PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Employment Rights Bill - 15 September 2025 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that Lords amendments 66, 88, 90, 91 and 101 engage Commons financial privilege. If any of those Lords amendments is agreed to, I will cause the customary entry waiving Commons financial privilege to be entered in the Journal.

After Clause 22

Contractual duties of confidentiality relating to harassment and discrimination

4.43 pm

I beg to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment 22.

With this it will be convenient to discuss:

Lords amendment 22 and Government amendment (b).

Lords amendment 1, and Government motion to disagree. Lords amendment 7, and Government motion to disagree. Lords amendment 8, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 21, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu.

Lords amendment 23, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 106, Government motion to disagree, and Government amendment (a) to the words so restored to the Bill.

Lords amendments 107 to 120, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendments 46 to 49, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendments 60 to 62, and Government motions to disagree.

Lords amendment 72, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendment 121, and Government motion to disagree.

Lords amendments 2 to 6, 9 to 20, 24 to 45, 50 to 59, 63 to 71, 73 to 105 and 122 to 169.

It is a pleasure to make my first appearance at the Dispatch Box as Secretary of State for Business and Trade to deliver the biggest improvements in workers’ rights for a generation, as part of the Labour Government’s Employment Rights Bill, which formed a key plank of my party’s manifesto commitments.

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, the right hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), for his work on the Bill and, more widely, in supporting our country to get to growth. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) for her tireless fight for the rights of working people. Without her, this Bill would simply not exist. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), who worked so hard to get the legislation to this point, and to my dear friend Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, whose indefatigable work in the other place has ensured that this Bill was steered through the legislative process with a very steady hand. To many who have worked on this Bill, it has been a life’s work, and the culmination of an enormous amount of effort on their part, for which I am extremely grateful.

This is a landmark Bill. It is pro-worker and pro-business, and it supports the Government’s objectives of boosting growth and improving living standards across the country.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

So early on! I will happily give way.

I am grateful. The new Secretary of State has been asked this several times, but we never heard an answer: can he point to a small or medium-sized business that actually supports this Bill?

Of course I can. Many businesses have now come out in support of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman asked for a small business or a large business; let me give him one of each. I have talked to small and medium-sized enterprises. R & W Scott Ltd, a leading UK manufacturer based in south Lancashire specialising in high-quality ingredients for jams, came out in steadfast support. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know of large businesses who back this Bill, I could mention the Co-op, Centrica and Richer Sounds—all businesses that, as he will know, serve his community and his constituents. He should get behind those businesses in their support of the Bill.

I welcome the Secretary of State to his new role. He will be aware—as will the Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), who is next to him—that IKEA in my constituency welcomed this legislation, but when the Conservatives heard that, they heckled, and said, “Oh, they’re Swedish.” Will my right hon. Friend recognise the huge amount of employment that IKEA provides in this country, and welcome its foreign investment? Does he agree that IKEA welcomes this legislation because it realises that supporting its staff leads to better productivity and more loyalty to the company?

I congratulate my hon. Friend on being a champion for investment in our country, unlike the Conservative party, which did down the country while it was in government, and is doing it down while in opposition, too.

The task this Government have set themself is formidable: to update employment law and make it fit for the age in which we live; and to reward good employers, and ensure that the employment protections given by the best are extended to millions more workers.

I have a letter from the Hampshire chamber of commerce, which, the Secretary of State will be pleased to hear, says that businesses are not opposed to all the changes that will be made to employment legislation, but it does focus on several areas of concern, such as the involvement of a tribunal in deciding whether an employee has been legitimately dismissed during their probation period, removing statutory sick pay waiting days, and changes to trade union recognition and industrial action thresholds. Will the Secretary of State do more to engage with chambers of commerce about these concerns?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful contribution, and for reflecting the voice of chambers, who do an incredible job right around our country—and around the world. I say to the chambers, and to him, that the Bill reflects the best standards that are already in use right around the country by the very best employers—indeed, by most employers. Those employers have nothing to fear and a lot to gain from this legislation.

On consultation, this is a Government who listen constantly, and we will continue to listen. On those measures for which an implementation phase is really important, there are, unusually, formal consultations in which businesses can engage. This is a listening Government and an acting Government, and we will deliver on our manifesto commitments.

We welcome many aspects of the legislation, but I put this question on behalf of my small businesses. They say that sickness absence costs them £3,500 a year—it costs some £5 billion across all the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—and they are worried that the legislation could dramatically raise their fees and costs for the next year. How will this Bill support small businesses that literally cannot afford to pay sick pay as well as hire someone in the place of the sick? That is a constructive question, and my small businesses need the answer.

In all the Front-Bench jobs I have had, I have enjoyed my exchanges with the hon. Gentleman, who is always constructive and well intentioned. I did not expect that we would enjoy that renewed relationship so soon in my new position. I say to him, and to the incredible businesses in his community, which I have had the pleasure of visiting, that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. We intend to ensure the health and wellbeing of employees, and to ensure support for them in the workplace, structured in a way to get the very best out of them. That will be of benefit to employees, and certainly to employers as well.

My right hon. Friend will, without doubt, remember those dark days of covid, when people had to turn up in the workplace, despite being poorly. That contributed to the spread of the pandemic. Does that not illustrate the need to ensure that when people are ill, they can rely on a sickness absence framework that supports them, and allows them to return to work when they have recovered?

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. Both in times of crisis, such as during covid, and in good times, there are good employers and those who sometimes fall beneath standards. Covid shone a light on the challenges that can be faced in the workforce. In those times, we needed to see the best from everyone. The majority of businesses supported their employees through that time of challenge. We want to ensure that the floor is high enough, and that the standards for every workforce are those that were set by the best, not by those who fell short of what we expect in Britain in the 2020s.

Today, I ask the House to renew its commitment to this legislation. I will ask hon. Members to endorse Government amendments that seek to clarify and strengthen a number of measures, and to reject the amendments of Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers who joined forces to undermine the progress that we are attempting to make. I make an exception of those in the other place who had the sincere aim of scrutinising, and who ensured that the Bill was steered through the legislative process there with a steady hand.

In opposition, those now in government probably rightly criticised the Conservative Government for introducing Henry VIII powers, yet the Bill is absolutely riddled with them. Does the Secretary of State agree with the Attorney General that such powers strike at the heart of the rule of law?

I agree that such powers need to be used wisely. The House will notice that many clauses provide for guidance in primary legislation during the implementation phase, and consultation with the businesses affected. Members will have their voice heard, as will businesses and workers affected by the Bill. During the passage of the Bill through both Houses, there have been improvements to the legislation, and I am grateful to Members of both Houses for their tireless work.

The vast majority of the Employment Rights Bill is very much to be welcomed. Amendment 61, which relates to heritage railways and heritage tramways, would allow people under the age of 16 to volunteer on those heritage railway lines. It has been so narrowly worded as to be specifically for those sectors, and it would give young people fantastic opportunities to learn about technology, to work across generations, and to contribute to their communities. Will the Government please consider it again?

I know that this is something that affects the community that right hon. Lady represents, and that she is a tireless champion for her community here in Parliament, via the all-party parliamentary group on heritage rail. I will come to that amendment specifically, so I think it is best that I leave the answer until then. If she wants to come back to me once she has heard the explanation as to why we will not support amendment 61, I will happily take another intervention.

I will start by speaking to the amendments that the Government made in another place. The majority of them reinforce and strengthen existing measures in the Bill by making technical adjustments. They close loopholes to safeguard policy functionality, resolve uncertainty and ensure that measures are comprehensive and effectively deliver the policy as intended, as set out by the plan to make work pay. Some of the substantial amendments follow excellent campaigning by Members of this House and the other place, and demonstrate that the Government are listening and taking action, where appropriate.

The Government’s amendments on zero-hours contracts strengthen and clarify provisions that were already in the Bill when it left this place. Our commitment to banning exploitative zero-hours contracts is the culmination of years of campaigning by Labour MPs, trade unions and the wider Labour movement. For too long, these contracts have been used to replace full-time jobs. The Government amendments tabled in the other place reflect our commitment to getting the detail right, and were informed by extensive engagement with a wide range of businesses, trade unions and other expert stakeholders.

My husband suffered a catastrophic brain haemorrhage, which meant that he could not return to his work, but after he began to recover, he started to work again in another job, helped by a zero-hours contract. It meant that if he was not well enough to work, he could agree with his employer that his hours could be adjusted to suit. The practical and fair solution is to give staff a right to request a zero-hours contract, rather than replacing a requirement for businesses to offer a zero-hours contract.

I hope that the hon. Lady will pass on my sympathy and encouragement, and that of the whole House, to her husband, who has shown tenacity and resilience. I will come to the relevant part of the Bill shortly but, in summary, we feel that putting the onus on employees to request, rather than on employers to deliver, such contracts would alienate several categories of workers, particularly younger workers and those with vulnerabilities. I will come to that in a minute, and it would be a delight to take any further interventions that she might have then.

Technical changes include clarification of how zero-hours contract provisions apply to agency workers; reinforcement of the guaranteed hours provisions in relation to workers with annualised contracts and interaction with unfair dismissal; refinement of the right to payment for short-notice provisions, in relation to when payments and notices of exemptions are due; and expansion of those provisions to staff employed by both Houses. Together, these amendments strengthen the legislation by ensuring it is fair, proportionate and clear.

On short-notice periods for zero-hour contracts, there was an opportunity in the House of Lords to support the Liberal Democrat amendment that would require employers to give employees at least 48 hours’ notice. Labour peers voted against that amendment and the Government have not come forward with an alternative, suggesting that it will take until 2027 before there will be consideration of those measures. Will the Minister explain why we will have to wait nearly three years before we can get a response to that?

The powers that the hon. Gentleman refers to are strident powers. We have firmly committed to consulting on those powers and to reporting back, based on the outcome of the consultation, and that shows that we are listening. We will learn from the consultation and, if necessary, we will act.

When the Minister consults on those powers, will he include the agricultural sector? With seasonal work, there is a big concern that employers will not necessarily have time to provide a notice period as the weather changes. On behalf of all our farmers, I ask him to consider that.

As a Member of Parliament representing a constituency in the beautiful county of Sussex, I am aware of the needs of seasonal workers, including those in the agricultural sector. We believe that the Bill allows flexibility for that sector, but if the hon. Lady would like to write to me with further updates, I am always willing to listen.

On that point, will the Minister give way?

Let me make a little progress, then I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman; I am sure he will understand.

We move on to bereavement leave. The Bill will ensure that every employee has an immediate right to bereavement leave from the first day of employment. As both Houses have agreed, bereavement is not an illness or a holiday, and it needs its own special category. The Government amendments in the other place expand bereavement leave entitlement in the Bill to include pregnancy loss occurring before 24 weeks. I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned on that change, such as the Women and Equalities Committee—specifically my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen)—and countless women who have told their own very personal and painful stories of loss as part of the campaign for this important change. I have been very open about my own experiences with grief and loss, and I feel strongly that people need time away from work to grieve. No one going through the heartache of pregnancy loss should be worrying about work; they must be able to take time to recover.

I give way to the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne).

Let me take the Secretary of State back to zero-hours contracts. The seasonality of the hospitality industry and, indeed, boat building down in my constituency, where large numbers of students are taken on, means that scheduling for guaranteed hours is very difficult, particularly when those students benefit from the provision, because they want to partake in races and other seasonal activities of a leisure nature.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising his concerns in this area. I represent a constituency in Brighton and Hove that has a vibrant hospitality and night-time economy and two universities, so I have paid particularly close attention to these issues. I reassure him that the Bill refers to exploitative zero-hours contracts. It is clear that some people will want employment on different terms, and we have flexibility in the Bill for those circumstances. Where there is exploitation or the potential for it—which surely we all agree exists in the economy at the present time—we should act against those sorts of things.

In the positive spirit in which the Secretary of State speaks, will he commit on the Floor of the House that the reference period used to calculate hours for sectors that have serious seasonality—we have heard about boat building, hospitality, tourism and farming—will not be a ridiculously short period, such as 12 weeks? Will it be long enough to reflect the seasonal nature of that type of work?

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the passion with which he speaks. That is a very important point, and that is why we are consulting on the time threshold; we want to get it right. As my predecessors and I have said repeatedly, this Bill is good for workers and good for business, and that is the spirit in which we will continue.

Let me move on to fire and rehire, on which hon. Members will know there has been a long-running campaign led by trade unions. The provisions in the Bill will ensure that employers are no longer able to use cruel fire and rehire practices. No longer will unscrupulous employers be able to fire employees to replace them on low pay. The Bill also ensures protection for employees replaced by non-employee workers, such as agency staff, to do the same role. As we said in our manifesto, these reforms are a pro-business, pro-worker set of measures. They strike a balance, curbing misuse while allowing fair businesses time for adaptation.

This Bill will make work fairer for thousands in my constituency. However, my constituents are worried that Conservative Members seek to water down this legislation. Can the Secretary of State confirm that the Government will resist their attempts and are committed to introducing the Bill in full?

I understand that there will be workers around the country who are worried about the watering down of such legislation. I reassure my hon. Friend that as long as they vote Labour, that will never happen.

In the other place, the Government made amendments to strengthen protections for social care workers and school support staff, ensuring that workers whose employers go above and beyond the minimum standards set out by the negotiating bodies will have those better terms protected.

On that point, will the Secretary of State give way?

How could I resist such an invitation?

As a former schoolteacher and leader, I know the value of support staff and how critical they are, but does the Secretary of State agree that Lords amendment 121 is unnecessary? The Bill already ensures that no negotiating body can prevent employers from offering better terms and conditions where they wish to do so. The school support staff negotiating body was regrettably abolished in 2010, but this Government will reinstate it. The amendment would add needless bureaucracy and would risk impeding the flexibility that schools and staff rightly expect.

My hon. Friend has demonstrated many things in that intervention, including what a great teacher she was. As a former chair of governors and a governor of a couple of schools, I can assure her that I too understand the value of teaching assistants and all those who support the education of young people. I agree that the Bill gets the balance right—that is why we are proceeding as we are.

I turn to the Lords amendments dealing with the international maritime provisions. The Government amendment clarifies that a regulation to implement future agreements may not be brought into force before the agreement is ratified, but by implication, such regulations may be made before it is ratified. This will allow the UK to meet its international obligations by ensuring such regulations can be made ahead of the deadline for bringing them into force.

