PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Employment Rights Bill (Fourth sitting) - 28 November 2024 (Commons/Public Bill Committees)

Q127 Good afternoon, gentlemen. I will put the same question to you as I put to the other trade union representatives we have heard from so far. The Bill is wide-reaching. Some people from other trade unions have even suggested that it would re-unionise the economy, to use words we heard on Tuesday. Do you share that assessment, and do you feel—because this is an important test—that your unions believe the Bill goes far enough?

Mike Clancy: The primary purpose of the Bill is to reset employment relations, and trade unions are an important part of that. I have the privilege of sitting on the ACAS council, which is a tripartite body responsible for overseeing good employment relations and good practice. That demonstrates that unions, employers and independents can work together successfully. I see that as the primary purpose.

The reality is that in so many jurisdictions that have positive employment relations and that are addressing their productivity challenge, unions play a very important role. An objective to have the right level of trade union membership in the economy, so that working people have a voice, is at the heart of the Bill. Previous Administrations have restricted the ability of working people to have a voice. So there is a real opportunity to, first, improve employee relations; secondly, ensure that working people generally have a voice; and thirdly, ensure that unions are part of the fabric of the economy in a way that addresses the challenges ahead. I would say that the Bill can deliver all those objectives.

Q So you do not think that there is any part of the Bill that is deficient, and that your union would rather see strengthened or modified in any way.

Mike Clancy: The key thing we would like to see is that access to workplaces is not confined to physical premises, but is also digital. That applies where union recognition already exists. We need to ensure that we can address the workplaces of today and tomorrow, not just those of the past. Physical access is important, but many workplaces have remote, hybrid, virtual working arrangements, so we would want the Bill to be amended to ensure that digital access, in a way that is compliant with data protection, is addressed.

Q What does that look like?

Mike Clancy: It probably looks like ensuring that the best practice from employers now—who allow us access to their intranet and to electronic and digital means, in terms of their staff—becomes the norm, and that it complies with data protection. That happens in workplaces up and down the country now, but some employers see the law in a different way.

An important thing to get across is that if you start to talk to an employer about organising their workplace, the best way to do it is by consensus. That means understanding the employer—understanding the nature of their product and what their concerns may be—as well as making sure that their workforce’s aspirations, if they want a collective voice, are delivered in a way that works successfully for all parties. The access conservation needs to reflect the nature of the workplace as it is now, not just as it has been. It should not be confined to physical premises.

Andy Prendergast: From our point of view, this is very much a 21st century Bill for a 21st century economy. It is not about looking back; it is about trying to make sure that what we have is fit for purpose, moving forward. Unionisation rates are around 20% at the moment. If we look at a graph of unionisation and also at a graph of rising inequality and the fall in productivity, we will see that they are almost perfect correlations. We believe that collective bargaining is a way of improving things. That has been identified by organisations as diverse as the World Economic Forum and the Church of England. If the Bill ends up with higher levels of unionisation, which leaves lower levels of inequality, we believe that that will be a good thing.

On where the Bill is lacking, I think, like Mike, that we need to make sure that there is a digital aspect of access. Many of our members working for gig economy platforms in parts of the new economy do not have the old workplace that we traditionally know. It is not a factory and not necessarily an office. So we have to talk about how rights can be accessed by people who work remotely, who work from home, or who simply do not have a workplace.

There is one area where the Bill could be strengthened. We welcome the improvements in statutory sick pay, but we do not believe that they go far enough. We did a survey today of care workers at HC-One that shows that over one third cannot afford to take sick leave. We saw during the pandemic that having people go to work when ill, potentially spreading diseases, is bad for everyone. We think something could be done on that later that would ultimately help workers and help the economy generally.

Q You mentioned the 20% unionisation rate. Do you have a target that you want to see?

Andy Prendergast: They key thing for us is that everyone who ultimately wants to join a trade union has the option to do so. It is important that people are aware of their rights, aware that they can join trade unions, and aware that they have a right to, for example, SSP on day one, statutory holidays and the minimum wage. Rights that people do not know about and that cannot be enforced are ultimately no use. This is shamelessly partisan, but I would like to see union rates being far higher, and I think that the economy as a whole would benefit from that.

Q It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Sir Christopher. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Generally speaking, do you think that the Bill will improve working conditions, particularly for those in low-paid and insecure work?

Andy Prendergast: I think the Bill is a major step in the right direction. One of the big problems that we have seen, certainly over the last 30 to 40 years, is the huge increase in insecurity in the workforce. That tends to have a massive impact on the individual concerned and their ability to fully partake in the economy, and to make long-term commitments through mortgages and loans—the kind of stuff that drives the economy. Ultimately, we have seen that as they have lost their guaranteed hours—in zero-hours jobs, for example—and there has been the removal of their employment rights, those people are less able to exercise those rights. So we see the Bill as a major way of moving industrial relations forward.

We would also point to the work around the pandemic. In the last 14 years, we were very much locked out of Government in most areas, yet when the pandemic came around, there was a fantastic bit of work between the CBI, the TUC and the Government, with Rishi Sunak standing on the steps of No. 10 talking about the fantastic work that led to the furlough scheme, which saved millions of jobs and millions of people from poverty. What surprised us is that that great work was then stopped virtually as quickly as it happened. If we look at other G7 countries, a tripartite system is what drives higher levels of productivity, lower levels of inequality, and ultimately, higher levels of investment and economic outcomes. We think that the Bill is a long overdue step in the right direction of moving some power back towards workers and away from businesses, too many of which exist for exploitation.

Mike Clancy: I echo those comments. If we look at the responses from the business community, yes, there is going to be some anxiety about the detail and how it will work—again, I reference my experience not just in ACAS, but from working with employers more generally—but we find ways to do this and operate in practice successfully. Good employers have nothing to fear in the Bill. That is not just good employers that are larger, and we think that with the right degree of consultation, which the Government have committed to, we will be able to address those areas where there are a few wrinkles and things to ensure work in practice.

We have to reflect on what the alternative was. The deregulatory, more de minimis approach to employment regulation applied previously, and if that trajectory had continued, we would not have addressed the issues of precarious work and productivity, and we would not have been able to do that in a way that looks at the workforce of the 21st century, as opposed to looking backwards.

There is a lot in the Bill, but that is not surprising. There will probably be a long period of adjustment. With the right consultation, I think we will get to a position where we look back at this as a milestone in changing how we do things, a paradigm shift in relations. I think that it will drive better engagement not just for unionised workforces, but for workforces more generally, because that is where employers will see that they can answer the challenges on the next generation of technology insertion and organisational design, and make sure that they can get the talent that they need.

Q Before I ask this question, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am also a member of the GMB.

I want to ask about balloting. What are the practical implications for your unions of paper balloting? What sort of difference do you think electronic balloting will bring?

Andy Prendergast: It has been a somewhat strange situation in that, as far as I am aware, the only legally required paper ballot relates to industrial action. That sometimes creates a major impediment for us taking industrial action when that is the clear view of the workforce. There was a certain irony, not lost on us, that when Liz Truss was elected, effectively as Prime Minister, that was done via an electronic ballot. We have been told consistently by people in this House that electronic ballots are not safe and secure, yet you can have one to elect a Prime Minister but you cannot have one to take industrial action. If I am absolutely honest, the state of the Post Office does not help. We often have to have a fast turnaround on a ballot. Where I live, I normally get the post about every eight days. We end up with an antiquated system that simply does not work for this purpose.

If you look at electronic ballots, the important thing is that people have the opportunity to take part in a democratic process. It is a process that is allowed under the International Labour Organisation freedom of association rules and the European convention on human rights. It is vital that people are able to partake in democracy. We believe it is something of a strange situation that the one area that currently requires paper ballots is industrial action law. If I were cynical, I would argue that that is specifically to stop industrial action taking place.

For us, industrial action is always an absolute last resort, but at times it is necessary. People do not always like industrial disputes, but when you look at what they have achieved over the years, from equal pay via Ford Dagenham to the eight-hour working day, having weekends off, and significantly improved health and safety, it is important that workers have the ability to hold their employers to account in that way. Ultimately, something that simply allows them to take part in that democratic process has to be a good thing.

Mike Clancy: For too long, the arguments for inhibiting electronic balloting have, in my view, been entirely bogus. If you look at it from an employer’s perspective, they want the most representative turnout if they have a trade union in their midst, particularly in the context of difficult circumstances where industrial action may be in contemplation—and so does the trade union. We want a representative turnout, and we also want to be able to send a clear message if we get to a juncture where bargaining or something else in the process is proving to be difficult.

