Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Steve Yemm and Justin Madders

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Steve Yemm]

As a small business founder and someone who has grown a business, I recognise the need for balance. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for raising that point. In my concluding remarks, I put on the record how proud I am of my unions, the GMB and Unite, for the work that they have done with this Government to help deliver this groundbreaking legislation. I will therefore be voting with pride to support the Bill in the Lobby later today.

[Justin Madders]

We have had another excellent debate. We might have to deal with a few misconceptions, but I am conscious that we need to move on to Third Reading, so I apologise if I do not address every single contribution we have heard today. I will start with the Chair of the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), and his new clause 82. The Bill already requires the Secretary of State to produce an annual report for employment rights enforcement, as well as an enforcement strategy every three years. Both documents will be laid before Parliament, allowing for parliamentary scrutiny. We are committed to giving the Fair Work Agency the resources it needs to do its job effectively. I agree with him that the number of prosecutions for minimum wage violations has been pitifully small in recent years. We should never tolerate lawbreakers in the business world. We should ensure that responsible and well-performing businesses are never allowed to be undercut by minimum wage violations.

My right hon. Friend’s amendment 282 would include digital means of communication with workers in unions’ rights of access to workplaces. I appreciate the good intentions behind the amendment, but the Government are already committed to modernising working practices and moving away from a reliance on ad hoc access arrangements. We recognise the importance of providing for a digital right of access, in addition to the physical access for which the Bill already provides. That is why we have amended the Bill to expand access rights, allowing for access agreements to include communication with workers other than by means of physical access to a workplace, such as digital means.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) talked about procurement. His new clause would amend the Procurement Act 2023 to place a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that any contract entered into by either a Government Department, an executive agency of Government, a non-departmental public body or a non-ministerial department must comply with certain requirements relating to the recognition of trade unions. We recognise that the recognition of trade unions for collective bargaining was an important feature of the previous two-tier code on workforce matters. The Bill contains powers to reinstate and strengthen the code by way of regulations and a statutory code, so I assure the House that the Government are committed to strengthening trade union recognition and collective bargaining rights.

New clause 77, in the name of the hon. Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law), would result in a change to the Scotland Act 1998 by removing employment law from the list of reserved matters, thereby bringing it within the competence of the Scottish Parliament. While his perseverance on this issue is not unnoticed, it would come as no surprise to him, were he here, that the Government have no intention of devolving employment law to the Scottish Parliament. Previous Scotland Acts have already created one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world. When there were considerably more SNP Members here during the last Parliament, there was a ten-minute rule Bill on this very subject, and the SNP could not even get a majority of its own Members to support it, so why on Earth would we support such a measure now? I do not know.

I will turn to the amendments from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on prison officers’ right to strike. I thank him for his persistence and his active engagement on behalf of prison officers. As he said, prison officers are prevented from taking industrial action under current legislation. Their pay is governed by the independent Prison Service pay review body process, which acts as a compensatory mechanism for that restriction. There is limited contingency to deal with industrial action, and during such incidents the reliance is on a narrow pool of operational managers with some potential for very limited support from the police and Army in limited circumstances. That creates operational risks and is not sustainable for any period of time.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington referred to what he classed as disrespect to prison officers during that debate in Committee. I just put on record that there was certainly no disrespect shown by those on the Government Benches; we value and respect the work that prison officers do. I know that he will continue to pursue this matter, and I suggest that he contacts the Ministry of Justice, which has the remit. I hope it will be able to engage on the matter in future.

Let me now deal with some of the Liberal Democrat new clauses and amendments. The hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) spoke about new clause 19, which would give the Secretary of State the power to set out and define in regulations the professional bodies that could represent employees at disciplinary meetings. It is unclear to us where the demand for that would come from, and I would expect it to benefit some businesses that have raised the prospect with successive Governments. What is clear, however, is that expanding the types of organisations that could be involved in representing workers at such meetings could lead to hearings requiring legal representation for both the worker and the employer. That would increase the cost of holding a hearing, would escalate matters, and would potentially decrease the chance of an amicable resolution as both parties became entrenched in dispute. We believe that trade unions are best placed to represent employees in disciplinary and grievance hearings in the workplace, and statutory provisions are already in place to enable them to do that.

The hon. Member for St Albans also tabled new clause 111, which relates to legal aid for employment disputes. I am committed to ensuring that workers are able to enforce their employment rights, and we are working closely with the Ministry of Justice to ensure that happens, looking into what further improvements we can make to the way in which ACAS and employment tribunals operate. A key benefit of moving enforcement to the Fair Work Agency is that it will make it easier and quicker for workers to secure justice, without the need for additional legal representation or legal aid. I hope that gives the hon. Lady some reassurance that we are looking seriously at the issue.