The Fair Work Agency provisions will establish a single body to enforce a wide range of employment rights. The Government amendments are technical refinements to improve enforcement and co-ordination. They clarify definitions of “worker” and “employer”, enable summary sheriffs in Scotland to act on underpayment notices, and refine provisions on data sharing between enforcement bodies. The amendments will ensure that the Fair Work Agency can operate smoothly and effectively.

In another place, the Government also made an amendment to change the time limit in the Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Consultation by Employers and Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations 2006 from three months to six months, ensuring consistency with wider employment tribunal time limit reforms.

Amendments were made in another place to the trade union provisions. The Government have refined the provisions on trade union recognition by adding sanctions for non-compliance, requiring timely sharing of worker data, and tightening timelines to protect bargaining units. Together, these amendments enhance fairness, transparency and enforceability in trade union recognition.

I now turn to non-disclosure agreements. The Government are committed to ending the misuse of NDAs, which silence victims of sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying. I thank Members of this House and those in another place for their work on this issue, as well as Zelda Perkins, the founder of Can’t Buy My Silence, for her tireless campaigning, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), who has championed this cause for many years. Today must be a good day for her, as she sees another step forward taken in delivering those rights.

I am sure all Members of the House would like to note that Zelda Perkins joins us in the Under-Gallery today, and to thank her for her tireless work in campaigning on this issue. The road map for implementation of this legislation was published before the Government tabled their amendments, so will the Secretary of State confirm when he will commence consultation, and when the Government are aiming for this primary legislation to commence so that the ban on NDAs can come into force?

It is great to know that Zelda is in the Chamber with us today, and that my right hon. Friend is also in the Chamber to give voice to so many campaigners and the work she has done. The Prime Minister has confirmed that the road map remains as is.

In another place, we made two amendments to strengthen the provisions in the Bill that protect victims, while preserving NDAs to protect legitimate business interests. The new clause will allow workers to speak freely about their experiences and allow those who have witnessed misconduct or have knowledge of it to call it out by voiding a non-disclosure agreement that has been used to try to silence victims. The Government will consult on related secondary legislation before commencing the measure.

The Government propose two new amendments. The first will extend the scope of the clause to include staff of both Houses. We are proposing that change following discussions with parliamentary authorities. The second amendment is designed to give disabled workers more protection. It will extend the scope of relevant discrimination to include a failure to make reasonable adjustments for disabled persons under section 21 of the Equality Act 2010. That will ensure that all forms of harassment and discrimination in the Equality Act are covered.

I will now set out the Government’s position on the 28 non-Government amendments made to the Bill in the other place, which cover 12 policy areas. Lords amendment 1 addresses provisions on zero-hours contracts and seeks to change the onus from the employer to the employee on the right to guaranteed hours. The amendment shifts it from a duty on employers to offer guaranteed hours to qualifying workers to a model where employees must actively request them. The Government believe that the duty to offer guaranteed hours should lie with the employer. A right-to-request model could create undesirable barriers, making it especially difficult for vulnerable workers on exploitative zero-hours contracts to access their right to guaranteed hours, especially as many such workers are younger and may be in their first job. As of June 2025, approximately 480,000 people in employment aged 16 to 24 are on zero-hours contracts. That is out of a total of 1.18 million workers on zero-hours contracts overall. Our position strikes a fair balance between protection and choice. For that reason, the Government do not support the amendment.

I think we have a difference in how we look at Lords amendment 1. It does not water down the Bill; it adds more flexibility so that people get the opportunity to have the kind of employment that works for them. That is particularly important in an environment where we are trying to get people off disability benefits and back into work.

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s thoughtful intervention. I still believe that in order to exercise rights, people have to know that they exist. The majority of people—young people in particular—entering the workforce in such numbers via zero-hours contracts simply would not know that those rights exist for them. By changing the onus so it is on employers, it clarifies the rights they have and ensures that every workplace must offer equal access to employment hours. This Bill includes flexibilities, and I think those will encompass the situations over which she has legitimate concern.

Lords amendments 7 and 8 seek to provide that a short-notice cancellation payment is due only where the shift is cancelled less than 48 hours before it is due to start. The Government intend to set out short notice period regulations following a consultation.

I know that 48 hours seems a long time to some Ministers, but does he agree that having a shift cancelled at short notice would be bad news for many workers across the country? This Bill should be amended to specify an acceptable notice period.

I think the Bill gets the balance right. For most people in most workplaces, 48 hours is a long time, although I have witnessed some speeches in this place that have been a lot shorter than that, but seemed a lot longer—perhaps the one currently unfolding is an example.

The consultation will determine a fair short notice period that works for businesses and workers. Putting the implementation detail in regulations will retain the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. The Government have already stated in the Bill that “short notice” will not be more than seven days, and we are committed to continuing to work closely with businesses and trade unions and considering carefully the right approach to this matter. That is why the Government will be rejecting the amendment.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way; he is being very generous. Can he explain why, before he took up his present post and took responsibility for the Bill, no assessment was made of the hiring practices that would occur if the unfair dismissal period was reduced from two years? Why was no modelling done? It is in the Labour party manifesto, but where is the evidence of what it will do to jobs and economy? That is what my constituents are concerned about.

Of course many of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will be concerned about their workforce protections, and those who are setting up, running and managing businesses will want us to get the balance right as well, but we have many years of experience that have informed the decisions we have taken, and our engagement with trade unions and other bodies has ensured that we have got that balance right.

I am glad that the Secretary of State has mentioned trade unions, because that allows me a moment to return to his earlier point about banning fire and rehire. In July, the general secretary of Unite said that what Birmingham was proposing for its bin workers was fire and rehire. If this Labour Government do not like the idea of fire and rehire, when will they tell their colleagues in Birmingham about that?

I think that the hon. Gentleman is making an argument for the Bill. We want to ensure that every employer in the country has the same legislative framework in which to operate.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will, but I must alert all Members to the fact that I want to have time to listen to their own speeches, so I shall be rattling through from now on.

What can the Secretary of State say to those in the boatbuilding industry who have made representations to me about protection from day one? When someone takes on a craftsman, it can take quite a long time to establish whether he is any good and up to the job.

The reassurance that I give is that we will implement this policy, having listened to employers. We will make sure that the rights to which we have committed in our manifesto are fully upheld.

What employers want is to have workers who are fully committed to their life in the workplace. If employees feel that they have an unreasonable sword of Damocles over their head, employers will not get the best productivity out of those workers.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I am going to make some progress.

We have said explicitly that our intention is to provide a less onerous approach for businesses to follow in order to dismiss someone during the statutory probation period for reasons to do with their performance and suitability for the role. The Government are committed to undertaking a public consultation to get the details of the statutory probation period right, to keep it light touch and to get the standards right. Most employers who use contractual probation periods operate them for six months or less. The Government’s preference is for the statutory probation period to be nine months long. That will enable an employer to operate a basic six-month probation period, with an option for extension where employers wish to give their employees further time to improve their performance. We will consult on the duration, which is why the Government will not agree to Lords amendments 23 and 106 to 120.

Lords amendment 48 seeks to impose a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to the requirements for seasonal workers when making regulations. The Government do not believe the amendment is necessary, because the Bill already reflects the realities of seasonal work. For example, it allows guaranteed offers for limited-term contracts where appropriate, such as for task-based or time-bound roles. This Government do not believe the amendment is necessary, as the approach taken in the Bill already protects seasonal jobs while ensuring fair rights for workers, which is why the Government decline to support this amendment.

Lords amendment 49 seeks to require a consultation on the effects of provisions in part 1, and to ensure that at least 500 small and medium-sized businesses are included in the consultation. SMEs are the backbone of the British economy, and their insights are vital to shaping policy that works in practice. That is why our approach to the implementation of the Bill includes 13 targeted consultations, running through to 2026. We think it is more effective and proportionate for us to engage extensively with SMEs, as planned through the consultation that we have described in our road map, and to ensure that SMEs’ views help shape the implementation. Given the comprehensive process, the Government consider that the amendment must be rejected.

Lords amendment 46 would have the effect of requiring the Secretary of State to make regulations within six months to extend the circumstances in which an employee is automatically considered to have been unfairly dismissed for whistleblowing. It would require certain employers to take responsible steps to investigate whistleblowing claims. The Government do not support the amendment. We recognise that the whistleblowing framework in the Employment Rights Act 1996 may not be operating as effectively as it should be, but we believe that any reform should be considered as part of a broader assessment of that framework. That is why the Government consider that the amendment must be rejected.

Lords amendment 47 would insert a new clause into the Bill that relates to workplace representation. The amendment would allow workers and employees to be accompanied at grievance hearings by a certified professional companion. The law already guarantees workers the right to be accompanied at a disciplinary or grievance hearing by a fellow worker, a trade union representative or an official employed by a trade union. Employers may allow other companions to attend formal meetings on a discretionary basis. The current law has served workers and employees for well over two decades. It strikes the right balance between fairness, flexibility and practicality, and we believe it should remain this way.

Lords amendment 60 seeks to remove the restrictions on young people aged 14 to 16 working on a heritage railway or a heritage tramway from the meaning of

“employment in an industrial undertaking”.

The Government do not believe that this amendment is necessary. The benefits of youth volunteering in heritage railways cannot be overestimated and, with proper health and safety management, it already works well. The Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children Act 1920 does not ban youth volunteering in appropriate roles on heritage railways. Well-run schemes, such as the one in Swanage, show that young people can still take part safely and legally.

I politely remind the Secretary of State that he is therefore advising heritage railways to in effect break the law, because that is how the law stands. If parents or a local authority were to bring an action against a heritage railway, it would find itself in such a position. If he cannot change that in this legislation, I really urge him to discuss with me how to bring this forward in another way.

This matter has been the source of a lot of consternation and examination in my Department. I assure the right hon. Member that we have looked very closely at it and believe that the existing law is fit for purpose in this case. We will proceed on that basis, but as she will have found during the time we have both been in this place, I am always happy to sit down with her, and especially, being so new in the job, so to learn about that specific case. However, we will proceed in that way because the advice is very clear on this matter.

Lords amendments 61 and 72 seek to remove clause 59 relating to trade union political funds from the Bill. Clause 59 reverses the changes introduced by the Trade Union Act 2016, reinstating arrangements whereby union members are automatically opted in to contribute to political funds, unless they choose to opt out. This is a key step in lifting the burden of the 2016 Act and returning to a long-standing precedent that worked for 70 years. Removing clause 59 would break a clear Government commitment, which is why the Government consider that Lords amendment 61 should be rejected.

Lords amendment 62 seeks to remove clause 65(2) from the Bill, the effect of which would be to retain the 50% turnout threshold requirement for industrial action ballots. The Government do not support this amendment. The Bill brings union democracy into line with other democratic mandates, including votes in this Parliament and elections for each and every one of us. Clause 65 is a step towards fairness and consistency in how we respect collective voices, which is why this Government consider that the amendment must be rejected.

Lords amendment 121 is another duplicate amendment. We agree that the school support staff negotiating body should not block employers that wish to go further than the minimum terms and conditions, but that is already stipulated in the Bill. The amendment duplicates the effect of proposed new section 148M(6)(b), which is why the Government will be rejecting the amendment.

I urge Members to support the Government amendments before the House, including the amendments in lieu in relation to the extension of rights to time off for special constables. We have listened throughout the Bill’s passage, and we have made meaningful changes where needed, including on bereavement leave and non-disclosure arrangements. We will continue to listen in relation to the further work to be undertaken when implementing the Bill.

The Employment Rights Bill is a major step forward in modernising protections and delivering on our commitment to make work pay. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Bill, and I will now allow others to speak.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his place, and congratulate him as well as the hon. Members for Halifax (Kate Dearden) and for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant) on their appointments. His is a vital role in Government, and it will surely be a delight and a privilege for him to champion our hard-working, innovative businesses in Cabinet and on the world stage as President of the Board of Trade. I particularly welcome his comments that the Government’s priority must be to “double down” on growth and position themselves as

“an active partner that delivers success, supports new business and backs wealth creation.”

Where he does that, he can be assured of our support, but if that is really his view, we should not be debating this Bill today and the Government should never have brought it forward.

In fact, I well understand why Ministers may well be concerned about job insecurity and last-minute shift cancellations. After all, their predecessors, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) and the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), had their own Front Bench shifts today cancelled by the Prime Minister with barely a week’s notice. Apparently, that boss did not even have the decency to fire them in person, but at least they can take comfort in knowing that with the current rate of departures from No. 10, there will soon not be anyone left to do the sacking.

Does the shadow Minister understand the difference between fair dismissal and unfair dismissal?

The shadow Minister absolutely understands that. He does so and understands the implication of clause 23 from having spoken to Make UK, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses, all of whom urge the Government to rethink on this clause. Business does not recognise a process that ends in a full legal tribunal, flanked by lawyers, after typically a two-year wait and lost management time, as light-touch. Legal fees alone for defending an unfair dismissal case range from £15,000 to £20,000.

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that very few cases end up in a tribunal, particularly at a point where all due process happens? Not all dismissals are unfair.

Of course not all dismissals are unfair, but if it was not a process that ended up in court or in a tribunal, we would not be facing a backlog of 491,000 individuals with current open cases—by the Government’s own figures—and business organisations would not be citing legal fees in that order of magnitude.

One reason that so many of those cases do not end up in a tribunal is that businesses, cognisant of the loss of management time and £15,000 to £20,000 in fees, simply pay up rather than contest.

My right hon. Friend, with his experience, is exactly right. Just think about the impact on a small business of a fee of that magnitude and the length of time it takes to get justice.

What is going to happen? This is a really important point. Those on the Government Benches will be living this reality over the remainder of their term, and they will have to account for it. Businesses will be discouraged from hiring anybody without a perfect CV and a proven track record of work. Who are we talking about? We are talking about young people, people with dyslexia and related conditions, and people with a period of inactivity on their CVs—such as former prisoners seeking a second chance to go straight. Those will be the victims of that particular measure.

Labour Ministers should realise that they will be the first victims of disagreeing with Lords amendment 62. The long-standing principle here is a simple one: we should not be allowing strikes to be called when a majority of union members have not even voted, let alone voted in favour. A strike could still proceed with just over a quarter of those eligible. Opposing this amendment will guarantee that unions are held hostage by a militant minority who force strikes even when the union’s own members do not support one. We can ill afford more strikes that crush growth, prevent workers from getting to work and endanger lives, and the public will not forget the change that this Government seek to make.