Electronic balloting is going to enable exactly that. The idea—this is where I feel the argument has been very bogus—that it cannot be done securely is in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. The sooner this particular clause can be progressed and made real, the better. Clearly, it will improve not only engagement, but the validity of results, and I believe that is absolutely something that trade unions want. The sooner we can do it, the better.

Q We have heard a general consensus breaking out around fire and rehire, but part of one of the clauses in the Bill has a bit of a loophole, to put it bluntly—“likely” financial difficulties. We have heard already today, and we heard on Tuesday, that that could be a back door for employers. I would like to hear your views on that more generally, but, Andy, you raised the situation with statutory sick pay. The witness from the Resolution Foundation was asked earlier today whether the Government have gone far enough, and he said that they have only gone “halfway”, in particular because statutory sick pay currently stands at £116.75, which is less than one fifth of the average weekly wage, and it has halved since it was introduced. It is the lowest of all the OECD countries. I want to ask both of you if that is something you want to see improved in the Bill, because there is no mention of any increase whatsoever.

Mike Clancy: I am sure we will both have our views on the subject, but on fire and rehire, this is the space in which some of the most egregious employer behaviour has played out—behaviour that probably most in the business community look away from, because it is not the way they want to conduct their business with their workforces. We therefore absolutely welcome the fact that the Bill focuses on that dynamic. It has no place in good employment relations. But of course there has to be a space in which you evaluate, if an employer has a genuine financial challenge, whether it has some form of defence in that regard.

I cannot emphasise enough—in a way, this is not seen enough in the national media, on social media and so on—that day in, day out, trade unions solve problems with employers. They face difficult business circumstances at times, and they work with employers, communicate with their members and the workforce, and come out with some form of proposition that goes some way to resolving the issue. Therefore, the number of times that employers should fall foul of these provisions should be very small. If you conduct your engagement with your workforce either through a trade union or workforce representatives and in compliance with the law, and you are not seeking to evade your responsibilities—you see the importance of open book and sharing the finances, because that is all part of keeping the workforce engaged —this is really a minimum platform to deal with the employers who might sit on the extremes. I think it is very important that this has been addressed. It is sending a message about how we should do business around here.

Q Can I press a little bit further on that, Mike? I understand that there should be some room for employers who are under extreme financial stress, but the employers we have looked at so far—British Airways, P&O, British Gas, Douwe Egberts and Tesco—are not small companies. They have deep, deep pockets. They could exploit this loophole in the Bill. I wonder what you think about the language and whether it needs to be tightened or removed completely.

Mike Clancy: We will be going through clause by clause, will we not? We will have to look at where there is potential for employers to exploit these sorts of loopholes. What you have to understand is that often in employment relations, sensible employers read the writing on the wall. The rights of access may or may not come in for some time, but employers will think, “Right, we are moving into an environment where we need to engage with our workforce differently.” Other employers will say, “Look, that sort of behaviour is frowned upon in public policy. We are not going to go near it.” I do not think we should lose sight of the direction that the Bill sets on these matters. Let us be clear about the context. This is a big endeavour, and there will be detail to work through for both employers and trade unions. I think we should set out on this in the way that we mean to go forward. Let us do it co-operatively where we can.

Andy Prendergast: Just following up on fire and rehire, I was involved in resolving the British Gas dispute, where close to 500 members of ours got fired because they would not sign a new contract. At the time, it was roundly condemned across the House. The Prime Minister at the time got up and said that it was dishonourable, and that has very much been our view.

The real concern for us, as Mike says, is that, as trade unions, we sometimes have to make very difficult decisions. Following 2008, I would go into factories to negotiate pay cuts to keep people in work. It was heartbreaking, but we had to do it because it was the right thing to do. Overwhelmingly, we had those conversations not because of fire and rehire, but because, ultimately, we could convince our members that that was the best way of securing their jobs. We did something similar during covid.

The big issue for us is that if you look at British Gas, it is a highly profitable company and it went down a route that was, frankly, disastrous for it as a business and that it is still recovering from. We need to stop that behaviour happening. A contract is a contract. In this country it is almost your word, and if you are willing to break that it asks questions about whether you went into it honourably in the first place.

Some of the points you make are right. We have seen lots of financial engineering. We see inter-company debt. I think there is a concern long term that we may find cases where companies have engineered a financial position that allows them to do something they otherwise would not. That will have to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Where we have collective rights, we can still take action on that when we need to. This Bill takes a significant step in the right direction towards a point where the expectation is that contracts are honoured and that companies are prevented from boosting profits at the cost of their workforce.

On the SSP point, as a trade union we are used to negotiating improvements. Occasionally we cannot let perfect get in the way of good. I am pleased that we are talking about an improvement on SSP. Does it go far enough? I do not believe it does. I think that will have to be looked at long term. There are huge areas, such as care, where it is catastrophic that people do not feel that they can take time off, and, as I said before, that has a real impact, but at the moment I am happy that, for once, we are talking about an improvement to this. Personally, I am always of the view that we bank it and move forward.

Q This is a question particularly for Mr Prendergast. What do you think will be the impact of reinstating the school support staff negotiating body—a measure that your union has long called for—on your members in schools?

Andy Prendergast: When you look at the school support staff negotiating body, this is something that has been on the agenda for about the last 25 years. We have found overwhelmingly in schools that teachers have national bargaining and very clear terms and conditions that are vigorously enforced, but unfortunately for the support staff, it is almost like the soft underbelly. So often when schools enter financial difficulties, heads—when you read the school returns, they have often given themselves quite large pay rises—end up cutting hours and pay from some of the lower-paid people.

Over the last quarter of a century, we have seen a transformation in what schools are like. Most of us remember schools having one teacher and that was it. Now, we see increasingly more pupils with special educational needs go into mainstream education, and they need that additional support. People from vulnerable backgrounds get the support of teaching assistants, and we have seen educational outcomes really improve off the back of that.

For us, particularly as we see more and more academisation and more and more fragmentation, we often find that there is an undercut-and-poach approach from different schools, which ultimately means that one benefits at the expense of another. It is not helpful when we get into that situation. The school support staff negotiating body allows for minimum standards and the extra professionalisation of roles, which really have changed over the last 25 years. Originally, there was a little bit of a stereotype that teaching assistants were there to clean paint pots and tidy up. Now, they do very detailed work on things like phonics and supporting pupils with special educational needs and disabilities, and they really help to deliver classes. I think it is time that professionalism was recognised and rewarded.

Q I think that you, like all the other witnesses from the trade unions, were quite pleased with the Bill, and understandably so. I know you said that you felt shut out over the 14 years of government until the general election. I want to ask about your engagement with the Department and with Ministers, and indeed with No. 10. How many meetings have your organisations had with officials, special advisers and Ministers, and were you involved in any of the drafting of the clauses of the Bill? Did you see any in advance before publication, and that kind of thing?

Andy Prendergast: Personally, I was involved in two meetings, and they were tripartite ones. They were quite robust exchanges where we had Ministers, civil servants, people from the employers’ associations and large employers, and also people from trade unions. I think those meetings were really quite helpful. We were raising points that sometimes they would argue with or agree with, and they raised points that sometimes made us look at things differently.

In the wider sense of the union, we have had quite a lot of engagement, but I would expect a union to be engaged over a Bill that has a huge amount of clauses about trade unions. In terms of whether we saw any of it in advance, no. We were very much holding our breath when the Bill came through. Part of my job is to tell people things and make cases, and to be told that they have heard, and then something comes out that is the complete antithesis of everything that we talked about.

As I said, we did not see the Bill in advance. When it turned up, there were some things we liked an awful lot. Some things, as we said beforehand, did not go far enough. The majority of engagement was tripartite, and I think both ourselves and the business organisations that have taken part in that process have helped understand it, and we have got to something we can all live with. That is certainly our impression.

Mike Clancy: I would just emphasise that Prospect is not affiliated with a political party, so any comments I make are based on evidence of the past and the present. We have had proportionate engagement. We have not kept a count or a register in that regard. Frankly, probably trade unions and business would want more and more time on this, and I am sure that will be a challenge going forward.

