Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends. I will start with the noble Baroness, Lady Cash, who I have known for 35 years from when we were students together. She was elegant and eloquent then, and that will continue. I am also looking forward to my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, as I am sure he will spice things up if we are to judge by some of his past publications. I extend my congratulations to the noble Baronesses, Lady Berger and Lady Gray of Tottenham. Without destroying their reputations in this House, I consider them to be friends, having come into the House together with them and worked with the noble Baroness, Lady Gray, in government too. I am sure that they will continue to staunchly uphold their principles as well as contributing to national debate.

In terms of national debate, this Employment Rights Bill entered the other House 100 days into this Government with 149 pages. After Committee in the other place, there were 191 pages, and now there are 299 pages, which it will be generous to get through in seven days of Committee consideration. Today, I want to focus on just a handful.

On Clause 59 relating to union finances, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Burns. I do not understand the trend, with all the consumer and legislation protection that we put in place, for encouraging people to have to opt in to contractual arrangements. The default now by and large is that you are automatically opted out. I believe that should be continued, especially when there is a section in the legislation which suggests that union members who have not opted out should be reminded only every 10 years that they have the opportunity to do so.

On small businesses, I know the FSB is particularly concerned about two matters: the day-one risk of taking people on with there being no statutory probation period yet in law, and statutory sick pay. It used to be the case that SSP was rebated to all employers. I know that because when I worked at Mars, I used to fill out the forms every year to get the refund. However, that got taken away, recognising some of the improvements to be made in occupational health. It is important that the Government reconsider that with this shift to day-one rights, or at least produce an impact assessment.

On getting automatic rights on day one of employment and unfair dismissal, this already applies through the Equality Act. There is consideration of people with disabilities and other protected characteristics. I support the Government’s measures for a right to try in getting people a job, but perhaps the same should apply to employers. They have a right to try out employees and the statutory notice period should be put in the Bill and not left to regulations.

It is important that we continue the work of the occupational health task force to make sure that we have positive arrangements in place so that people can start, stay and succeed in work, but we need to remove the uncertainty, because I fear that companies will simply choose not to grow. I know that from my experience in Suffolk and some of the flexible working practices there. I understand why the Labour Government have chosen to put even more controls on them, but without the support of small businesses we will not get growth in productivity and, indeed, economic growth more generally.

On the fair work agency, I welcome the construction of this combination of regulators—it is a sensible approach—but I consider Clause 113 to be novel. When I asked the Minister in the other House, Justin Madders, he seemed to suggest that the EHRC had similar powers. The Equality Act actually gives the same powers as Clause 114, under which legal assistance can be provided, including advice, representation and other forms of assistance, but not the situation where the fair work agency could take a case on behalf of a worker, or somebody who has applied for a job and is not even a worker. Subsection (6) removes any liability from the Secretary of State towards that same worker. Of course there will be a need to recover legal costs from the worker. I understand that, if there is a big payout, the Government may want to recover the funds that they have given out, but the regulations need to change to the affirmative rather than the negative procedure. In Clause 114, who will get the money to take people’s cases to court? Will it be the unions or a bunch of law firms? That does not feel like the approach we should be taking with taxpayers’ money, although it admittedly strengthens rights.

I should say to the Government that I have nothing against trade unions; I actively encourage people to join them. They can play a valuable role. I have never felt the need to join one myself, although it is in my blood: I looked at the 1921 census and my grandfather was an apprentice shipbuilder. It was also noted in the census that he was on strike, so it certainly runs through the Coffey veins. Indeed, other people were trade union organisers. But we need to be careful that we do not end up destroying growth rather than promoting it.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 1, although possibly not for quite the same reasons as those already expressed in this Chamber, and I regret I was not able to speak at Second Reading.

When dealing with a purpose clause, one cannot avoid spending a moment dwelling on the broader principles behind the Bill before coming to the amendment itself. It is worth noting that one of the reasons the British economy has surprised so many people over the last decade or so on the upside, despite all the gloomy predictions, is because it is an extremely flexible and responsive economy, particularly in the labour market. Most indices of these things put us in the global top 10 of labour market flexibility, which I regard as a good thing, although clearly many noble Lords who have spoken do not.

There is a paradox here, in that flexibility is the best way of delivering security—maybe not in any individual job, but security of employment and income over a period. The Government seem to think that the only way to ensure job security is to put in place more and more intrusive and detailed legislation to require it. That is why we are going to be discussing, no doubt at great length and with huge complexity, this massive Bill which tries to do just that. It is damaging that the Bill is being made up as it goes along to such a large extent; it just multiplies the complexity and difficulty.

I do not think that is the right way to look at job security. The best way to look at it is that flexibility produces security. If it is easier to change the terms and conditions of a job, or easier to dismiss people if they do not fit, then it is also easier to re-employ or shift resources from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors and to deliver growth in the economy. The approach in the Bill protects insiders at the expense of entrepreneurs and those who are outside the labour market, so it is not surprising that the representatives of trade unions are so supportive of it. The trade unions represent the insiders, but they are not the only people who have an interest in labour market flexibility.

I make these points because they go to the difficulty of drafting a satisfactory purpose clause for this Bill. It is desirable to have a purpose clause for something that is so complex and sprawling in the way it tries to legislate. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, has written it as cleverly and clearly as he possibly could in the circumstances. It is cleverly written, but the difficulty is not so much that it is not sufficiently exhaustive but that it contradicts the contents of the Bill. It sets out a number of things which the Bill simply does not do. For example, in paragraph (a) of the proposed new clause, it talks about “fairness”. Well, that may be fairness for employees on one definition but not for employers or those who are outside the formal labour market. Whose fairness are we talking about?

Paragraphs (b) and (d) in the proposed new clause do not “facilitate”—to use the word in the amendment—good labour relations; they actually make them more bureaucratic, complicated, difficult and hard to implement. Paragraph (c) makes provision for pay and conditions but, arguably, it should not be doing that at all—that is not the business of the Government but the business of employers and employees. The only one that is an accurate description of what is in the Bill is paragraph (e), the simple statement that it is to

“make provisions about the enforcement of labour market legislation”,

which it certainly does.

I am not sure that there is a satisfactory way of dealing with this. Nevertheless, I support this purpose clause amendment, because it seems to me that if it were to pass, the logical consequence, to be consistent, would be that large parts of the rest of the Bill would have to fall away to be consistent with the expressed purpose in this purpose clause. If the Bill were to be internally consistent with the things that we say are desirable, then much of this Bill is simply not consistent with that. Now, what goes first—the purpose clause or the rest of the Bill? I think we know how that is going to play out. Nevertheless, that is why it is difficult to get to a satisfactory purpose clause for this Bill. It would be good if much of the Bill fell away—no doubt we will come on to that in the next seven days—as it is going to cause a lot of damage to the economy and to growth.

To conclude, I support the amendment, if not perhaps for exactly the same reasons that others have supported it. It will enhance and make clearer, to some extent, what is a very sprawling, complex and unsatisfactory Bill.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to all of the amendments in the group. I spoke at Second Reading. As my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out, we only had four to five minutes then, so this gives us an opportunity to consider further what the purposes should be. In the document published by the Labour Government, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade referred to the fact that this would be about getting more people into work. So far under this Administration, we have, unfortunately and regrettably, seen unemployment rise.

At the same time, comments have been made by noble Lords on the other side, such as by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who referred to income inequality. What he may have forgotten is that, under the previous Labour Administration, income inequality rose. Meanwhile, under the recent Conservative Administration, income inequality fell. So, this is a case of trying to make sure that, as we take the legislation through, we focus on the outcomes it will have for people right across this country, rather than dogma. There is a combination of factors where, frankly, flexible labour has generally improved the prosperity of people in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, complained that people in work were on universal credit. That is a large point of it. We have finally got rid of tax credits, which went earlier this month. Those had been introduced by previous Labour Governments in order to increase people’s pay—which employers were not doing. It was done in a rather crude way, such that capital was not taken into account. When we were moving people from tax credits to universal credit, we discovered—particularly early on, when we were doing some of our test and learn approach—that there were people with capital of over £100,000 who were still receiving tax credits and who decided that, although they would be entitled to one more year of such a transition payment, they did not think it was right to do so.

It is about that sort of element, of trying to consider what we want to see as an increase in prosperity and productivity. However, I am concerned, given the recent increase in unemployment and all the messages that we are receiving from businesses, small and large, that we will instead start to see a significant increase in unemployment and indeed more people going on to benefits. As I say, the whole point of universal credit is that you will be better off working than not working. The approach is to try and support people as they reach higher salaries.

My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe is right to say that, if we were considering further things to add to the proposed new clause set out in Amendment 1, competitiveness and growth should be there. I would add that the outcome should also be about increasing the number of people in employment. I know that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has set an exceptionally ambitious target of 80% of people being in work—which would be the highest in an exceptionally long time—but, to do that, she needs to work with other parts of her Government to make sure that more jobs will be created, so that people can go into those jobs at the rate that is set.

After thinking through what will happen with this legislation, I made the point at Second Reading that the Bill started off at 149 pages—and I am conscious of the 100-day deadline set by the Deputy Prime Minister to present it—and that it had basically doubled by the time it left the Commons. Not a huge amount of time was set aside for consideration of the additional 103 pages that were considered on Report there. As we have already heard, we are starting to see more amendments come in from the Government that this House needs to consider.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I think I am allowed to come back in Committee. I want to respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, because I probably did not articulate terribly well what I was proposing. I certainly was articulating a right to request, but I was also assuming there would be an obligation to meet that request, given certain thresholds that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, was talking about. It would not be an option for the employer as long as the request was within those thresholds. I suspect that is not what the noble Baroness thought I was proposing, and I just wanted to set the record straight.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 8. I commend my noble friend Lord Wolfson on his excellent speech, bringing the reality of employing so many people into the heart of this debate, along with the constraints and the concerns being raised, while still recognising that I understand why so many people consider casual work and zero-hour contracts to be particularly poor when people are trying to have certainty of employment over some time. I also support Amendments 7, 12 and 13—in essence, any amendment that refers to specifying the reference period in the Bill.

I say that because, when thinking of 26 weeks, I think in particular of the hospitality industry in coastal areas. There are a number of employers around the country who literally shut down their businesses, or move to a much lower level of needing people, at certain times of the year, and then, in the summer, are desperately trying to find people. We need to give flexibility. The 12 weeks simply does not recognise that, as has been referred to. It is perfectly usual for people to work at different points throughout the year, potentially in on annualised-hours contract, but varying the number of hours expected to match the demand of customers requiring a particular service. I fear that the 12 weeks does not address that sort of business.

Across the country, 2 million people work in the hospitality industry. It is one of our biggest industries, and for many families it is key to how they support their household income. For the flexibility that employers want, and—thinking of how many people lose their childcare at certain times of the year—for employees to have flexibility around their hours worked, bringing in casual staff is a key element in how employers keep those businesses going.

There is another element that needs thinking through. While I appreciate that the Government seek to reduce the number of agency and bank workers in the NHS, let us not get away from the fact that, unfortunately, many NHS trusts are actually terrible employers. A lot of people leave or reduce their permanent contracts because they simply cannot get the flexibility that they need working in the NHS. That could be for caring reasons, for all sorts of people—it does not matter whether it is men or women; people provide care to their families and to their friends. I am concerned, and I intend to discuss further with NHS Professionals how this will impact on the NHS fulfilling its expectations for people right across the country. I appreciate that it is not simply NHS Professionals; many individual trusts have their own bank. That is intended to provide flexibility based on need, and recognises that simply not everybody can work the NHS shifts expected.

Thinking of the 26 weeks or the 12 weeks, I am also concerned that, at the other end of the Corridor, 650 Members of Parliament are all individual employers. They have to sign contracts, which are provided, but when people are ill or go on maternity leave, MPs can and do take people on through certain term contracts. I am concerned that there will be unintended consequences for the provision of services. As a real example, if you had to guarantee hours beyond when the employee came back, you could end up in a situation that you simply could not manage.

It is for those reasons that we need to think very carefully about the reference period when we are considering the different employment situations that small employers find themselves in, as well as the large sectors, such as hospitality and retail, which have already been discussed.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 3, 6 and 17 stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt. Before turning to the detail, I would like to frame the debate in its proper context.

At the heart of this issue lies the question of incentives. Much of the discussion around zero-hours contracts rightly concerns the security and well-being of workers. We must not lose sight of the fact that only a relatively small proportion of the workforce is employed on such contracts, or in other forms of temporary work. Many of these individuals are young people—as my noble friend Lady Lawlor illustrated in her very detailed speech—who are starting out in their careers. Others are disabled people, who may be able to work only a limited number of hours due to their personal circumstances. If we make the regulatory environment too rigid, we inadvertently create a disincentive to hire precisely these groups. We reduce the number of vacancies, reduce opportunities and end up harming those we most wish to support. Good intentions do not alone lead to good results. It is the incentives that lead to results.

I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan and the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Goddard, for their contributions in this group, and I will come on to others. My noble friend Lord Moynihan made a compelling argument to leave out this part of the clause altogether, because it is simply unworkable in its current form. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.

I turn to the specifics of my amendments. Job security is vital, and there can be no disagreement on that point, but we have to recognise that guaranteed-hours contracts are not always practical or appropriate across all sectors of the economy. The principle that we wish to uphold is simple: autonomy. Workers themselves are best placed to judge their own circumstances and to decide whether a guaranteed-hours contract would suit their needs.

Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, published in its report on zero-hours contracts, found that workers on such contracts often report a better work-life balance and higher well-being compared with other workers. This is an important reminder that flexibility, when genuinely chosen, can be empowering rather than exploitative.

Not every worker wants a rigid schedule. Young people, parents with caring responsibilities and disabled people may actively prefer the flexibility that variable hours allow. A one-size-fits-all approach simply does not reflect the realities of the modern labour market. Sectors such as retail, hospitality and tourism, and other seasonal industries, are heavily dependent on flexible staffing to meet seasonal demand. It is these very sectors that offer the vital entry-level opportunities to workers who might otherwise struggle to find employment.

Despite the Government’s understandable ambition to improve labour market fairness, the Bill as currently drafted risks reducing that flexibility rather than enhancing it. The automatic obligation placed upon businesses to offer guaranteed-hours contracts once certain thresholds are met would impose significant and disproportionate administrative burdens, even when the worker involved may have no desire to change their current arrangements.

The problem is particularly acute for larger employers, such as national retailers, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Wolfson, who delivered an expert speech. They would be forced into a continual cycle of recalculations and offers, simply because an employee’s working patterns have shifted slightly. As my noble friend Lady Verma explained, that affects small businesses as well. In practice, firms would face a daily or weekly obligation to offer a new contract based on changing patterns, resulting in huge and unnecessary administrative costs. This would not only create inefficiency but would discourage businesses offering overtime and additional work voluntarily, thereby reducing opportunities for those who value flexibility.

The amendments I propose take a different approach. Instead of an automatic right to be offered a guaranteed-hours contracts, we propose a right to request a guaranteed-hours contract. It entirely respects the spirit of the Government’s intentions. As the noble Lord, Lord Fox, has already explained, it would impose the same the obligations on employers as the Government’s Bill. This would preserve the choice for workers, empowering them to seek greater stability when they wish, but it would avoid imposing blanket obligations on employers that may lead to perverse outcomes. The Government’s current drafting, with an automatic right to guaranteed hours, risks creating a bureaucracy that neither workers nor businesses have asked for.

On the subject of businesses, it is worth referring to the letter received from five employers’ organisations. For reference, those are Make UK, the CBI, the IoD, the Federation of Small Business and the British Chambers of Commerce. They say in that letter:

“Not every job can be made compatible with every possible need. This reform means businesses incur admin costs whenever an employee works variable hours. The result is that firms are discouraged from offering variable hours even when the flexibility is requested by workers, including voluntary overtime. The cost associated with administering and calculating contract offers on a rolling basis whenever staff work additional hours is also disproportionate and provides no clear benefit to workers”.


I could not have put it better myself.

There has been some reference on the other side, by the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry, to the Low Pay Commission, which met seven years ago. That ignores the fact that, over the last seven years, working practices more generally through the economy—whether on flexible-hours contracts or not—have changed very dramatically, partly as a consequence of the pandemic. I note that the FSB has now signed the letter which includes the quote I have just delivered, so it has clearly changed its mind.

I recognise that there may be an even simpler and more effective alternative to the right to request, which would be an automatic offer of a guaranteed-hours contract combined with the right for the worker to opt out if they so wish, so Amendment 17 introduces a worker opt-out mechanism. A qualifying worker may opt out of receiving a guaranteed-hours contract provided that the employer has provided clear written information about the guaranteed-hours system, the worker has given written notice in a prescribed form, and the employer reminds the worker at regular intervals, at least every six months, that they can opt back in at any time. Under that model, every eligible worker would be enrolled on to a guaranteed-hours contract after the reference period by default.

However, those workers who genuinely value the flexibility of their zero-hours arrangement—and there are many, particularly, as we have already discussed, young people, carers and so on—would have the right to decline the offer by providing written notice. This approach would strike a better balance, because it would ensure that guaranteed hours are the norm unless the worker themselves chooses otherwise, thereby protecting workers who might otherwise feel pressured not to request more security. Equally, it would avoid the unnecessary administrative burden on employers of offering contracts that in many cases would be rejected. We would be sparing businesses the cost and disruption of a process that delivers little practical benefit where flexibility is mutually valued by both employer and employee. It would ensure that the choice remains a real and continuing one, recognising that workers’ needs and circumstances evolve.

--- Later in debate ---

If the measures in this Bill go through, many small businesses and microbusinesses will not be able to do what others have done—namely, grow rapidly and develop exponentially—as we have heard. There is a very strong case for exempting small businesses, particularly micro-businesses, as has been proposed. I hope that the Government will listen.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 5. Without small businesses growing and taking on people, we will not achieve the outcomes that the Government have set for getting more people into work. I referred in a debate on an earlier group to the 80% target.

I am conscious of what happened with the Kickstart scheme. We particularly encouraged small businesses to participate in the scheme and to consider the opportunity of an extra pair of hands, giving them the confidence that they could grow their business and employ people, often for the first time. That was an important step in thinking about how to minimise risk in the first instance. A considerable proportion of people were offered permanent jobs as a consequence.

That first step of taking people on is often the hardest for many small businesses and microbusinesses. That is why I would be even happier if this amendment was altered on Report to make it solely for microbusinesses, not just small businesses, as that first step is one of the hardest.

We already have thresholds in many other employment practices. We already have thresholds about things that connect with pension contributions, and other financial thresholds have been referred to. But this is about having the courage to take on people. You may decide to expand your services, whether in the care sector or elsewhere, as you do not want to let clients down, but you need to make sure that you can guarantee quality support to your clients. That is one of those uncertain things when we discuss a wide range of the amendments to Part 1 of the Bill.

There are other opportunities where I will raise the issues impacting small businesses in the Bill, but overall we should take the successful approach of previous Governments, including Labour Governments, of keeping small businesses out of this area. The impact assessments talked about mitigations they plan, but there is no mention of what those mitigations may actually be, and that level of uncertainty is one of the things that will hold back growth, which we are led to believe is the number one mission of this Government. I fear that without some of the exemptions, we will not see that growth coming in our UK industry.

[Lord de Clifford (CB)]

I rise in support of the gist of these amendments with regard to small businesses. I declare my interest as the owner of a medium-sized business with 130 employees, so it would not apply to me. But the burden on small businesses, certainly of Part 1, will seriously restrict their ability to grow and have the courage to take that step of employing people. I certainly think that micro-businesses should be exempted from a lot of these burdens. As we go through Part 1, we need to keep those micro-businesses in our thoughts.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 29th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move government Amendment 14 and shall speak also to government Amendments 23, 25, 26, 30, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41 and 45 to 61. I reassure the Committee that these are technical amendments brought about as a result of very welcome scrutiny of the Bill.

The amendments incorporate technical and clarificatory adjustments, close loopholes to safeguard policy functionality, and resolve uncertainties to ensure the measures are comprehensive and will accurately deliver the policy intent set out in the plan to make work pay, delivery of which was a clear manifesto commitment of this Government. They do not introduce new policy; they simply ensure the Bill works to achieve its intended aims effectively. Making technical amendments to the Bill in this way is an entirely appropriate and ordinary part of making good legislation.

On Amendment 14, as the Bill is drafted, workers on annualised contracts—or other contracts where the hours are guaranteed over a period longer than the reference period—that have a total number of guaranteed hours of work but little detail as to their allocation may fall out of the scope of the right to guaranteed hours. This is because the worker would be on neither a zero-hours contract nor a contract guaranteeing a certain number of hours over the reference period. It is the case even if they would otherwise be eligible. Workers may therefore fall out of the scope even if they are guaranteed only a very small number of hours over a year.

On the other hand, workers on annualised hours contracts who have a sense of when their hours will be worked may fall into scope of the right to guaranteed hours if they have a certain number of hours guaranteed during the reference period. This is not our policy intention—workers on annualised contracts may experience one-sided flexibility in the same way as those on weekly or monthly contracts. As the Bill is drafted, there may also be a perverse incentive for employers to place workers on to annualised hours contracts guaranteeing a very small number of hours with no indication as to when they should be worked to avoid being in scope of the right to guaranteed hours.

Amendment 14 will ensure that the policy works as intended and expected and will act as an anti-avoidance measure. It makes provision to determine what the minimum guaranteed hours are in the relevant reference period by providing a calculation method to find the apportioned number of any unassigned hours under the contract for that reference period.

Amendments 49 to 57 add grounds on which a dismissal would be automatically unfair. A dismissal would be automatically unfair where an employee was dismissed for bringing a complaint to an employment tribunal that they were wrongly issued a notice by their employer stating that their guaranteed hours offer had been withdrawn or for alleging the existence of any circumstance which would constitute a ground for bringing such proceedings. Adding these grounds aligns with the approach taken where a worker is unfairly dismissed for taking a claim to an employment tribunal on other grounds relating to the right to guaranteed hours. All employees deserve protection from unfair dismissal. These amendments will ensure that employees who make a claim in an employment tribunal on any of the grounds related to the right to guaranteed hours will be protected from being dismissed as a result of making such a claim. Consequential amendments have been tabled to amend the right not to suffer a detriment for workers and agency workers to ensure consistency when referring to the proceedings that can be brought or referred to and that could lead to that detriment.

Amendments 25, 26, 34 and 35 relate to the movement of shifts for the purposes of payment for workers for shift movement at short notice. These amendments make technical changes to the definition of the “movement” of a shift. This is to provide for situations where a shift is split in two or more parts, or where a part of a shift is moved with the result that the shift ends later than it otherwise would have but the start time remains the same. For example, a worker could have a 9 am to 5 pm shift changed at short notice to 9 am to 12 pm and 4 pm to 9 pm. In this case, it is right that a payment for a short-notice change is granted given that the worker may have already incurred costs for plans associated with the shift, such as childcare or other care arrangements.

Amendments 30 and 40 make technical changes relating to payments for shifts that have been cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice where an exception applies. Where an exception applies—meaning that the employer is not required to make a payment for that changed or cancelled shift—the employer must provide the worker with a notice so they are aware that they will not receive a short-notice payment and why. The notice must be given to the worker within a certain amount of time, which will be specified in regulations. This period may be shorter than the deadline for making payment, which will also be specified in regulations. Under the current drafting, even if they make the payment despite an exception applying, the employer still has to provide an exception notice if they make the payment after the deadline for giving a notice. The amendments change this so that employers do not need to provide a notice if they pay the worker within the deadline for making the payment. The same applies in respect of work-finding agencies and agency workers.

Amendment 23 aligns the wording used in Clauses 2 and 3. To be eligible for the right to short-notice payment, workers must be on a contract of a specified description, if they are not on a zero-hours contract or arrangement. This is referred to in Clause 2 as a contract

“that requires the employer to make some work available to the worker”.

We are adding the same description into Clause 3 to ensure that this is included in the provision.

Amendment 39 is a minor and technical amendment that corrects a cross-reference to align paragraph 23(5) of new Schedule A1 to the Employment Rights Act 1996 with new Section 27BR(3) of the same Act, both inserted by this Bill. This concerns the duty to give notice where an exception applies that means that no payment is due for a shift that has been moved, cancelled or curtailed at short notice. The amendment ensures that, for both directly engaged workers and agency workers, only the requirement to give an explanation in the notice of exception does not require the disclosure of information where that would contravene data protection legislation or breach a duty of confidentiality, or where the information is commercially sensitive.

Amendment 45 signposts at Clause 6 the definition of “work-finding agency” in Clause 4. This minor and technical amendment adds the definition of “work-finding agency” to the interpretation section in new Section 27BZ2, with other definitions used for that part. It does this by referring to its meaning in new Section 27BV of Part 2A of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Amendments 46, 58 and 61 amend Schedule 6 to the Insolvency Act 1986, Schedule 3 to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 2016 and Section 184 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 so that employees can receive short notice payments in the same circumstances as they receive other wages on the insolvency of their employer. When an employer goes insolvent, outstanding wages due to employees are treated as preferential debts—or preferred debts in Scotland. Amendments 58 and 61 ensure that outstanding short notice payments are also treated as preferential or preferred debts.

Amendment 46 enables employees to obtain payment of unpaid short notice payments from the Secretary of State in the same circumstances as they receive other wages under the scheme created by Part 12 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Amendment 59 amends Section 202 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to ensure that information does not have to be provided and will not be disclosed to a tribunal or court under the zero-hours provisions where a Minister is of the opinion that such disclosure would be contrary to the interests of national security.

Amendment 60 amends Section 206 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 to ensure that, in the event of a worker’s death or the employer’s death—or the death of another respondent in the case of agency workers—tribunal proceedings under the zero-hours provisions can still be instituted, continued or defended as appropriate by a personal representative of the deceased.

Amendments 41 and 47 amend Section 12A of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 and the provisions on short notice payments for agency workers in order to enable employment tribunals to impose financial penalties on all types of respondents in claims brought under the zero-hours provisions where there are aggravating circumstances.

Amendment 48 amends Section 16 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 to include payments for cancelled, moved or curtailed shifts in scope. This ensures that regulations can be made to enable benefits to be recouped where a worker has not received such a payment and so has had to claim benefits, and the tribunal has then ordered the employer or work-finding agency to make the payment. The amendment also ensures that regulations can be made so that benefits can be recovered from all types of respondents in claims brought under the zero-hours provisions—for example, in respect of the payments that are compensation for loss of wages.

