Employment Rights Bill

Lord Hunt of Wirral Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group and will speak to my Amendment 200ABA. Our seafarers are the engine of a vital part of our trading economy, but their conditions of work are often out of sight and out of mind. Among other problems, as set out by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, the gender imbalance and isolation on most ships has resulted, sadly, in risks for women which need clear measures of protection.

Of the 23,700 United Kingdom seafarers counted in 2024, only 16% were female. These were mainly among ratings and uncertificated officers—that is, those with the least authority and power. I heard of a nasty case of rape on a cruise ship, where the victim, significantly, said that she had no help from the HR department because she was too shocked to report it immediately. She was advised that her only recourse was to leave the ship, because the perpetrator was needed on board—a not uncommon reaction. Some privately owned super- yachts require applicants for jobs to submit photographs and “be comfortable with nudity”, which gives a flavour of the work environment.

Research from the Seafarers International Research Centre at Cardiff University shows how fearful women seafarers on cargo ships are of sexual assault and how lonely they can feel in their workplace. We have now the seafarers’ charter, announced by the Government last December. This provides the vehicle for vastly improved standards for seafarers’ working conditions, but it needs to clarify that it will specify protection against sexual harassment and bullying—hence my amendment.

Our shipping force is declining, not least in the retention of women, and there are skills gaps. This has put pressure on workplace standards, resulting in seafarers in general having a higher rate of sickness and accidents than onshore workpeople. There are industry initiatives to encourage recruitment, but little thought on making workplaces safe, convenient and welcoming to women. We can attract more people into it if everyone feels safe.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, for so clearly setting out the case for a range of amendments. As he made clear, the matters under discussion go to the heart of how we uphold standards for those who work at sea, an essential part of our economy and infrastructure. Of course, we are all well aware of the extent to which the events surrounding P&O Ferries in 2022 were a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities that are faced by seafarers operating in and around UK waters. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for reminding us of some pretty stark situations that are faced by people who work in this environment.

I was very pleased and proud when the Conservative Government took clear and concrete steps to improve protections, most notably through the Seafarers Wages Act 2023, the introduction of the voluntary seafarers’ charter and a broader nine-point plan aimed at promoting fairer treatment and higher standards across the sector. These reforms represent a record of action that reflects the seriousness with which we take the obligations owed to maritime workers and our determination that what happened—that unacceptable practice that we all saw and were so concerned about—must never happen again.

Today’s amendments reflect continued concern for the welfare and rights of seafarers. They raise, though, a number of detailed questions about scope, enforcement and the role of harbour authorities. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, here to reply to this debate, because we want to hear from him how the Government see these provisions fitting alongside the reforms already undertaken. We await with bated breath his reply to this important debate.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, I will first speak to government Amendments 200B and 200C. These amendments relate to Clause 54, which amends the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to provide powers to make regulations giving effect to international agreements relating to maritime employment. Amendment 200B provides that such regulations cannot be used to bring into force an international agreement, or an amendment to an international agreement which requires ratification, before the UK has ratified it. By implication, the effect of this amendment is that such regulations can be made ahead of ratification of the agreement or amendment. For the UK to ratify an international agreement, it is usual for any necessary implementing legislation to be passed or made in advance of ratification, so the amendment helps ensure that the UK can fulfil its international obligations. Amendment 200C is simply a consequential drafting amendment.

Amendments 143A and 143AA, tabled by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, seek to amend the requirements of the collective redundancy notification provisions to apply to services calling at a port in Great Britain at least 52 times a year, rather than 120 times a year. We are, as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, related, yet again dealing with the appalling events surrounding the P&O dispute in March 2022. As with the Seafarers’ Wages Act, the frequency requirement of this measure was designed to ensure that it applied to those services with a close enough connection to the United Kingdom to justify it. Any broadening of the scope would require further consideration of the impact of bringing further vessels into it. I will come on to the proposed amendments to the scope of the Seafarers’ Wages Act, but we do not accept the proposal to amend the scope of those measures. We will apply a consistent approach to the proposed changes to the scope of the collective redundancy requirements, which has the same frequency requirement. Any change would require stakeholder engagement and full consideration of the impacts on industry. However, having listened carefully to my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, we will agree to meet the trade unions, as he suggests, where a number of the issues that he has raised tonight can be further discussed, including the requirement for a summary of the Government’s position before Report.

Amendments 200AA, 200AB and 200AC, also tabled by my noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton, seek to apply the measures under the Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023 as amended by this Bill to weekly services rather than those calling 120 times a year as drafted. The existing minimum frequency requirement for the new remuneration and safe working declarations is consistent with the requirements under the existing Seafarers’ Wages Act 2023, which was brought into force on 1 December 2024. It is important that this measure be limited to services with a close enough connection to the UK to justify intervention in their working practices; the current requirements in the Seafarers’ Wages Act and in the Act as amended in this Bill have been designed with this in mind. Extending the scope of this measure would require careful consideration of the international law implications of bringing into scope less frequent services to the UK, as well as the impacts on the market. With these considerations in mind, we think that the existing scope strikes the correct balance. It would also not be right to accept this amendment without undertaking a full public consultation, which cannot be done in the timescales required to make this change as part of the Bill.

Amendment 200AD and the consequential Amendments 200AE to 200AK would go beyond the existing powers in the Bill to make safe working and remuneration regulations. It would provide further powers to specify conditions relating to sick pay, holiday pay, pensions and other training, and to require harbour authorities to request the associated declarations from operators, following the approach taken by the Government in relation to the remuneration and safe working regulations.