Amendment 61 is a Cross-Bench Lords amendment that would maintain a consensus arrived at by the Trade Union Political Funds and Political Party Funding Committee—that only those who actively choose to contribute to a political fund opt in to do so. This is a basic principle that the Government have applied to services everywhere else in the economy, from beauty boxes, gyms and meditation apps to Netflix and newspaper subscriptions. Why should Britain’s workers not enjoy the same right? The only conceivable reason—it brings shame on anyone who votes against the amendment—is to swell the coffers of one political party.

Lords amendment 47, on the right to be accompanied, tries to finally level the playing field for the 80% of workers who are not in a union, but should have the same rights as trade union members to be supported in a disciplinary or grievance hearing. By voting against this modest but important reform, Labour is preserving what is essentially a closed shop that unions use to push people who do not want to join into doing so. We scrapped the closed shop decades ago, and no one should be bringing it back as a means of pressuring vulnerable workers into paying into union coffers.

Will the hon. Member give way?

I will happily give way if the hon. Gentleman will talk about the other organisations that will do a brilliant job of representing employees.

Well, that wouldn’t be the Tory party, would it, Madam Deputy Speaker?

What the shadow Secretary of State seems not to understand is that workers cannot turn up to a trade union and go, “I’ve got a problem. Can I join and get representation, please?”. Almost every union in this country requires a qualifying period to get the representation he talks about—the idea that this is a closed shop is just nonsense.

The hon. Member has probably wilfully misinterpreted what I said. I am talking about the right for individuals to be represented by a trade union or by a qualified professional from another domain, such as a qualified lawyer.

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman—we are missing him already.

I am glad to be back.

The shadow Secretary of State just talked about legal fees for firms when it comes to defending tribunal cases. If the right to be accompanied is expanded to include lawyers, the response of firms will be, “We had better get a lawyer too”, and that will just put up costs, will it not?

The hon. Member has done a great deal of work on the Bill, and it is a great shame that he was cut short in his prime, but with respect the point is about choice for the individual. In many cases, the long-standing right will be to be represented by a trade union, but it could also be a mediator or a qualified professional in any other domain. The point is not to extinguish that choice, which is absolutely—he will know this—what the amendment would do. The Bill—from a Government who in too many domains are now tolerant of a two-tier system—creates a two-tier system for workers’ rights.

Lords amendment 1 is a typical example of where the Government do not understand or have failed to listen to businesses, particularly hospitality and seasonal businesses. What started as an attempt to ban zero-hours contracts has morphed into a chain around the necks of both employers and workers. The Government will no doubt cry about unintended consequences when the time comes, but I can tell them now that the consequences will be clear, and a cacophony of business groups such as UK Hospitality, the British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Small Businesses have explained this precisely to them. I gently say that if the Government feel so strongly about zero-hours contracts, the best way of putting their own house in order would be to start with tackling precisely those that operate in the armed forces reserves.

Lords amendment 48 would protect the countless businesses across the country that rely directly on seasonal work. From the coasts of Devon and Cornwall to Great Yarmouth, and from the Secretary of State’s and my own county of Sussex to Ayrshire, there are millions of workers employed in seasonal industries. Seasonal work often takes place in communities that are heavily reliant on tourism, both foreign and domestic, and that are competing in a competitive international market. The Government have already taken an axe to the hospitality and retail industries with the removals of relief. The amendment would be a very good way of going in some direction to support them.

In opposing Lords amendment 49, the Government are showing their commitment to ignore small business above all others. The Secretary of State says that he wants to listen to businesses, and I take him at his word, but why then oppose this amendment, which would codify precisely that? Countless small business will have a real challenge in dealing with this Bill, which is now 330 pages of red tape. Why on earth would the Government put their Members through the Lobby to oppose listening and consulting with small businesses?

We support Lords amendment 60, which has cross-party support, at the behest of millions of those who enjoy heritage railway attractions. If the Secretary of State has not yet made it to the Amberley museum, which is not that far from his constituency—[Interruption.] He knows of it? Well, he is welcome to come and visit and listen to how the volunteers who are gaining valuable experience will be affected.

I am perplexed about why the Government are so opposed to Lords amendment 46 on the protection of whistleblowers. It is genuinely confusing. Time and again Ministers on both sides of this House have come to the Dispatch Box to talk about Government scandals. We have seen brave people in organisations try to speak up and raise their concerns, only to have them dismissed. The Government claim that the Bill is about workers’ rights yet seem to have zero interest in protecting workers who try to reveal serious problems in the private and public sectors. I urge all colleagues to read that for themselves and to make up their own minds on where they think the right place to be is. Good luck to those who vote against that entirely reasonable amendment, which would protect people who do the right thing, and then have to try to explain to their constituents why they did so.

I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which includes an election donation from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and my membership of the Unite and GMB unions.

I welcome the Bill’s return to the House and the opportunity to consider the amendments made in the other place. I also welcome the new Secretary of State to his place and thank him for his kind words. I also welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), to her ministerial position—undoubtedly the best job in Government—and wish her every success in that role. I know that she will be a champion for workers and that she will be committed to introducing the “make work pay” agenda in full, as we promised in our manifesto.

I am speaking a few rows back from where I had expected to be today. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned getting a short-notice cancellation payment—I am afraid that has not winged its way to me yet. However, I am delighted to be speaking in any capacity, because this Bill really is what a Labour Government should be delivering on. I was able, alongside my right hon. Friends the Members for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), to take the new deal for working people—a policy programme carefully developed in opposition—and turn it into legislation that was laid before the House within 100 days of taking office, as we promised we would. While I started my ministerial role as I ended it—fired with enthusiasm—my hopes for the meaningful change that the Bill can deliver remain undimmed.

That we are here entering the Bill’s final stages is testament to the hard work and dedication of those who developed the policy programme both in opposition and in government. I place on record my thanks to those in the Department for Business and Trade who helped shape those manifesto commitments into the Bill. I also pay tribute to Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, who did a sterling job of guiding the legislation through the other place amid intense scrutiny and opposition, which of course we will talk about.

I will not go through every Lords amendment; I will just pick out a few of those I consider to be most damaging and undermining of the intentions that we set out in our manifesto about how we will rebalance the workplace to make it work for ordinary people. First, Lords amendment 1 completely undermines the principle, set out in our manifesto, of banning exploitative zero-hours contracts. The amendment would water down the commitment we gave to provide workers with an offer of a guaranteed-hours contract to a right to request guaranteed hours.

There has long been a misunderstanding—perhaps a wilful misunderstanding—of how the policy operates. It does not prevent those who want to remain on zero-hours contracts from continuing to do so, and neither does it prevent employers from hiring seasonal workers. It simply provides the opportunity for those who want certainty about the hours they work, week to week and month to month, to have guaranteed hours. We understand that not everyone will take advantage of that, but it might just be a lifeline for those who struggle to balance fixed costs such as bills, housing and childcare by taking out the stress of the potential variations that we see so often in zero-hours contracts at the moment. This is a very good thing for the Government to be doing, because one of the key principles in the Bill is the need to restore security and dignity at work, which would be damaged by the amendment.

I understand that the noble Lords argued that the wording of the amendment would prevent employers from rejecting guaranteed-hours requests. It is presented as a reasonable compromise that achieves the same outcome, maintaining workers’ rights to guaranteed hours while removing the employer’s requirement to make offers. I disagree with that analysis. It shifts the right from one that is passively applied to one that has to be actively invoked by workers. This means that an individual would have to know their rights and have the confidence to approach their employer in order to benefit from them.

As the Secretary of State said, those working on zero-hours contracts are some of the least empowered workers in this country, their contracts are inherently precarious, and those working on them are more likely to be younger, working part time and in low-paid sectors. There are plenty of examples out there of how the allocation of hours has been used by management as a tool of control and, in some cases, a tool of abuse. The Bill already sets out a number of anti-avoidance measures, because we know that that massive power imbalance has to be addressed, and this amendment would fatally undermine all that good work.

I have similar concerns about Lords amendments 6 and 7, which seek to impose 48 hours as a reasonable notice period. If passed, these amendments would remove any chance for workers or employers to make representations in a consultation process, and instead force an arbitrary cut-off of 48 hours. Throughout my time as a Minister, we were committed to consulting widely on changes and incorporating the feedback we received into our approach. I remember the Conservatives complaining during the original passage of the Bill that we were not consulting enough, yet now they lend their support to amendments that would chop that consultation off entirely.

That said, I must welcome the comments from Opposition Front Benchers in the other place, who indicated that they supported the principle of compensation for cancelled or curtailed shifts. I note that Lord Hunt of Wirral said:

“We are fully in agreement that workers deserve reasonable notice of shifts. That is a fair and modern expectation.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 July 2025; Vol. 847, c. 1612.]

Quite how that fits with the Tory pledge to scrap the entire Bill, I do not know. Of course, it is to be expected, as night follows day, that they will object to measures that improve the rights of working people, but that would mean scrapping things that I thought even they supported, including ending non-disclosure agreements for victims of sexual harassment, a new right for bereavement leave for those who have suffered a pregnancy loss, and finally an end to fire and rehire, which they did so much to condemn while in government but did nothing of substance to deal with. That is the Conservative position on this, and it is something that the British people will completely and wholeheartedly reject.

Lords amendment 23 relates to unfair dismissal, which is something I know rather a lot about. It seeks to impose a six-month qualifying period for unfair dismissal rights rather than day one rights, which everyone on the Labour Benches has campaigned for. This is another brazen attempt by the other place to remove a clear manifesto commitment. I and other Labour Members were elected on a mandate to introduce basic rights, including unfair dismissal rights, from day one. How can we allow people who essentially have a job for life to prevent millions of people in this country from getting basic employment protections on day one? It is fundamentally wrong that workers can currently be treated so disposably, and that they can be dismissed arbitrarily with no legal recourse for two years. This is about fairness. A worker deserves to be treated with dignity, fairness and respect, no matter how long they have worked for an employer.

I commend my hon. Friend for the work that he has done and that the Department continues to do on this. One of the interesting things about this provision is that, in 2013, the Conservatives changed the period from 12 months to 24 months. They increased the amount of time that people were in an insecure position in the workplace. It is essential that we support working families and working people, so does he agree that this is absolutely the right step forward?

I certainly do. In my conversations with employers, I did not come across any who were prepared to defend the status quo of a two-year qualifying period for unfair dismissal, because they recognise that is an awfully long time to be in employment without any protection at all.

The Government are sensitive to concerns about hiring, however, and we have included provisions in the Bill to establish a statutory probationary period during which an employee’s performance and suitability can be established, and a lighter-touch dismissal procedure will apply during that time. This will mean that, to coin a phrase, if a new hire is not working out, an employer will be able to follow a lighter-touch procedure to dismiss them fairly. But crucially, there will still have to be a process; there cannot be an arbitrary dismissal without explanation, as happens far too often now.

We know that recruiting someone is an expensive and time-consuming business, if it is done properly, so why would we not expect the same care and attention to be put into determining whether someone had a future in the business at all? This country, to our shame, has one of the least regulated approaches to dismissal protection in the OECD, leaving an estimated 9 million workers vulnerable to dismissals without protections. How can someone plan their life, make financial commitments and so forth if they can be sacked at the drop of a hat? We believe that this must change. People deserve greater security and dignity at work, and they deserve to be treated fairly, not just as disposable commodities.

This Bill strikes the right balance, and although much of the detail is to be determined by consultation and regulations—I will come back to that later—it sends an important message that we will not accept the race to the bottom any more and that dignity and security at work start from day one. That is the lodestone of what a Labour Government should be about.

I am delighted that the Bill is on track to become law in a matter of weeks. It is a landmark piece of legislation that will end the race to the bottom and provide the biggest uplift in workers’ rights in a generation. We on the Labour side have long been clear that it will benefit everyone across the country. It will be good for workers and it will be good for businesses.

Passing this Bill is not, of course, the end of the matter. There is so much more that needs to be done outside the Bill, particularly on finally ending the industrial-scale exploitation that is bogus self-employment. We cannot have a Bill that massively increases protections for millions of people at work but fails to address the growing scandal of a deliberate manipulation of the law to deny people the same basic protections. Over the coming years, there will be a range of secondary legislation, codes of practice and guidance issued to implement the Bill’s provisions. I wish the new Minister every success in working through and navigating the 80 or so statutory instruments that will be needed to ensure that the Bill is implemented in full and that we stick to the road map that was published earlier in the summer. I welcome the Secretary of State’s comment that the road map remains in place in full.

However, given the volume and complexity of all this—the details of the consultations, the scope of the regulations, the language in the codes of practice and even the commencement dates—it goes without saying that there are plenty of opportunities for those who do not want to see workers’ rights improved in this country to chip away at the strong baseline that the Bill represents, and of course it is far easier to do that in some stuffy Committee Room away from the main Chamber. I do not think that is the Minister’s intention, but I am not sure that everyone shares our enthusiasm for improving the rights of millions of working people, so we will all be looking at this closely and encouraging the Minister to keep to our manifesto commitments that we all believe so strongly in.

On that point, I know how enthusiastic Labour Members are about the Bill, and how enthusiastic many of the people we represent are about it, so let us see that enthusiasm replicated across the whole of Government. What better way to demonstrate that we are still the party of working people, and what better way to show that democratic politics can still make a difference than by championing the many ways that this Bill will improve people’s lives? From the shop worker on a zero-hours contract who for the first time will have a right to guaranteed hours, to the social care assistant whose voice will finally be heard through a national negotiating body, to the warehouse operative who will be able to have a trade union collectively bargain on their behalf, this Bill can be the antidote to the politics of division and despair. Let us not be timid in our backing of improved employment rights. Let us not apologise for at last restoring balance to the workplace. Let us be confident, and committed to all the good things the Bill can achieve, and let us shout them from the rooftops.

This Bill is Labour at its best. It shows us what can be done when the broadest experiences and the voices of our movement are harnessed together to deliver change. I am proud that I played my part in that, and I will do all I can to ensure that we deliver on the promises we made to the British people to truly make sure that work pays.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), and to hear his passion for the Bill; I wish him every success. I also welcome the new Secretary of State for Business and Trade to his place. I look forward to opposing him.