These amendments seek to prevent workers receiving double award where their rights have been breached and ensure that employers and other respondents do not benefit from breaching these rights. I therefore beg to move these amendments.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of government amendments. I am surprised that the Minister made the assertion that they are all technical. Amendment 53, for example, extends the types of dismissal that will be regarded as “automatically unfair”. That is not a technical amendment; it is an extension of what is already considered potentially controversial in being added to the Bill in this way.

There are other amendments in this group that really concern me in their drafting. Multiple amendments leave out several lines of the previous Bill presented to this House and the other House and then leave the employment tribunal and the employer to get into the detail. For example, Amendment 52 states:

“It is immaterial … whether or not the proceedings were, or would have been, well-founded provided that the agency worker acted in good faith in bringing the proceedings or alleging the existence of the circumstance”.


I ask the Minister, what has changed? Why do we now have an employment tribunal group which has to decide whether the actor worked in good faith? They will not necessarily need to know what the Government proposed before, but it would be very helpful to understand why significant parts of the Bill on the operation of the employment tribunal are being changed at this stage.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 8th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in this group in the names of my noble friends on our Front Bench. I have a number of concerns about the guaranteed-hours provisions in the Bill, one of them being that they are drafted almost wholly from the perspective of workers and pay little heed to the needs of employers. I do not believe that is a good way to create employment law to underpin a healthy economy.

On our first day in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale, who is not in his place today, and the noble Baroness, Lady Carberry of Muswell Hill, both spoke about the work of the Low Pay Commission on zero-hours contracts. I was grateful to them for being pointed in that direction. I have a great deal of time for the work of the Low Pay Commission, which is always balanced and very careful, so I went back and looked at the 2018 report. Unsurprisingly, I found that it does not provide the copper-bottomed support for the Bill that noble Lords opposite have claimed—I should also say that the employment bodies represented on the Low Pay Commission have told us that as well.

The Low Pay Commission did indeed recommend that workers should be offered guaranteed-hours contracts, but, importantly, it also recognised that there would be circumstances in which it would not be reasonable for the employer to have to do that. There is not a trace of that in the Bill. The Low Pay Commission was clear that the Bill should set out specific circumstances in which the employer would not have to offer guaranteed hours. The commission cited with approval some equivalent legislation which was at that stage going through the Irish parliament, which provided, among other things, that adverse changes in the employer’s business or the existence of temporary factors would allow employers not to offer guaranteed hours.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, I believe that Amendment 19A is eminently reasonable in that context. It does not give an employer carte blanche to ignore guaranteed hours but allows for some genuine business circumstances to be taken into account by the employer when looking at whether guaranteed-hours contracts should be offered.

At the end of the day, if we do not have successful businesses, there will not be any jobs on any kind of contract available. As I said on our first day in Committee, I am particularly concerned, as is the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, about small and micro-businesses, which really need to be allowed the flexibility if we are to protect the work opportunities of around half the private sector workforce.

Even if those small and micro-businesses survive the incredible bureaucracy associated with these guaranteed hours, they will potentially not survive the substantive impact of the hours if they are required in all circumstances to offer guaranteed-hours contracts. Of course, this is particularly the case in the hospitality sector, the largest user of zero-hours contracts; my noble friend Lord Hunt spoke about the problems in that sector. There are also very large numbers of small and micro-businesses in that sector.

Recognising some very limited flexibility, my noble friend’s Amendment 19A is actually very modest. It would go some way towards making this new requirement to offer guaranteed hours work in the context of businesses that have to face difficult circumstances, and at the moment the Bill pays no attention to that.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by my noble friends. I am just thinking of my career. I have had quite a conventional career in many ways, but I have also had many extra roles, particularly when I was a student—I am conscious that we will come to Amendment 19B separately later. It is important to reinforce the challenges in starting up or expanding a particular business. It is well said that a coffee shop will know within the first week whether it will succeed. You could argue that there are different factors, but within the first month a business will certainly know whether the footfall and the sale per customer justify the number of people it is employing and adapt accordingly.

As my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral mentioned, there is also this extended element about things such as holidays. It may surprise your Lordships to know quite how many jobs are, frankly, based on whether it rains and people cancelling going out to do different things. That is one of the reasons why, in particular but not exclusively, many hotel chains have started having a price differential: basically, you get a better deal if you book up front, but you cannot cancel or get your money back. Indeed, it is why even more restaurants are, effectively, starting to pre-charge an amount of money that is expected so that people do not cancel. Having lived in touch of the coast for most of my life, I can assure your Lordships that the fluctuation in how many people actually turn up to a resort for the day in a town is real, and what that means for temporary jobs.

That is why I think my noble friend Lord Hunt has found a good way of trying to help the Government to consider some of the everyday decisions that employers have to make as to whether they open up in the first place, whether they try to expand, and whether they try to get the growth. If I go further on to Clause 20, at the same time that the Government are trying to encourage businesses to go into artificial intelligence and see all that can be embraced in that regard, they need to bear in mind that businesses will not invest in such technologies if they are concerned that the other costs will be so detrimental to them.

We keep having this Catch-22 situation: if the Government want growth, they need to recognise the success where employers have been given the chance to scope and to be flexible, although I understand entirely the Government’s intent that the employer should be reasonable with the people that they take on. It is for these reasons—and I will speak more in the next group—that I believe that the Government should seriously consider how they operationalise this. We keep hearing about more and more consultations. We have heard people from the British Retail Consortium, from retailers and from hospitality saying that these are the real issues. We are almost doing their consultation for them by putting forward these amendments, so I hope that the Minister will look on them carefully in his consideration.

[Lord Hendy (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall make four short points on these amendments, all of which I oppose. First, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested that employers would get locked into guaranteed hours. I remind him that all contracts of employment may be varied by mutual agreement or, if not, they can be terminated and there can be re-engagement on fresh terms.

Secondly, the noble Lord mentioned the industrial reality. The industrial reality of zero-hours contracts is a complete disparity of power: 80% of those on zero-hours contracts would prefer a permanent contract, but those on zero-hours contracts are completely at the mercy of the employer. They do not know how many hours they are going to work tomorrow, let alone next week, and they do not know how much income they will make at the end of any week. Therefore, a worker on a zero-hours contract does not want an argument, to fall out or have a disagreement with the employer. That is a vital component of the legislation my noble friend proposes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I may also go down memory lane about aspects of employment—it was a variety of activities. Where I slightly disagree with my noble friend Lord Hunt, who moved the amendment, is that I expect the Minister will simply say that students are not required to accept a guaranteed-hours contract. She is absolutely right about that. However, if I were in a situation as a student getting a guaranteed-hours contract, happy days. I would lap them up wherever I could. I am trying to think back to my time doing my PhD. I think I worked for the university in two different jobs. I also managed to use some of my holiday to get extra work. It was a mixture of things, and we are seeing this trend increase. With the cost of living challenge that people across the country face, we are seeing a significant increase in students starting to take on quite long working hours, which is somewhat detrimental to their learning progress.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 73 in my name regarding SMEs and an SSP rebate scheme. I have made a drafting error by calling it four days when it should have been three days, in compliance with the law today.

Occupational health is a key factor in both helping people to stay in work, to try to prevent some of the illnesses, and to get back into work quickly, and for some time it has been a key part of the strategy of a successful business to do that. But I am also very conscious that SMEs in particular are not always well displaced currently to access, which is why expanding that capability has been a key part of DWP’s more recent strategies, which the present Administration have continued.

Sickness rates are significantly lower in the private sector than in the public sector, but what is common to both is that there is an increasing prevalence of the primary reason for sickness pay: people being off sick due to mental well-being. I am conscious that this is often not an easy situation to challenge or interact with if you do not have the experience to do so, and that is why increasing occupational health is needed.

Why is occupational health so relevant to this? It used to be the case that with statutory sick pay you could reclaim from the Government the amount of money that you had paid out. You might have paid out a lot more—100% of earnings or similar—but all businesses used to be able to get a rebate for the statutory sick pay element. I know that because I used to fill out the claims myself when I was working in industry. Over time that was whittled down, and it was finally abolished in 2014. Instead, the Government at the time created the Health and Work Service, which was designed to be referred to by SMEs for people who have been ill for a few weeks—again, almost as a provision facilitated by government.

One of the challenges is that this is continuing to be part of an issue. Many businesses, particularly small businesses—certainly in submissions made to me—are particularly worried about this starting from day one of people being unwell. As a consequence, it is important that we should investigate the opportunity to get a rebate scheme for SMEs to try to keep the status quo as it is today.

It is in the interests of government to support SMEs. As we have already heard, the statistics show that, unfortunately, payroll employment is falling. When in office I was very pleased that we saw it increasing. Indeed, I am certain, in wanting the Government to succeed in their ambition to get to 80% employment rate, that they need SMEs to be taking on people to work. As I have explained, I do not think the Bill will help with that, but one modest way to go towards alleviating some of the issues would be to introduce a straightforward rebate scheme for SMEs.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett, and in support of more being done on statutory sick pay. I welcome the Government’s commitment to strengthen statutory sick pay by removing the lower earnings limit and the waiting period, but they must go further to ensure that people with mental health problems have a secure safety net when they need time off work, and a pathway back into work when they recover.

The UK has one of the least generous sick pay schemes in the OECD in terms of rates and length. It forces people to remain in work while they are unwell, which risks them becoming more unwell and eventually falling out of work. Because statutory sick pay is inadequate, people who rely on it often carry on going into work when they are unwell. This can risk them becoming more unwell, to the point where they fall out of employment altogether. We need a sick pay system that provides real security, is more compassionate, gives people the time they need to get better and supports them to return to work when they are ready.

Reforming statutory sick pay is beneficial to the economy, to businesses and to people with mental health problems. As my noble friend has emphasised, presenteeism—going to work when unwell—is costing UK employers £24 billion a year, according to figures produced by Deloitte. It reduces productivity and business competitiveness, as well as aggravating a person’s illness. Introducing a flexible statutory sick pay model that allows for partial payments alongside wages would help people to gradually return to work after a period of sickness, or allow them to reduce their hours when needed without being signed off completely. Not only is this beneficial for the employer, as employees are able to return to work sooner part-time, but it keeps the employee connected to their workplace and reduces the likelihood that they will fall out of employment altogether.

Extending the length of statutory sick pay being paid from 28 weeks to 52 weeks will enable more people to stay in employment, reduce rehiring costs for businesses and prevent people falling out of employment and needing support from the benefits system. Ultimately, we need to see a higher level of statutory sick pay, and I see no reason why, when you are sick, you should get any less than the national minimum wage.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I commend the speeches that have been made, particularly on kinship care, but recognise the challenges that carers face. I am sure that the debate on remuneration for carer’s leave will continue. I am contributing on this group because of Amendment 81, from the noble Lord, Lord Brennan of Canton. I would say that it is quite odd for this to have been grouped alongside the other issues, recognising the very serious situation of pregnancy loss. Before the noble Lord spoke, I was not aware that this was relating to an inquiry at the other end. I have only just started reading aspects of that report, so I am not as fully informed as he was in presenting this. However, there are some issues here that I am concerned about.

Thinking through this, only three other countries in the world include parts of pregnancy loss in terms of being formally considered for bereavement leave. That is not a reason not to do it, but it is important to recognise that we would still be quite a considerable outlier. It needs careful consideration. I am not dismissing it in any way, but I am conscious that the Government responded on 25 March and I am slightly disappointed that we have not yet seen an amendment tabled. I appreciate that some of these things take a bit of time, but I had hoped that in Committee we would be able to consider what the Government were going to table in this regard.

As the Government have set out in their response to the committee and as is set out in ACAS guidance, a number of these issues are already covered in terms of pregnancy or maternity-related illness. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, said about this becoming a potential HR issue. It is discriminatory for any such illness in any way, including miscarriage, and molar pregnancy and ectopic pregnancy would be covered very straightforwardly by that.

I have a particular concern about proposed subsection (2B)(a)(iv) in his Amendment 81, which widely casts the net of any medical abortion. It is already recognised that any abortion after 24 weeks is automatically covered in bereavement leave. The same is true of stillbirth, which, in the UK, is considered to be the loss of a pregnancy at 24 weeks and above. The two are not causal or directly related—obviously, there is a correlation in the timing. It just so happens that we have our current abortion limits, with certain exceptions, up to 24 weeks. So I am concerned that, in effect, proactive abortions taken up to 24 weeks would be covered in this amendment. I do not know whether that is the intention of the Government in their response, because, as I have said to the House already, I have not yet had the chance to read the entire report from the Women and Equalities Committee.

On proposed subsection (2B)(b), I say that I have had many friends who have, not always successfully, had children through IVF. Thankfully, many people do, but they recognise when they enter into it some of the challenges they definitely will face in trying to have a child by IVF. As it stands, on average, the success rate for a woman below 38 is about 35% for any particular embryo-transfer loss. Once a woman starts to go over the age of 40, that falls—it has gone up from 2012 from an 8% to a 10% success rate in 2022. That careful consideration needs to be thought about by the Government and your Lordships in this House when we decide to extend certain entitlements, while recognising the heartbreak that can happen at certain moments in people’s lives in these particularly sensitive moments. I am conscious that this is a sensitive issue to bring up at this point in the Bill.

I do believe that I would like to understand this in more detail. I will take the time to do some more research myself, but I am very keen to hear from the Government quite where this is stretching. I appreciate they have given a certain kind of wording to the House of Commons Select Committee on this point, but the provision of further details to the Committee here would be very welcome.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all speakers from your Lordships’ House for what has been an excellent debate. It is a genuine pleasure for me to participate, hopefully quite briefly.