What I think was most positive, and something I had not seen in my career before, was a tripartite meeting with a range of very senior business representatives, trade unions and civic society with officials, the Business Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister back in August. That is important because it demonstrates that we can get in a room, we can talk to each other and we can resolve problems. That, for me, is the absolute core of this Bill and the “Next Steps to Make Work Pay” agenda. I hope that we can do more of that. I have talked a lot—I have had the privilege of doing this job for a long time—about how we have lost convening spaces in the economy in the past period, so we may be shouting over fences or making our cases separately to Government. Government is difficult, and it is about problem solving. The more that business, trade unions and civic society can come together and say, “Look, we’ve got our differences at the edges, but we can do this together. This is how we would fashion an outcome within the public policy you set,” the better. We will always want more, but to be fair, with their strong pace and intensity, the Government and their supporting officials have done an admirable job in convening us.

It may be that I do not ask a question, but for clarity, Professor Alan Bogg was my professor for labour law many years ago, and we were at one point work colleagues.

Q Good afternoon to the witnesses. You are professors of law, but we have heard from other witnesses that the Bill has a lot of holes in it and is very reliant on secondary legislation further down the track. Given that it is such a reforming piece of proposed legislation, do you believe it to be a good proposal, in terms not of its content but of the way you should go about making law?

Professor Deakin: I would not say that it has holes in it. It is perfectly normal to legislate in this way and defer complex matters to regulations. As a potential Act of Parliament, it is no more or less complex than similar Acts that we have had in the past. Labour law has always been complex and very granular. There are many provisions in the Act that will take effect without the need for further delegated legislation, and there are quite detailed schedules. I do not have a problem with the way it has been drafted, but there are issues with its scope and coverage, which we might go on to discuss.

Professor Bogg: It is a very ambitious piece of legislation, and it was delivered at lightning speed—in 100 days—which is an important part of the context. The collective labour law dimension of what is in the Bill is actually very simple. Much of it is in the form of repeal, and there are some proposals for tweaks to the existing structure. In terms of the collective dimension, I do not think the Bill has holes in it. It gives a tolerably clear indication of what the relevant provisions will look like and what needs to be done.

In terms of the individual provisions, it is fair to say that there is detail that needs to be worked out on day one dismissal protections and on guaranteed hours, but those are very complex issues and I do not think there is anything unusual about that. It is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of the conversation, and that is why we are here today.

Professor Simms: I am not actually a professor of law; I am a professor of work and employment, and general employment relations. I am always interested in the system as a whole, and how law and the implementation of all kinds of other pressures collectively shape employment relationships.

I agree with my two colleagues that the Bill is a very useful starting point. Law can only ever go so far in determining the rules of the employment relationship. It will always rest on wider social systems, economic systems and so on.

Q I am sure you will have seen that the Regulatory Policy Committee has been quite damning of the impact assessments done on the Bill. You said that it has been delivered at lightning speed, so perhaps we should not be surprised that the impact assessments do not necessarily add up. How concerned are you on a point of law, or indeed a point of employment law, that legislation is coming through for which the impact assessments have been branded by a very well-respected independent body as “not fit for purpose”?

Professor Deakin: The RPC said that about some of the impact assessments—it raised a red flag over some of them. They are concerned not so much with the legal drafting as with the economic effects of the law. The impact assessments are engaging in a cost-benefit analysis, which is attempting to put some numbers on the impact the law might have on the economy in terms of cost to employers and knock-on employment effects. Actually, they have quite a strict protocol to deal with. What counts as a cost is set out in some detail in protocols that we could discuss. For example, the cost to private parties—to employers—counts as a cost even if that is simply redistributing to households and to workers. From an economic point of view, we would be interested not so much in the private cost, but in the impact on the economy as a whole. Do these laws interfere with the way markets work? Are they going to lead to unacceptable costs, or will they produce countervailing benefits?

As a scholar interested in the economics of law, and having researched the impact of labour law, I was surprised by some comments in the RPC documentation. I was very surprised to read the RPC suggest that there may not be inequality of bargaining power in certain sectors, such as the public sector or transport, where there are very large employers, some of which are effectively monopolies. There will probably always be some inequality of bargaining power between individual workers and even smaller employers, but we have trade unions and collective bargaining because there is that inequality of bargaining power. The part of the Bill that addresses the ability of unions to organise, and to organise industrial action, in sectors where there are very powerful employers does seem to me to address a fundamental issue of inequality of bargaining power.

Elsewhere, the RPC asks for more evidence about asymmetric information and productivity. I thought the impact assessments were actually very good, in citing secondary sources on those very issues, and also balanced. They cited—I should declare an interest—work I wrote, but they also cited other work. You will see scholars cited in the impact assessments who have a less positive view than I do about the economic effects of labour laws. There are no citations at all in the RPC documentation. Now, that may be because that is not the job of the RPC. Fair enough, but I should have thought that the RPC request for more information and clarification from the Department for Business and Trade could quite straightforwardly be met.

Professor Bogg: I support much of what Simon said. Focusing on the collective reforms, there has been scaremongering about re-unionisation of the economy and how radical this all is. You would think that we were going back to 1965 in terms of the reform of the strike laws, when actually we are probably going back to 2015 with a few tweaks. The minimum service levels framework is being repealed, but as far as I am aware it was never used. There was a prospect of its use once, but it was so inflammatory that the employer in the ASLEF dispute stepped back from using it. The Trade Union Act 2016 ballot thresholds will be repealed. In that context, and with a few proposed adjustments to strike law, this is not very radical. It takes the UK from a hyper-restrictive framework in comparative terms, to a restrictive framework in comparative terms. In terms of the overall international context, even if all of this makes its way on to the statute book, the UK will still have one of the most restrictive strike laws in Europe.

Professor Simms: I could not agree more. It sets out an agenda that would be regarded as incredibly restrictive in many comparator countries. I think it is better than what we have at the moment, which is such a restrictive context particularly for trade unions and strike action. Concerns have been raised by the International Labour Organisation about the UK’s restriction on strike activity. In my judgment this, as drafted, does not take us fully into compliance even with some of the concerns expressed by the ILO—it is still incredibly restrictive.

Q My final question is off the back of that. On Tuesday, Mick Lynch—let us name him—told us that the Bill will lead to the re-unionisation of the economy. Is he getting overexcited?

Professor Simms: We have to be realistic about the resource capacity of our trade union movement at the moment. There are certainly things in the Bill that will make life simpler for trade unions—not necessarily easier, but it will require less resource to, for example, organise for a ballot, or to organise a re-balloting during a period of industrial action. At best case, that frees up some capacity to get on with the nitty-gritty of representing workers in the workplace and solving workplace problems. I cannot prove that that is going to happen, obviously, but that is certainly more than possible. But will it free up sufficient capacity to try and organise in the breadth of the retail sector, for example—lots of small employers? Personally, I think that is unlikely. I do not think that the UK trade union movement has that resource capacity at the moment.

Professor Deakin: Historically, what drives unionisation and strike levels is the economy. High inflation drives strike action and tends to drive union membership. Union membership, union activity and strike activity are highly sensitive to the wider economic context, which at the moment probably does not favour a massive increase in union membership. I would be very surprised if this particular measure moves the dial much on membership, and I do not think it will move the dial much on industrial action either.

What could happen, especially with the arrangements for sectoral pay bargaining, is that many workers, whether or not they are in a trade union, would benefit from sector-wide collective norms. That would be the case where the arrangements come in for two sectors that are mentioned in the Bill, and hopefully that is just the start. Other European countries and many countries outside Europe have sectoral collective agreements that, in effect, set a floor for an industry or sector. I am not sure whether you would call that re-unionisation, but I think the coverage of collective agreements is perhaps more important than simple membership, although unions depend on membership for their finances. The economic effects will turn very much on coverage.

Professor Bogg: As I said, the reforms to strike law are fairly modest, and I think that is true of collective bargaining laws. There are two incremental nudges towards sectoral institutions in two sectors, and there are some very modest tweaks proposed to the statutory union recognition procedure—lowering the preliminary membership threshold, potentially, and removing the majority support likely threshold—but it is difficult to see. I do not know what re-unionisation means, I must confess, but I will be very surprised if you see a radical upsurge in union recognition as a result of these very sensible but cautious changes in the legislation.

Q Just to aid the witnesses, it was the shadow Minister who used the term “re-unionisation” in the evidence session on Tuesday, rather than one of the witnesses. That may be why it is not something that is particularly resonating with you.

I want to ask you in particular, Professor Deakin, about the impact of the regulations on increased productivity and innovation—the general economic benefits. Do you think that that will have a positive impact on such issues?