The Liberal Democrats support many of the Bill’s aims. We have long called for employment rights to be strengthened in several ways, including by boosting statutory sick pay, strengthening support for whistleblowers and increasing support for carers. There is a lot in the Bill that we support in principle, and that moves the country in the right direction. However, we remain concerned about how many of the measures will be implemented. We must ensure that the legislation strikes the right balance for both employees and business. Some of our worries arose from the extent to which crucial detail has been left to secondary legislation, or will be subject to consultations. That does not facilitate stability and certainty for business or workers, and it precludes long-term planning. That will particularly impact small businesses, start-up businesses and those businesses looking to grow. That is why we are supportive of, for example, the amendment that sets the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims at six months; that would create certainty for business. Any new measures to support workers must go hand in hand with much-needed reforms to support our small businesses, which provide employment. Those reforms include reform of the broken business rates system, a removal of trade barriers, and proper reform of the apprenticeship levy.

I am in favour of Lords amendment 1, which would change the obligation to offer guaranteed hours to a right to request them. The Liberal Democrats have long stood for giving zero-hours workers security about their working patterns, and we are deeply concerned that too many zero-hours workers struggle with unstable incomes, job insecurity and difficulties in planning for the future. However, we also recognise that many value the flexibility that such arrangements provide. Many young people and those balancing caring responsibilities alongside work value adaptability in their shift patterns. It is therefore important to strike a balance that ensures that workers can have security and flexibility.

I spoke to a hospital catering worker in my constituency who was contracted to work 12 hours a week, but she regularly worked 36 hours a week. However, when she took annual leave, she was paid for 12 hours a week. Does the hon. Lady not think that this catering worker deserves the respect of actually being paid for the hours she works, and of having a contract for the hours she works?

If the hon. Lady supported Lords amendment 1, the catering worker would have a right to request, and could get the certainty she requires. The amendment would very much offer that right, which she currently does not have, but it would also mean there was no requirement on the employer to maintain records, and the employer would not have the administrative burden of being forced to offer those hours to workers in the industry who did not require such flexibility. That is why we think the amendment strikes the right balance.

We strongly support the principle of enabling workers to obtain fixed-hours contracts, but we have concerns about the implementation method proposed in the Bill. Small businesses have highlighted that having to offer employees fixed-hours contracts on a rolling basis could impose significant administrative burdens. Many small employers lack human resource or legal departments, and the change could be a significant cost for those with limited resources. That would compound other challenges, such as the recent increase in employers’ national insurance contributions and the fallout from the previous Government’s damaging Brexit deal. In the retail and hospitality sector, part-time and entry-level roles are often taken up by young people looking for flexible hours, people with caring responsibilities, and others who may not want to make long-term work commitments. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) offered a compelling example of a zero-hours contract giving someone what they required from work. For all those groups, flexibility is key.

The amendment is in line with our long-standing manifesto commitment to give zero-hours and agency workers the right to request fixed-hours contracts—a right that employers could not refuse unreasonably. The measure would maintain a flexibility that benefits both parties, whereas an obligation to offer guaranteed hours imposes a significant burden, which does not benefit either party.

We are clear that employees should be supported to exercise this right—and all employment rights—without fear of any negative consequences in their workplace, and we are pleased that the Government have taken steps to set up a unified Fair Work Agency. We hope that the Government will look into our other proposals—for example, the proposal to give zero-hours workers a 20% higher minimum wage to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours.

The amendment strikes a balance between security for workers and flexibility for employers. Much of the contention about the Bill relates to the lack of detail and clarity around key definitions, which makes it hard for businesses and employers to plan. That is why I also wish to speak in favour of Lords amendment 8, which would define a short-notice cancellation as a cancellation with 48 hours’ notice. That provides a workable balance. It gives employers clarity, while ensuring that workers are compensated when shifts are cancelled late.

Does the hon. Member agree that fair notice may be relative to the industry we are talking about? What is fair notice in, say, the retail sector may be completely different from what is fair notice for someone working on an offshore oil rig.

No, I do not think so. Forty-eight hours is a reasonable amount of notice in any sector. That is the kind of notice that enables, for example, parents to rearrange childcare, or other members of the family to rearrange their shifts. The 48 hours is a proper definition of reasonable notice, and 48 hours is 48 hours, whether you work on an oil rig or in a shop. I disagree that it is context-dependent.

I am passionate about ensuring that single parents can enter the workforce, and a big barrier to that is childcare. When thinking about which amendments the hon. Member will support, has she discussed the matter with any organisations representing single parents? Forty-eight hours does not seem like a lot of time.

As someone with a long history of having to arrange childcare at short notice, I am well aware of the limitations that needing to arrange childcare presents, particularly for working women, both those who are single parents and those in a relationship. Forty-eight hours is not ideal, but it is a reasonable compromise, and it is absolutely vital that employers have clarity about what “reasonable notice” looks like in this circumstance.

I wish to speak in favour of Lords amendment 48. Businesses, particularly those in the hospitality sector, that rely on seasonal workers are particularly vulnerable to changes in labour regulations and the knock-on impacts on the cost and availability of labour. The sustainability of farming businesses, for example, depends on being able to get the right people to the right place at the right time, and obstacles to that can have a big impact on ability to generate produce for sale, and therefore on the sustainability of the business. If we allow a different set of regulations to apply to seasonal work, a clear definition of “seasonal work” must be created to prevent employers from avoiding their legitimate responsibilities by claiming seasonal work in inappropriate circumstances. While we do not believe that this legislation should create contrasting employment law requirements for businesses, we continue to defend the principle that businesses should be properly considered when secondary legislation is created, so I urge Members to support the amendment.

Lords amendment 46, tabled by my good friend and Richmond Park predecessor Baroness Kramer, would introduce protections for whistleblowers. It follows her long-standing campaign for support for whistleblowers, and I pay tribute to her commitment to the cause.

There is no standard requirement for most companies to have a whistleblowing policy. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill would be a good opportunity to put in place real protections for whistleblowers who try to highlight crime, danger and malpractice in the workplace?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The current framework for whistleblowing applies only if somebody has lost their job. It does not address the duty on businesses to follow up whistleblowers’ serious concerns about crimes. That urgently needs to be addressed.

Too many whistleblowers who raised serious concerns about matters ranging from fraud to patient safety are ignored by their employers, or are reticent to speak out because of fears of unfair repercussions. The new clause in Lords amendment 46 has received the support of numerous international civil society organisations, including Protect and Spotlight on Corruption. It would be a long-overdue update to our once world-leading whistleblowing legislation, and I urge colleagues from across the House to support the change.

I support Lords amendment 47, which would expand the right to be accompanied to employment hearings to include certified professional companions. Currently, employees may be accompanied only by certified trade union representatives, leaving many workers to navigate proceedings alone. Although trade unions provide valuable support to their members, only 22% of workers are in a trade union, including only 12% of private sector workers, with recent figures at a record low. The current provisions made sense at a time when trade union membership was higher nationally, but those provisions have become largely outdated as trade union membership has fallen and the labour market has modernised. Without the amendment, we consign many employees facing unfair dismissal to navigating the requirements of disciplinary hearings on their own, without any kind of professional or educated support.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the best protection against unfair dismissal is trade union membership?

No, I do not. I think that people should have the freedom not to join a trade union if that is what they wish, not least because their trade union contributions might go to a party that they do not vote for. Many professions these days are better represented not by trade unions that cover a whole range of different employment categories but by professional bodies. As an accountant, I was a member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Had I been facing a disciplinary in relation to my professional duties, I would have been much better represented by a fellow member of that body than by a trade union.

I am a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Professional bodies are there to set the standards of the profession. Does the hon. Lady not recognise the conflict of interest that could arise from the professional body representing an employee at a disciplinary hearing when it has to uphold the standards of the profession?

I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but a fellow qualified accountant would be better able to advise somebody facing a disciplinary than an official from a general trade union, who would not necessarily understand the points in dispute.

The hon. Lady makes good points in some parts of her speech, but not in others. The point of a trade union representative—or any representative who goes with an individual to a disciplinary process—is not to advise on the particulars of the worker’s skillset, but to ensure that processes are followed and the worker’s rights are protected. I fully understand what she says about accountancy, but are there people in her professional organisation who can give her employment rights advice? Disciplinaries relate to employees’ rights, not their professional skillsets.

As the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch (Katrina Murray) have said, that has not been a requirement for professional bodies, but if we create the right for suitably qualified professionals to accompany employees, I fully expect that those bodies would go on to develop that capability. It is surely up to an employee to decide whether they want a fellow professional or a trade union official to protect and defend their interests. They should have the opportunity to make that choice for themselves.

The Liberal Democrats also support the retention of the opt-in system for contributions to trade union political funds. We believe in maximising choice and transparency for individuals in relation to the political funds to which they contribute. We therefore oppose measures that would make it an opt-out system.

I refer to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my support of the trade unions. On the thresholds, does my hon. Friend agree that those who choose to abstain should be counted as “no” votes?

I am slightly surprised to be referred to as “hon. Friend”, not least because I am probably going to disagree with the hon. Gentleman. To undertake such massive action, including in the NHS, and on the tube—we saw the level of disruption that that caused the public last week—there needs to be a positive vote in favour of strike action, which is why I back this amendment.

You haven’t understood my point.

I am happy to take another intervention.

I simply mean that if there is a threshold of 50% and it is not met, are those who did not participate in the ballot classed as “no” votes? Is that correct? It is pretty simple.

I think the point that the hon. Gentleman is making is that people who did not express a view either way should be counted as voting against. What I am saying is that in order to justify the levels of disruption that strike action has caused recently, it is important that a trade union can demonstrate that it has majority support from its workforce. That is why I support the amendment. We believe that the current threshold for strike action is suitable, and that making it easier to strike risks putting further pressure on public services and damaging the economy, as we saw last week with the disruption across the capital caused by the tube strikes.

Most employers are responsible businesses that want to do the right thing by their staff, and many of them support the aims of the Bill. However, they have significant concerns about the lack of clarity and the proposed implementation process. So much of the detail of the legislation is still undecided and will compound the challenges that small businesses are facing—from the Government’s changes to employers’ national insurance and the reduction in business rates relief, to the absence of any meaningful action to bring down commercial energy prices. We must find a way to support and provide clarity for businesses that are trying to plan ahead. The Liberal Democrats support many aims of the Bill and the spirit of measures that strengthen employment rights, but we will support the Lords amendments that will help to ensure that the legislation strikes the right balance for workers and businesses.

I welcome the Government amendments, and thank those who have steered the legislation to this point.

This is a generational upgrade in employment rights, and as a Labour MP, I am very proud to support it. It is a landmark shift in some ways—a declaration that in modern Britain, hard work should be rewarded with decent, stable work, security, dignity and fairness. Having worked in the private and public sectors at different times in my life, I believe that the Bill strikes a fair balance between the workplace rights of the individual and the rights of the employer. That is why I welcome the extensive consultation that the Government have undertaken with the private sector and with trade unions and other organisations. I am a member of USDAW—the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—and the National Education Union and have proudly represented and spoken for them in my career to date.

I wish to speak about a number of the Opposition Lords amendments and my concerns about them in short order. I have concerns about Lords amendment 1. Zero-hours contracts have allowed people to be trapped by insecure work, low pay and one-sided flexibility. I know from speaking to shop workers in my constituency that they have not been able to plan ahead with their finances because of the unscrupulous nature of some working relationships with employers. That has left families unable to plan their weekly shopping and childcare as well as their futures, especially in respect of securing loans and other financial settlements. It has become a way for employers to manage down by allowing too many people to take very short hours and then not allowing them to gain other forms of employment.

The Government’s measures to ensure zero-hours contracts are controlled—where the individual can request zero-hours contracts but there is an onus on the employer to support guaranteed hours—strike the correct balance. I therefore reject Lords amendment 1 as the Government’s measures strike a fair balance between the employee requesting and the employer giving.

Lords amendments 23, 106 and 120 relate to sensible changes on unfair dismissal. As has been mentioned, under the last Government the unfair dismissal provision was set at 12 months and that was extended to two years under the current Government. This does not take into account the fact that many who are subject to unfair dismissal might have been working for the employer for a significant period and also be subject to paternity leave, parental leave and other types of support. We should be supporting people with secure provision in work, and I believe that six months is a fair period in which most employers would be able to grade that assessment.

I do not accept Lords amendment 48 on seasonal work. It would add a loophole by which employers could exploit workers. The Bill pays due regard to the realities of seasonal work, both at Christmas and in farming and other types of practice, and I would welcome consultation on such provision continuing.

On political funds, I urge colleagues to reject Lords amendments 61 and 72. We must return to a model that has worked for over 70 years where people choose to opt out of political funds, because securing employment rights is one of the endeavours of a trade union. The trade unions were set up to secure rights for employees, and seeking to achieve that is one of their political endeavours.

I have concerns about Lords amendment 62. The Conservatives complain about the 50% threshold but they did not adopt that in their former leadership election, and perhaps it will not be the threshold in their leadership election to come in the next six months. If they adopted their recommended 50% threshold of members, we might not see a replacement. If they cannot use it for their own internal processes, that raises questions about why others should be made to do so. I also encourage the Government to consider online balloting as a next necessary step. We do online balloting for many of our leadership processes and it is a sensible way forward, as well as other forms of engagement by post.

As a former teacher, I do not support Lords amendment 121. Negotiations should be conducted in a fair way and the Bill covers that, preventing one-sided correspondence between teachers and their professional body.

As a former special constable, while I accept Lords amendment 21 in principle in supporting our special constables on the ground, that should not just be for a single group of people but should be considered for others, perhaps including carers and other support workers. I welcome the Government’s review of employees’ right to take time off; that is the most sensible approach.

On balance, I am not surprised that the Conservatives and others do not support the Bill—I and others have written as USDAW MPs. I believe that we should support a balanced approach between employees and employers. I welcome the work the Government and former Ministers have done to that end. The Bill strikes a fair balance between those who work in the private and public sectors and the obligations employers are to offer, which is why I will be supporting the Government tonight.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak to two specific Lords amendments proposed in turn by Lord Burns and Lord Sharpe in the other place. While addressing different clauses, both amendments essentially come down to the same principle: defending fairness, transparency and democratic legitimacy against narrow sectional interests.