The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, gave a moving speech, which was made more moving by the knowledge that Sarah Owen is at the Bar today, and I thank both of them for their contributions, but especially Sarah.

Amendment 81 has our support, not least as a catalyst to try to have the sort of debate we need and the careful consideration that the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, also alluded to. I hope it can start to move things forward.

We also support Amendment 134, which was so ably explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe. This again is an important issue that we want to have more conversations about following this debate.

My noble friend Lord Palmer gave a very spirited and strong advocacy for kinship care, and that was supported across the House—here is another area where there is an absolutely clear and present need for carers to be officially brought into the carers’ community.

The point on fostering was also well made by my noble friend, as was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young, about short-term fostering as something we should seek to bring into that. All these amendments are, in a sense, broadening the scope of carers and where we should be considering. For all of them, I hope the Minister will be able to stand up and say “Let’s have a debate following this particular group. Let’s talk with interested parties to see how some or all of this could start to be moved forward”.

I hope your Lordships will excuse me if I focus on paid carer’s leave. I had the great honour of piloting Wendy Chamberlain’s Private Member’s Bill through your Lordships’ House with, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, pointed out, the strong support of the Conservative Government. During that time, I had a chance to meet a lot of carers and a lot of employers of carers—big companies such as Centrica, which the noble Lord mentioned, and much smaller companies. They all set out the advantages of having a proper, strong relationship with their carers and the starting point, which we established through that Private Member’s Bill, of unpaid carer’s leave.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

This probing amendment proposes a sensible and defined way forward by seeking to introduce a probationary period solely for young apprentices. I hope the Minister will recognise the problem and the need to make special provision for young apprenticeships.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I did not put my name to Amendment 102, because I do not agree with it entirely, for reasons I will set out, but the general approach is absolutely right.

We do not need to get into the rights and wrongs of the apprenticeship levy and higher-level apprenticeships, particularly level 7, but it is important to recognise that the number of people starting apprenticeships—particularly down in levels 1, 2, 3 and perhaps even 4—is a challenge, and is holding young people back from getting into work. Indeed, it is not just young people, and that is my broader point: getting people—many of whom, for a variety of reasons, may have been out of the job market for a long time—into work. It is exactly this approach, through apprenticeships, which means that, usually for SMEs, the larger elements of the levy are not being used by the larger employers and are instead being used to help provide 100% of the cost in order to train people.

There are a number of different factors there. People have talked about the different elements of costs. There is also the opportunity cost. It is important that employers get involved in identifying and helping the supply chain of their own workforce. I am sure I am not the only person who has been somewhere where I just got fed up doing the hard yards on training and the extra work, and, as I said, the opportunity cost, only for someone else to come along and poach that person, or for that person, once they had fully qualified, to leave. I have seen the frustration that this sometimes brought.

One of the adjustments I would have made to this builds on the discussion about NEETs. The definition of NEETs is those aged 16 to 24. My suggestion is that the amendment be amended, to cover an apprentice who is less than 25 years of age at the time that the contract is signed.

On the consideration of a probationary period, it is fair to say that people will want to give those new to a sector, and new to the world of work, more than a week or so to see if it is going to work out. There is a mixture of elements that need to be considered when people take on apprentices. One is their capability in work and college, and seeing how that evolves, because it is not always such a straightforward translation. Nor should apprenticeships be considered as work experience; they are proper jobs, admittedly a training job, and we should bear that in mind if we see a further drying up of apprenticeships.

We can debate at other times how, sadly, unemployment seems to be rising, which I believe will be exacerbated by this Bill more generally, but the Government should be specific about how we give more people a chance. I know we will debate probationary periods in general later. Apprenticeships should not be seen as, “We will just see if they work out or not”. It is supposed to be more of a commitment.

The Government could accommodate this. They will be aware that, already, on wages—if not some of the other rights—there is an apprenticeship rate which is not the same as the national minimum wage in the first year of an apprenticeship. There is already a precedent in legislation and practice that apprentices can be treated differently. I appreciate that people do not necessarily want two-tier elements like that, but we need to give special consideration to apprenticeships, recognising the special status they are given by the Government in contributions towards training and given the risk that employers may take on.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment and declare my interest as the chair of a small housing association, Look Ahead, where we employ a lot of care workers and are encouraging apprenticeships to keep people in care work and to develop proper careers. We have not yet got the Casey review on care workers, but we know that the Government intend to reduce visas for overseas workers in this area. However, when you go into care work, you always find a small proportion of people who, when they realise some of the challenges of giving intimate physical care, feel unable to go on with that particular work. That is perfectly appropriate for both the apprentice themselves and the people they are supporting. I urge us to try to reach an agreement on this that is more flexible, so that people can have the opportunity of an apprenticeship in care, while recognising that, sometimes, a different kind of work is more appropriate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

I am aware of a case of a small company that has got rid of four individuals in view of the legislation because those individuals are not doing a good enough job, but it could live with them if it had the ability to get rid of them. What it cannot face the thought of is having to go down any form of tribunal route or indeed threat thereof. That is not what we are trying to do with this Bill; we are trying to prevent that. We do not want to see those individuals leave employment. That is not what we want, and that is where it could lead a lot of people.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is one of the most important parts of this legislation, and I am very conscious of the Labour Party’s manifesto and its success in the election last year. However, at the same time, this is the same Government who want to increase the employment rate to 80%, which has not been achieved in a very long time. If we go back in history, we see that the Blair-Brown Government did not make changes to go to zero or day-one rights in the same way. Yes, they changed it from two years to one year. The coalition Government later changed it back to two years.

Yet we are now seeing—as has already been pointed out elegantly by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in response to some of the comments raised on the Government Benches—that this is the Government’s own impact assessment. If we look at the Regulatory Policy Committee’s assessment of these proposals, we see that it gives a very strong red rating on this element and suggests that, basically, there is no evidence that they are in any way needed.

There are aspects here of “What is the problem that the Government is trying to address?”. Lewis Silkin solicitors point out that if the only changes to be made were those referred to and we were still to have, as the noble Lord, Lord Hendy read out, the different approaches on fair dismissal in the tribunal, the Government could just put forward a statutory instrument based on the existing power of the 1996 Act. However, they have not done so in the Bill; they are seeking to go much further in a variety of ways in Schedule 3. That is why I share the concerns of many other noble Lords who are worried about the unintended consequences. Nobody can believe that a Labour Government would want to see unemployment rise or more people on benefits, or not tackle the challenge of people not in education, employment or training—

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

Or the most vulnerable.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Or the most vulnerable—and we can just keep going.

However, on whether people take cases to the employment tribunal, as has been referred to, we are not going to debate Part 5 tonight, but in this same Bill, where we have to consider a lot of these things in the round, the Government are proposing to give an unlimited amount of money to somebody to get legal aid or legal support so that they can go to tribunal. In fact, they are going further and saying that the Secretary of State or somebody they appoint can go to court on their behalf. In that case, in Part 5, we are talking about people who have not even started work.

So, rolling it back, on some of the concerns about which noble Lords on the Government Benches are suggesting, “Don’t worry about it, this isn’t going to happen”, actually, the entire Bill is opening that. That is why I hope the Government do not just listen to the real concerns of noble Lords in this House; they should consider their own impact assessment and the representations of all the business organisations that think that this is just wrong.

I support the amendments. There are a variety of them about putting in the Bill a defined time for what should be considered a probationary period. We have already had a separate discussion about apprenticeships but, going further, one thing that surprises me is that in paragraph 2 of Schedule 3, new Section 108A refers to:

“Employees who have not yet started work”.


You may think, “That’s very sensible. How can you have an unfair dismissal?” I have already referred to Part 5, coming somewhat later. Then there is a list in the Explanatory Notes. It is quite complicated—it tries to simplify it, but the legislation is complicated—but here we have one of the answers. A lot of the Bill is basically about trying to make sure that trade union membership goes up—that means more money going into the political fund and having to wait to opt out until the following January, for, in effect, finances. Indeed, paragraph 5(3) of Schedule 3, as a consequential amendment, says that, in effect, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal, before you have even started work, will not apply if you are a member of a trade union. That is what is going on in this legislation. I will read it out:

“Omit section 154 (disapplication of qualifying period for unfair dismissal relating to union membership”.


There are a number of activities here; it goes further in the Explanatory Notes. They include if you are on strike—I do not quite understand how you could be on strike if you have not started work, but perhaps one is on strike if one is in a different job. There are already protections in the disapplication in existing law—it suggests people who are pregnant and similar. There are a variety of things here where there are already protections, but these are now being extended in different ways. Sometimes, the Government Back Benches may not all have necessarily read the full detail of the Bill.

To that end, I support the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, in saying, “Let’s get rid of this clause and this schedule”. There is genuinely a way to start this again. There is still time for the Government to go away and do proper thinking—there is plenty to get through in this debate before we get to Report—to really narrow in on what the Government are trying to do, rather than, frankly, giving a blank cheque to a series of employment situations. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral—happy birthday to him, by the way—has already deemed this to be the unemployment Bill. I know those are not the consequences that the Government are seeking to address, but the experience and the petitioning of business organisations is very clear that that is what will happen.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, there are two things that I can safely say. One is that I am unanimous in my comments tonight, and the other is that you cannot accuse the Liberal Democrats of extending the debate past a reasonable hour; we have done just over an hour on this debate. The debate has been quite sensible and both sides have ventured into the usual jousting, but the comments from the noble Baroness who just spoke were a bit disingenuous in saying, or intimating, that the real reason behind this measure is to increase union membership and generate money for the Labour Party. That could not be farther from the truth of what this Government are trying to do, whichever way you look at the Bill.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Has the noble Lord read the later parts of the Bill that specifically say that? In the human rights assessment, there is a qualified comment from the Government that, basically, cites in particular the element about postponing any refunds until January. That is exactly what part of the Bill is designed to do.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I will reply to that. Yes, it is a technical question, and perhaps that wording sits there, but any person with an ounce of common sense who sees the Bill can see what the Government are trying to do. I do not think that the Bill, with over 300 amendments to it, is geared to do what the noble Baroness is intimating. That is cheap political point-scoring, and I think it is beneath her.

I have carefully considered the amendments put forward by noble Lords in this group, particularly those seeking to remove Clause 23 and Schedule 3, including Amendments 23 and 334 from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, the series of amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and others relating to probationary periods, including Amendments 105 to 112. While I am not persuaded by those amendments or the case for removing the provisions or fundamentally changing the Bill, I recognise the need for greater clarity on probationary periods. Given the Bill’s current drafting, which relies heavily on future regulation, it is essential that the Government provide clear and firm guidance on how the provisions will operate in practice, especially for small businesses, which will find ambiguity challenging in difficult times.

Amendment 107A from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which proposes a default initial employment period but would allow the Secretary of State flexibility to amend that through regulation, offers a balanced concept that could be helpful in providing certainty while retaining adaptability. Likewise, Amendment 334 from the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, which calls for a retention of the current qualifying period until suitable regulations are in place, reflects concerns about the smooth transition, and that deserves attention. However, I am less convinced by the calls for further impact assessments or reviews of the proposals in Amendments 103 and 123, which I believe risk delaying the necessary reforms without providing clarity.

In light of those amendments, I urge the Government to seize this opportunity to give definition and definite practical guidance on the provisions that the Bill will implement. It would be better if the Minister could say in absolute terms the length of time for which probationary periods will be set in future regulation after the passage of the Bill. That would be particularly important for smaller employers that need certainty to comply. Providing that clarity would help to ensure that the reform worked as intended, and it would help to strike the right balance between protecting employees’ rights and allowing employers the flexibility to manage probationary employments effectively. On that basis, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

Yes, I can confirm that that is the case.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

The Minister has not addressed the fact that there are already powers in existing legislation to modify the qualifying period. The Minister talks about going into consultation, but that consultation on the probationary period could start right now with the SI, and that element. I struggle to understand why we have to wait such a long time when, actually, the Government could get on with their policy a lot more quickly.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

That has reminded me that that was the other question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe—so I thank the noble Baroness for raising it.

As we have said before, we are working on an implementation plan, which we hope to share with noble Lords as soon as we can. It is in my interests as well as noble Lords’ interests that they see it sooner rather than later, but there is no point in sharing something that is not complete. Noble Lords will see that—and it will set out exactly what we are planning to do and where the consultations will fit in with all of it. I hope that when noble Lords see it, it will reassure them.

To go back to the particular question from the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, we see this as a wholesale package. It is right that it is introduced to employers as a package; it will have appropriate timescales in it. We do not want to do things on a piecemeal basis, we want to do them in the round. That is why we are attempting to address this in the way that we are proposing today.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I rise to move Amendment 141 in the name of my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. She is, about now, talking about net zero to students at Oxford University. It was an engagement that was made some time ago, but she wishes to express her thanks to the Minister for arranging a meeting to discuss this and later amendments, and for the constructive dialogue that followed.

This amendment speaks for itself, but I would like to describe a case where it would have been applicable. It is that of 19 year-old Ellen Reynolds, from Glasgow, who worked a five-hour shift in a restaurant. She told the BBC:

“I ran food and drinks to customers … I cleaned the tables, set up the tables, swept the floor, took people to their seats … took a few payments on the card machine”.


Before that shift, she had to buy a shirt and trousers as a uniform, costing £20. Then, she got paid nothing, and she did not get a job out of it.