Professor Deakin: I think so. The evidence internationally is that there is a strong correlation between stronger labour protection and both productivity and innovation. I think that sentiment in the research community has shifted very much in the past 20 years. That is partly because we have better data and probably better methods. Certainly, a generation ago, the World Bank was quite hostile to the idea of labour law and said that labour laws, in aiming to help workers, might harm them. That, however, is no longer the World Bank’s position. The World Bank has said that there can be too little labour law in an economy—too little protection for innovation and productivity.

Of course, productivity has many causes, and the way we regulate labour is only one issue. If we are talking about labour law, though, these reforms are essential to help improve the productivity position. Will this law on its own lead to an improvement in UK productivity? Not necessarily, because that depends upon how we regulate other areas of the economy, and that is affected very much by the way corporate governance works and also by training and other aspects that are not all covered by the Bill. But is this Bill essential in the area of labour law for improving economic performance? Absolutely. Does it go in the right direction? Yes, it does.

The research we have done in Cambridge, which I mentioned in my written evidence, shows that, on average, strengthening employment laws in this country in the last 50 years has had pro-employment effects, for various reasons. That is, as I said in my notes, not a predication or a forecast, but historically in this country, stronger labour laws are not associated with unemployment.

Professor Simms: Could I chip in as well and emphasise the point that Simon has just made about skills and training? Skills and training of managers—the professionalisation of managers—and of our workforce are really crucial ways of shaping productivity and innovation. They intersect very strongly with some of the issues in the Bill.

In general, the push to professionalise management of work—the managerial decisions—is a really important part of that more complex story that Simon has just spoken to. The signals through the law, but also through other areas of policy, to managers, organisations and employers about the professionalisation of their management are a really important thing that the state can do to support that general up-tick in productivity and innovation in general.

Professor Bogg, do you want to add anything?

Professor Bogg: I am just a simple lawyer; I would not like to offer any views on the economics of it all. I will defer to my expert colleagues.

Q I am a simple lawyer, too. Could I ask you, Professor Bogg, how you feel the fair work agency will help improve the employment landscape?

Professor Bogg: This is really the most critical point of all. We can enact shiny rights and put them on the statute book, and if they are not enforced, there is not much point to the entire exercise. What will be critical is the proper resourcing for a new body. The right direction of travel is for that to occur through a new agency, rather than having to co-ordinate across different agencies. I think that will make things more efficient.

It is also important that the employment tribunal system is properly resourced. I saw the welcome announcement that the time limits will move from three months to six months, in line with the earlier Law Commission recommendation. As the Lady Chief Justice said, the rule of law costs money in order for it to be done properly, so the tribunal system will have to be properly resourced. There needs to be a commitment to a principle of effective access to dissuasive remedies. That is absolutely central to all of this working or not working.

Professor Simms: Can I pick up on the enforcement case? It is important for the Committee to properly understand that the organisations that will be merged into a new agency have had to cut back, to some extent, on their advice and guidance to employers and employees because of the challenges of resourcing over the last years. They still work in those spaces, but they cannot do it at the scale that they have previously—ACAS in particular. Re-resourcing that expertise to support both employers and workers’ unions to make good decisions that never become a breach of any rights is really important.

Professor Deakin, anything to add?

Professor Deakin: Enforcement is really critical. We do not have an effective enforcement regime in this country. Recent research on the minimum wage, for example, shows that on the whole, employers that do not comply with it can actually save money by not doing so. They are rarely punished, fined or required to pay wages back in a way that even covers the gains they make by not paying the minimum wage. We are not effectively prosecuting minimum wage breaches. We treat breaches of the criminal law involving theft in a supermarket, for example, and in other contexts extremely seriously. We do not treat wage theft with anything like the same seriousness.

There are hardly any company director disqualifications in cases of non-payment of the minimum wage. The message being given, or the one that has been given, is that compliance with the legal obligations is in some sense optional, and not complying can be profitable for firms. We are not the only country in that position. It is also an issue in the United States.

However, we can do more. We can certainly resource the inspectorate. In my note, I suggested that we can also facilitate collective remedies in addition to individual employment tribunal claims. It is difficult for an individual to take a claim to a tribunal, and it can also be costly for employers, who will, in many cases, have to organise a legal team to fight a case, and they will not get their costs back. It seems to me that neither side is necessarily happy with the way the employment tribunal system is working.

I believe that collective remedies, particularly through arbitration, which can be brought by trade unions—hopefully in future to the Central Arbitration Committee —are more effective than individual claims in many cases. It is not just a question of resourcing the new fair work agency. I think there should be a greater role for collective arbitration, and in my note I made some suggestions based on precedents from the 1970s, which could easily be used again.

Q I cannot resist the temptation of having three professors in a row in front of us. If you could make one change to the Bill, what would it be?

Professor Simms: We were warned about this question, and I am going to be very cheeky and ask for two. First, I think a clear and proactive right to strike and join a trade union would go a long way to bringing us into line with many of our comparator countries. I also have some concerns about the negotiating bodies, which really look quite like pay review bodies at the moment, rather than free collective bargaining between the parties deciding their own issues and what works for them. Those are the two areas I would focus on.

Professor Deakin: I would make a change on fire and rehire. I think that the provisions on unfair dismissal are helpful but will not address the problem of collective agreements being undercut. At best, at the moment, the remedy for an unfair dismissal is almost certainly going to be compensation, when what is needed is a mechanism to embed terms and conditions going forward. The Department is consulting on reforms to the interim relief procedure, but I would go further. I think there has to be a change to the remedy for unfair dismissal so that the previous terms can very clearly be reinstated. At the moment, it is not possible to enforce a reinstatement order. You have to go to the county court even for compensation, but in the case of a reinstatement order, the employer can resist it and just pay compensation.

In my opinion, there should be a collective arbitration mechanism. The Central Arbitration Committee should have the power to reinsert terms and conditions for the affected categories of workers, and that would be true of the persons hired, if that happens to replace those who have been dismissed. That mechanism existed under 1970s legislation and would provide the kind of collective remedy that we have just been discussing. It would be important for stabilising terms and conditions in labour markets and avoiding the need for individuals to bring complex claims before employment tribunals. I also have ideas about zero-hours contracts, but you said just one.

Professor Bogg: I have said that I think enforcement is the critical dimension of the conversation about all of this Bill. One specific change that I think would be valuable is to remove the presumption that collective agreements are not legally enforceable. That puts the UK in an almost unique position in the world. One aspect of the P&O Ferries scandal that is not often discussed is that there were collective agreements in place, but because of the statutory presumption that they were not legally binding, P&O Ferries was able to put the collective agreements in the bin. I am not saying that I would mandate them to be legally enforceable, but I would remove the statutory presumption, which would give a signal to the parties that they could make them legally enforceable. I think that would bring some real value to the enforcement dimension of UK labour law.

Q I thought that I would quickly clear up the disagreement that seems to have broken out between the two sides of the Committee, so I have gone through the record of Tuesday’s session. Paul Nowak said:

“It is very likely that we will see increased unionisation as a result of the Bill”––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 67.]

and Mick Lynch said that the Bill will mean that “many workers”—more than 50%, he hoped—

“are covered by collective arrangements in one form or another.” ––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 62.]

That is up from 22% today. So I think it is fair to describe that as re-unionisation. I do not really understand why the Labour party would be so ashamed of doing such a favour for the Labour movement, of which it is a part. But anyway, you just mentioned P&O. I just wanted to ask you, who did you think was right about P&O? Was it the Transport Secretary or the Prime Minister when he slapped her down for criticising them?

Professor Deakin: I am not sure I quite understand the question.

It is about employment rights. We have been discussing P&O throughout the whole—

Q Okay, you don’t want to answer that; I will ask another one.

One of my concerns about labour market regulation relates to the use of substitution clauses by firms like Amazon and Deliveroo, where they give a licence to a courier and the courier is then entitled to share that licence with others. The expectation is that responsibility for checks for things like the status of the substitute, in terms of whether they can work legally and so on, and responsibility for the pay that will be provided to that person, all lies not with Deliveroo or Amazon, but with the person that they have contracted with in the first place. That is not dealt with in the Bill at all; I think it should be. Can you expand on that, please?