On Lords amendment 61, in 2016, after long and at times fraught debate, Parliament reached a carefully constructed settlement on the question of trade union political funds. That settlement was not only fair and balanced but, crucially, was broadly accepted by all sides. The compromise was a simple one: it resulted in new members contributing to a union’s political fund only if that member gave their active, informed consent. In contrast, existing members were left untouched and, importantly, unions were required to remind all members annually of their right to change their decision. This is both a fair and a balanced settlement. It is not a carve-up; it is a genuine compromise. It respected both the collective strength of unions and the personal liberty of individuals.

Yet what do we see now? We see a Government seeking to dismantle that settlement, and the result is a return to an era where consent was assumed and where individuals found themselves supporting causes they did not share simply because the rules made it cumbersome to say otherwise. That is not a positive reform; it is regression. In every walk of life—whether a subscription service, an insurance policy, or a mobile phone contract—the public quite properly expect clarity in respect of the terms they are committing to. Why should those standards of fairness be cast aside when it comes to political funds of unions closely bound to the governing party?

Lords amendment 62 deals with the threshold for industrial action. Strikes have consequences. We have seen that only in the last week, with transport links across London brought to a standstill, commutes drastically prolonged, and the consequential significant disruption to people’s day-to-day lives. As a former doctor who, I should point out, did not go on strike in years gone by, I have seen at first hand the consequences of medics taking industrial action: operations cancelled; out-patient appointments postponed; and the provision of healthcare delayed. When the livelihoods and wellbeing of citizens up and down this country are so significantly impacted, it is neither unreasonable nor undesirable that such action rests upon a clear majority. The 50% threshold is precisely that safeguard. It serves as a clear assurance that industrial action has broad legitimacy and is not just the preserve of a militant minority. Yet this Government seek to sweep away that protection by voting down this very sensible and considered improvement to the legislation.

Both these amendments remind us that democracy depends upon consent, transparency and legitimacy. Those values have been the bedrock of Britain for generations. It would be a poor bargain indeed if they were set aside to placate the financial and political interests of a narrow few.

I rise to speak to new clause 22, which will ban the use of non-disclosure agreements in cases of harassment and discrimination.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) who did remarkable work in pushing this huge Employment Rights Bill through in a relatively short space of time. I am incredibly grateful for their support and hard work. I also place on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) who has worked on this issue over many years, and to the countless other campaigners in both Houses who have not stopped until this legislation was to become law.

Sadly, we are not here to relitigate this entire Bill, which is so wide in scope and impact, and yet so skimpy in detail, having been cobbled together for a headline under Labour’s “first 100 days” banner. I refer the House to Lords amendment 61, which without doubt will be dashed aside as Labour seeks to salvage something, anything, as a legacy for its deposed red queen, the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), whose Bill this very much remains.

Lords amendment 61 would reinstate the requirement for trade union members to opt in to contribute to the political fund. Incredibly, Labour Members, who bristle at commercial subscriptions that rely on consumer inertia, will likely vote down this sensible and proportionate change. The reasons why demonstrate the wider issue with the Bill. The left’s hive mind aside, the Bill is a love letter to the unions—a thank you for all the support.

Labour has been bought with union gold, with donations totalling almost £40 million since the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) took the helm of his party. It means that the Bill is payback for the unions, all the time masquerading as a fillip for the working class. We know how important that working-class concept is for the Labour party from watching the candidates for the vacant deputy leadership engage in a “prolier than thou” contest, with hairshirt-and-gravel shades of Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen” sketch thrown in.

In reality, the Bill has little to do with actual working-class people, and the Labour party has no monopoly on them in their ranks. Instead, the Bill does rather more for what is sometimes called the “boutique left”—the trade union apparatchiks and their ilk. The Bill only makes sense if we see it through the skewed prism of every employer being a robber baron and every union organiser a saint. It does nothing for all those who will struggle to find a job in the first place, as its granting of day one rights will give companies—already facing big bills thanks to employer national insurance contribution rises—pause for thought. Other amendments fight a rearguard action with a sensible six-month qualification period. The Bill means that unions are going to party like it is 1979—but they should have a care. In ’79, restive unions triggered strike after strike, sounding the death knell for both their own unfettered power and for the Labour Government.

Lords amendment 62 addresses the threshold for strike action, meaning that 50% of eligible members would have to vote for action. Are the unions not better being sure of the complete backing of their members before lighting the picket-line braziers? Again, the unions should learn the lessons of the past. Next year marks a century since the general strike. Although often talked of in reverential tones by the left, the strike left the unions’ proud red banners in the dirt and the miners it was meant to support back in the underground galleries with worse pay conditions. Why? Because the strike alienated the public. Last week, the chat from the man forced on to the Clapham omnibus when London was crippled by transport strikes was less, “Up the workers!” than, “Right up the workers,” with their £65,000 base salaries and demands for a still shorter working week.

Business cannot afford the Bill unamended, as it will take an estimated £5 billion out at a time of belt tightening. The public cannot afford the Bill unamended, as it will facilitate more frequent and more damaging strikes, and it will make jobs harder to come by. Labour itself cannot afford the Bill unamended. Labour Members may think that, with scandal and crisis all around, they cannot sink any lower in the popularity stakes. Oh, they can, and the Bill is the ticking timebomb that could take them to their nadir faster than they imagine.

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and to my proud membership of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the GMB. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), who has just popped out for some well-earned tea, for his hard work steering the Bill through the House. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my equally hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), to her place; we both know that she has big shoes to fill.

Today, we finally arrive at the concluding stages of this historic Bill’s long journey through Parliament. It is a moment that has been many years in the making. For well over a decade, working people have been calling for the protections that this landmark piece of legislation will introduce. It is our duty to deliver them, and to deliver them in full. Last year, people voted for change. They are crying out for change, and this Bill delivers real, meaningful and positive change. It is therefore immensely frustrating, although sadly not surprising, to see the old coalition band get back together in the other place, to have one final go at obstructing this Bill through changes, like Lords amendment 1, which will be the focus of my remarks.

One of the defining aims of the Bill is to end exploitative short and zero-hours contracts. The right to a guaranteed-hours contract is at the heart of the new deal for working people because, as I said on Report, the rise of one-sided flexibility has been one of the most damaging labour market developments of the past 14 years. Such contracts leave workers—often the lowest paid—vulnerable to sudden changes in income, with weekly working hours varying unpredictably. It is an unstable, precarious life that many are forced into, and it is long past time that this exploitative practice was brought to an end.

Lords amendment 1, a throwback team effort from the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, seeks to replace the Bill’s right to a guaranteed-hours contract with a far weaker “right to request”. At just five words long, the amendment may seem minor, but it is anything but. As working people know from bitter experience, a right to request often means no right at all. Unfortunately, it is clear from the comments made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) that either Liberal Democrats do not understand or they are wilfully misrepresenting the amendment.

Lords amendment 1 creates a loophole, enabling unscrupulous employers to use pressure or coercion to deter employees from making requests. It also puts that crucial protection out of reach of those who simply are not aware of their rights in the first place. Far from delivering a new right, it reopens the door to workplace conflict, insecurity and exploitation, something of which I am sure the Liberal Democrats would not be proud. It is completely at odds with the spirit and purpose of the provision, and it must be rejected.

We must deliver greater security, stability and dignity to people in their working lives. The right to a guaranteed-hours contract, and the increased financial security that brings with it, is central to achieving that. It will be transformative for living standards, productivity and the economy. I urge colleagues from across the House not to undermine this essential provision and to reject Lords amendment 1. Working people are counting on all of us to do the right thing by them.

I am pleased to speak in favour of the Government amendment in lieu of Lords amendment 21, which commits the Government to reviewing whether to add special constables to the list of roles that entitle an employee to request unpaid time off work from their employer under the Employment Rights Act 1996.

Special constables are volunteers who give their time freely, at no cost to the taxpayer, to support our police forces and keep our communities safe. They hold the same powers as regular constables: the power to arrest, to search and to detain. They carry the same responsibilities, face the same dangers and accept the same risks. Yet, unlike their regular colleagues, they are unpaid.

The special constabulary is one of the most remarkable institutions of British policing, with its history stretching back almost two centuries. The Special Constables Act 1831 allowed justices of the peace to conscript volunteers to help restore order during riots and unrest. The specials were called upon again during the first world war, when regular officers enlisted to fight. Their success led to the Special Constables Act 1923, which ensured their permanent place in policing.

From their inception, specials were designed to be a national contingency force: citizens stepping forward in times of crisis to strengthen the police service when needed most. That role is no less relevant today. The Government recently published a resilience plan, addressing the higher level of threat we face from Russia, global instability and multiple risks here at home. In such a context, specials are not a relic of the past, but a vital part of our security and civil defence framework, and a reserve force in all but name.

I proudly refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which relates to support from trades unions. I welcome the Secretary of State and the new Employment Rights Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), to their places. I especially pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax for her support and hard work in the taskforce, when I was shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights and Protections, that led to the production of the new deal for working people. We are in good hands as she carries on the excellent work. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) for his excellent stewardship in securing the Employment Rights Bill and taking it thus far.

I welcome the return of the Employment Rights Bill and the opportunity to address the urgent priorities of the people of this country, which are improving employment rights for better security at work and, ultimately, better pay from work. The cost of living crisis remains a burning issue, and giving people the tools at work to tackle in-work poverty is crucial. This Bill starts the process of delivering much-needed dignity and security for working people. It will not have escaped the attention of colleagues that Members of the party now purporting to speak for working people are nowhere to be seen in this debate. We know whose side the Reform party is on, and it is not working people.

These Lords amendments demonstrate the problems before us. I urge the House to reject the Opposition’s amendments, which, if passed, would weaken the rights and protections that this Bill seeks to deliver.

On Lords amendment 1, which would water down the right to guaranteed hours, let us be clear: moving from a duty on employers to proactively offer secure contracts to a model in which workers must request them would completely undermine the purpose of the Bill. Vulnerable workers, often young people on their very first job, should not be left in the position of having to plead with their employer for basic security. We have heard from Unite members such as Izzy, a pub worker who felt unable to raise issues for fear that her hours would be cut, and Caren, a restaurant worker who was left with 40 hours one week and barely any the next, with her mental health paying the price. This House cannot endorse a model that forces workers into the role of Oliver Twist, asking, “Please, Sir, may I have some more?” The duty must rest firmly with employers.

Lords amendments 7 and 8 would reduce access to short-notice cancellation payments. Again, the effect is to let employers off the hook. A 48-hour limit is wholly inadequate. Imagine a parent who is told late on a Friday night that their Monday shift has been cancelled; there is no compensation, but there is still childcare to pay for.

The hon. Gentleman says that a 48-hour time period is unacceptable, yet the Bill does not specify what time period would be acceptable. Does he have an idea in mind of what that number would be? How many businesses has he spoken to about that?

The amendment speaks to those sorts of figures. I am making the point that that sort of notice is simply not acceptable.

People cannot live structured lives and be able to plan for their futures under such a dreadful regime, and I reject it wholeheartedly. That is not reasonable notice; it is a transfer of cost and stress on to the worker. USDAW’s evidence shows that, in many sectors, workers already get four weeks’ notice of shifts. The risk here is that by lowering the standard, we drag conditions down across the board. That is why the Government have rightly committed to setting notice periods through consultation, not through arbitrary amendment.

The challenge is that we are waiting years before we have any response to what the numbers might be. Does the hon. Member find that reasonable? In the meantime, we have no protections whatsoever for these people who we are all trying to protect.

We want to get through this consultation as quickly as possible and to get this Bill on the statute book so that the position is clear, but I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We need to move on these issues as a matter of urgency, and he is right to point that out.

Lords amendments 23 and 106 to 120 propose to reduce the qualifying period for unfair dismissal from two years to six months. We cannot support that halfway measure. Our manifesto is clear: Labour will deliver day one rights. Accepting these amendments risks entrenching insecurity and delaying meaningful reform. Workers should not have to serve a probationary period of six months or two years before being protected from arbitrary dismissal. We will fully consult on probationary arrangements to get them right, but we will not compromise on our principle of security from day one.

I must urge the rejection of Lords amendment 62, which seeks to retain the 50% turnout threshold for industrial action ballots. The threshold was a deliberate barrier imposed by the Trade Union Act 2016. No other democratic process in this country faces such a hurdle—not parliamentary votes or local elections. This House was elected without such restrictions. Trade unions must not be uniquely singled out. Removing the threshold restores fairness, strengthens industrial relations and honours our commitment to repeal draconian Conservative legislation.

Finally, Lords amendment 121 would permit academies to deviate from pay and conditions agreed through the school support staff negotiating body, which risks entrenching inequality. It could mean teaching assistants in the same trust being on wildly different terms, creating a postcode lottery in education and exposing staff to equal pay disputes. Instead of undermining sectoral bargaining, we should be expanding it, ensuring fair, consistent and collectively agreed standards across the board. Let us be frank: after years of pay erosion, school support staff truly need a pay restoration deal that values the vital work they do.

In every case, the Lords amendments before us risk weakening rights, not strengthening them. Our task is to make work pay, end one-sided flexibility and ensure fairness and dignity for every worker. If this legislation does not go far enough to meet union demands for sectoral bargaining and a single worker status, Members of this House will rightly call for a second employment Bill this autumn. We cannot sustain this anathema of fragile, insecure work for so many millions of people in this country; they need that security to plan their futures, and they need to have the protections that those in employment enjoy. In addition, were they to be brought into that architecture, the Treasury would benefit to the tune of more than £10 billion per annum, opposite the uncollected tax and national insurance contributions.

Working people have waited long enough. It is time for us to deliver the stronger rights and protections that they truly deserve.

I intend to speak mainly to the provisions dealing with guaranteed hours, but I begin with a word of thanks to the Government for what they have announced about special constables. It is not quite as good as adopting the amendment, but I welcome the review. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) for the work he has done. I hope the review will report quickly, and I hope for a growth in the number of special constables, not only in neighbourhood policing, which my hon. Friend rightly mentioned, but among people working in the tech sector. We need cyber-specials to tackle the scourge of cyber-crime and fraud, which is now the single largest category of crime, and is, sadly, growing once again.