The Department for Business and Trade’s guidance on national minimum wage eligibility includes a section on unpaid work trial periods, which discusses to what extent the national minimum wage applies to work trials undertaken as part of a recruitment process. It says that work trials can help employers to

“decide whether the individual has the skills and qualities … for the job”,

and that unpaid work trials can be a

“legitimate practice”,

so long as they are not used

“to obtain work or services for which at least the minimum wage should be paid”.

That, I believe, is an invitation to abuse: the kind of abuse that Ellen suffered, being expected to work for nothing—not getting less than the minimum wage, but getting nothing at all. We hear reports of employers who do this to a succession of workers.

For those who would like to explore this issue in more depth than I have time for today, I point them to a debate in Westminster Hall on 29 March 2023, secured by Stewart Malcolm McDonald MP. That followed the introduction by the same MP of a Private Member’s Bill in 2017 seeking to achieve the same outcome as this amendment. That Bill that won the backing of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the National Union of Students, among others. The commendably persistent MP reintroduced it last year. So, it has been an issue that has been around a long time but still has no solution.

If the Minister feels that the amendment is not properly drafted, I have been assured by my noble friend that she is in no way attached to the detail of how it is written, although she thanks the Bill Office for its assistance so far. The point is to act and to actually create a solution for an abuse that is enacted on people who can least afford it.

I have heard some very familiar phrases in the past few groups: we need more information, this is not the right time, there is legislation elsewhere that deals with this and this is not the Bill. But if not now, in the Employment Rights Bill, then when and how? We have to protect workers such as Ellen. They are often young and vulnerable, and sometimes English is not their first language. Surely the point of an Employment Rights Bill is to protect people from exploitation such as unpaid work.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am sympathetic to the intentions behind this amendment. There are risks of exploitation, which the noble Baroness has just set out. Where I am somewhat more concerned and have more sympathy with the amendment debated earlier today is about how people continue to do these sorts of jobs and still do not get paid.

To give a real example, the Department for Work and Pensions runs a programme called SWAP. It is quite a short-term programme and it is not quite the same as a boot camp, principally run by the DfE. It is often for people perhaps wanting to go into a new sector or who are open to new experiences, so there is an element of training. However, a key part of the SWAP is that you work and try out. There is no guarantee that, at the end of that, you will get a job with that specific employer, but what really matters is that it will give you a sense of aptitude and of getting back into the workplace, while you continue to receive benefits.

Let us not pretend that receiving universal credit for a week is necessarily the same as being paid the equivalent of a national minimum wage. But my principal concern with this amendment is that, while wanting to avoid exploitation, it would unwittingly or unknowingly shut down these broader opportunities and programmes which the Government run to help get people back into the world of work. That is why it needs to be considered carefully by the Minister, but ultimately rejected.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I will speak briefly to this amendment, which proposes to prohibit unpaid trial shifts by ensuring that those who undertake such shifts are paid at least the national minimum wage. This issue echoes concerns raised in earlier debates on unpaid work experience.

The amendment seeks to clarify that shift trials, defined as work undertaken in the hope of securing a temporary or permanent position, should be fairly compensated. This would address that potential gap in existing legislation and offer clearer protection for workers, ensuring that their time and labour are respect and valued. Such clarity is important for both workers seeking fair treatment and employers, and in maintaining transparent and ethical recruitment practices.

At the same time, it is important to consider the practical implications for employers who may rely on trial shifts as part of their recruitment process. I therefore invite the Minister to consider carefully whether this amendment strikes the right balance between protecting workers’ rights from exploitation and allowing employers reasonable flexibility in assessing candidates.

I look forward to the Government’s view on the best way to achieve a proportionate and effective approach that serves the interests of all parties involved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has pointed out, this idea was in both the 2022 Green Paper and in the paper that the Labour Party published during last year’s election. Clearly, there is an expectation that this needs to be addressed in this huge Bill, the main purpose of which, as I have said to this Committee before, could have been achieved through a statutory instrument.

However, one of the important things in the amendment, which has been carefully written by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, sets in place the idea that:

“The right to disconnect does not apply where … a worker is on call or standby duty and receiving appropriate compensation for such duty”.


In trying to get into this debate, which is a fair debate to have, we find that the legislation already addresses the majority of situations where this would already happen, and so all that would happen if this were to become law is that contracts would be written in such a way that, in effect, if necessary, everybody would be on call—which would not be a desirable outcome.

I want to build on that. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, referred to a variety of anecdotes and his personal experience. Personal experience matters in considering how a good employer can act. For what it is worth, in my private office, which was very busy, and in my parliamentary office when I used to employ people, I required everybody to have their “do not disturb” setting on. The setting works such that if somebody really needs to get hold of you—if you are a Minister, say—switch will get through to you eventually. I have to say to the people on the Front Bench that that is the case even if you do not have your phone on. Those situations are already addressed.

One of the things the Bill is trying to do overall is to get that balance. However, it is fair to say that not everything needs to be put into legislation. It is about having a positive relationship, and some of that can be done through ACAS and in other different ways, such as guidance. Trying to micromanage every single relationship that the millions of workers have directly with their employer risks overcomplicating things. The fear that I have, given that this is in the Government’s manifesto, which they seek to put in place—it will be interesting to see how they want to make this happen—is that this will make for very tricky legislation. Although there may be instances where this would work, ultimately, it comes down to employment tribunals and somebody else’s judgment.

For what it is worth, we have an evolving variety of workplaces. A lot of people who used to work at home have now come back to the office so that they can leave their job behind, as opposed to feeling that they will open something up after dinner or whatever.

I look forward to hearing the Minister set out how the Government are planning to fulfil their manifesto commitment while trying to make sure that they do not micromanage every single element of how a job can be done in the workplace.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate what the noble Baroness said, because this is about fairness and making sure life works. There are a lot of companies, big and small, where, to a great extent, what has been proposed is already working. However, there are a number of instances—including somewhere like where I work—where I do not think this would work.

I will just give your Lordships one quick example. I work in insurance for a huge insurance broker. We had a client in the United States who by 5 pm had not decided whether to renew his insurance contract in London. If he had not renewed it by 1 June—which I guess was a Sunday—he would have had no insurance on that specific part of his business. A member of my team kindly stayed online, for want of a better word—he was probably out and about with the phone in his pocket—and the call came through at some time after 9 pm. Looking at the way the clause is drafted, I am not sure whether that would be considered enough of an emergency to get a member of staff out of bed, so to speak. Equally, that company might have had to stop working, doing whatever it was doing in the oil and gas industry—I know that will not endear me to the noble Baroness, but that is a fact. But we had to bind that insurance contract once we got the order. It was all ready to go; it was just a question of sending a number of emails to say that it was done. So there are huge swathes of the country where it is in fact in place already, as the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, has said, but in some of the big City environments where you are working across time zones particularly, it is extremely difficult to enact.

On working from home, we all worked at home for some time; personally I loathed it—I am back in the office almost as much as I can be. However, I have members of staff who like working at home, and, let me tell your Lordships, they know how to turn themselves off when they do not want to talk to us anymore, and they are good at it. So they should be, and I respect them for it. But if you really need them, you can always find them.

Finally, you can turn the damn machines off. Be it a telephone, a computer, an iPad or whatever it is, there is an off button out there. Certainly when I was a child, we were told never to call anybody after 9 pm, and that was friends and family. So there are some unwritten rules out there that are already very effective.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I support my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral’s amendment and have little to add to what he and my noble friend Lord Moynihan have said. I emphasise that we ought to support such amendments for reducing the levels of collective consultation for companies involved in insolvency proceedings. We should do so in the interest of reducing the escalating costs to a company as a result of compliance and protracted timing. I support these amendments for that reason.

As we have heard, the Insolvency Act 1986 obliges the administrator to act in the best interests of the creditors. The more time and compliance are demanded of a company, the more it will cost and the less there will be for creditors. These costs will escalate under Clause 27 as drafted. As a result, the creditors will have less available to pay their bills and their employees. We will see a domino effect on companies left short of cash flow and on their ability to pay their bills and their employees. These amendments are very important, because we cannot afford a domino effect, with businesses left short of cash because of the compliance costs and protracted timings posed on companies facing insolvency proceedings. They are suffering anyway; their bills have not been paid. In the end, the less that is available to pay them, the worse the outcome will be for the whole economy, for employment levels as a whole and for the cost of living.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak on this really quite interesting clause. I have carefully read Hansard from the other place in trying to understand what it is really putting in place. I am concerned by aspects of the comments made by the Minister at the other end, Justin Madders. He said that it really means only that businesses have to consult on their location and only with trade union representatives, and that, “By the way, these things get sorted in legal debate in the courts, and we hope the courts will understand”. That is not good enough when we are writing primary legislation.

In thinking this through, it is important for the Committee to consider what is happening here. Why is this needed? It has apparently been done to reduce the pressure on people with a vulnerability. Let us take the example of a pub chain, which has quite a big estate and has decided that it is going to reduce its number of hours. That could be a consequence of some of the other measures being brought in by the Government or just a trend that is happening. So it starts to think about what it is prepared to do in terms of how many people it employs in its pubs. It may not want to do that straight away; it may want to think about it in different sections and to leave that discretion to local managers. The man or woman in the street would think that that is perfectly sensible.

However, the businesses that gave oral and written evidence to the Bill Committee are worried—which the Minister recognised in saying that they should not worry—because that is exactly what the legislation is saying they will have to do. They could be undertaking consultation at huge expense, right across the country, while recognising that some of those situations could be very localised.

We already have sensible measures in place. When there are going to be significant redundancies across the country, it is already a legal requirement for them to go before Ministers, whether from the Department for Business and Trade or the Department for Work and Pensions, who can then mobilise local jobcentres and the like to prepare for those redundancies. Imagine going back to the business considering the impact of that on what can be quite localised operations. The Explanatory Notes are silent, frankly, which is why I took to reading Hansard from the Commons.

I am concerned and would be grateful to hear from the Minister why this is the right approach and how, despite the uncertainty still left in this legislation, the Government want this to be in place. Instead, they should accept the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Hunt to make sure that these situations are well considered and that we do not end up in a situation where, despite the primary legislation, we have to go to an employment tribunal again and again. For that reason, I hope the Minister accepts my noble friend’s amendments.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt of Wirral, for tabling these amendments. We have been listening to feedback from businesses on the clause as introduced. It requires collective consultation whenever 20 or more redundancies are proposed to be made across an employer’s organisation. Businesses told us that this would put them in a constant state of consultation. That is why we have made amendments in Clause 27 to the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992; they aim to limit the burdens on employers while still expanding protections for employees, by ensuring that collective consultation is triggered when a threshold number of employees are proposed to be made redundant across an entire organisation.

The purpose of Clause 27 is to strengthen collective redundancy rights. The Government worked with stakeholders, including businesses, to address their concerns, which include not counting employees who are already being consulted on redundancy. We will set an appropriate threshold number in due course, via secondary legislation, following further engagement with stakeholders and a public consultation. We will look to balance the interests of both employers and employees when setting this threshold. Business stake- holders have welcomed the Government’s engagement on this clause and the opportunity to input to the threshold number via a public consultation.

Amendment 141BA seeks to exclude employers going through insolvency proceedings from the scope of a new trigger for collective consultation. I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, about how one expects an employer which is going insolvent to consult employees across the entire organisation. The Government believe that collective consultations are an important part of ensuring fairness and transparency between employers and employees. The benefits of consultations are felt by both. I heard what the noble Lord said, and I must say that employees are an important part of the organisation, as are the suppliers and the whole supply chain. Whatever is due to them should be paid, as is the same for other creditors.

The law already recognises that consultation may not always be fully practical in insolvency situations. That is why Section 188(7) of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 includes a special circumstances defence for employers to depart from the collective redundancy obligations where it is genuinely justified and they have shown that they have taken all practical steps to comply. That flexibility should be applied on a case-by-case basis, not by removing that duty altogether.

Amendment 141C seeks to ensure that obligations are triggered only where redundancies are linked to a connected reason. We recognise that collective consultation will be most productive when workers and employers are focused on a common issue. However, employers and unions have told us that they believe it is not possible to define what is connected or “common reasons” in a suitable, clear way and that this could lead to more litigation. They tell us that attempting to restrict these new rights to connected redundancies in this way would create further burdens, rather than relieving them.

Amendment 141D seeks to exclude seasonal workers or those on fixed-term contracts from the scope of collective redundancy measures in the Bill. First, it may reassure the noble Lord to know that the expiry of a fixed-term contract at the end of its term does not trigger collective consultation obligations. Therefore, any fixed-term contract expiring at the end of its term will not add to the running total for the new threshold introduced for collective redundancies. We will consider further how employees on fixed-term contracts should be counted for the purposes of calculating an employer’s overall workforce that might be needed for the purposes of a national trigger for collective redundancies.

Amendment 141E aims to avoid an obligation to combine consultation by inserting two new subsections into Section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, but new subsection (2A) already strikes the right balance here. Employers will be well placed to determine how to divide consultations appropriately where the national threshold has been met. We agree that each group should receive meaningful collective consultation and intend to set up guidance on this point in a new code of practice.

On Amendment 141F, it is already the case that where collective consultation on redundancies has already begun those redundancies will not be counted when determining whether subsequent new redundancies reach the threshold for collective consultation. We do not believe that this should be extended to exclude employees who have been individually consulted, as individual redundancy consultations have a different character and purpose from collective consultations.

On Amendment 142, we agree with the noble Lord that the threshold number that will trigger collective consultation should be proportionate and not overly and unnecessarily burdensome on employers. However, this amendment is unnecessary and disproportionate to address this issue.