Professor Deakin: Of course, the issue of employment status has been deferred, has it not, to a consultation? But unless a way is found to include workers like the Deliveroo workers within the scope of protective labour law, the proposals to improve collective bargaining rights and many other rights will just fall away. Large businesses like Deliveroo, I would say, need workers; and if our labour law system cannot describe those workers as protected by one means or another, there is a clear defect in it.

There are various ways to get to that point. They do not all turn upon the definition of worker, or the use of a substitution clause to get you outside the scope of the current law. In some cases, and in some countries, independent contractors are protected by labour law rights, even if they do not count as employees. In our past, homeworkers who might have employed other people had legal rights under labour laws. So this issue absolutely has to be addressed. I understand it is out for consultation. Many of the measures contained in the Bill would not be effective, unfortunately, if this issue was not grappled with.

Professor Bogg: In the situation that you have just described, I think part of the driver for the use of substitution clauses is that they are used to avoid employment status. So in any review of employment status, a key thing that will need to be addressed is the problem of substitution clauses as a way of avoiding either employee or worker status. There is quite a simple way to do that, which is to treat personal work as an indicative rather than a conclusive factor, because it then just drops back into the range of things that the tribunal will look at.

In a situation where a large company is relying on wilful blindness to avoid responsibilities under migration rules or under health and safety legislation, there is a very simple response, which is to impose criminal liability on large corporations that try to rely on wilful blindness to avoid obligations in primary legislation. That is a very straightforward way of tackling an abusive avoidance of rules that are very important to enforce.

Q You have mentioned where the Bill places the UK internationally in terms of strike law. Where do you think the Bill broadly places the UK compared with other developed nations, when it comes to the level of employment rights?

Professor Deakin: If we take the whole of individual employment law, for example, the Bill will bring us closer to the OECD average, but there will still be various respects in which we would not be as protective of individual rights as other countries, especially when they relate to remedies for unfair dismissal. Enforcement could be made much more effective, but there is no doubt that the Bill brings us closer to the OECD norm—and not just there: many countries in east Asia and other parts of the world will have labour law systems that are at least as protective as ours. So it is a corrective.

On the other hand, I emphasise that UK employment law has never been as deregulatory as US law has, for example. We are not in a situation, as US unions and US workers are, of starting from scratch. We also have a history of labour law that we can build on. That makes it easier to think of this as the first step in a rolling programme that will effectively restore us to where we were before the 1980s. In the 1970s, more than 80% of workers in this country were covered by a collective agreement. Union membership was around 55% or even 60%, but coverage was over 80%. We had a very progressive employment protection law at that point.

Going back further, we were the first country not just to industrialise, but to have modern factory legislation. We now know that the implementation of the Factory Acts led to not just protection and things like the weekend, but improved productivity. This history is important for us.

Professor Bogg: This Bill seems as radical as it does only because the baseline is so low, and it is very important to keep that in view. Let us assume that this Bill is not enacted—if you look at the OECD countries, we are the fifth least regulated on dismissal protection out of 38 countries, and we are the third least regulated on hiring on temporary contracts. That is where we are in OECD terms, so the measures on dismissal protections and guaranteed hours will push the UK back into an intermediate position in the OECD. I do not think the Bill marks any kind of revolution just yet; it just pushes the UK back into the mainstream of other civilised OECD countries with employment regulation that works effectively.

Professor Simms: To return to enforcement, the challenges of both individual and collective enforcement in the UK at the moment really do add extra difficulty. Not only do the rights not exist in general—there are relatively few rights in general—but they are very difficult to enforce.

Q We have heard from each of you about what you would ideally like to see in the legislation. One thing we have heard is that it is going either too fast or too slow for businesses. What are your thoughts on how much time will be required for businesses and employees to be ready for this legislation?

Professor Simms: Clearly, there will be a period of adjustment. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which represents human resources specialists in the UK, has indicated that a period of 12 to 18 months would probably be a sensible adjustment period. Business and managers in the UK tend to want to conform to whatever employment rights and regulation there is. The challenge is communication, and communicating clearly in a way that then allows them to access knowledge, skills, training and development for their capacity to do those things. It will take time—it always does—but the general trend, certainly over my lifetime, has been that where new rights have been introduced in this area, most UK companies want to come into line as promptly as they reasonably can. We are talking not decades.

Professor Deakin: I think it would be really important to build a consensus on this issue, because what can be achieved in this Bill will begin a process that will have to be rolled out further if we are to have a modern system of labour market regulation, and that will require cross-party consensus. I very much hope that that will be possible.

Q Good afternoon, gentlemen. This is a far-reaching Bill. We have heard from the Government and from other witnesses that there is potentially a £5 billion cost to the economy associated with it. Others have suggested that that might even be a small c conservative estimate. From the perspective of your business interests, what is the likely impact of this Bill on the bottom line economically, as well as to overall job numbers in the economy?

Luke Johnson: I think you need to put it in context. From my various decades of creating businesses and jobs, I would say that we now have among the highest ever levels of tax burden and of overall regulation and legislation, and that this is a high-cost country. Job vacancies have been falling for at least 15 months. Unemployment is going up. Interest rates are massively higher than they used to be. Insolvency specialists tell me that they are rubbing their hands because they think that next year will be very busy. I would say that even if we do not suffer a technical recession next year, it is odds-on that there will be a serious slowdown. I am at the cutting edge of businesses, and, in some cases, some of my companies might not survive next year. I do not know how many Committee members have ever been involved in starting and growing a company and keeping it from failing, but it is not much fun.

The idea that now is a good moment for small and medium-sized businesses—which, let’s face it, are the future; they are the ones that disproportionately innovate and, actually, disproportionately create most of the jobs. They are the ones that are the next big businesses; every business started as a small business once. On the idea that companies that can barely afford any form of HR could stomach a big new Bill of 150 pages and 28 measures, they will not even have time to read it. The idea that they can adopt something like this when they are facing quite possibly—we have to remember that they have the hangover of two years when so many of them were shut. They have legacy debts and energy prices. Electricity prices in this country are the highest of any developed nation. Try manufacturing things here now. The timing of this is beyond belief, and that needs to be put into context. Whether £5 billion is the real cost or not, it is death by 1,000 cuts because you never know until you get a big tribunal what the real cost is, for example.

Michael Lorimer: I agree. Obviously, a Bill like this does not exist in splendid isolation if you are running a business. Luke has identified the increased costs of doing business, which are severe and impact small to medium-sized enterprises most, which, as you will be aware, represent 80% of the employment in this country. There was the news yesterday about the White Paper, “Get Britain Working”, and as a top line, I am very supportive of that. I think that is absolutely brilliant. Getting 2.8 million people back into work is something I am very passionate about. In Banbury, we are beside an area of deprivation, with a lot of people on benefits, and a lot of young people who are feeling quite depressed about life. We would love to be offering those people jobs—I cannot emphasise that enough. For six months of the year we have temporary staff coming in, and we are very glad they come—they come from different countries, work very hard and do great work for us.

My concern, without being able to give you a number on it, is that for some of the riskier hires that might come from the areas around where our business is based—in other words, people not in education, employment or training, kids who have not worked before, or people who have been unemployed for a long time; you hear on the radio every day that people in their 50s cannot get a job—businesses will be very slow to take a risk because of the day one legislation that is coming down the track. We have an HR department, so we can deal with this to some extent, but as you slide down the road and find businesses that employ maybe less than 20 or 10 people, there will be deep concerns and perceptions that this is just too expensive and scary.

I was hugely encouraged by the White Paper—I think the top-line aspirations are absolutely the right ones. It is the same direction of travel, towards 2 million jobs, that the Jobs Foundation have published a report on this week, and that the Centre for Social Justice are focused on. I would exhort all of you politicians, regardless of your colour, to get behind the concept of getting Britain working. But my fear is that this torpedoes a lot of those plans—genuinely, that is my fear.

Q I certainly recognise the picture you paint of Banbury; it is very close to my constituency and I am sure you have people from Buckinghamshire on your payroll. What modelling and projections have you done—on the presumption that the Bill becomes law and obtains Royal Assent at some point next year—on employment numbers in your businesses?

Luke Johnson: We are still grappling with the fallout from the Budget. There are millions of pounds of additional tax that some of my companies will have to pay, and a 6.7% increase in the national living wage, when average inflation is 2% or 3%. As for the idea that many businesses have already given deep thought to this new piece of 150-page legislation—when we already have such things as the Employment Rights Act 1996, the Equality Act 2010, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and many other pieces of legislation—I dare say that large companies have given it some thought, but most of the businesses I am involved with are not so big. I think they will wait and see what the final result is before trying to measure whether it leaves the business smaller.

