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In conclusion, there are many other issues that we are looking forward to debating in Committee. We on these Benches broadly support the Bill in the hope that it will reduce the burden on employers and increase fairness for all—especially for employees who have been and are unfairly treated by rogue employers over the minimum wage, or at least the lack of its implementation.
6.56 pm
Lord Henley: My Lords, I start by offering a little advice to both the Liberal Front Bench speakers who seemed to devote most of their time to attacking this party. I advise them that it might be worth marching towards the sound of gunfire in future. The opposition is opposite.
Lord Razzall: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is being seriously silly. I spent 10 seconds attacking the Conservative Opposition and my colleague, my noble friend Lord Cotter, probably spent 12. That is 22 seconds out of 20 minutes, which is not spending all of our time attacking the Tory Party, however justified that might be.
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Lord Henley: My Lords, the noble Lord is being oversensitive. I suggested to my noble friend that it smacks slightly of a faint element of Stockholm syndrome, but I shall leave it at that. I shall explain the syndrome later if the noble Lord so wishes.
I start by offering my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Jones, particularly for the letter that he so kindly wrote to us on 27 December. We admire his hard work and admire the fact that he took the trouble to come back from—I presume—Birmingham on the train, if it was working, or perhaps a ministerial car brought him back to Victoria Street. It is an important letter because, as the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, reminded us, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will hold an open-house-style briefing session in the House of Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, put the point bluntly and said that he very much hoped that the noble Lord himself will take that briefing session. We appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is an experienced Minister and has served in a number of departments in this House. But this is the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Jones. He has put his name to it and he has made the declaration that the Bill is compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights. He is the one responsible for the Bill and is answerable to the House, so he ought to be at that meeting.
Secondly, as the noble Lord will know—this point was raised by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others—we have agreed to take this Bill in Grand Committee in the Moses Room. I understand that the usual channels have already put together dates, which I have in my diary. It would be only right if we could get an assurance from the noble Lord—if he wants to interrupt me now—or a commitment that will have to be made by his noble friend Lord Bach that he will be present for the Committee stage of the Bill.
I have been in this House for a number of years. I served as a Minister for some eight years so I know of the pressures on ministerial diaries and that we have to do other things on occasion. I know that Ministers sometimes could not be present for the whole or some part of a Bill. Illness may have taken them away, or something else, but in the main in all the 30 years I have been in this House—as long as the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn—I have always known Ministers to make every possible effort to be there for Committee and later stages of Bills. I have never asked this before, but on this occasion it is right to seek a firm commitment from the Government that the Minister will try to be here for the Committee stage of the Bill. One of the reasons why we have Bills in the Moses Room is to give greater flexibility on dates to allow Ministers to fit them into their diaries. If the Minister has other duties that will take him away on the dates that have been discussed by the usual channels, I am sure that we and noble Lords on the Liberal Benches will be prepared to look at our diaries to find other dates that will suit the Minister, but all of us would like to see him take the Bill—his Bill—through all its stages in this House.
That brings me to the question of consolidation. I find I am in agreement with both the Liberal speakers on this occasion—it is rather nice to be in agreement with them. As many noble Lords will know, the Bill
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As my noble friend Lady Miller and the noble Lords, Lord Razzall and Lord Cotter, put it, we need consolidation. We have had 29 Bills relating to hiring and firing since 1997 and I imagine that we have had 10 times that number of statutory instruments. Can the Minister say whether that figure is correct? How many more regulations will the Bill bring in? Since it was originally called the Employment Simplification Bill and comes from the department for regulatory reform, how many will it repeal? In passing, I shall say that I am quite grateful to see that the first two clauses relate to repeals.
With all this extra complication, how can the poor employer, especially the small employer, cope? The Minister, with his former responsibilities and experience at the CBI, might feel he knows all about big business, but he does not necessarily know much about how small businesses cope. Does the Minister accept just how difficult it can be to employ people? I do not know whether he has come across the recent survey, which was referred to earlier, that found that one-third of businesses are prevented or deterred from employing people by the complexity of the legislation, particularly when it comes to getting rid of people. If you cannot fire people it is very unlikely that you will want to hire them. What does the Minister say to that? The case for consolidation seems to be overwhelming.
I shall turn briefly to the Bill, which was described by my noble friend as lacking a theme. As the noble Lord made clear to us, it is in four parts. The first part deals with dispute resolution. In it we see the abolition of something brought in by the Government only two, three or four years ago. It seems to be an odd way of proceeding first to legislate, then to announce a review of that legislation and then to repeal it. I suspect that life might be easier if the Government accepted a few more of the sunset clauses that we occasionally suggest. It would save them the trouble of repealing parts before they brought in further changes.