We will work on it.

I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for suggesting that he will try.

I turn to the provisions dealing with guaranteed hours and zero-hours contracts. I understand why it is attractive to the Government and the Labour party to seek to restrict the availability of contracts that do not have a guaranteed number of hours. From listening to Labour colleagues, it seems almost as if “exploitative zero-hours contracts” is one word. It is as if those words must always go together. We all want to end exploitation—that is why, in 2015, the then Government passed legislation to stop employers imposing exclusivity. We said, “If you are not going to guarantee your employee a minimum number of hours, it is not all right to say that they must not work for somebody else.” But not all zero-hours contracts are necessarily exploitative.

One of the biggest users of zero-hours contracts in our country is none other than the national health service, through its use of bank staff. I notice that the Liberal Democrats announced a new policy today, which would require extra pay for people on zero-hours contracts; I do not know whether they have yet costed that policy. By the way, for many of the people working as bank staff in the NHS, that is not their primary job but a second job. This allows a hospital or other setting to respond to spikes in demand. For many people with a zero-hours contract job, it is their second job, not their primary source of income. Zero-hours contract jobs are also very important to people coming back into work, as the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) said powerfully in an intervention.

Many people on zero-hours contracts are students. Particularly in hospitality, there is a pattern of work whereby an employee lives in two places: at home, and at their term-time address. They can stay on the books of their employer at home—it might be a local pub—while they are away studying during term time. It could be the other way around: they could have a job in their university town, and stay on the books when they come home. They can dial up or dial down their hours; for example, many students do not want to work a lot of hours, or any hours, during exam time. Contrary to what we might expect, and contrary to the all-one-word conception of “exploitative zero-hours contracts”, some people actually prefer a zero-hours contract.

And some people do not.

And some people do not, as the hon. Gentleman quite rightly says.

When I was working at the Department for Work and Pensions, the issue of zero-hours contracts became a totemic issue under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the immediate predecessor of the current leader of the Labour party. There was this idea that there had been a huge increase in the number of people in the country on a zero-hours contract. We discovered that less than 3% of people had a zero-hours contract as their primary source of income, and the average number of hours those people worked was not zero or close to zero, but 25. Even more unexpectedly—this was the bit that really got people—the average job satisfaction of people on a zero-hours contract was higher than it was for the rest of the workforce.

I think we understand why the Labour Government wish to legislate in this way. It is something for Labour MPs to bring home. When so much else in their manifesto is falling apart before our eyes, they can say, “At least we’ve killed off this modern scourge, this huge growth in zero-hours contracts.” As I say, the number of those contracts is not nearly as big as most people think. If you think about it, we have always had zero-hours contracts in all sorts of forms, whether it be piecework, commission-only sales, agency catalogue work or casual labour. In fact, it is possible that today, there are fewer people on a zero-hours contract than ever before in the history of the labour market. Many colleagues might reflect on their first job. Mine was washing dishes in a restaurant. We did not have the phrase at that time, but it certainly would have been a zero-hours contract, apart from the fact that there was no contract at all.

If the Government wish to reform this area, as they may, I ask them to consider the situation in sectors with great seasonality, including hospitality, tourism and retail, and to please look again at the concept of a 12-week reference period, which does not reflect the reality of seasonality. I know that this will be introduced through regulations, not the primary legislation, and I welcome what the Secretary of State said; I think he indicated that the Government were open to looking at a more sensible length of time. The Government could also do things differentially by sector; there could be one period for employers in general, and another for sectors or sub-sectors that have particularly strong patterns of seasonality.

I also ask the Government to reconsider the requirement to not just offer guaranteed hours once, but keep on doing it. That is introducing unnecessary bureaucracy. If the Government want to make changes in this area, I encourage them to at least ensure that once an employer has made the offer once, the right can become an opt-in right.

The Government think that these provisions are something for Back-Bench Labour MPs to take home, but I ask Labour colleagues whether they really want to take them home. Do they want to take home higher unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment? Do they want to take home fewer opportunities for people returning to the workplace after many years away? Do they want to take home fewer opportunities for ex-offenders—those furthest from the labour market? Do they want to take home—because this will come as well, as night follows day—a further trend away from permanent employment and towards fixed-term temporary employment? Do they want to take home a shift from waged or salaried work to more self-employment? Is that really what Labour wants to deliver?

I start by saying a massive thank you to the new ministerial team and the new Secretary of State, who I welcome to his role, for keeping in clauses 14 to 18 of the Bill, as well as for their warm words at the Dispatch Box. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), but we heard all those arguments before from Conservative Members when they opposed the minimum wage, which did none of the things they warned about.

I turn to my declaration of interests. It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), is not in his place, because he asked all Labour Members to declare our trade union affiliations. I will proudly do so—they are in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—but my interest in this Bill does not stop there. I have worked a zero-hours contract, and I would have benefited from this Bill. I have been a care worker who would have benefited from the collective bargaining that this Bill will introduce, and the Bill would also have meant that I was paid for time spent travelling between the jobs I had to travel to. I am proud to stand by my declaration of interests. It is a real shame that the shadow Secretary of State did not mention that he used to be a non-executive director for Just Eat, a company that has faced a number of claims for giving employees bogus self-employed status. Perhaps that would have been of interest to everybody in the Chamber.

The Employment Rights Bill has been called lots of things by lots of critics, but to me, it is about ensuring that all people can work safely, with respect and dignity, and have security in their work. For the past 15 years, we have seen people at the sharp end. We have heard stories of businesses struggling, and nobody wants that, but we have not heard the stories of what the previous Government subjected working people to. They called it a living wage, when actually it was a minimum wage, which ensured that people were stuck in in-work poverty. A woman is 34% more likely to be stuck in a zero-hours contract than a man. If we are talking about black and Asian minority people, that figure reaches 103%. Disabled workers are 49% more likely to be stuck on such a contract. This Bill is about protecting all workers, not just some.

On the right to sick pay, no one chooses to be sick. There are 1.3 million people without the right to any sick pay whatever. That is the difference that this Bill will make, and the difference that a Labour Government will make to working people’s rights. As has been mentioned, where are the grifters who sit on the Opposition Benches? They pretend that they care about the ordinary working man—not often mentioning women; often they talk only about the working man—but where are they? They probably have their hand out for some more of Elon Musk’s bitcoin, shall we say.

I will talk about clauses that touch on our work on the Women and Equalities Committee. The parental leave review, although not specifically in this Bill, will impact on so many workers. It is a pleasure to hear that being talked about under a Labour Government. We know that parental leave is also a problem for self-employed people. We have heard a lot about the impact of bogus self-employment and rogue bosses, but we have not heard enough about the protections for self-employed people. In the course of our Committee’s parental leave review, we heard that 31% of self-employed people do not take a single day off after their child is born. That is a shocking statistic. It is damaging not just for our economy, but for individuals and families.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) and all the campaigners for their work on misogyny in music and on banning non-disclosure agreements following sexual harassment and bullying. We heard loud and clear how many people in the music industry are self-employed, and many have been subjected to NDAs. That goes unreported and is unknown. The measure before us will make such a difference for so many people in many sectors, and it is so important that we get it through. The Conservatives and the Lib Dems talk about bits of the Bill that they do not like, and they list things that will be problems, but I ask them to think of the people we are trying to protect, because there will be a real impact.

Lords amendments 14 to 18 concern an issue that has a special place in my heart, and the hearts of many people, both in this Chamber and outside it. I am pleased that in spring the Government accepted the principle of two weeks of bereavement leave for parents who lose a pregnancy before 24 weeks. There is no sliding scale on pain for bereavement and loss, particularly for expecting parents. As a result of this change, grieving parents will no longer need to push through their pain to carry on working. Women who experience baby loss will not need to use sick leave, which implies that their body had something wrong with it. Arguments against the measure were founded on, “Well, you can always just take sick leave,” but a person who has lost a child blames themselves. It is natural instinct. Your first reaction is, “Did I do something wrong? Could I have done something differently? Should I have not eaten that? Should I have not done this? Should I have not jumped? Should I not have gone to an exercise class?” You think of all the things that you could have done to prevent it. For someone to go to their employer and say, “I need to take sick leave”, as if there is something wrong with them, is fundamentally different from how society sees pregnancy loss and miscarriage now, and I am grateful for that.

I thank the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) for her brave and personal testimony, and for sharing the testimonies of many others on the importance of bereavement leave.

Let me begin by welcoming the news that the bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis will keep its sites in Scotland open after the announcement by the First Minister, John Swinney, that the Scottish Government have committed £4 million to a furlough scheme while the company obtains new orders over the next six months. I am sure the whole House will welcome the action taken by the SNP Government in giving domestic manufacturing businesses the opportunity to succeed and protecting skilled manufacturing jobs.

From the outset of this Bill, we in the SNP have been clear in our support for legislation that will strengthen the rights of workers, having long campaigned for many of its provisions. There are progressive attempts to guarantee working hours and protections against unfair dismissal, and the Bill begins to reverse some of the most damaging and insulting anti-union legislation of the previous Government. None the less, throughout its passage in the House of Commons we have called on the Government to be bolder and to use this opportunity to deliver transformational change for workers. We proposed amendments to be more robust on fire and rehire, to improve statutory sick pay and to strengthen protections for migrant workers in accessing their rights, all of which were sadly rejected by the Government. Disappointingly, none of those issues has returned to this House in the amendments agreed to by the House of Lords. Instead, we see a series of amendments that seek to weaken the Bill and weaken the rights of employees by watering down provisions on protections against unfair dismissal, the right to guaranteed hours, and the capabilities of trade unions. Let me be crystal clear: the SNP will not accept proposals that seek to diminish workers’ rights.

One of the most important elements of the Bill is the provision ensuring that workers have rights from day one, a significant change from the current two years. Workers should not have to wait to be protected from unfair dismissal. Unfair dismissal is unfair no matter what time limit is imposed, so there should be none. The Lords amendments would still allow for employees to be dismissed without the right to claim unfair dismissal for the first six months of their employment. Failing to reject this amendment today would fundamentally undermine the principles and objects of the Bill.

The provisions on sexual harassment are also significant, particularly those that void agreements preventing workers from making allegations of harassment or discrimination, and void provisions preventing workers from speaking out about their employer’s response to the relevant harassment or discrimination. We have heard some eloquent speeches today about the very reasons why that can never continue. Astonishingly, the Lords are attempting to except parliamentary staff from the protection from non-disclosure agreements. I have not heard that mentioned today, but it is a disgusting attempt by the House of Lords to protect itself from allegations of sexual harassment and to silence those who are victims of sexual harassment in Parliament. What is it about that unelected Chamber, which brazenly seeks to use its power to protect and entrench its own privileges time and time again? This is just another ludicrous example of why the House of Lords needs to be abolished: it is utterly shameless.

It has long been recognised that insecure work is one of the biggest problems facing our society. I have been listening carefully to what has been said about zero-hours contracts, and I want to register a few facts. Contrary to what was said earlier, in the past decade there has been an increase in the number of zero-hours contract workers—not a small increase, but a 65% increase. More than a million workers are on zero-hours contracts, including over 100,000 in Scotland, and many more are on very short-hours contracts. Rather than providing flexibility, zero-hours contracts offer little or no control or ability to forward-plan. Let me give an example. A recent report from the Work Foundation noted that when Wetherspoons introduced an option for guaranteed hours—guess what?—99% of its workers opted for guaranteed-hours contracts, with only 1% choosing zero-hours contracts.

The Bill seeks to require employers to make an offer of guaranteed hours to a qualifying worker after the end of every reference period, but once again the Lords have attempted to weaken that by taking the onus away from employers and putting it on employees, requiring them to request guaranteed hours. It is important for the Government, as well as rejecting this amendment, to provide clarity on the duration of the reference period and to define what constitutes a “low” number of guaranteed hours.

Similarly, the Government seek to reject Lords amendment 8, which defines “short notice” for the purpose of an employer cancelling a shift as 48 hours, with Ministers in the Lords suggesting that when the regulations are made, “short notice” will be defined as a period greater than 48 hours. That is fine, but, as I have pointed out a number of times today, it is cold comfort for those who are currently on zero-hours contracts, who will have to wait until 2027 at the earliest to find out what comes back from the Government’s consultation.

One of the biggest problems with the Bill is that so much of it will not be clarified until further down the line, through secondary legislation and regulations, which means that much of it is still uncertain, much of it will avoid scrutiny, and much of it will be easy for future Governments to reverse. Indeed, the Opposition are on the record as having made that last point today.

Of course, voters in Scotland know that devolution of employment law is a far better way to protect workers’ rights in Scotland from a future UK Government who might remove those protections. Fair work practices are already being delivered by the SNP Scottish Government, such as supporting collective bargaining, achieving real living wage employer status, and closing the gender pay gap faster than other parts of the UK. Workers in Scotland should never again have to see their employment rights eroded by any Tory-led Government, and we in the SNP will continue to campaign—as Scottish Labour was previously committed to doing—to ensure that employment law is devolved to Scotland or, better still, that Scotland gains independence from consecutive Westminster Governments who seek to erode Scottish workers’ rights.

I am grateful for being able to contribute to this debate. It is a privilege to follow so many powerful speeches, and the speech delivered by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) was the most powerful I have heard in this place. Her words rose to the moment; mine are inadequate by comparison. I can only thank her for speaking so powerfully about an issue that affects so many of us.

I welcome the new Secretary of State to his place, and thank him for the way in which he opened this debate.

At the outset, I draw the House’s attention to my background as an officer of the GMB union and my current unpaid role as chair of the GMB parliamentary group. In that capacity, I thank the hon. Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law), as he leaves the Chamber, for what he said about Members’ staff in this place. GMB is the union that represents the majority of people who work in support of us as Members of this House. I am sad to say that they are perhaps uniquely vulnerable to some of the abusive practices that have shamed our democracy for too long, and I am at a loss to understand how the relevant Lords amendments were ever brought forward from the other place.

I wish to speak specifically against Lords amendments 121, 11 and 1, and in support of the Government amendments that seek to strike them out. Before doing so, I want to say a few words about my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders), who is not in his place at the moment. As a former shadow Minister and latterly as the sponsoring Minister for this Bill, he unfailingly and characteristically brought graft, industry and good humour to the brief. This would be a weaker and lesser Bill without him, and those of us who support the Bill and its principles owe him a debt of thanks. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), who brings a real depth of knowledge and understanding to the role of Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, is now guarding the Bill’s passage to Royal Assent. I know that she will be both pro-worker and pro-business in her approach.