With any piece of legislation like this, we have to remember that it is not just the current jobs affected, but the unseen jobs and opportunities that were never created. I urge you to look at the fact that, for the first time in many years, the number of businesses being created in this country has been falling or stagnant for five years. That is more or less the first time in decades. If we lose the full employment we have enjoyed and the enterprise economy that we have managed to create—I believe it to be much more fragile than some might believe—it will be incredibly hard to get back. Jobs do not just fall from the sky. They appear because companies are created by risk takers, and they take a risk with every job they create. Jobs only exist because they are helping that business to progress, and 80% of jobs are nothing to do with the Government—they are private sector. If you crush the private sector, you crush jobs. All the research shows that the single most important ingredient for a happy society is jobs. Without jobs, you do not have civilisation.

Michael Lorimer: Our turnover is in the public domain, so I can share it with you. We will probably turn over about £370 million this year. We are in a high-turnover, very tight-margin business, so if we make £10 million net, that is about the height of it. It is very difficult to estimate the increased cost of national insurance contributions and the national living wage, because not all the details are yet clear, but we think it will be somewhere between £1.5 million and £1.8 million. That is quite a big chunk out of our net profit.

We do not have a huge problem with it. We are a company that believes strongly in creating prosperity. The national living wage is something that our hearts have no problem with, because we would like to see people getting paid correctly, but we have to mitigate that. That is something that we just have to get on with. Our company has grown successively every year since it started 30 years ago, in top line, bottom line and people numbers.

I need to stress this again to you: the passion that we have is growth and job creation. When we see people coming into the business, working their way through it, earning more money, developing their career and prospering, that is what brings us the greatest joy of all. My concern, which I have to repeat, is that businesses smaller than ours—following on from Luke’s point, we were a small business at one stage—are going to find it very hard to get on that growth trajectory.

Q Good afternoon. A number of witnesses, including many from the business community, have welcomed the intention behind the Bill to increase workplace protections. Do you feel that the current employment law landscape is too favourable to employees, too difficult for employees or about right?

Michael Lorimer: From my perspective, there is a pretty good balance between employer and employee at the minute. I am sure you could unpick that, and there could be cases for either side, but as somebody who runs a business in, quote unquote, a “fast-moving environment”—in fact, Luke Johnson’s business is much faster-moving even than ours—where you are focusing on driving your business and trying to get results, I think that there is actually a good balance. I am not particularly in favour of tinkering too much with it. That is my personal view.

Luke Johnson: I would slightly differ, in that I think some areas are increasingly onerous for employers. Increasingly, when I talk to entrepreneurs, they are looking to outsource, offshore or automate rather than employ people. Not all of that is legislation and regulation; post furlough and lockdowns, there is a vast amount of talk among employers and owners of businesses about workforce motivation. That goes back to a point that Michael made earlier about the number of people not in work who are of working age and able-bodied. I think this is an issue for society as a whole, and I think a happy society is one in which people are productively occupied.

I am surprised that you say that many employers want greater protections for their staff. They are very entitled to give them to them if they want. They do not need to rely on the Government for that; they can just give them better contracts if they want.

There are a number of concerning aspects to the Bill, which could be counterproductive if the objective is higher living standards. As I understand it, this Government’s priority is wealth creation, prosperity and jobs. Ultimately, although I do not believe that this legislation will be devastating to employers, I think it will be damaging for job creation and therefore counterproductive to wealth creation and to achieving higher standards of living.

Q I apologise to the panel for returning to an earlier dispute in this quite disjointed way, but just for the record, earlier this week one of our witnesses, Paul Nowak, said:

“I do not think there is a direct link; you do not pass a piece of legislation and trade union membership and collective bargaining go up”.––[Official Report, Employment Rights Public Bill Committee, 26 November 2024; c. 67.]

Another witness, Mick Lynch, said that personally he hoped to see 50% collective bargaining coverage. That is compared with 39% now. It seems like thin margarine to me and certainly not a unionisation of the economy, but there we go.

My question to the panel is the same question that was put to employers’ federations earlier this week. We all understand the points that you have made, but are there specific measures in the Bill that you welcome?

Michael Lorimer: No.

Luke Johnson: No.

Michael Lorimer: I am not trying to be contrarian, but I think Luke’s point is a very good one. There are 150 pages and 28 new measures, or whatever it is. Apart from anything else, it is an administrative burden. I welcome the White Paper hugely, but there is nothing in here that I am excited about.

Luke Johnson: I will give you an example of one very specific issue that may arise that I do not think has been thought through properly, and its unintended consequences. There is an adjustment to collective redundancy rights. This would, I guess, normally apply in a business that is going through a very severe restructuring and possibly an insolvency.

What happens in an insolvency is that a buyer can keep that business alive and keep a chunk of the jobs, at least, from going by buying it out of administration. The one thing that goes through an administration is the TUPE rights of the employees. If you are only buying a small portion of that business, normally you can carve out only TUPE rights relating to the staff of the bit you are buying—let us say that it is several divisions, departments or whatever. As I understand it, this will tighten that, as proposed, such that almost any buyer of any part of that business will face the TUPE rights of the whole workforce. The unintended consequence will therefore be that parts of a business that were good and that could survive will not; they will be shut. The whole thing will be shut and all the jobs will be lost.

I do not think that whoever drew up that part of the legislation has fully thought it through, because it is in society’s interest that where businesses can be saved and rescued—I have been involved on both sides in those situations—they should be. It is always a great deal easier in certain respects to save a business that has failed because it had too much debt, or some other problem, than to start all over again from scratch.

Michael Lorimer: Perhaps I should add that there are aspects of this that I am quite neutral or comfortable about. There are some things around bereavement, and so on, that are all good. I emphasise that my focus today is around the day one stuff and flexibility.

It is quite conspicuous that you are the first two witnesses, I think, who actually run businesses yourselves, and your evidence is rather different from much of the—

Luke Johnson: Has any of the other witnesses ever created a single job?

I would have to leave that to them.

Michael Lorimer: I did think, Nick, that we could have met in the endangered species part of the Natural History Museum, as business leaders.

Q Indeed. With not just the Bill, but the increase in employer’s national insurance contributions and things like the equalisation of the national living wage for young people—you also mentioned energy prices, Mr Johnson, which are a particular concern of mine—you sound very worried about the future of innovation, investment and ultimately jobs in this country. You have a platform today to send a message to the Prime Minister and all the Ministers who are involved in this legislation. What would that message be?

Luke Johnson: I think there is a complacency about our current prosperity. There is this belief that jobs will always appear, that businesses will always invest and that living standards will naturally rise. It sometimes feels as if Britain is a nation running on fumes at the moment. We have large amounts of debt, certainly at Government levels. We have public spending projected to take, I think, 45% of GDP—a very high level compared with 10 years ago—and that crowds out the private sector. Interest rates, especially if you have to borrow from the bank, are pretty punitive.

As for the idea that we can continue to occupy the role in the world that we used to occupy decades ago, it is a dramatically more competitive place. There are dozens and dozens more countries where money can be invested, factories can be sited and jobs can be created. Many of them are much lower-cost than we are. They might argue that they have a hungrier workforce, or whatever it may be. No country has ever taxed and regulated its way to a higher standard of living. It feels as if that is what this Government are about. They need to get real about how prosperous economies are actually created.

Michael Lorimer: If I were speaking to him, I would say, “Listen well to those who matter most.” To go back to the White Paper, you simply cannot create jobs without the private sector on board. You can listen to all sorts of people who will give you incredibly important stakeholder advice, but if you want to create jobs and grow the economy, the business community has to be on board. If we want to create prosperity, the private sector is where it is going to happen. I would say, “Listen well to those who matter most.”

Secondly, I would say, “Take your time and consult widely on this.” I feel that at the minute the consultation is not wide enough. We are here today: there are two of us speaking, broadly on the same message. Take time and do not rush it through for the sake of meeting a timescale. Take time and speak to business. Go out to the country and speak to small and medium-sized businesses and employer groups.

A lot of this stuff is not controversial. It is tick-box and—to go back to the first question—it is reinforcing a lot of stuff we do in the business anyway. We have 600 employees; at the minute I think we have three people in total on long-term sick, so we do not have a lot of problems. We have an engaged workforce and we are delighted to pay people well, at above the national living wage. All that stuff is about us trying not only to help our people to prosper, but to help our customers and the Banbury community to prosper. All this feels quite counterproductive and could have a lot of unforeseen consequences.