Like others, I noticed with amusement that the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, felt rather deeply that the role played by him, the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, in the opposition to the part brought in in the 1992 Act had been underplayed. In turn, he wanted to underplay the part
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Turning to the national minimum wage, I echo everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, had to say about the cadet force adult volunteers. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bach, I served for a short while as a Minister in defence, and I hope we did what we could to support them. We always looked for a great deal more support from all other aspects of the Government and all other departments. I am very grateful that here is another department doing its bit to support the work of something that emanates from the Ministry of Defence but benefits the whole of society—the cadet force movement and the work of the adult volunteers. In passing, I shall put one brief point to the noble Lord in a genuine spirit of inquiry. It is something that we might want to come back to in Committee. Are there any other volunteers or people in an analogous position who might also have to be considered? For example, there might be some people in the TA or retained firemen. Are there others? I hope that the noble Lord will give that some thought—we will give him an opportunity to give it some thought when we reach Committee stage.
There are one or two other Committee points that we will want to pursue at a later stage. In particular, I understand that offences will now be triable as indictable offences, not just summary offences, which will mean higher levels of fines. I move over employment agencies because that involves detail that might be more appropriate for Committee stage.
The fourth aspect of the Bill is trades union membership—ASLEF v UK. The noble Lord, Lord Morris of Handsworth, said, with apologies to the residents of Barking, that he thought that this was truly barking. If one does not want to go that far, one might say it is at least two stops short of Barking—Upton Park. We can look at that in due course. The general point, however, that seemed to emerge from those who spoke—I am especially grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and my noble friend Lord Campbell of Alloway—was to stress, following the considerable unease expressed by my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lady Wilcox, that there is no
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I look forward to the Committee stage. I repeat again that it is important that the Minister should make himself available to the House. I regret having to put it in those terms, but because there seems to be some doubt, it is important to do so. We look forward to Committee and later stages of the Bill and, this evening, we especially look forward to the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, on behalf of the Labour Party.
7.10 pm
Lord Bach: My Lords, first, let me say what a pleasure it has been to listen to this Second Reading debate. There is a huge amount of expertise on all sides of the House in this field and the speeches have been extremely powerful. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, was powerful. On my side, if I may mention it in particular, not to embarrass him, the speech of my noble friend Lord Morris of Handsworth was powerful.
This is an interesting Bill, which has been criticised for being something that it has never claimed to be. It is really a bits and pieces Bill in dealing with employment law—nothing wrong in that, I think—concerning major and important issues. Indeed, I do not think that we should have had such powerful and impressive speeches if it had not raised such issues. It is not a minor piece of legislation by any means, but please see it for what it is and let us judge it on that basis.
The noble Lord, Lord Henley, said—I think probably tongue in cheek; I hope so, for his sake—that this is an odd way of legislating: to legislate, agree to have a review in a couple of years and, if the legislation is working well, not repeal it, but if parts of it are not, repeal them. That seems to me, as it did to the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, an immensely sensible way to deal with complicated matters such as this.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral—I thank him very much for his kind words, but I knew that a “but” was coming eventually—talked about the Bill not being about job creation. I think that my noble friend Lord Watson dealt with that to some extent. No, it is not a Bill about job creation, but I think that we will all agree—I know that the noble Lord will from his time when he was Employment Secretary—that the better employment relations are, the better it is for economic success in the country. In that sense, a Bill that is aimed at better employment relations goes to the heart of whether we remain a successful economy.
I am sorry that the main opposition party does not really support the Bill. I was hoping for words of support from the Front Bench, but I never got them. I was disappointed. The Liberal Democrat Benches were much more favourably inclined. The CBI, the voice of business, is very encouraged by the Bill and supports it a great deal. I make no apologies whatever for pointing this out, especially to the Conservative Party opposite. It states:
“The CBI welcomes the Employment Bill and supports its major provisions. The Bill provides a balanced package of
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Not bad. Even noble Lords opposite may have received the TUC’s comments on the Bill. It, too, in general terms, supports it—not completely, but it supports it. On this occasion, as has perhaps been true about industrial relations for a long time, the party opposite is the party out of step.
As for employment, we heard comments about difficulties there. I point out to the House, if I may, that employment in the UK is at its highest level since comparable records began, with 29.3 million people employed as at October 2007. The employment level in October 1997 was 26.6 million, so that represents a 10 per cent rise in the number of people in employment since October 1997. By any standards, that is not a bad record.
I want to deal with as much as I can in the limited time available to me. If I do not succeed in answering everyone's questions—of course, I will not—I will try to write with the answers to particular questions. We know that many of these issues will come up in what will undoubtedly be a fascinating Committee.
On consolidation, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform is undertaking a major project to improve and promote guidance on the body of employment law. That is projected to save £365 million per year by 2010 by reducing the cost of understanding and complying with employment law. That is as far as I can go in answering the questions about consolidation. A fair point has been made all around the House about that.
What is the Bill trying to do? It is trying to strengthen and clarify key aspects of employment law. In doing so, we believe that it will improve the effectiveness of employment law for the benefit of all: employers, trade unions, individuals and the public sector. Importantly, we argue that it brings together both elements of our employment relations strategy: on the one hand, increasing protection for vulnerable workers; and, on the other, lightening the load for law-abiding businesses. I argue that that is exactly what the Bill does.