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Removing this clause would risk depriving many employers of a useful and necessary framework for understanding the inequality dynamics within their own workforce. Data without action achieves little. Equality action plans help translate information into strategy, encouraging employers not just to measure the problem but to engage with it. You have to have the data before you can actually deal with that. At a time when many organisations are seeking to do more to build inclusive and equitable workplaces, this clause offers structure and accountability. I urge noble Lords to resist the clause stand part notice and to support this considered and constructive provision.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friends Lady Lawlor and Lord Jackson of Peterborough because they rightly question whether this clause is necessary to establish what we all agree should be the vital place for equality of opportunity.

It is vital in the workplace that merit should win the day, but there should also be equality of opportunity. Women and men should have equal opportunities, fair treatment and the freedom to thrive regardless of their background. So I hope all those who have spoken, including the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, would agree that we all support equality of opportunity, not just in principle but in practice.

Therefore, it is right that every time there is another step, particularly when it creates more paperwork and more bureaucracy—as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, put it—it is important that we just question whether this is the right way to proceed, particularly, as my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough pointed out, because this is really giving the Government power to do whatever they want to do whenever they wish to do it, by regulation. We do not know what the Government will do because they have not yet consulted on the power that we are about to give them. It is exactly what this House has always preached long and hard against. We should not give Henry VIII powers to the Government to do whatever they would like to do by statutory instrument.

I would have thought that my successor as chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie—would know that more than anyone else. Giving the Government this power has to be justified. My noble friend Lady Fox of Buckley does not need me to defend her against the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, as he saw her move across the political spectrum, but she is right to question this in the way she did. As my noble friend Lady Lawlor put it, we are, in a way, promoting positive discrimination, which undermines achievement on merit.

I hope that the Minister will give very serious thought to explaining exactly what is proposed, rather than wait for the secondary legislation. Let us know, straightaway and in detail, what additional equality action plans are being proposed. We have to pause for a moment to worry about the serious and often unintended consequences that policies such as these can have, particularly for women on the margins of the labour market. The principle behind the measure is commendable —to close the gender gaps, to support women through challenges such as the menopause, and to shine a light on structural inequalities—but, in practice, these kinds of top-down mandates too often result in box-ticking compliance, statistical quotas and public relations targets, and never in real progress.

What gets measured drives what gets managed. When employers are judged by headline figures—gender pay gaps, representation in senior roles—there is an inevitable temptation for them to focus their efforts where the optics are best improved, on high-status, high-visibility roles. As a result, employers might feel pressured to hire or promote individuals with certain characteristics into elite positions just to improve those diversity statistics, rather than genuinely supporting a larger number of people, who are often the minority, who hold lower-paid, insecure or part-time roles and who would benefit most from meaningful reform.

Regardless of sex, ethnicity or sexual orientation, merit should always be the basis for the advancement of an individual. I worry that we risk a situation where the beneficiaries of an equality policy are disproportionately those who are already relatively privileged, while those in cleaning jobs, care work, warehouses, and food processing and service are pushed further to the margins. Even worse, if statistical appearances become the basis of legal or reputational risk, employers may become reluctant to hire minority women at all into lower-paying roles for fear of what the data might suggest. That is not progress; it is perverse.

I warmly applaud the fact that this debate is taking place. Equality is not achieved by engineering the statistics; it is achieved when every person, regardless of sex, class, race or role, has access to fair work, safe conditions, proper pay and genuine opportunity to get on in life. I ask colleagues to consider: will these equality action plans bring meaningful change for working-class young men, people from ethnic minorities and women on zero-hours contracts, or will they largely serve the HR departments of large organisations by helping to polish their diversity reports while little changes on the ground? We cannot effect equality by appearance; we must demand equality by substance.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for initiating this probing debate on Clause 31. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, highlighted—I like to call him my noble brother after all these years of working together—it enables us to put forward a very strong case. One can always be concerned about Henry VIII powers and secondary legislation, especially when employers are not consulted and the objective is to undermine good industrial relations. I remind my noble brother about the debates we had on the strikes Bill, which was precisely about those issues of unintended consequences.

Ensuring that women can remain in and progress in work is crucial—vital—to economic growth, and yet the national gender pay gap remains at 13.1%. We know that women often face barriers in the workplace that impact their pay, progression and economic participation. Eight in 10 menopausal women say that their workplace has no basic support in place. This lack of support is a barrier and can lead to a significant loss of talent and, just as importantly, productivity.

This is not new. As a trade unionist, I, and my noble brother opposite, know full well—we have heard about all the legislation that has been brought in—that real progress has been effected in the workplace by supporting and amplifying that legislation and giving people the tools to ensure that that legislation has an impact. As a trade unionist, I have seen many initiatives that have delivered better facilities and ensured that women can remain active in the workplace.

I remember a campaign in the 70s and 80s about breast cancer. Many women would not even dare talk about it, but the trade union movement launched a campaign for workplace screening and opened up a debate, so that people could acknowledge the risks and address them, rather than live in isolation and fear. It is important that women are able to talk about the menopause openly and can address it. Breast cancer does not make women victims. We should all be focused on how we can deliver for women. That is really important, and there are many examples.

Since 2017, large employers have been required to publish gender pay gap data. The additional publication of an action plan is precisely to do what the noble Lord opposite has said. How do we see and assess the impact? The additional publication of an action plan has been encouraged, but it is voluntary. However, analysis in 2019 discovered that only half of employers reporting data were voluntarily producing a plan on how they can make improvements. What the noble Lord described is what has happened: they produce the data and do nothing. That is why this legislation is so important, and the next step for improvements for women in the workplace is to make that mandatory.

Of course, we recognise and applaud the best employers, which already recognise the value of supporting women to thrive and are already taking action—many noble Lords addressed that. Following their lead, large employers will be required to detail the actions they are taking to improve gender equality and support employees during the menopause. The intention is to motivate employers to take meaningful action, to break down the barriers and help all women to thrive.