My Lords, in this group I have Amendments 9 and 22, both of which seek to amend government amendments in identical ways. I shall speak to Amendment 9, which seeks to amend government Amendment 8, but my remarks apply equally to Amendment 22, which seeks to amend government Amendment 21. Before doing…
My Lords, I support Amendment 28, which has been so well moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral. My main problem with the statutory sick pay clauses in this Bill is that the Government are proceeding without a reliable evidence base. The Government do not collect data on sick leave taken by em…
My Lords, I listened very carefully to that wonderfully rosy picture of the UK economy. Can the Minister reconcile that with the most recent employment statistics, which show a decrease in payrolled employment and an increase in unemployment? That does not reconcile with what he is trying to convinc…
As noble Lords know, this is the final group of amendments, and I must say that I am very flattered that so many noble Lords on the Benches opposite have stayed to hear it.
The inspiration for these amendments is the Social Security Advisory Committee, which has been in existence for over 40 years …
My Lords, in this group of amendments, I have the stand part notice for Clause 114. I support the several amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey, many of which are probing amendments to try to find out more about this clause. I could find no clear rationale that the Gove…
That was a rather surprising statement. Is the Minister saying that these costs are not included in the estimates that have already been given for the costs of the fair work agency, which were included in the various documents surrounding the Bill? He has just implied that it will be done later. It …
Further to that point, will the Minister clarify whether he is talking about medium-sized companies, which might just about cope with the bureaucracy of being a B Corp, or about the vast majority of businesses in this country, which are small and micro companies? There is a big difference between co…
My Lords, the amendments just spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere, are clearly very important. I hope the Government will take them extremely seriously. I have three amendments in this rather strange group, which seems to be the dustbin for amendments broadly about the fair work ag…
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, and I took part in the debates on the 2023 Bill when it went through your Lordships’ House—obviously, on different Benches. She is right that no employer sought to use the powers in the 2023 Act, but the Act had only a relatively short ex…
My Lords, I am a great fan of international competitiveness and growth objectives for regulators. When the first one was introduced for financial services regulators in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, I thought it was an incredibly important addition to the way regulation of financial s…
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, but I also support all the other amendments in this group. Both the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, and my noble friend have already fairly comprehensively treated the issues that concern a number of us, so I …
The noble Lord referred to the likelihood of cases succeeding if they got as far as the tribunal. Does he accept that the vast majority of cases that are initiated never get as far as a tribunal because there is a huge incentive in the system for employers to settle? The costs of taking a case right…
My Lords, I have several amendments in this group. I also support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Young of Acton. The extension of the Equality Act harassment provisions is not new territory. In 2023 it was included in a Private Member’s Bill, which became the Worker Protectio…
My Lords, can the Minister explain why Clause 21 gives power to the Secretary of State to make provisions in relation to reasonable steps only for sexual harassment and not non-sexual harassment? I think she said something about it being an area in which there is evidence that this would be useful—I…
My Lords, my main concern with the changes to statutory sick pay in this Bill is the impact on smaller businesses, which is why I support the amendments in this group in the names of my noble friend Lady Coffey and the noble Lord, Lord Fox, which provide for rebates for SMEs. Of the two amendments, …
My Lords, the Minister said during her remarks that there would be a cost per employee of £15; I think she said that in the earlier group as well. Can she provide any more information on this? It seems counterintuitive. If the average number of sick days per employee is around eight, which is what t…
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 …
My Lords, I will comment briefly on my noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom’s Amendment 28, which replaces the test of reasonable belief with that of formal confirmation. I mentioned earlier the work done by the Low Pay Commission on zero-hours contracts when it reported in 2018. It also examined the i…