I believe that Lords amendment 121 contains significant drafting weaknesses and would fundamentally alter the nature of the proposed and restored school support staff negotiating body. First, the amendment states that employers may introduce new terms and conditions of employment that

“meet or exceed any minimum standards set by the SSSNB.”

In legal terms, however, the SSSNB will not set or determine those standards; it is a statutory forum for negotiation. The actual conditions of employment will be set through regulations drafted by the Secretary of State and approved by Parliament.

Secondly, the actual parameters of a future pay and grading structure will be negotiated by the relevant parties: the representatives of employers, and the representatives of employees. That was the spirit of the original 2008 Act and the actual operation of the SSSNB in its original incarnation. Given my experience as a former trade union officer representing school support staff, I know the contractual issues that need to be addressed are so complicated that they cannot be satisfactorily resolved on the Floor of the House. That complexity is a result of 14 years of drift, dither and political disinterest in the 800,000 support staff workers in England who keep our schools going, and it is a damning indictment of the decision to cancel the original SSSNB.

Finally, Lords amendment 121 risks creating confusion at a local level. The amendment states that employers must not be restricted from introducing “improved terms and conditions”, but changes to contracts are not merely introduced; they are consulted on and agreed, either individually or collectively, under existing statutes. The effect of the somewhat loose wording in the amendment may be to encourage local attempts to make unilateral variations to contracts and terms and conditions. Members who support this amendment might say that only improvements could be made under it, but both “improvement” and “detriment” are subjective terms. They are in the eye of the beholder, and I believe that if the amendment were to be carried through, the actual effect may be to increase the number of court cases concerning school support staff.

I urge the Opposition not to push a point, and to reconsider their wider opposition to the school support staff negotiating body. School support staff undertake essential roles, and they deserve the same professional standards and professional respect that is afforded to teachers. That is what the restoration of the school support staff negotiating body will achieve.

We have debated the official Opposition’s amendments many times at various stages, but I want to comment on some of the Lords amendments that stand in the names of Liberal Democrat peers, either in whole or in part. When I entered this Chamber at the start of the debate, I did not presume that those amendments necessarily enjoyed the support of the Liberal Democrat Front Benchers in the Commons, but I am afraid that impression was dispelled by the contribution from the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney).

I am at a loss to understand how the radical change in approach has come about among the Liberal Democrats in this House between Committee stage, Report, Third Reading and the debate that we are holding today. In fact, listening to the hon. Lady, I felt an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu: it was like watching the Rose Garden press conference all over again. After all, her Front-Bench colleagues—the hon. Members for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) and for Torbay (Steve Darling)—were at all times appropriately critical in Committee, but they were essentially supportive of the principle of enhancing workers’ rights. Lords amendment 11, which was originally a Conservative amendment in the Commons but now stands in the name of a Liberal Democrat peer, was not supported by the Liberal Democrats in Committee.

Lords amendment 1, which stands in the names of both Liberal Democrat and Conservative peers, seeks to amend clause 1. However, the Liberal Democrats supported that clause in Committee and only voiced concern, which was reasonable, that timely guidance to employers must be issued to accompany it; indeed, they voted with Labour Members when it was put to a vote in Committee. I fear that this amendment, too, could have serious unintended consequences.

The clause that it seeks to amend puts a duty on employers to offer regular-hours contracts to “workers”—that is the language used in the legislation as it stands at the moment—but the amendment seeks to convert that duty into a right to request by employees. “Employees” is, of course, a more restrictive category than “workers”; indeed, clause 148 of the Bill as drafted makes it clear that for the purpose of the interpretation of this Bill, “workers” and “employees” mean two different things. Many of the people who are classed only as “workers” are precisely those who may benefit the most from these protections. Some 5 million people who are nominally casual workers in sectors such as social care, construction, hospitality, security and retail could be excluded from these protections if the amendment, which stands in the names of Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers, were to be carried. I hope it is not the intention of those on the Conservative Benches to exclude those 5 million people. At the start of this debate, I could not believe that that was the intention of the Liberal Democrats, but now I am not so sure.

The Women and Equalities Committee heard compelling evidence earlier this year about misogyny in the music industry. That is exactly one of the areas where people who are classed as “workers” need protection, so I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising a very powerful and relevant point. She is absolutely right that those are the groups of workers who would enjoy greater protection as a result of this legislation being carried.

I want to respond to a couple of points that have been made in this debate. It was a shame that the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who is not currently in his place, did not have the self-confidence in his arguments to take interventions on his points. He referred repeatedly to the validity of estimates of the number of workers employed on zero-hours contracts, but there are good reasons for not having confidence in these estimates. After all, they are derived from the Office for National Statistics labour force survey, which has had well-advertised and well-understood problems with response rates that have wider implications for both the current Government and the previous Government. It is well known that the number of people who identify as being on a zero-hours contract corresponds to changes in the wording of that particular question. In addition, the labour force survey has well-understood limitations when it comes to reaching people who are employed in what might be called the most marginalised parts of the economy. I therefore urge Conservative Members not to have too much confidence in those estimates, but to look instead at the surveys of workers undertaken by many organisations, such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and trade unions.

It was a shame to hear during the debate the number of references to trade union political funds only in the context of party funding. Of course, the great majority of trade union political funds are operated by trade unions that are not affiliated to any political party. Furthermore, the political funds even of Labour-affiliated unions in practice often support meaningful and consequential campaigns that are supported by Members across the House. One example to which I would draw Members’ attention is the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018—sometimes called the protect the protectors legislation—which began as a result of trade union campaigning that was not party political in its nature, and that legislation has since been broadened. I pay tribute to USDAW’s “Freedom From Fear” campaign and the work that has been done to extend the same protections to retail workers. These are exactly the sort of valuable campaigns that, sadly, Members from both the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats are looking to restrict.

Finally on points raised, I had not intended at the start of the debate to talk about heritage railways. Indeed, it must be said that during those long years in opposition, when we were looking closely as trade union officials at the potential future issues that would be covered by trade union legislation, I think it is fair to say that that issue never once came up, but perhaps we were guilty of tunnel vision. [Interruption.] Sorry, I will not do that again. Throughout all the debates on this matter in the other place and here, it has been discussed purely in theoretical terms. The contention has been that the 1920 Act has had a chilling effect on the of operation heritage railways across the country. I do not think, but I would be glad to be corrected, that any actual examples have been brought forward of either court cases being taken or legal advice being received from those organisations, but it certainly feels like an issue that the Transport Committee may wish to consider.

I have tried to limit my comments only to the details of the Lords amendments, but if I may, I will make two general comments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough said, the Labour manifesto committed to

“implementing ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay…’ in full…and introducing basic rights from day one to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal.”

Yet in front of us are Lords amendments that would either obviate many of those commitments or reduce their potency to homeopathic levels. As he also rightly said, there can be no question of nodding through amendments that contradict the clear mandate we first received a year ago, and which commands broad support among voters of all parties.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—like most Labour Members, I am proud to be supported by trade unions. Others have mentioned the absence of Reform Members from this debate, and of course we know why they are not here: they do not support the measures in the Employment Rights Bill, but they do not have the guts to say that to their voters.

I am here to speak on behalf of my constituents, particularly those who feel insecure at work. They are the people who do not have assets and safety nets, who are not mobile and confident, who live pay day to pay day, and who feel that they must take whatever pay and conditions they are offered because they are terrified of the alternative. It is 12 years since this party announced a commitment to end exploitative zero-hours contracts as a means of controlling workers and avoiding employment obligations.

I am a former teaching assistant, and many teaching assistants were working under a form of zero-hours contracts. Does my hon. Friend agree that this Bill, as well as bringing back the negotiating body for teaching assistants and support staff at school, will greatly help them by taking away the zero-hours contracts under which they previously suffered?

The Bill absolutely will do so.

I remember speaking to a young couple when I was canvassing 12 years ago. The young woman had just had a baby, but because she was on a zero-hours contract, she was unable to get the maternity rights to which she was otherwise entitled. Her young partner, who likewise was on a zero-hours contract, talked about his pay and conditions at work, and after asking him why he did not challenge his employer, I understood that so many young people do not feel able to do so because they feel so insecure and sometimes just so grateful to be in a job. That is why I am speaking against Lords amendment 1.

It is absolutely right that the onus be placed on the employer to ensure that people are given regular contracts, and that we are not asking people who are often the most vulnerable and insecure workers to go to their employer and start asserting and demanding their rights. I have met many constituents over the past year or so, and I have learnt about the sheer vulnerability that, sadly, many working people feel, such as a tenant who tells me that they are frightened of demanding rights from their landlord because they fear they will be evicted. Of course, Reform also voted against our reforms banning no-fault evictions.

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful speech. He quite rightly mentioned that the Reform UK Members are not in their place, and does he agree with me that this really is a travesty? When we think about the social media posts that they put out and the grand speeches they give up and down this land, does he agree with me that it really is a travesty for them to claim to be on the side of working people when they have the audacity to vote in this House against a Bill introduced by a Labour Government on the side of working people?

It will not surprise my hon. Friend to hear that I completely agree with that assessment. They are clearly not on the side of my constituents or the people I am talking about, who just do not feel that they can assert their rights. Too many feel completely powerless, so it is right that we put the onus where it is. I will vote against the attempts in the Lords to water down that part of the Bill.

On accessing the rights in the Bill, does my hon. Friend agree that, for people going about their busy daily lives at work and possibly struggling to make ends meet, there is a fundamental difference between a right to a contract with guaranteed hours and a right to request one?

There is a difference. My hon. Friend is an expert in this field, having come to us from USDAW, and I know that those who worked on the Bill will have thought this through carefully. It certainly chimes with my experience. People should not need to have to request and assert their rights; they should be given those rights. That is what this Government are doing.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: I am a member of Unison and the GMB, and during the election I received financial support from trade unions. One thing I found when I was a trade union official was that it was not necessarily people who were not confident in asserting their own rights. A number of workers simply did not know what their rights were. Oddly enough, employers were not running around handing out little laminated cards saying, “Here are all the rights you can ask me for.” If employers are not made to tell them their rights, how else are employees meant to find out?

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. That is what the Bill speaks to. There is a power gap between the ordinary working person who does not necessarily know their rights and is unable to assert them, and the sort of person who, for example, might buy a house in their girlfriend’s name. I will progress.

I also oppose the attempt, in Lords amendment 106, to water down the Bill by requiring six months for protection from unfair dismissal. There is of course a difference between unfair dismissal and fair dismissal. No employer is prevented from using fair grounds to dismiss an employee. The previous Government extended the time before you could even claim unfair dismissal to two years. That left far too many people vulnerable to being dismissed at a whim, or dismissed because they had demanded their rights at work.

I had an experience of that myself. I have never talked about it before, because I signed a non-disclosure agreement. Shortly after becoming the branch rep for the University and College Union when I was a college lecturer, I pointed out that the college I was teaching at was not paying the minimum wage to some of its staff. The college then attempted to dismiss me for bringing it into disrepute. Thankfully, I was able to take on one of the top employment lawyers in the area at the time—only because they had forced me to teach an HR course—and give myself a crash course in human rights law. I left that place with a payout.

I remember the shame I felt at the time for signing the non-disclosure agreement. I wanted to fight for other people, but at the end of the day I was terrified that I was going to miss my next mortgage payment and I was thinking of my children. That is the position that far too many people find themselves in. So what we are doing on non-disclosure is right. I have to ask all Members, as they vote on whether to water this down, whose side they are on. Will they be on the side of those seeking to cover up sexual harassment, rather than on the side of the whistleblowers?

In my mind’s eye, as I vote this evening, will be real people in my Bishop Auckland constituency. I want to tell the House about two or three of them. A few months ago, I received correspondence from a parish councillor who is also a local farmer and a member of the Labour party. He told me of his concern that every day he saw two women sitting in the bus shelter in a cold hilltop village. He approached them to ask them what they were doing there, because they were there for several hours. It turned out that they were care workers. They were dropped off in the morning and did a visit. At another point in the day they would do another visit, and another visit later. But they were only paid for the specific time that they were in people’s houses; they were not paid for the entirety of the day. That is a workaround to avoid paying them the minimum wage. The Bill makes provision for a fair pay agreement in adult social care to address such practices. By the way, he then opened the village hall for them and made sure they had a warm space to wait in each day between shifts.

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I, too, was a Unison rep, and I have taken contributions from Unison and other unions towards my election expenses. The point my hon. Friend makes is very real in Cornwall too. Migrant care workers were left on a bench in a village from the early morning shift to the late evening shift. That must be addressed, and it will be addressed under the Bill.

It will, absolutely. We should not have people working in those kinds of conditions and that sort of poverty in 2025.

My hon. Friend speaks about care workers. Does he agree that one issue so brutally exposed during the pandemic was the fact that many thousands of care workers were classed as workers, not employees? As a consequence, they could not get full access to sick pay. One consequence of that was that the fatality rates among both residents and workers were much higher in the care homes that did not make that provision available. If the provisions in the Bill were in place then, many thousands of lives could have been saved.

My hon. Friend raises an excellent point. Another great provision in the Bill is that right to sick pay, which is so important and would have been so important for many care workers during the pandemic.

In my mind’s eye are those women sitting at that bus stop in the cold. Two other people I met who were also care workers—one lives in High Etherley and the other in Etherley Dene—told me similar stories. They did not vote for me. They did not vote for anybody, because they did not believe that anybody could fix their problems. They just told me that their lives were tough. They had to pay for their own uniforms. They were not really getting the minimum wage for their work. They felt disrespected by everybody. They felt vulnerable and left behind. But I made them a promise that if I came to this place, I would speak up for them. I am doing that today and I am voting for them today.

Finally, the Employment Rights Bill is not just good for workers; it is also good for businesses. So many family businesses in Bishop Auckland, Shildon, Crook and Barnard Castle all tell me the same thing. They tell me how much they enjoy contributing to our local economy and how important it is to them that they are a responsible, decent employer. But they tell me how tough it is when there is a race to the bottom. They want employment rights strengthened. They do not want the watered-down version coming to us from the Lords. They want the full-fat version of this Bill, because they know it is good for their workers and good for their businesses.