New clause 110, also tabled by the hon. Member for St Albans,

“would require the Secretary of State to publish a review on the impact of Part 4 of the Bill…on SMEs within 3 months of the passage of this Act.”

In the impact assessment, the Government have set out our initial plan for monitoring an evaluation of the impacts of the Bill, as well as some secondary legislation. I say this with the greatest respect to the hon. Lady: she has expressed concern about the burden on business, but if we had accepted all her party’s amendments yesterday, that would have added several billion pounds to the costs of businesses. The Liberal Democrats will have to decide, ideally tonight, whether they are in favour of workers’ rights or not.

Let me now deal with some of the amendments from the official Opposition. Amendment 297 seeks to

“increase, from seven to 14 days, the notice period that trade unions are required to adhere to when notifying employers that they plan to take industrial action.”

Our consultation on the creation of a modern framework for industrial relations sought views on what an appropriate notice period would be, recognising that the repeal of the Trade Union Act 2016 would reduce the notice period from 14 to seven days. The Government have listened carefully to the concerns expressed by respondents to the consultation who feared that a seven-day notice period would not provide enough time for unions to prepare for industrial action in some important sectors, such as transport, healthcare and education, with possible knock-on impacts on other services. The Government believe that employers should be given enough time to mitigate the most severe effects of industrial action, and acknowledge responses to the consultation arguing that seven days’ notice was insufficient.

Of course, we did have seven days’ notice between 2010 and 2016 under the Tory Government. The Tories’ lack of understanding of the Bill is clear from the number of times we heard that it would take us back to the 1970s, whereas in fact it will take us back to 2015, when an earlier version of the Bill was introduced. The Government’s view is that 10 days provides the appropriate balance in enabling employers to mitigate the impact of industrial action and reduce disruption and the knock-on impacts of strikes, while also respecting the right to strike.

Amendment 291 seeks to remove clause 52, which deals with political funds and which, I think, prompted the most heated debate. It is notable that when it comes to reducing Tory red tape, it is only trade unions that do not receive the same benefits as everyone else. There has, I think, been a fundamental misunderstanding of what a trade union is. It is a member-based, democratic organisation designed to protect those who are part of it. Comparisons with Netflix subscriptions and insurance contracts are bogus, because they are not the same thing at all. Membership of a trade union and a political fund is not a subscription that people sign up to for a fixed period; it is membership of a democratically organised and independent trade union, which they are free to leave at any time. Members have control of the organisation because it is democratically organised, and they can decide as a union whether to have a political fund at all. People cannot email the chief executive of Netflix and demand that it makes a programme starring their favourite actor, but if people are unhappy with a trade union, they have the opportunity to get involved and change it.

It should be noted that in the 40 years that we have had political fund ballots, no union has disaffiliated from the Labour party. There has been no closure of political funds, so it is very clear that this is simply red tape. Of course, it is not all about funding the Labour party, because nearly half of all unions that have a political fund are not affiliated with the Labour party. If Conservative Members are not satisfied with that, they should read the Bill that is before them, because the clause that they want to remove—clause 52—sets out in subsection (3) how members can opt out of a political fund. It even sets out the ways they can do so: by post, email or electronic means. Some of the patronising comments we have heard about people being trapped into something that they do not wish to be in does not reflect the reality of the situation or the ability of trade union members to make up their own minds and exercise their democratic rights. Had any Conservative Members ever been members of a trade union, they would understand that.

The repeated insinuations from Conservative Members that I or any anyone else on the Labour Benches have brought forward this Bill because we have been paid by the trade unions to do so is offensive and wrong in equal measure. They might think money buys you the chance to write the law, but that says far more about their approach to legislation than it does about ours. On the Labour Benches, we do these things because we believe in them. We believe that everyone deserves fair treatment at work, and this Bill delivers that. It is delivering on our values.

In conclusion, the Bill represents a generational shift in protection, a long-overdue reinforcement of workers’ rights in this country, and tangible proof of how a Labour Government can bring meaningful benefit to people’s lives. For many of us, it is fundamental to why we are in the Labour party, so now is not the time to shy away from our efforts. Now is not the time to talk about what might have been; it is the time to be bold, to be loud and to be proud that this Labour Government are delivering by putting fairness, dignity and security back into the workplace.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.