Q As the Minister says, we have heard from businesses and their representative groups, which have said that good employers have nothing to fear from the measures in the Bill; in fact, they welcome the level playing field to prevent undercutting. Given that the purpose of the Bill is to promote good-quality employment, what are the specific measures in it that you think do not contribute to that aim?

Luke Johnson: It has already been raised, but if you introduce lots of rights like paternity rights and flexible working rights from day one, you risk having more problems, and that will be a cost. For example, there is a new obligation to protect employees from harassment. That sounds wonderful, but if you are in the licensed trade, as I am, that means that a single remark from a single customer could lead to a harassment claim for which you are responsible. How on earth are we to police that?

I do not know whether you are at all familiar with the state of the hospitality trade, but it is pretty dismal. We had two years where we were barely allowed to open; we have had unprecedented energy costs; we have higher rates; we obviously have all the costs for NIC and so forth from the Budget; and we have at best flat, if not declining, sales. I fear that hundreds more—if not thousands more—hospitality businesses will shut next year for good. That is obviously not the fault of this legislation, but it is petrol on the flames.

I suspect that a lot of the organisations you are hearing from are very large corporates with huge HR departments. In a way, they want to keep out new, young and innovative competition, because that is how big companies often behave. Building walls of regulation suits them, but that is not how you get a growing, vibrant and innovative economy. You get that through lots of smaller, younger businesses growing, coming up with new ideas and challenging the incumbents.

Q Michael, let me ask you the same question: given that the purpose of the Bill is to promote good-quality employment, what are the specific measures in it that you think do not contribute to that aim?

Michael Lorimer: It goes back to what Luke said about a lot of this day one stuff. I do not want to paint a picture that we do not do a lot of this stuff already, because we work on the basis that if you recruit well and you train and develop well, you will not have as many problems down the line. But it is easy for us because we have an HR department and legal advice, so if we do hit the buffers we can deal with it. For smaller businesses—the entrepreneurial businesses that Luke mentioned—the perception, which of course is always stronger than the reality, is that it will create a lot of fear and concern.

I was in a shop recently and it took a long time for me to pay for a pair of Wellington boots. I said, “Are you busy?” He said, “No, but so-and-so left and we are not replacing him, because we’re very fearful. We’re a small business with two or three employees, and we’re anxious about what’s coming down the line.” You just need to be very mindful. That is where wide consultation comes in: you need to speak to people and see where the sore points are going to be.

Q I have a straightforward question that will probably provoke some debate. Impact assessments of any bit of legislation are clearly hugely important to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Who is right—the Government or the Regulatory Policy Committee—in their condemnation of the impact assessments?

John Kirkpatrick: I am not sure you would necessarily expect me to answer that question directly, Mr Smith. Nevertheless, I will say that yes, you are quite right: impact assessments are very important to us.

Let me say a bit more about that in the context of the Bill. As an example, I will take some of the provisions designed to improve opportunity and to regulate particular forms of contract. We know from our work that women and disabled people have lower rates of employment than men and able-bodied people, and we know that younger workers are more likely to be in zero-hours contracts than workers of other ages, and so on and so forth. The measures in the Bill that are designed to protect the interests of those people with protected characteristics may well be beneficial to them, but not if the result is that those jobs then vanish rather than improve.

What I would put back to the Committee, and potentially to the Government, is the real importance of assessing up front the likely implications of the measures that Parliament wants to put in place. If it does enact the measures, subsequently reviewing and monitoring them to know what impact they have actually had would be really important. I should probably put in my advertisement, at the end of that comment, that it seems to us that only if they do that will the Government be fulfilling their obligations, under the public sector equality duty, to assess the impact of the things they want to do on those in whose interests they seek to act.

Margaret Beels: I would address the question in a similar way, in the sense that when we look at the labour market, we see the job situation being very flexible, but one person’s flexibility can be another person’s precariousness. We are about to publish some research—in fact, we will publish it tomorrow—that is based on a survey of workers, which demonstrates that about 10% of workers are in precarious work and about 8% of workers get stuck in precarious work. That is the matter that needs to be addressed.

Q I appreciate that, from the perspective of the Department of Business and Trade, there might be a more clearcut answer, but from your perspective, Mr Kirkpatrick, given your answer earlier, do you think there is a high risk that the measures in the Bill could reduce the number of jobs in the UK economy?

John Kirkpatrick: The answer is that it is hard to tell. You have already heard evidence on that—I heard some of the evidence this afternoon and you have heard other evidence in other sessions—from others who are arguably better qualified to answer the question than I am. As I say, I encourage you as a Committee to encourage the Government to ensure that it thinks that point through carefully, as you consider the Bill, and to bear that advice in mind as you scrutinise it.

Margaret Beels: My office has not done that analysis and I would be guessing if I answered the question.

Q May I ask you, Margaret, for your views on how the fair work agency might help in the enforcement landscape?

Margaret Beels: I took on this role in the expectation that there was going to be a single enforcement body, which the previous Government had referred to but did not bring about. I was strongly supportive of the creation of a single body and accordingly I am supportive of the creation of the fair work agency.

From my perspective, which involves looking at what has worked under the existing arrangements and what could work better, I went back and looked at the recommendations in the strategy that I most recently published, on 11 November, and it had 12 recommendations. I looked at them and considered how things are working out now under three bodies with different governance, different plans and different ways of doing things, and whether I think that under a fair work agency regime those things would be done better. A fairly quick assessment is that half of them would definitely be done better; the other things would probably be done much the same. The ones that relate to having a better joined-up approach, to greater efficiency and to better sharing of information among bodies are the things that I think the fair work agency will do a lot better.

Q Could you give us some examples of the sorts of areas or issues that might benefit in that way?

Margaret Beels: One of the things I found it hard to do was to assess the impact of the different bodies, because they all have their own governance arrangements. I have a statutory responsibility to decide whether more should be spent in one body or in another. In practice, however, because they run under their own governance, it is really hard to do that and assess whether spending a bit more on national minimum wage enforcement or a bit less on employment agencies would be better value for money, because value for money for the public purse is really important. We are all public servants: we are all accountable to you as parliamentarians and to the public. I have found it really difficult to answer that question about the effectiveness of the different activities.

Q Do you both feel that the Bill and the fair work agency in particular will help to protect people with protected characteristics at work?

John Kirkpatrick: It is clear, Minister, that a number of people with protected characteristics are particularly vulnerable to the sorts of practice or exploitation that the fair work agency would devote itself to being concerned about. I would defer to Margaret on whether the unification of the existing authorities will make for improved enforcement. If it does, it will clearly be of benefit to those people.

I suppose the one thing I would add is that it is really important in this kind of area and these parts of the labour market that there is clarity on both employers’ obligations and employee’s rights, and what their sources of redress might be if those rights are breached. Real clarity and distinction of who enforces what seems to me very important. There is no difference between us on this, nor anything in the Bill that would confuse that. The maintenance of that clarity, so that people can understand what their rights are and how to exercise them, seems to us an important precondition to the Bill being successful in that aim.

Margaret Beels: The research I referred to, which is being published tomorrow, demonstrates that the workers more at risk of precarious work are female workers and younger workers, as well as workers from a lower-working-class background. The industries in which they work that are most at risk of being precarious are hospitality, retail, agriculture and construction. I think, to the extent that the Bill will address some of the issues affecting more precarious workers, that will be of benefit.

Q Margaret, I have a question for you, specifically about the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority. It strikes me that a lot of our discussion is about things like zero-hours contracts and wage enforcement, but the GLAA deals with a different set of labour market challenges: the excluded or isolated groups, such as shellfish workers, or the victims of modern slavery. It is a first responder to the NRM—the national referral mechanism—so it has a different set of responsibilities.

First, what is your assessment of how effective the GLAA has been, given how it was constructed, and how has it been able to perform its functions? Secondly, specifically on modern slavery—thinking about those the GLAA was set up to protect, such as the Morecambe Bay cockle workers—how do you see those functions working in a single enforcement body?

Margaret Beels: It is really important that, in setting up the new body, the three bodies sit down to think about what they do well, so that when we bring them together, we will bring the best of what is done. One of the recommendations in my most recent strategy is to encourage them to start the dialogue with each other at every level—so what an inspector from, for example, the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate does when they go out, versus what is done when a compliance inspector goes out from the GLAA.