On Amendment 142A, the term “establishment” has already been settled and is well understood in employment law. It works well in practice, so we consider that attempts to change the definition here would create confusion and lead to more litigation with very few clear benefits in return.

Finally, Amendment 142B would undo the Government’s extension of the protective award period to 180 days. This change was made following a full public consultation in October 2024 and has been carefully considered. It makes it harder for unscrupulous employers to price in non-compliance with their collective consultation obligations, as we saw in the case of P&O Ferries. The Government are committed to strengthening employment rights in this landmark legislation. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw Amendment 141BA.

Employment Rights Bill

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I am quite concerned about this amendment, although I rarely disagree with my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. I am just concerned about the number of agencies or government bodies that keep being created. We already have considerable regulation in this country; I am not convinced that this will add value. Although I recognise the reasons why my noble friend put this forward, I hope he might reconsider tabling it again on Report, if he was so minded.

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, I start by saying how pleased we are to see my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond in his place. I had the privilege of moving his previous amendments in his absence, but we are delighted to see him back with us and I thank him for proposing this important amendment.

The way my noble friend did it was very welcome because, at the heart of his speech, was a recognition that the labour market—especially the supply of temporary and agency workers—has to be fair and transparent. He used those particular words and stressed their importance. I agree with him that it is essential that all companies involved in these arrangements operate under the same clear set of rules. Too often, we see instances where umbrella companies or certain intermediaries do not meet the standards expected of traditional employment agencies, whether on pay, workers’ rights or transparency. This inconsistency undermines the integrity of the labour market and can put vulnerable workers at risk. Licensing could, in theory, help address this by ensuring that any business participating in employment arrangements meets minimum standards and is subject to proper oversight.

However, as my noble friend Lady Coffey stressed, the amendment raises some other important questions. Clause 34 broadens the definition of “employment business” to encompass a range of activities connected to supplying workers who are employed by one party but work under the control of another. This means that the regulatory net will be set much wider than before, potentially to cover businesses beyond traditional recruitment agencies.

Moreover, it is worth considering whether the same objectives could be achieved through improved enforcement of existing regulations rather than by introducing a new licensing framework. In this Chamber, we have to weigh carefully the costs and benefits, particularly to smaller businesses that may struggle with additional compliance burdens. We must also consider the impact on businesses and the wider economy. Many employment businesses operate with tight margins; for them, licensing means added costs, added paperwork and longer lead times to launch new services or respond to labour demand.

This is not an argument against regulation per se; it is simply a recognition that badly designed or poorly phased licensing can create barriers to entry, reduce competition and even push some providers underground, where abuses are harder to detect. In sectors that are already experiencing labour shortages, such as social care, hospitality and logistics, the cumulative impact could be significant.

As my noble friend Lady Coffey pointed out, there is also the risk of regulatory duplication or conflict. Some sectors already have licensing or registration schemes; others are subject to sector-specific standards set by Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission or the Financial Conduct Authority. Without co-ordination, we risk creating overlapping regimes, with businesses subject to multiple audits, rival codes of conduct and inconsistent enforcement. Workers too may be confused about their rights and the mechanisms available for redress.

I also note that the amendment does not contain any provisions for parliamentary oversight or consultation. The power it seeks to create is broad and, while it is subject to the discretion of the Secretary of State, it is not constrained by any statutory duty to consult stakeholders. In a sector as economically important and socially sensitive as this, there must be consultation. Against that background, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 151, 174 and 180, which are in my name. These amendments would address one of the most crucial challenges in our education system: how we value, support and compensate more than half the school workforce—the non-teaching staff. These teaching assistants, business managers, IT technicians, cleaners and catering staff form the backbone of every successful school.

While the Government’s intention to establish a school support staff negotiating body demonstrates a genuine commitment to these vital employees, and indeed fulfils a manifesto pledge, I am really concerned that the proposals as drafted are unworkable, expensive and time-consuming. They will add to the complexity and workload of every single school, not just academies. Individual maintained schools will often not be aware that the pay structure in their local authority is different from that in a neighbouring one. My amendments focus on academy schools, but the thrust of my argument to the Government is to think again because of the impact on every single school.

Amendment 151 seeks to mitigate potential damage by limiting the SSSNB’s powers to creating a framework that academies must consider regarding remuneration, terms and conditions, training, career progression and related matters. I believe that these flexibilities should extend to maintained schools. Amendment 174 would require the Government to produce before introducing these changes an impact assessment of the cost to the whole education sector, both academies and maintained schools. Amendment 180 would require annual reports of the SSSNB to include an assessment of the increased costs to the sector of any pay and conditions agreements.

It is important that we are clear what we mean by support staff. Support staff are not a homogenous group but an extraordinarily diverse workforce spanning many different roles, skill levels and contexts. Teaching assistants, while crucial, comprise less than half of all support staff. The remainder includes roles ranging from pastoral care to facilities managers, finance assistants, network administrators and school receptionists.

A small maintained primary school might employ a part-time administrative assistant handling multiple responsibilities, while a large multi-academy trust might maintain specialised finance teams, HR professionals and IT specialists serving multiple schools across a region. This diversity is intentional and beneficial. Schools and trusts have developed different approaches to organising their support functions because they face varying challenges. They serve distinct communities and operate at very different scales. What serves a 100-pupil rural primary school will not suit a 2,000-pupil secondary academy. What works for a stand-alone school will not fit a trust operating across multiple regions. Any national framework that fails to acknowledge this reality risks becoming either too vague to be useful or too rigid to serve communities effectively.

I am not trying to suggest that the status quo is perfect. The current National Joint Council arrangements have significant weaknesses in their application to schools, leading some local authorities such as those in the so-called London fringe to opt out of the Green Book terms and conditions entirely.

First, the NJC terms and conditions were designed for general local government workers—from refuse collectors to office administrators—but they barely address schools’ specific working environments and unique demands. Secondly, there is insufficient co-ordination between teacher and support staff pay negotiations. These separate processes often reach conflicting conclusions about affordability and appropriate pay increases. Did the Minister consider expanding the remit of the STRB to include support staff? Thirdly, the Department for Education has minimal influence over support staff pay decisions, and school affordability is not factored into NJC decision-making. Consequently, when resources are limited, teachers’ pay becomes the residual after other decisions are made, which is clearly an extraordinary outcome.

The current legislative approach is fundamentally flawed. Mandating a single detailed set of terms and conditions for all support staff will create more problems than it solves and certainly will not address the challenges schools face with recruitment and retention. First, it is essentially impossible to have a national set of pay scales for this very wide range of roles, given the vast variation in how schools and trusts organise their functions and their work. Consider this example: how can one write a generic job description for a finance assistant that serves both a small primary school’s sole financial administrator and a large trust’s specialist management accountant? Although sharing a title, these roles require entirely different skills, qualifications and responsibilities. What schools do for themselves, and what is done by the local authority or trust’s central team, varies hugely across the country. How many people there are to run finance or technology in a school, and therefore their seniority and skill, depends on the size of the school and on its legal status.

Secondly, at present, under the NJC each local authority sets its own grading structure. Even if you could find a role which was commonly defined across the country, you would find that it was graded and paid somewhat differently in different areas. The SSSNB would be expected to override these 150 grading structures and produce one national one. This would inevitably entail paying some people more, at potentially substantial cost in some areas, or paying some people less. I would argue that neither outcome is palatable.

Furthermore, much of this variation is driven by local labour markets. Some areas have to pay more than others to get decent IT skills, for example. It would be extraordinary to require schools in Cambridge to pay the same for IT skills as other schools if it meant that they could not get the skilled people they needed or that other schools had to pay significantly more than they do now.

I have heard Ministers suggest that their aim is to create a pay floor, not a ceiling, but that does not change the fundamental problem. It represents a full pay negotiation beyond NJC agreements, and therefore an effective national grading structure in which roles are mapped to a national spine in a consistent way across the country, rather than the more than 150 ways that currently exist. The task of trying to do that could begin only after considering every local variation. The floor points negotiation faces another challenge: employers cannot afford floors above current pay rates, plus cost of living adjustments, and understandably unions will not accept anything lower, even as a minimum. Given that the same role currently receives different pay across local authorities within the NJC, achieving both goals everywhere is impossible.

I hope the Minister acknowledges that this will create complications for local authorities, as their grading structures will likely not align with nationally mandated school support staff pay scales. Must authorities alter their grading structures to match the national framework, or will they apply it only to schools, or neither? Every possible answer creates serious problems of complexity and comparability within individual local authorities.

Most concerningly, this fiendishly complicated approach addresses non-existent problems. Despite repeated allegations of academies cutting and poaching support staff, sector colleagues can find no evidence of this. I find it hard to imagine that any rational person would take a cut in their salary to be poached. In fact, academies that have departed from standard terms and conditions have done so to enhance pay and improve conditions and career prospects, not to reduce them. Claims that support staff lack clear contractual terms are just not correct. Like teachers, they have specific contracts, often referencing established national or local frameworks. Contractual arrangements are not the issue.

Our school support staff deserve recognition, proper pay, good working conditions and career development opportunities. Above all, they need a policy framework that serves them and their schools effectively. We can build this through pragmatic reform, building on existing strengths, addressing real weaknesses, and respecting the diversity and complexity of modern school organisations. However, we cannot achieve meaningful improvement through legislation that ignores schools’ practical operations and imposes uniformity where variety better serves everyone. My amendments seek to make some progress towards this goal. I strongly urge the Minister to reconsider the Government’s approach. I beg to move.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the amendment in my name, but first I fully endorse what my noble friend Lady Barran has said. It is worth the Government reflecting on her direct experience of this before Report.

My amendment is quite simple. It is about the practice and conventions behind whatever we get into primary legislation. Candidly, I object to the naming of an organisation that is not a regulator in this country as needing to be consulted by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can consult anybody they like when considering making regulations. I do not see why the TUC should be named in primary legislation. That is the reason for my amendment. This is poor legislation and adds nothing to the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Prentis of Leeds (Lab)]

I rise to speak in favour of the proposed school support staff negotiating body, as set out in the Bill. Noble Lords may remember that such a body was established in 2010. All the things that have been said in the Chamber today on this issue were talked about prior to that. Unfortunately, there was a change of Government. The coalition came in and even though the arguments were dealt with, everything was set up and moving forward, and the school support staff negotiating body—which we had great hope in—had met once, the coalition’s first act was to abolish it.

Through the Employment Rights Bill, we can rectify something which was wrong. The new body referred to in the Bill is long overdue. It will work towards a number of goals for support staff, some of which have already been mentioned. It would give them a voice in the education debate, achieve fair pay, which is the law of this land, and create unified pay and conditions across the country—what is so wrong with that? Local government, which has been mentioned, negotiates on behalf of millions of local government workers who do different jobs in different communities, with different arrangements in place to meet the local conditions where the service is being provided. All that has been in place not for decades, but for a century. Look at our National Health Service. We all applaud joint working and the implementation of fair pay and conditions—fair pay for work of equal value— across the NHS and all the different disciplines it provides in our communities. Collective bargaining works well. Those bodies address and deal with any issues as they arise.

We are talking about a group of school staff who, for many years, have seen teachers have collective bargaining—which we obviously support. Other school staff have nothing; they are at the whim of the headmaster or headmistress, and of local conditions. Little is done on their behalf, which is why school support staff across the country welcome the re-establishment of the school support staff negotiating body.

The TUC is a voice for good. It is at the heart of the trade union movement and is respected by employers and governments alike. If there are differences or issues that need to be tackled, why not go to the heart of the trade union movement and ask for its advice and assistance? It has been doing it for nearly 100 years and doing it well. There is no reason whatsoever why it cannot be part of the arrangements for establishing the new body. I am proud of the work the TUC does.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I was clear that the Secretary of State could consult whoever they liked, and I would not be surprised if that was the TUC. My point is, why is this being put into primary legislation when it is completely unneeded?

[Lord Prentis of Leeds (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that comment.

The whole intention appears to be to limit the scope of any collective bargaining. It is as clear as day. Different forms of words can be come up with concerning who is involved, who should clear what, and so on. That delays things, and that is the intention of the amendments before us.

Noble Lords have to understand that the proposals legislate for the Secretary of State or their nominee to be involved in the negotiating body. I personally have no reservations about that. We want to talk to the people who have the power and the influence to make decisions that improve the service and teaching in our schools. This proposed new body is intended to improve schools and education. What better way of doing it than to bring people together, give them a voice, allow it to be heard and come to conclusions which are for the benefit of all?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I too will speak to Amendment 185, to which I was very pleased to add my name. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, on this amendment and my noble friend Lord Hendy, who spoke to his amendments in this group.

As the noble Baroness already indicated, Amendment 185 relates to training and education for the social care workforce, which is a critical imperative given the care and attention required by the people they care for. I declare my interest as vice-chair of the APPG on Dementia, and I thank the Alzheimer’s Society for its support in preparing for this debate.

Our social care workforce is vital in providing care to those who need it. However, they have been undersupported for too long. This amendment seeks to include training and education in the remit of the social care negotiating bodies that the Bill will create. These bodies will then determine the fair-play agreements in the social care sector, and, in so doing, improve training and education, which will also make a significant contribution to tackling the recruitment and retention crisis that the social care workforce faces.

