain why it covers some but not all employment rights.

There are two ways in which it operates. The first is via Article 387, which requires that a party, including the UK,

“shall not weaken or reduce, in a manner affecting trade or investment between the Parties, its labour and social levels of protection below the levels in place at the end of the transition period, including by failing to effectively enforce its law and standards.”

Indeed, Article 387.4 requires that:

“The Parties shall continue to strive to increase their respective labour and social levels of protection”.


On Tuesday, I pointed out that labour and social levels of protection are defined by Article 386, which includes not only

“occupational health and safety standards”

but

“fundamental rights at work … fair working conditions and employment standards … information and consultation rights at company level; or … restructuring of undertakings.”

It is quite apparent that many of the EU laws on employment are protected by that definition.

The other way in which some employment rights are protected is by Article 399.5:

“Each Party commits to implementing all the ILO Conventions that the United Kingdom and the Member States have respectively ratified and the different provisions of the European Social Charter that, as members of the Council of Europe, the Member States and the United Kingdom have respectively accepted.”


I will not reiterate the many ILO conventions which protect employment rights at work, but Members of the Committee may not be so familiar with the European Social Charter. I will not read the text of the relevant provisions, but I will just mention that Article 2 protects the right to just conditions of work; Article 3 protects the right to safe and healthy working conditions; Article 4 protects the right to a fair remuneration; Article 7 concerns the right of children and young persons to protection; and Article 8 concerns the right of employed women to protection. There are other provisions as well.

For these reasons, it appears to me that my noble friend Lord Whitty is right to seek protection for employment rights, or at least some employment rights, that are covered within those two ambits, as well as health and safety at work.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I am sorry, my Lords, but it was clearly expressed, and it was expressed again in 2019. A mandate was given to the Executive to remove EU laws; it was not given to this Chamber to hold it up.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I doubt very much whether the will of the people was to remove the rights of working people. I doubt very much whether those who voted for Brexit voted to remove the rights and entitlements that they had inherited from EU law.

I too support the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. Last Wednesday, 10 May, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, referred a moment ago, was a busy day for the Government. On that day, in the other place, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade made a Written Statement about this Bill, pointing out that amendments would be tabled to it. At the end of the Statement, she said:

“As part of this drive for deregulation, today I can announce that we will make improvements to employment law which could help save businesses around £1 billion a year, while safeguarding the rights of workers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/5/23; col. 16WS.]


And she gave some indication of what those changes might be.

On that same day, the Department for Business and Trade also published a booklet called Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy. From the last couple of pages of that we learn what is in the Government’s mind: first, the requirement under the working time regulations to keep records of hours worked is to be removed. How businesses and their workers will be able to ensure compliance with the remainder of the regulations was not explained. Secondly, eight days of UK holiday are to be added to the 20 days of EU holiday for workers; but, it appears, this may result in economic loss, as the days allowed by the EU are paid on a different, higher basis than the UK days. Thirdly, rolled up-holiday pay—a technicality of employment law—is to be permitted, but the effect is to remove what was introduced as a protection for workers. Fourthly, the obligation to consult over redundancies is to be removed for small businesses.

Those changes are not very great, although they may be significant for some. In the vast number of amendments to this Bill that have been tabled—in particular, the 600 pieces of EU-derived legislation identified by the Government for removal or partial removal—I have looked at where those weakened employment rights are to be found. They are not there. The reason they are not there is that they will be introduced by statutory instrument after the Bill has become law.

We in Parliament need the chance to scrutinise what will otherwise be a constant stream of statutory instruments removing and weakening workers’ employment rights and health and safety at work rights. That is why I support the important amendment from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hendy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not detain the House too long. In this amendment we have tried to reflect the structure that we have just agreed in relation to the environment. This is not about blocking change. The Minister said that we are in danger of creating immutable legislation. That is not the case. We are in a unique situation here in terms of regulations that are going to be changed in a way that does not have the same sort of parliamentary scrutiny as primary legislation. That is the difference. It is unique, and therefore it needs a proper, unique response to it in terms of the three elements on which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, focused.