I would like to start by thanking all Members who have contributed to the debate, but especially the new ministerial team and senior Ministers across the Government who recommitted to this legislation in public, and especially to the previous ministerial team who advanced the Bill as it went through the Commons.

In my constituency, of the six key pledges on our leaflets, this was the one that got the younger generation interested and engaged. They were worried about where they would work, how they would work and how they would get ahead in life. The vast majority of young people across this country are aware that the path to a better life comes through the workplace.

What do we see when we look at these Lords amendments? It is another week, another paltry attempt by the Opposition parties in the Lords to undermine my constituents’ rights at work. A couple of weeks back, there was an Opposition day motion that told my constituents that if they worked behind a bar, they should have fewer rights than if they worked behind a desk. These amendments are just another feeble attempt at watering down a popular and generationally crucial piece of legislation.

I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that when Conservative Members oppose day one rights, they are not really worried about the day on which the rights start; they are actually opposed to the rights. That is why many of them cannot muster an argument that is about more than, as he says, spreadsheet efficiency.

I agree, especially if we look at unfair dismissal. The issue is not the cause of the dismissal; at its core, this is about denying people recourse. If a worker cannot claim unfair dismissal because of the two-year threshold, their recourse is substantially weaker. The course of the conduct is not changed simply because a worker has been in a place of employment for 23 months, as opposed to two years.

This issue is real and corrosive. I have had young people in my constituency office who have experienced this issue, especially in the run-up to consideration of this Bill. There has been a course of conduct in the workplace that has resulted in them wanting to leave, or somebody wanting to force them out, and this issue makes it substantially easier for bad employers—not every employer, of course—to force an employee out. It does not change the nature of the conduct, or what we should be tackling, which is poor employment practices.

I do understand the concern that has been raised, but a two-year threshold often leads to workers, early on in their careers, being taken out of the workplace without process or prior warning. Their only right of recourse, as I have said, is taking the employer to court through a far weaker form of redress that is often time-consuming, exhausting, fruitless and restrictive, and so deters them from pursuing their rights.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many small businesses are fearful of day one rights because they worry that they might take someone on, only for it to become apparent within a few days that they are not appropriate for their business, and they then fear an employment tribunal for procedurally unfair dismissal, and the costs involved. The result of granting day one rights is that small businesses will be less likely to employ more people, and far less likely to employ people at the margins of the labour market, such as someone recently out of prison or someone with mental health problems. The Bill will increase unemployment.

I have to disagree with the characterisation of the Bill as increasing unemployment. We have heard the same about other measures. To tackle the hon. Gentleman’s point about somebody coming into a workforce and not being cut out for it, which I have seen happen in hospitality and retail industries, I believe that is addressed by the probation provisions in the Bill.

I fully agree with my hon. Friend that the probation period is the core of the answer to the question from the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox). Does my hon. Friend agree that a large part of the fear we see is due to scaremongering and misinformation spread by Opposition Members?

I agree on the misinformation being put out about hypothetical situations, which are often talked about when we discuss hospitality.

I recognise the point being put forward for small businesses, but I also recognise that those businesses have the right to a probation period, and to other employment models, such as part time working. I have seen that happen quite frequently.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Conservatives bequeathed us an economy in which more and more people were moving out of work and becoming long-term sick? A lot of that sickness was driven by mental health disorders— in particular, anxiety, worry and stress, which are driven by an insecure labour market. Does he also agree that the measures in the Bill to make people safer and more protected at work will improve mental wellbeing and productivity, and be good for economic growth?

I fully agree that the economic benefit of security in the workplace is evident. I have worked in some of the most insecure industries in hospitality, and people trying to rush themselves back into work was a severe issue, especially just after the pandemic, because they did not have another source of income. If they had to isolate, there was financial support, luckily, which was just about enough to cover wages for a period, administered by local authorities. However, there were still a lot more people who tried to drive themselves back into the workplace. I remember coming back after a 10-day isolation period after having covid, and I could tell that I was not prepared physically or mentally to re-enter the workplace. It did make me think that I wanted to call in sick. It is then substantially more difficult for someone to re-enter work, especially in high-intensity industries. We often forget how physically intensive hospitality and retail workplaces, where people are working on zero-hours contracts, can be.

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. I rise merely to support what he is saying. About a decade ago, the University of Manchester published research that found that being in forms of insecure employment may be more damaging to health than being unemployed.

That is substantially clear. I would add the concern that long-term sickness translates into long-term unemployment, which is often seen in the most insecure workplaces. We often think of people burning out in a very high-stress, high-income job, but it happens right through our labour market. In my experience, it has led to devastating consequences, but those are personal stories that I do not have the permission or time to go into.

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is trying to get through his speech, and I very much respect the position he has taken, but I have to fundamentally disagree. We Opposition Members have been accused of scaremongering and of misinformation, but what does the hon. Gentleman say to the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chamber of Commerce and the Confederation of British Industry, all of which have said that because of the Bill and the regulations it will impose, employers will be letting go of staff, and that there will be a damaging consequence to employment and jobs? Does he think that that is misinformation and scaremongering, or is that just expert voices urging caution about the Bill?

To address the point about substantial issues facing businesses, I acknowledge that is the case at the moment. We are not talking about energy costs or business rates, but I have a local business improvement district on my high street and I am well aware that it is talking about the costs that are put on business.

This Bill is a fundamental rebalancing in favour of workers, and frankly that would have to happen, irrespective of economic conditions. We need it to get people to believe that work pays again, because sadly much of my generation have not had that perception of work for too long. They may have seen other avenues—easier, passive income that does not come from hard graft, and from learning skills that are needed at a fundamental level.

The problem is that the entry point to work for many young people has been casualised and is insecure, and often it does not seem as though there are any prospects. I believe the Bill will change that perception substantially. To go back to doorstep conversations, this was one of the pledges in our manifesto that got young people engaged and thinking about how politics could fundamentally change their life and their experience in the workplace.

Turning to Lords amendment 1, I want to Members to put themselves in the mind of somebody experiencing a zero-hours contract for the first time. The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) made some reasonable points about the right to request, rather than the right to have a contract that reflects hours, but in my experience of who zero-hours contracts are meant for in society, they are extensively given to the younger generation at the entry point of their career. There is a fundamental flaw in the concept of a right to request. Someone may be in their first job behind the till at Argos, or at a pie kiosk, or at a hotel bar or a restaurant—I do not have to imagine it; this is essentially my CV, prior to entering politics, all done in the last 10 years. At age 18, people do not necessary know their rights beyond what their mum and dad tell them, and this is a point I have heard addressed by several Members.

Imagine a person who, after years of zero-hours contracts, reliance on casualised working and low pay, is in an industry that is still adapting to the Bill’s provisions. They ask for a contract that reflects their hours, rather than what they would be entitled to under the Bill if we reject the amendment. How likely would they be to press the issue with their employer in this market? How likely is it that somebody will bang their fist on the table and say, “I want the contract that I can request, rather than the one I am entitled to”? People often want to make a career in the retail and hospitality fields, but how likely are they to do so if they cannot get the hours they are entitled to, or foresee their income for the coming year? They can get a contract that reflects the shift that they are putting in.

The problem with the amendment is that it shifts the power dynamic ever so slightly back to the employer, when the legislation quite rightly tips the balance in favour of the worker—the working people who have endured the acute impacts of a pandemic. I lost my job and my ability to privately rent, and I had to move back home, aged 20, in a cost of living crisis.

My hon. Friend talks about tipping things in favour of the employee. How important is that, when we have heard of employees who have been exploited through zero-hours contracts, and who cannot say no, or pay their bills? Some people, especially young women, have been sexually abused at work when they try to adjust their contracts. These measures are a vital part of the legislation.

I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent intervention. That dynamic is apparent in the workplace, from the smallest perceived grievance all the way up to the very serious criminal allegations she refers to. It is a power dynamic that we need to address through the Bill. Zero-hours contracts put far too much power in the hands of the employer over the employee.

To address the point about notice of cancellation, I have worked as agency staff, and have been told not to come in the night before a shift. It is demoralising, quite frankly. In the workplace, it alienates people from colleagues they have had a good laugh with the day before. They may have worked closely beside them and said, “See you tomorrow”. Most good employers know that and do not cancel shifts the night before. Sadly, short-term cancellation has increased, especially post pandemic. This is something I endured, having lost my job during the pandemic picking up takeaways.

Imagine young parents working payslip to payslip who have to arrange childcare on a Friday night and are then sent a text at 3 am on a Saturday by their boss that says, “Don’t bother coming in on Monday.” Are we seriously saying that that gives them enough time to arrange their life and that it is fine to arrange their life around the employer, or should we rightly acknowledge that it is insufficient to provide legitimate flexibility? It is a cover for the rare but corrosive practices of bad employers. We must keep this purpose in mind during the consultation with Ministers. That moral clarity should negate the need for a lengthy consultation.

With the leave of the House, I call the Secretary of State.

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and your colleagues for conducting this debate so efficiently and effectively. I am grateful to Members from across the House for the contributions they have made to the debate today and throughout the development of this legislation. It has been exhaustively debated—in Committee and in both Chambers—and now it has come back again to be exhaustively voted on this evening.

The Employment Rights Bill will benefit millions of people across the country, raising the floor for workers and strengthening protections in the modern workplace. It will help unlock higher productivity, drive innovation and create the right conditions for long-term, sustainable and secure economic growth. This has been a constructive debate, and I thank Members from across the House for their varied and valuable views. I will now turn to individual contributions. Many Members spoke about their broad views on the Bill without asking specific questions, but I would like to unpick as many as I can, because it was a good, high-quality debate.

I start with the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), whose contribution I enjoyed very much, particularly because we are both Sussex MPs. He referred to many places in his constituency and asked whether I had visited some of them. I grew up in Bognor Regis just down the road and at weekends would often walk to places that he now represents in Parliament. It is one of the most beautiful parts of the Sussex Downs.

The shadow Secretary of State said that the Bill was a bad day for democracy. He is not unknown for overstatement, but given that the Bill was in the manifesto that won the trust of the public, I would say that today is a good day for democracy. It is a day when the Government elected by the people deliver on a promise made to the people, when a Bill that was introduced in the House of Commons, debated here in Committee, and debated extensively in House of Lords, has come back. This is democracy at its very best. I hope he will reflect on that.

There are a lot of issues with voting percentage thresholds, which the shadow Secretary of State also raised. I point out that he was elected to this place on 28% of the vote of the community that he represents. If we apply his logic, he is advocating one rule for him and another for every other worker in the country. To the Labour party, that simply does not stand.

I also point out that during the Conservatives’ period in government from 2010 onwards, employment tribunal delays increased by 60%. We therefore take no lectures from those who criticise some of the costs that may or may not be incurred as a result of the Bill, because they inflicted enormous measures and costs on businesses around the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Bromborough (Justin Madders) made a passionate, detailed and personal speech about the Bill. It is clear that the Bill is the culmination of his career before coming into politics and in politics, both in opposition and in government. I cannot thank him enough for his work and for how he has engaged with me since I was appointed to this job just over a week ago. I hope that he sees in the debate and the approach of this Front-Bench team the legacy he left being represented loud and clear.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) spoke passionately about the cause of seasonal workers. He spoke for the consultation that we have pledged to have to ensure that we get this right. Several hon. Members from across the House spoke about seasonal workers; it was good to see them represented. As a Member of Parliament for Sussex—my hon. Friend is a Member of Parliament for Kent—we care deeply about these issues, and we will strive to ensure that we get it right.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh) raised an important point on non-disclosure arrangements, which she has campaigned so hard for. I thank her not only for speaking with passion but for standing on a record of delivery on this matter. She is an advocate for whom we should all be proud, because she has used her parliamentary prowess to deliver the real change needed on NDA reform. I thank Zelda Perkins —I believe she is not in the Gallery now, but she was here—who has shown extraordinary bravery through her advocacy for victims of harassment and discrimination. I have stood by in admiration of the work she has undertaken.

My right hon. Friend asked what the consultation will cover. We will consult on the regulations that expand the types of individuals and measures that apply beyond those who were within the definition of “employee” and “worker”, and on the conditions for excepted NDAs. To give an example, where a victim requests one and workers are covered by an excepted NDA, they can speak about the relevant harassment and discrimination to, for example, a lawyer or a medical professional.

My right hon. Friend also asked about the timings. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a timetable tonight, but I want to be clear that this is a personal priority for me. I reassure her that we will be moving as fast as possible to consult on the related secondary legislation and commence the measure. I will stay in touch with her so that she is fully informed along the way.

I am grateful to hon. Members across the House for their contributions today and for their hard work in getting the Bill where it is. It is of paramount importance that we get the Bill on to the statute book and start delivering for businesses and workers as soon as possible.

My right hon. Friend is rightly talking about the contributions made in the debate by hon. Members of various parties. I am always reluctant to criticise individual Members who may not attend a debate, because they often have good reasons, but there has now become a pattern: at no point in the Bill’s passage has any Reform Member spoken to justify their stance of scrapping thousands of laws, including employment laws. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a democratic deficit in not one Reform Member ever having spoken to defend their stance?

Yes, indeed. When we talk about seasonal workers, we do not mean Reform Members. Of course, Members have lots of duties elsewhere, but it is not surprising to me that a party led by somebody who goes to another country and invites that country to punish this country would be absent from a debate all about giving rights to workers right across the country. Reform wants to strip our workers of their rights, their dignity and, through its actions, the pay in their pockets. The absence of Reform Members today suggests nothing else.

I urge hon. Members on both sides of the House to consider carefully the amendments I have proposed in lieu of those made in the other place. One of my predecessors as President of the Board of Trade once argued that workers need protection because, without it,

“the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst”.—[Official Report, 28 April 1909; Vol. 4, c. 388.]

That predecessor was Winston Churchill. He knew that the best employers need protecting from unfair competition by companies who trade at the expense of rights at work. The Bill protects workers from exploitation and protects businesses from unfair competition. That is why the Bill is pro-worker and pro-business.

Government amendment (a) made to Lords amendment 22.

Government amendment (b) made to Lords amendment 22.

Lords amendment 22, as amended, agreed to.

Clause 1

Right to guaranteed hours

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 1.—(Peter Kyle.)