However, of particular concern is the level of training and education in dementia among the adult social care workforce. The Care Quality Commission’s 2024 State of Care report highlighted dementia as a key area of concern and, specifically, that

“health and care staff do not always understand”

the specific needs of people with dementia. Many of those who, like me, have people with dementia in their families only realise this either when they are training to deal with it or when they are working with them on a daily basis.

A Nuffield Trust report from November also found that people with dementia in England are not consistently receiving good-quality social care, so this amendment seeks to build the foundations to change that, not only for people living with dementia but for all who draw on care, through the prioritisation of training and education within the workforce. That is a simple but vital aspect of ensuring that workers receive the recognition and the value that they deserve. That is what this amendment, if included in the Bill, would do. It would help in introducing opportunities for progression and development within the workforce and improving the quality of care that people receive.

I come to this debate as someone who strongly supports the Employment Rights Bill, because I believe it introduces a number of measures to increase the protection and rights of workers. In so doing, I hope that my noble friend the Minister and the Government ensure that training and education form a part of this legislation. I hope that the Government share these sentiments and see the value of the changes that this amendment would implement. I look forward to the winding-up comments from the Minister.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will begin by mentioning that my sister and I cared for my mother in the last fortnight of her life, and we were significantly helped by carers—to whom I will be forever grateful—in that short time.

Of course, our social care workers right across the country were genuine heroes during Covid-19, and that recognition needs to continue. At the time of Covid-19, I was Secretary of State in DWP and, clearly, the workers there were carrying out tremendous acts of heroism right across the country—but there is a recognition, in a similar way to the NHS, that this drove quite a lot of burnout. However, recognising the importance of carers and the choices that people made in taking up that really important role, I felt it was absolutely vital that we tried to get better organised, to encourage people not only to stay in the sector but to join the sector. That is why I worked with the Department of Health and Social Care at the time, with my honourable friend Helen Whately.

I do not wish to lower the tone entirely, but I turn to the explanation of the creation of this negotiating body and to one of the things that I think is key. I am not at all opposed to it in principle. However, it suggests that the bargaining power of care workers has been low, partly because of low unionisation rates. This is only 20%, it is suggested, of a workforce of 1.6 million, which is about 5% of the total workforce in this country. I must admit I am somewhat sceptical about that.

I do not want to get into a huge debate about social funding. This is a challenge that the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, is taking up. With her capabilities, I am sure she will find a way through in this regard. However, I think we should recognise that there are a whole bunch of employers right across the country, and that social care funding is provided for through national government, through the hands of local government and, of course, council tax payers through the social care levy. That is the key challenge that we need to recognise, and we need to consider how this negotiating body could address that.

I will apologise to my noble friend Lady Browning for not speaking on something. When I looked at my amendment—I have an amendment coming up in the next group—I de-grouped it because I was trying to differentiate thinking about the progress of social care in regard to trying to split it away from the negotiating body. Perhaps I will explain briefly why and then, in the next group, come on to what I suggest could happen instead.

I have already set out that I started working on this, getting DWP to be engaged and thinking through about swaps and similar things. Indeed, one of the things that came out of that was the care pathway on a journey after People at the Heart of Care at the end of 2021, leading to the Next Steps consultation. I would say that the care workforce pathway is working.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

Perhaps I can just clarify that we were very much sighted on the fact that in education, people who are on the non-teaching staff are included in the Bill in the pay negotiating bodies. We were not clear why it should be different for social care workers.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. I must admit that I had almost to force-fit Amendment 200A, which I am coming to, into the Bill in order to be able to talk about a very valid concern about the progress and retention of social care workers in our country, recognising the absolutely vital role that they play in many care homes across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Baroness Coffey]

200A: After Clause 48, insert the following new Clause—
“Registration scheme: duty to provide access(1) Social care providers must ensure that their employees have access to any registration scheme which Social Work England may establish.(2) In subsection (1), a “registration scheme” is system where social care workers’ training is centrally logged, allowing their previous training to be recognised by a new employer.”

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I have already set out, in the debate on the previous group, my appreciation of social care workers right across our country. I said that I would try to set out in this group one of the ways that we can achieve the outcomes that the Government, and, I think, this Committee, are seeking to see: improved pay, terms and conditions for social care workers, including for the benefit of the people they help, to try to increase retention and tackle some of the challenges faced.

In my previous role, I commissioned my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith to consider in-work progression. While in DWP, I was concerned more broadly about people getting stuck in low-paid roles and what we could do to help increase their prosperity. In looking at a wide range of sectors, her commission highlighted the challenges facing the care sector right across the United Kingdom. A variety of research elements went into it. It cited research that found

“little incentive to gain qualifications in a sector viewed as low status”,

and that:

“Those working in care perceive it as involving highly skilled work, but workers tend not to view care work as a profession”.


As I referred to in the debate on the previous group, and therefore will not repeat, it set out, in effect, the care workforce pathway, which got going and has been enhanced by the current Government recognising the progress that could be made.

It used to be the case that a lot of people went into the care sector through the apprenticeship route. A decade ago, Skills for Care would cite nearly as many as 100,000, but that has significantly changed and has gradually fallen over time. Some of that might be to do with the nature and the variety of the work, which does not necessarily lend itself entirely to being appropriate for the apprenticeship levy for everybody in that sector. Last year, we ended up with about 24,000, one quarter of which were at level 2 entry, with, I hope, some of the people who had already completed level 2 securing level 3, but it represents quite a shift. It is testimony to the Department of Health having put together and worked with an Ofqual-registered qualification at level 2 as part of this new way to try to make sure that there is progress.

I agreed with one recommendation that my noble friend made, but she made a recommendation that I did not agree with. One of the challenges she set out was the hugely diverse nature of the social care sector. In financial support, as much is given to adults, as opposed specifically to pensioners, when it comes to social care. Indeed, my longest-standing friend Dawn spent most of her career as a social care worker for adults with learning disabilities. There is variety within the work that 1.6 million people in the workforce undertake every day. One of the challenges—whether you are self-employed or are moving to an agency or local authority—is that there is no way of recognising your experience and any training that you might have done. That is one of the key challenges of people leaving the sector, or getting stuck—instead of, perhaps, the sector expanding.

One of the recommendations was to emulate what happens in the construction skills certification scheme in the UK construction industry. This has been developed with a card and it shows that individual workers have transferable proof of a level of training and qualifications. When you start with a new employer in the social care sector, you would then not have to go through all the training that you have already done heaven knows how many times. If you are perfectly well skilled that is a frustrating element as well.

I do not agree with one of the recommendations. I strongly do not believe we should be regulating this sector. I think that would become more of a barrier. There are now many careers and jobs that are regulated by some separate authority. My noble friend made this recommendation on the basis that Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland have done exactly that. Anyone who wants to be a social care worker has to become registered and be regulated by, for example, Social Care Wales or the Scottish Social Services Council. I am not convinced that we should be getting into that in this sector.

However, it could be possible—perhaps not for the negotiating body we have just spoken about, and I was suggesting why I did not think it would be appropriate—for Social Work England to establish something if people wanted to register and get their training recognised so that they had an equivalent to the construction scheme card. Again, the workers under that are not regulated by the construction industry in that regard. However, it has become a useful tool so that employers and workers are clear on what they can bring to the next employer they are seeking to have.

It will vary around the country but, quite often, social care workers will be contracted by multiple agencies. This recognises the flexibility of work that is available and wanted. This can sometimes lead to significant differential pay rates. Quite often, when working for a local authority, the pay will be considerably less than working for a private agency. It is important that we allow people to have this flexibility but, dare I say it, without the draconian regulation a whole body starts to bring about.

That is why I have put forward the suggestion that, if Social Work England chooses to establish such a scheme, any employees must be able to register training and any existing certificates with Social Work England to facilitate their personal choices on how to progress in work. I beg to move.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I was unfortunately delayed in getting here for the start of the previous group of amendments. I had added my name to the amendments on education. However, I am delighted to be here. I would have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, if I had realised what she was going to say.

I reinforce the need for education and monitoring what people do. The social care workforce is absolutely amazing. Its members work across an enormous range of people. When I chaired the National Mental Capacity Forum over six years, it was very evident that some people wanted to and had great talent for working with people with impaired capacity, and they wanted to learn how to do it better. There were others who did not like working with people with impaired capacity or people who had early dementia or even mental health issues, but they were extremely good at working with people with physical disabilities and impaired mobility. They were very good at manual handling, lifting and so on.

Over many decades, I have worked with social care workers in my field of palliative care. In the report of the palliative care commission that we wrote recently, we recognised the important role of many of these workers. When they look after people in their own home, they are often the person who spots deterioration first. Very often, patients will confide in them because they do not have the mantle of power that nurses and doctors have, and people speak very openly to them. They understand the problems and fears that people have in themselves and their lives. But they can see what is happening only when there is continuity of care—when they have seen the person before and will see them again.

I have to defend Social Care Wales; it has helped having a registration system because it has improved the perception of the status of people working in the field. When looking at this in detail in my field, we found that, although their time in post was transient, they often moved to a different employer. Although they did not remain with one employer, they would take their skills and what they had learned with them.

It has struck me over the years that this is a workforce thirsty for knowledge, skills and education, yet the group is not normally included among those considered as educated. When I first set up the hospice in Cardiff, it was the carers and kitchen staff who came in on their days off because they wanted to learn. Very often, because I had worked with them for 20 years or so, they knew best of all when I was worried about something and when to trigger calling me out of hours, because they had a whole set of skills.

Registering those skills will be very important in allowing career progression and recognition and allowing people in this workforce to work in the domains in which they have the best personality and skill set that suits them—where they feel appreciated and know that they are rewarded emotionally as well as financially. Some people are happy to drive around from one house to another in the ghastly traffic of the outer London suburbs or in cities. Others do not want to do that; they want longer one on one. Some are better working with disturbed young people or people with addictions. If we can have a way of recognising and building on that, we can go a very long way to improving the overall security of this very important workforce, which has, sadly, been tremendously undervalued across our society until now.

It was heartening to hear the Minister summing up on the previous group. I was absolutely delighted to have my name on the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, and to hear that the training will be set out via regulations under the affirmative resolution, which I think was going to be our next negotiating point when we were discussing what to do next. I hope that, with these amendments at different points in the Bill, we might find a way forward to get something on education and training recognised for the specific areas that people are in, so that they can gain credit for it, personally and in terms of career progression.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords for contributing and for again recognising the great value we attach to social care workers across the country. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, that I am not trying to do down Social Care Wales at all; it was more that there is almost a regulation approach, which I am keen to avoid and which I believe is not entirely necessary. I welcome the words of the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, and my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom in that regard.

I am really pleased that the Minister has flagged this digital record, which I was not aware of. I am really excited to hear about that. I had already referenced the care pathway in the previous group, and it is great to see it being built on, which is something the sector was keen to achieve.

With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 200A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, but I hope I am forgiven for thinking he has not been listening to what I have been saying. As I understand it, this clause is about reducing the number of people down to more or less nothing who are necessary in a company in order for a bunch of trades union mechanisms to be created. The amendment would remove that and tries to push up the number of employees below which this clause would not take effect. That is all that I have been talking about and I am startled to believe that a noble Lord of such eminence apparently has not been listening. I could finish fairly soon, if not interrupted much more.

My concern is that we are all people of good will. I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady, is rightly proud of the many good things that trades unions have done, but surely she cannot be unaware of how the people of Birmingham might feel about the striking dustmen or about how the people of this great capital feel about striking Underground workers and the commuter trains that so often muck up their daily life. She must be aware that, on another coin of trade unionism, there is the good and the bad. We have employment tribunals with two years of delay to even get to a tribunal, but clause after clause, including this one, threatens to increase the number of references to employment tribunals.

This clause is going to increase the awful number that we have just seen today of 150,000 job losses. In the parallel universe that we are in, can it possibly be that the Government Benches believe that that loss of 150,000 jobs has nothing to do with this plan, with their NIC changes, as my noble friend Lord Lilley said, or with so many other changes that are detrimental to employment in this country?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to the Clause 55 stand part notice and Amendment 208. I have sympathy with my noble friend’s amendments regarding small and micro employers. We need to cut to the chase. I will probably irritate the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, but what is the point of this?

The Minister in the other place said that he hoped this clause would be “straightforward”—it is certainly straightforward—and “uncontroversial”. He said:

“Currently, there is no general requirement for employers to let their staff know of their right to join a trade union”.


and that there is a duty in this clause. He said:

“A lack of awareness of the right to join a trade union may be contributing to declining union membership and reduced worker engagement in collective bargaining. The clause will help empower workers to become active in protecting their rights. This is a step forward in strengthening worker representation”,—[Official Report, Commons, Employment Rights Bill Committee, 7/1/25; col. 517.]


and so on.

I go back to the point I made in a previous debate: the key headline in selling this to the public was that it was about day-one rights. As I have already explained to the Committee, this could have been done through a statutory instrument. Part 4 is a classic example of the fact that a lot of the motivation is about increasing trade union membership. Trade union membership is now at about 6 million people, I think; it might be just over that. By the way, as I said at Second Reading, I am not against trade unions, but I do not think it is the job of legislation to try to increase trade union membership as a consequence of our actions here today. I made the point about political funds.

To come back to the numbers, about 22% of employees are now members of a trade union. Of course, people have to pay a fee. I have recommended to people that they join a trade union, but we should be aware that the only sector where trade union membership is going up is the public sector. My general perspective on some of these things is that people tend to join a trade union when they do not trust their employer and they think they might need help, when they are not treated well or when there are other issues worrying them. That is when a lot of the benefits of trade unions come in, such as getting access to legal advice—I know there are plenty of other benefits as well. Family members of mine are trade union members and, as I say, I am not anti-trade union, but I am concerned about the approach we are taking in Part 4.