There are four parts to the Bill, and I shall deal with them as shortly as I can. Dispute resolution is one. The national minimum wage is second. Employment agencies are third. The fourth is the vexed issue about which we have heard especially impressive speeches: Clause 17. I will not do justice to any of those four tonight, but let me try to deal with some of the issues that arise from them.
On dispute resolution, in Clauses 1 to 7—praised even by the party opposite for their deregulatory effect; I am grateful for small mercies—the Bill provides for the repeal of the statutory dispute resolution procedures and implementation of a package of replacement measures aimed at ensuring that the underlying principles of good practice in resolving workplace disputes are followed, while removing inflexibility and reducing administrative burdens. Many noble Lords wanted to know about the package. It includes statutory changes, revision of the ACAS code on disciplinary grievance procedures—I shall say more about that in a moment—and substantial investment to improve advice to employees
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As regards some individual questions raised, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, made the very important point that one size does not fit all. She is absolutely right. We need some flexibility. The dispute resolution provisions will abolish what has turned out to be a fairly inflexible statutory provision. The chair of ACAS has confirmed that the revised code on discipline and grievance will be short, principles-based and proportionate. My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked about the role of ACAS, and other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Wedderburn, were also concerned about that. ACAS will continue to have its current role in conciliating disputes. We are going to invest new resources—the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was also concerned about this—in disputes which are not yet the subject of an employment tribunal claim. The Bill will enable ACAS to use these resources to best effect where it is needed to conciliate in pre-tribunal disputes.
Why does the Bill not state when the ACAS code is the relevant code for the purpose of tribunal judgment? The tribunal has a duty to take into account any procedural provision of a code which appears to be relevant to the proceedings being decided. My noble friend Lord Wedderburn went on to ask why we could not delay consideration of the Bill until we have the revised ACAS code. I know that there is strong feeling around the House that it has not seen enough yet. I understand that. I want to be careful in the words that I use now, so that they are not held against me in the future, although I am sure that no noble Lord would be so mean as to do that. I will do my utmost to ensure that a draft copy of the ACAS code is with noble Lords by the time we get to Committee. I make no promise that that will happen, but I will do my utmost—and my noble friend Lord Jones agrees that he will, too—to ensure that it does. The point is well made: a draft copy of the code is necessary. However, those who have been in and know about government will know that these things are not always quite as easily available as we would like. I hope I have dealt with that point and the one about resources.
Alternative dispute resolution is an important issue. We agree that mediation often provides an excellent way to resolve disputes, and will invest resources in improved advice for people in dispute that will include advising on all the potential mechanisms for resolving disputes. I hope that goes some way to dealing with that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Razzall, my noble friend Lord Watson and others talked about a fair employment commission to enforce tribunal awards. There are new powers in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 which streamline the process by which unpaid awards are enforced. They may be enforced in the same way as any county court judgment if unpaid after 42 days. I hope noble Lords will be patient. We want to assess the effectiveness of these measures before considering any potentially more burdensome methods for enforcing awards, but we know how strongly it is felt that some enforcement is necessary.
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There is obviously strong feeling, perhaps mostly from behind me, about employment tribunals and where they are going. My noble friend Lord Wedderburn talked about tribunals deciding cases without hearings: fast-track cases. I make it absolutely clear that each party will have the right to request an oral hearing in any fast-track case. The human right to a fair trial can generally be waived in any case. The clause in fact introduces more safeguards to this power than previously existed.
The noble Lord also asked whether we can guarantee that a lay member role in tribunals will be maintained. Responses to the consultation showed the great importance placed by many tribunal service users on the role of lay members. I emphasise that the Bill makes no changes to that role.
My noble friend Lady Gibson asked about the threat to the employment tribunals as a separate pillar. We are committed to the maintenance of employment tribunals as a separate pillar within the tribunal service. Employment judges will still be required to have seven years’ legal experience before appointment.
My noble friend Lord Hoyle asked whether he could be assured that there would be no change in workers’ ability to go to an employment tribunal. Yes, there is no change at all in the right to go to a tribunal. The abolition of pre-acceptance mandatory procedures will ensure that technical failures by claimants do not invalidate their claims. Of course that right will exist. One of the issues is whether it should always be exercised.
My noble friend Lord Wedderburn asked about the status of voluntary agreements between workers and managers to resolve disputes. The tribunal will be able to take into account how far a party unreasonably failed to follow the provisions of the ACAS code. The code will be principles-based, and so it is likely that agreed arrangements, if followed, will be compliant.
My noble friend Lord Watson asked how non-unionised workers can access the tribunal. We intend to invest significant resources in better advice services from ACAS to ensure that all employees and employers have access to the best advice on how to sort out the disputes.
My noble friend Lady Turner asked about arrangements for bringing class actions. I have noted what she has said, and will pass her comments to the Minister responsible so that she gets a proper reply to that. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Hendon, talked about Clause 2 requiring a tribunal to find a dismissal unfair for the slightest error in procedure. The consultation certainly showed that most people believe that the clause that we have drafted reverts to a well understood position, where the tribunal must consider whether the employer acted reasonably in issues of procedure. This was supported by many consultees as a fair balance, but I am sure that we will come to this in Committee.
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