Employment Rights Bill (Seventeenth sitting)

Debate between Peter Bedford and Justin Madders

Committee stage
Thursday 9th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

Indeed it is, and the usual parliamentary scrutiny will apply, but I was talking specifically about the role of the fair work agency. There will be that role, and no doubt as more detail emerges there will be more parliamentary opportunities to talk about the role and functions of the agency.

My hon. Friends the Members for Worsley and Eccles and for Birmingham Northfield talked about the broad support for the agency’s establishment, as indeed did the hon. Member for West Suffolk. I have a list of all the supportive witnesses at the oral evidence sessions, and it is a broad and impressive cast. It includes the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce, the British Retail Consortium, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, the Food and Drink Federation, the Co-op, Margaret Beels, and of course all the trade unions. There is support across the board for this single enforcement body.

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. There are a few points about the creation of the agency that I would like the Minister to address. I am broadly supportive of synergies and of the rationalisation of public bodies, particularly to ensure that the taxpayer is getting value for money, but have the Government considered the cost of this new body and whether it will result in savings for the taxpayer? Will they consider locating it outside London so that it is more broadly reflective of the country at large?

[Justin Madders]

As a regional MP—a north-west Member—I am always looking to see where we can get more Government agencies out into the rest of the country. It is probably too early to say, but those kinds of decisions are being looked at.

At the moment, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs deals with minimum wage enforcement. Moving such a specific task across to another body will take some time, so there may well be a period during which HMRC continues to undertake that work, albeit that it is within the remit of the fair work agency. Such operational details will be discussed and dealt with in due course.

The hon. Member for West Suffolk made a point about the powers of individual officers. Initially, we envisage that officers will move into, effectively, their existing roles. It will be a matter for operational consideration in due course whether it is beneficial to extend people’s remits. It will not be required of anyone without sufficient training and safeguards in place, but as the agency develops, it may well be considered advantageous to broaden the role of enforcement officers. One of the rationales for the body is that there are often several aspects to an employer’s breach of obligations, so we want the fair work agency to be able to tackle these things as a whole. However, that is an operational matter that will be dealt with in due course. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 72, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 4

Legislation subject to enforcement under part 5

Employment Rights Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Peter Bedford and Justin Madders

Committee stage
Thursday 5th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Justin Madders]

We are taking this approach because we want to be reasonable and engage with businesses and trade unions on what the shape looks like. That is why the full consultation, which will look at the broad range of issues, is not yet ready. It is not really in the spirit of that for us to nail down everything in the Bill. Most employment rights have their detail in secondary legislation.

There are some clear principles about the levels of compensation that we will set out. Clearly, a worker should not be compensated for more than the number of hours that he or she has lost. If other heads of loss occur, there are already principles about wages, for example, whereby ongoing losses have to be compensated for. That is the kind of thing where the detail ought to be put into secondary legislation and consulted on fully, which is what we intend to do.

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

The one thing that businesses do not like is uncertainty. Unfortunately, there are so many gaps that need filling in the Bill that it makes it very difficult for businesses to plan for the future—for example, about how many people they will employ, what risks they will take on, and how to budget. Does the Minister accept that the Bill is so full of gaps that it causes more uncertainty for businesses and makes it harder for them to plan?

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

There is a danger that we will get too prescriptive about this. There will be a relatively small number of cases in which there is detriment, but they are all going to be very fact-sensitive. That is why we have framed the amendment in this way.

[Mr Bedford]

The hon. Member for Dundee Central referred to how a lot of businesses will have insurance for various eventualities. As a maximum is not specified, have the Government considered the unintended consequences of such provisions on businesses’ ability to insure against such instances?

[Justin Madders]

We are not talking about the general running of a business, with reference to shift notice and cancellations; we are talking about a very specific set of circumstances in which an employer’s act is considered to be detrimental to the employee and gives rise to an employment tribunal claim. I am sure that there are insurance products that cover all employment tribunal claims, but this is about individual acts of penalisation against employees or workers. This is not a departure from existing legal principles; it is well set out and understood by lawyers and HR practitioners. I do not envisage that this is a provision that will be greatly used, but it is an important principle to have in the Bill.

Amendment 48 agreed to.

Amendment made: 49, in schedule 1, page 107, line 39, leave out from beginning to end of line 11 on page 108 and insert—

“(7A) Where—

(a) the complaint is made under section 48(1BA),

(b) the detriment to which the worker is subjected is the termination of the worker’s contract, and

(c) that contract is not a contract of employment,

any compensation must not exceed the compensation that would be payable under Chapter 2 of Part 10 if the worker had been an employee and had been dismissed for a reason specified in section 104BA.”—(Justin Madders.)

This amendment relates to the maximum award of compensation by an employment tribunal in a detriment claim under section 48(1BA) of the Employment Rights Act 1996. The change achieved by the amendment is that the maximum award in cases involving the termination of an arrangement that is not a worker’s contract is at the tribunal’s discretion.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(Anna McMorrin.)