On Amendment 208, it would be useful to get an understanding from the Minister about what other prescribed times there might be. It is one of the oddest bits of this part of the Bill. When you join, you get to know certain things—it might not all be on day one; I accept that there is a bit later that talks about instalments and that sometimes you get to know certain key things, but you must do it within two weeks or two months, I cannot remember which. You may not get everything on day one, but, nevertheless, what are the other prescribed times? Will it be the same frequency as is being put in the Bill about the reminder to opt out of the trade union political fund, which will have moved to every 10 years? Why not put it in the Bill if we want an annual reminder, or we want it at the same frequency as a say on whether people can be part of the trade union political fund—or indeed on ways that that decision is made?

I am concerned about this element. There is no doubt that employer representatives are concerned about aspects of this Bill. In particular, when they spoke to me earlier this week, they said that quite a lot of the impact assessment is written on the basis that savings will be down to the fact that there will be fewer strikes. We should recognise the history of strikes happening in our employment places in the last couple of years or so: the number of strikes has gone up significantly in the public sector, exactly where trade union membership is going up—not the other way round. I appreciate that there has been a change in government and that Wes Streeting sat around a table, but we know that right now, where trade union membership is going up, the ballot papers—I do not quite know the process—are going out, calling for getting the vote together for a mandate for industrial action. It is happening right now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that our very serious concerns about this clause would be assuaged were the Government to have properly followed Cabinet Office protocols and updated expeditiously the impact assessments, which are normally present in Bills of this size and magnitude?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. I have tried to get deposited in the Library, or sent through some other form of communication to all Peers, a response I have received from the Secretary of State on this matter. By the way, I have still not received a reply from the Cabinet Secretary, who is supposed to uphold Cabinet Office guidelines. In essence, the answer came back: “We’ll do a full impact assessment once the Bill is completed”. We know that industry is looking for that. We have no idea when these regulations will be introduced; I assume that they could already have started the consultation. It is important that the Secretary of State—I am trying to remember; I do not have a photographic memory—basically said, “We haven’t really changed that much”. That is where we are. I will continue to make the point. My noble friend is right and reminds me to chase the Cabinet Secretary.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

Perhaps I can help my noble friend by explaining that Section 38 of the Employment Act 2002 allows an employee to claim compensation of between two and four weeks’ pay. Does she think this will lead to ducks-and-drakes people trying to seek such compensation?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I expect the bigger employers, if they know about this legislation—although we are hearing from a lot of the employers’ representatives that a lot of their members had not even heard about the day one rights until very recently—will probably put their HR departments and lawyers on it. I am concerned about the smaller ones, which is why I am sympathetic to the amendments in this group on micro employers and small employers. Otherwise, this could start to become a very expensive business. It is yet another reason why the Government generally do not seem to understand the chilling effect that not only their economic policies but legislation such as this will have on the recruitment of people to jobs.

[Lord Ashcombe (Con)]

My Lords, I had no intention of coming here today to speak until I had dinner last night. Having put in a day’s work, I thought it was time to come here and express an opinion.

I would like to describe that situation last night. It follows on from a lot of what my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley said and the powerful words of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor. This friend of mine, whom I have known for 30 or 40 years, is a small businessman in Bath, down in the West Country. He said to me, “Mark, we have a major problem coming. I have friends in similar places who run small businesses”—he runs a business of some six or seven people. “We are all talking together, because that is how we transfer knowledge, and the number of us beginning to think about throwing in the towel is significant. I want you to know about it”.

If this change were to happen, it would affect the poor employees of these businesses. There is nothing inherently wrong with these businesses but there is, as we have heard, more and more legislation coming upon them. It is the employees who are going. The domino effect through local economies is too much for these businesses. These small guys have to employ lawyers, HR experts and so on. I work for a company where we have those in house. They are just getting to the end of their tether. They do not want to stop, but I hope that Amendments 205 and 207 will help prevent that sort of thing happening and another nail in the coffin for these small businesses, which are really struggling as they think about the hassle of going on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I know we have discussed the implementation plan several times now, and I can assure noble Lords that we are working at pace to finalise that. I do not think it would be helpful to see it in draft or imperfect form. We want people to have a categorical road map which shows the way forward. We absolutely understand that businesses need to see that; we are working on it. I am very confident that when businesses see it, they will be reassured that none of the things that we are proposing in this legislation will be rushed through. They will have time to prepare for it—I think we had a debate about this earlier. We know that businesses need time to prepare, we are absolutely aware of that, and we are going to make sure that they have it.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I just wanted to clarify something the Minister said. I think I heard her say that it would be done by negative resolution. Does that apply to all of Part 4 or specifically for every element of Clause 55?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My answer was specifically about Clause 55.

Amendment 206, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, would remove the compulsory element of the proposals, making it optional for employers to inform workers of their rights to join a union. To be clear, this is not about necessitating union membership but about ensuring that workers are aware of their rights and can make an informed decision about whether to engage. We want to empower workers to take a more active role in protecting their rights, and, where they choose, to participate in collective bargaining to improve their working conditions. Access to clear and accurate information is fundamental to that. This amendment would seriously weaken this measure by allowing employers to simply ignore the duty, defeating its policy intent entirely. It is vital that the right to union membership is made accessible to all workers as intended, that it is communicated regularly, and that employers are under a firm obligation to do so.

Amendment 208, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, would remove the requirement for employers to issue a statement of trade union rights on a prescribed basis. We are legislating for ongoing reminders of the right to join a trade union to reflect the reality of the workplace. New employers may miss information at the start of employment or change roles over time within the same organisation. Limiting the duty to the start of employment would also exclude existing staff, who equally deserve access to that information.

This statement of the right to trade union membership is important in fostering worker engagement and meaningful dialogue between unions and employers. Ongoing reminders are a key part of this measure. The Secretary of State will be able to set the frequency of this notification. This will be, as I have said, outlined in secondary legislation, subject to public consultation, and we invite interested parties to provide us with their views on this matter when we launch the consultation.

On the wider issue, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, urged us to consult more. I can assure him that these proposals have been subject to extensive consultation, and we are continuing to consult on them. I can also tell the noble Lord that we had a very constructive meeting with the Federation of Small Businesses.

Finally, I turn to the clause itself. Clause 55 introduces a new legal duty on employers to inform workers of their right to join a union. Employers will be required to issue this statement at the start of employment, alongside the written statement of particulars, which I commented on earlier. There is currently no requirement in law for employers to notify their workers of the right to trade union membership. This lack of awareness may be contributing to the falling union membership and reduced worker participation in collective bargaining that we have been discussing. This duty intends to address this gap, ensuring that workers are better informed of this right and helping to strengthen the collective voice in the workplace and enhance their representation. This delivers on the Government’s commitment to improve working conditions through increased trade union membership and participation. Specific details of this measure, including the frequency, form, content and manner of the notification, will be set out in secondary legislation, as I have said. Therefore, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment and I urge that Clause 55 stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and others. This clause strikes horror in my heart. The idea that someone could come into my business, access my premises with no notice—good luck with that, because I sit in a room on my own—or even worse, access my systems and my server, which are all heavily password-protected because I am regulated, strikes horror not just in my heart. I can assure the Minister, who says that she has consulted business groups, that she will see surveys coming out in the very near future that show the fear, horror and dislike that small businesses have of this Bill, and in particular the clauses we have been debating tonight. I hope she will have the opportunity to meet again with business representatives and listen to what they are saying.

The draftsman on this Bill is working in another era. What does physical access to a business mean? I like the clauses restricting this for smaller businesses, because most small businesses do not have a physical presence. In many businesses, literally tens of thousands of them, the employees work from home. They might have a WeWork office where they meet every now and then, but it is meaningless to give right of access to most small businesses. If we then go to right of access to digital communications, that implies, from the wording I have read, that a trade union official would have to be given the passwords to enter the systems.

What protection is there? What indemnities are there to ensure that this is not abused? We know that abuse happens, particularly in these days of cyber fraud, where someone who has accessed the system could take advantage. Obviously, I am not suggesting that that is going to be prevalent or happen in the majority of cases by any means, but I do not see any protection for small businesses should that happen.

It seems to me that the whole concept of access is misconceived. I would quite understand it if the legislation were drafted to require an employer of any size to pass messages to an employee—I would understand that; it would be reasonable—but can the Minister explain to us why she is demanding access to both physical and digital assets of small businesses?

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak in particular to the amendments regarding communication with workers. I think it was Amendment 207 but, whichever one it is, I think noble Lords will know. The reason I bring this up is that my noble friend has just referred to aspects of cybersecurity. By the way, I am not suggesting that any trade union would be seeking to cause this havoc, but we know this is a particular challenge. I am struggling to understand how, under wider confidentiality, how anybody would have access to this or be expected to. It may be that the employer is required to pass on an email, I do not know.

I am also struggling to find the justification for this. In introducing the Bill, the Government did not make any reference to digital communication or this other communication; they referred only to physical access. I cannot find any justification put forward by the Minister for this. I cannot find the amendment in Committee, and I am struggling to find the amendment on Report, in the Bill documents on the parliamentary website. I am sure they are there; I am just struggling to find them. I certainly cannot find any reference by the Minister in the other place to why this is deemed necessary. I appreciate that it is not necessarily the job of the Government to do my research for me, but that would be very useful to hear, because it certainly was not in the Bill introduced to the Commons.

I would be grateful if the Minister could give this House a justification, because one of the things that is causing concern among employers’ representatives is this sort of process. It is fairly well established that trade unions are often invited in; that is all part of good industrial relations. The legislation talks about being able to organise. I think the Minister in the other place talked about using it as an opportunity to recruit new trade union members, to organise, to have meetings and so forth. I want to clarify something. The Bill states, in line 15 on page 75, that

“the access purposes do not include organising industrial action”,

so I would be grateful to understand this better. How is the Minister in the other place saying that you can organise different from organising industrial action?

I am genuinely concerned that anyone can just be told, “Please email all your employees with this material”. Fortunately, at the moment, it does not seem that we have prescription that the Secretary of State will write the words that need to be said—I expect they would not be writing on behalf of the trade union—but, again, I am trying to understand why employers would need to allow that to happen. On that, I will draw my comments to a conclusion.

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I too shall be very brief. I strongly welcome this new right for workers to have reasonable access to their union representatives at their place of work—that is very important. It is also worth stating the good news that there are many voluntary access agreements already in place. I have had the pleasure many a time of visiting companies, big and small, walking the floor with the managing director and the union representative and having really good discussions, with an opportunity to meet workers and talk about the success of the business.

However, as a union official, I have also been in the position where I have had to meet workers in cafés, pubs, church halls, homes or anywhere, because they were too scared to be seen speaking to a union official outside their workplace with CCTV cameras trained on them. That is the reality that we are also dealing with, but there is plenty of good, practical practice to build on.

--- Later in debate ---

To fully answer the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, this will all be part of further consultation. To reiterate, existing data protection legislation will continue to apply. That means that, whatever systems are put in place, those quite tough and onerous conditions that we have through the DPA will still apply. We expect, in many cases—

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Before the noble Lord moves on from that point, I am fully aware of where the reference to digital is in the Bill now. The point that I was trying to make to the Minister was to justify why, when the Bill was originally presented to the House of Commons—perhaps I should have been more specific—it was not mentioned at all. I believe it was not inserted in Committee, so it must have come somewhere on Report, but I cannot find any justification made by the Government for why they have added this digital communication when they had not put it in at either the introduction of the Bill or in Committee in the other place, when it has the most scrutiny at that end. I had hoped the civil servants might have sent him a note.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I assume my civil servants understand that I probably know the answer to that question—they might be right, or they may be wrong. To cast my mind to the inner workings of Committee in the other place, the reference in the Bill, as I understand it, is to communication with workers rather than explicitly to digital communication. I sometimes feel that I cannot speak for the way we examine Bills in Committee in this place, let alone in the other place.

We now have the opportunity to discuss, as we are doing, the fact that in the modern day, in 2025, the idea that access to a workforce would not include digital channels is, frankly, fanciful. Were we seriously to say, not to trade unions but to employees—to workers—that the only way that they could receive a message from a trade union or from an employee representative or, to turn it on its head, from an employer was on a piece of paper or in a one-to-one verbal communication, then I think we would all regard that as fanciful. There is a little bit of sophistry—

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am happy to write to the noble Lord with more detail, but this is one of things that will be set out in regulation following extensive consultation. I go back to the original point of principle that I made about levels of granularity in setting out specific channels: if we specify channels A, B and C, as soon as the Bill is published we risk finding that employers are actually using channels E, F and G, because that is the pace of technology as it develops, so we have to retain flexibility.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Will the Minister write to me with a better, candidly, a more comprehensive answer than he has given so far in response to my questions? I would be very grateful.

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I am very happy to write. I resist the idea that I am not being candid here. The noble Baroness may not like what I am saying, but the point stands. I am of course very happy to write to her and to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, with more detail.

In conclusion, we expect that, in many cases, employers and trade unions will be able to agree the terms on which access takes place, including for digital access. In the event that there is no agreement, the CAC can impose terms, including terms dealing with digital access. I repeat: the precise details of how this will work in practice will be set out in secondary legislation following further consultation. I therefore ask that Amendment 208A be withdrawn and that noble Lords do not press their other amendments.