Queen’s Speech

Lord Woodley Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, as other noble Lords have already said, there was no mention of the Government’s much-promised employment Bill in last week’s gracious Address. There is no doubt that this is a scandalous omission and nothing less than a betrayal of working-class voters, many of whom, sadly, believed the Prime Minister’s cynical pledge at the last election, as my noble friend Lord Monks said,

“to make the UK the best place in the world to work.”

Since then, Ministers have promised at least 20 times to deliver an employment Bill to protect workers’ rights, yet, sadly, it is nowhere to be seen. We have been taken for fools; promises have been made and broken time and again.

As my noble friend Lord Haskel stated, no employment Bill means no new “single enforcement body” to

“crack down on any employer abusing employment law, whether by taking workers’ tips or refusing them sick pay.”

That is a direct quote from the Tory manifesto. Here is another quote:

“We will legislate to allow parents to take extended leave for neonatal care, to support those new mothers and fathers who need it during the most vulnerable and stressful days of their lives.”


Was this just a con? Was there outrage when they did not talk about stopping the fire and rehire, which Ministers, including the Prime Minister himself, have called “unacceptable” and “bully-boy tactics”? Do they really believe that, or is it just another publicity stunt? I think we know the answer, because if they really believed, why did they block the Private Member’s Bill of my Labour comrade Barry Gardiner, which sought to outlaw the shameful practice in all but the most extreme circumstances?

Not only did Ministers block that Bill, but they blocked it as hard and as fast as they could, enforcing an unprecedented three-line Whip on a Friday and employing a variety of dirty tricks, such as not-so-urgent Urgent Statements to use up debate time and ministerial filibustering to finish off the Bill before it could achieve its Second Reading—or so they thought. Well, they were wrong, because I am delighted to tell this House that I have been successful in our own ballot with the reincarnation of Barry’s Bill. The Bill is backed by the Labour Party and the entire trade union movement, particularly my own union, Unite. I am really honoured to have the baton passed to me, especially at a time when it is more urgent than ever to ban fire and rehire, which is spreading through our economy like a virus, threatening a pandemic of poverty, adding yet more misery to millions during the cost of living crisis.

What are the Government doing to stop this cruel abuse of loyal workers? What action have they taken, as was said earlier, against P&O bosses, who went a step further by sacking 800 seafarers on union rates by Zoom and replacing them with agency staff on as little as £1.80 an hour, even after the CEO admitted to a Select Committee in the other place that he had knowingly broken the law by not consulting recognised unions? Why? Because he knew it was simpler to blackmail workers into taking enhanced redundancies. Ministers have done absolutely nothing to address this scandal, despite being in the same room when it was said that he should have been barred from holding directorships. Any decent person would have said that.

What more evidence do we need that this Tory Government will always be on the side of the bosses, despite their absurd claims to be the new workers’ party? It is laughable. Thankfully, the workers of this country are waking up to the deception and I am confident that they will not have short memories at the next general election. I ask everybody who questions this: how much more damage will Ministers do in the meantime? As well as letting bad bosses get away with abusing their workers, the Government want to scrap the Human Rights Act, removing the vital protections it provides, including freedom of conscience, expression and association, and even the right to a fair trial. Taken together with other draconian legislation, including further crackdowns on the right to protest that this House has already rejected, the direction of travel is clear. The disgraceful laws passed in the last Session, especially the elections, borders and police Acts, have all laid the groundwork for a fundamental shift in power and authoritarian control in our country.

We must learn from the mistakes of the last Session and work out our strategy for defeating this new assault on our most basic human rights. We have the Members in this place to make a real difference and the duty to restrain what has basically become a rogue Government, led by a Prime Minister who refuses to resign despite breaking his own laws and is now planning, as was said earlier, to renege on the Brexit deal that was struck. Labour, my party, founded by the movement, is committed to rolling back the Tories’ anti-worker laws, as laid out in our excellent Green Paper on employment rights, which my noble friend Lord Hendy played a key role in drafting. From Government-brokered fair play agreements—what in the past we would have called central bargaining—to day-one rights against unfair dismissal and, of course, a ban on fire and rehire, our Green Paper sets out a new agenda to address the unfair power imbalance at work, which has only grown over the past 12 years of Tory rule.

For all our faults, Labour is a real party of the workers, and in government our party will have to start by clearing up the Tories’ mess, as we always have to. Until then, our top priority must be to limit the damage and protect as many people as possible from the Conservatives’ conscious cruelty. I hope that all Members across the House worried about where the Government are taking us will continue to fight the good fight until we can turn the page of this disgraceful chapter in our democracy’s history.