The first of course is non-regression. We should understand the ambitions of this Government in relation to workers’ rights. I have heard from Ministers throughout this Bill and also in other debates that they are committed to defend and extend workers’ rights. I think we need that ambition to be translated into proper processes and procedures in relation to the unique circumstances where regulations can be removed, revoked or revised simply by Ministers producing statutory instruments.

The other element, which again the noble Lord, Lord Krebs pointed out in relation to the environment, is proper consultation. If changes are envisaged, how do we consult the appropriate bodies? We have a government agency that has huge experience in terms of regulations and codes of practice that ought to be properly consulted in relation to any changes, and of course we have stakeholders in terms of employers and unions. And by the way, this is not a debate about whether one should support workers or employers. Everyone wants proper standards. Employers themselves want proper standards. When we come to the international agreements that this Government have signed up to, in particular trade agreements, that level playing field is going to be a really important element in maintaining those agreements and extending them, so there is a very strong economic case for supporting this amendment.

We also need to ensure that trust and confidence are put back into the system. We hear Ministers suggesting that somehow regulations are a burden on employers, but sometimes those burdens are the thing that can provide and guarantee the level playing field that we have argued for and supported.

We talk about the ambition of this Government but we are still waiting for the long-awaited employment Bill, which I hope at some stage we will see brought forward. This is about ensuring that we do not turn the clock back—that we maintain the proper standards. As a shadow spokesman for foreign affairs, I work with government Ministers in defending and advancing the rights of workers across the globe. We are the strongest advocate of that, so the one thing that we should not do is turn our backs on workers at this moment in time. If Brexit is to mean anything, it should be about putting rights back into this Parliament and making sure that workers are not at the end of the queue but very much at the front. I beg to move.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 50, as well as Amendment 51, which bears my name. Amendment 51 is an elaboration of Amendment 50, so I will speak only to Amendment 50. I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Collins has said. The object of Amendment 50 is, as it states in proposed new subsection (1)(a), to prevent the reduction of

“the level of protection for workers”.

As my noble friend said, this is not simply to protect workers but to protect good employers from being undercut by bad employers. It speaks of the level of protection for workers, in respect not just of employment rights but of health and safety at work rights.

In spite of the warm words of the Government and the promises of an employment Bill over the last three or four years, there is a suspicion that the Government will try to take advantage of Brexit to undermine and water down workers’ rights. That fear is not helped by the fact that, last week, on 10 May, as I mentioned earlier today, the Department for Business and Trade published its booklet, Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy. This contains no less than four proposals to water down the Working Time Regulations and Section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which guarantees the right of workers to be consulted when collective redundancies are proposed.

The proposals to water down those rights are not contained in the Bill, as they could have been among the 928 proposals in the schedule. They are yet to come, in the form of statutory instruments that we have not seen, cannot examine and, when it comes to it—notwithstanding the excellent amendments from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, earlier on—may have difficulty in seeking to amend. The purpose of Amendment 50, and indeed Amendment 51, is to ensure that workers’ rights are not watered down and that the obligations contained in Articles 387(2) and 399(5) of the trade and co-operation agreement, against regression, are honoured.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on both of these amendments and I am happy to support them both. The proposers will be pleased to know that I do not intend to speak for long, because I have heard two excellent speeches that set out the reasons why supporting these amendments is important.

The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, talked about the danger of back-door watering down of legislation. It may not be this Government; once this is in statute, it could be any Government going forward. We do not necessarily have to distrust the people we see before us—I personally do not—but we do not know who in future will be able to use these measures.

If the Government want to water down workers’ conditions, that should be done through primary legislation, straight up, and negotiated and scrutinised properly. It should not be put through the backdoor, which could happen here. Throughout the process of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, has said over and over again that it is not the Government’s intention to water down workers’ rights. By supporting Amendment 50, the Government can make sure that they are absolutely as good as their word.