Deregulation Bill

Lord Lea of Crondall Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, it is important to place on the record and clarify some of the misunderstandings that took place in Committee. At the beginning of the discussions on the Bill, the Government prayed in aid, with a great deal of enthusiasm, the recommendations of Professor Löfstedt, who is professor of risk management at King’s College London. That enthusiasm became less and less as Members of the Committee challenged some of the statements contained in the proposals. Certainly, my noble friend Lord McKenzie challenged them on a number of occasions.

In Committee on 21 October, the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, said:

“I was in contact with Professor Löfstedt in the past week. He has seen the wording of the Bill and appears to be very content with it”.—[Official Report, 21/10/14; col. 568.]

It is important that we set the record straight: Professor Löfstedt is not in the least bit happy. My noble friend has already quoted from his letter. To save time, I will quote a small additional bit. He says that,

“the proposed Government list may increase injury and death in the workplace something that I never intended with my original recommendation”.

It is very serious that there has been a misunderstanding about the authoritative recommendations that were claimed to be behind this proposal. I agree with my noble friend: it will increase confusion; it will add complexity to the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act; it will add burdens to the conscientious self-employed who want clarification about their obligations; and it is a charter for cowboys. I urge the House to support the amendment.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, it is very noticeable that when people such as those from the Federation of Small Businesses are asked, “Where is the evidence that more people ought to be excluded?”, they say, “It is not a question of particular evidence; it is a question of perception”. Something rings a bell in my mind when somebody says, “It is not the evidence; it is a question of perception”. As somebody once said, what about changing the perception? I think that is where we are at the moment. Indeed, that is where the Government and the employers do not want us to be—to look at the evidence.

Instead, there are lots of crocodile tears and lots of red herrings dragged across the trail. One red herring is, “They do it in Germany”. Well, they do lots of things in Germany. In the one minute I have available, I say to the Government that if they would like to start citing Germany and give us the whole employment package that they have in Germany, we on this side will vote for it. I put that proposal; perhaps the Government would like to agree to it.

Finally, there is a trend in Britain today, whether or not it is being deliberately promulgated—that makes it sound like some sort of conspiracy theory, but I do not go in for conspiracy theories because we are often at the receiving end of them. But if there has been an increase in self-employment, it is hard to reconcile with the idea that it is very difficult to be self-employed now because of all the red tape. Anyway, on one side there has been a vast increase in self-employment, if we can get our brains around that. On the other side, there are a number of people who do not have contracts of employment. That is partly a question of whether, ex hypothesi, in a static labour market there are a greater number of people in work. But on the employed side of the labour market, which is the vast majority, the quality of the contracts of employment is being reduced bit by bit.

One of the great advances since the war has been to improve the quality and content of the contract of employment. If you were to interview a random group of self-employed people and a random group of people with good contracts of employment, a lot of people who are self-employed would turn out to have some sort of relation to the employed but with a subcontract in the middle whereby they are not really self-employed—they are on something which does not give them a contract of employment with four weeks paid holiday and all the rest of it. Will the Minister therefore comment on the fact that it is very desirable that the good-quality contract of employment terms are a benchmark for the self-employed, and that this is not a further means of endeavouring gradually to wear away a benchmark on which we in this country have always been able to rely?

[Lord Jordan (Lab)]

My Lords, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 transformed the safety landscape for all people at work. For the first time, it told everyone at work, “You are responsible for safety”. The Government’s proposals concerning the self-employed are a step backwards, telling some people, “Don’t worry, you are not responsible if someone gets hurt”.

Those who know the world of work are telling the Government that they have got it wrong. The Government have told them that the cost of regulation will be reduced, but they know that the cost of regulation pales into insignificance against the cost of accidents. The CBI and the EEF know it and, as my noble friend Lord McKenzie said, have both told the Government that the self-employed exemption in its current form is not fit for purpose.

What will be the cost of ignoring the significant warning of Professor Löfstedt? He is worth quoting, because he has analysed the possibilities. He has said:

“The danger with the proposed list is that self-employed individuals who are not on it will be exempt even if the jobs that these individuals do are in actual fact rather dangerous and unsafe. In other words the proposed Government list may increase injury and death in the workplace”.

The Government proposals, in their present form, will carry a cost: not in money, but in lives. This amendment will help to prevent that.