I gather a lot of evidence from stakeholders, and they will say, “This works really well here,” or, “That works really well there.” In informing the fair work agency, there should not be a presumption that something will always be done one way because that is done by this lot; instead, we should look at the journey of non-compliance. It is important to help businesses to be compliant; that is, by far, the best way to achieve compliance.

Who is good at doing the communication with businesses, then? The national minimum wage team do that as well—they have their geographical compliance approach and they try to go out to help business. How do we build that into the structure of what is done? When it comes to deliberate non-compliance and modern slavery, you need to have the teeth to deal with that. The modern slavery dimension will move across into the fair work agency, but then it will have the whole spectrum of looking at how things are done.

Resources will be important to the fair work agency. All the bodies will talk about the fact that they do not have the resources that they would like to do the full job that they are there to do. I go back to challenge them: “Can you show me the value for money in what you are doing? Are you being as efficient as you might be?” My strategy talks about the use of artificial intelligence—are they building those tools into how they do things, so that they can have the maximum efficiency possible? Then, as they come together, will they listen to each other to make sure that they pick the best?

Q I experienced a conversation with sixth-formers in Torbay who were sexually harassed in the workplace. I would welcome your thoughts on how the Bill could be strengthened so that it is supportive of employers in their support for people who experience such a situation.

John Kirkpatrick: We start from the position that everyone has the right to a workplace in which they are free from the risk of discrimination or of harassment. In our view, that ought to be the way it works. We have lots of evidence, as I am sure you and other Members have from your constituents. For example, from our “Turning the tables” report, we know that a quarter of respondents had been harassed by third parties in the workplace. That is a particular issue for people in customer-facing roles.

It was interesting to hear Margaret talking about sectors that are vulnerable to exploitation. Some of those where we have found vulnerability—[Interruption.]

Q Thank you, John and Margaret for the important work that you both do in your respective roles. How do you believe that the measures in the Bill could improve opportunity for workers of all backgrounds? I am thinking specifically on class, race and disability.

John Kirkpatrick: I think I said earlier that to the extent that some of those protected characteristic groups have worse experiences in the labour market than others, protecting them is absolutely desirable. The only risk is to the flexibility of employment, which can even include such things as zero-hours contracts, which are very convenient and desirable for some people. If those opportunities were to diminish, that would be of some concern, but I think that that does no more than repeat the point I made earlier that we need, both in advance and subsequently, to monitor very carefully the impact of these measures on levels of employment and quality of employment, which is what I think they are aimed at.

Margaret Beels: In terms of the sectors that we regard as being at the highest risk of labour exploitation, which is what I worry about, such as agriculture, the car-washing industry, construction or adult social care—we have not talked much about adult social care, but I have been doing quite a lot of work in relation to workers’ experiences in adult social care—I welcome the measures in the Bill that will start to address some of those issues. I know that the Bill will not necessarily address the totality of those problems, because there are obviously issues around the finance for improving those things, but previous speakers talked about what we as a nation value. We need to value our adult social care workers and the work they do, and to give them more support.

John Kirkpatrick: Since Margaret has introduced social care as a particular sector, I might add that the work we have done in the past on the workforce in that sector again showed an issue that I referred to earlier, which is the challenge of people being able to understand their rights, particularly where those rights are complicated and are not necessarily written in the most accessible language, even in the best guidance. That can be really challenging, and has been particularly for ethnic minority workers in the health and social care sector among others.

Margaret Beels: It was quite striking in the work I did on adult social care that about a third of domiciliary workers in England are on zero-hours contracts. That does seem a very high number.

Q Good afternoon, doctor. Given the work you do, which you have just described, what is your assessment of what the Bill will do for women and men in the workplace?

Dr Stephenson: We think this Bill marks an important step in the right direction in improving the rights of women in the workplace. We particularly welcome the provisions on zero-hours contracts, which will benefit over half a million women. We also welcome the changes to statutory sick pay; 73% of those who currently do not qualify for sick pay because they earn too little are women.

We welcome the fair pay agreement in social care—I know that the previous speakers talked about social care, and it would be good to talk a bit more about that. Obviously, women are the majority of workers in the social care sector, but they are also the majority of those needing care. Improving pay and conditions for social care workers will also have a beneficial impact on the recipients of care, because it will reduce turnover in the sector, which is a really big problem at the moment. There would also be a knock-on impact on unpaid carers, the majority of whom are also women—care is very much a female-dominated sector.

We welcome the improved day one rights to paternity and parental leave. These are often seen as particularly beneficial to fathers and partners, but we believe that women will also benefit from them. Women’s unpaid work is at the heart of their economic inequality; women do 50% more unpaid work than men. The time when a child is born is often the point at which the distribution of unpaid work gets fixed. Most parents go into parenthood thinking that they want to have a more egalitarian sharing of care than maybe their parents did when they were growing up. But as one person described it to me, “You wake up one day, and you suddenly find yourself back in the 1950s,” because of the very limited rights that fathers and second parents have. So we think that this policy will benefit women as well.

We welcome the greater protection against pregnancy and maternity discrimination. We know that you heard earlier this week from the Fawcett Society and Pregnant Then Screwed about flexible working and sexual harassment, and we very much support their positions.

There are some areas where we would like the Bill to go further. On statutory sick pay, for example, we think that the Government needs to increase the rate. The low rate at the moment means that even those who are entitled to it often continue to go to work when they are ill, which is not only bad for them, but bad for public health—

Q I hesitate to interrupt you, but can you give us an indication of where you think statutory sick pay should sit? What should its value be?

Dr Stephenson: At least at the level of maternity pay, for example. We are one of only four countries in Europe that does not extend some right to sick pay to self-employed people, so we think we should do that.

We were disappointed that the Government went back on their original proposals that people who were previously on zero-hours contracts who had shifts cancelled at the last minute should be reimbursed for those shifts. That is a particular problem for women, who often have to arrange childcare if they are in paid work, so having a shift cancelled means not just the loss of the pay, but paying out for childcare.

We think that this is a missed opportunity to improve rights to maternity pay—we know that that is under review—but particularly to deal with the discrepancy between statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance for people claiming universal credit. At the moment, statutory sick pay counts as pay for the purposes of universal credit, but maternity allowance counts as a benefit, so you lose universal credit pound for pound. If you are not entitled to statutory maternity pay and must go on maternity allowance, you are basically losing whatever money you get off universal credit. We are also supportive of the call from the Fawcett Society and Pregnant Then Screwed for a duty to advertise jobs as flexible.

We think that underpinning all this is the problem with our civil legal system; having improved rights at work is only as important as your ability to exercise those rights. Since the reduction to civil legal aid under the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the only area of employment law that is covered by legal aid is discrimination law. Many people do not even know that they have a discrimination case until they see a lawyer in the first place, so if this Bill is to have the effect that the Government want, they need to look at provisions around civil legal aid.

Q That is a hugely comprehensive answer, and I am very grateful for it. One bit of evidence we heard from other witnesses earlier in the week, which I do not think you covered in your list, was a disappointment that there has not been an extension to bereavement leave in the horrible, sad circumstances of a pregnancy loss. Is that also on your list of things that you would like to see?

Dr Stephenson: Yes, that is something that we have also called for. This is where a woman loses a pregnancy before the point at which it counts as a stillbirth. Late pregnancy loss can be extremely traumatic and have health implications for women as well as psychological implications, and we think that the right to paid leave in those circumstances is really important.

That is very helpful. Thank you.

Q The shadow Minister was right: your response to the initial question was a comprehensive critique of the Bill. I will ask you a bit more about sexual harassment and the issues with preventing that and dealing with third-party harassment. Have you been concerned about that?

Dr Stephenson: We have not done as much work in this area as organisations such as the Fawcett Society or some of the trade unions, but we are very conscious that for women working in the hospitality sector, for example, third-party harassment can be a really serious issue. We think it is important that women have those rights and protections, but beyond that it is more that we would support them than that we have done much detailed work.

Q One of our previous witnesses, Luke Johnson, said that one thing that he thought was bad for business in the Bill was increasing access to paternity leave. Mr Johnson publicly backed the now Leader of the Opposition in her leadership campaign, and she of course said that maternity pay had gone too far. Do you think, in reflecting on your evidence, that those comments belong to the 1950s, and do you see the benefits for both business and workers in protecting mums and dads in the workplace?

Dr Stephenson: Yes. What we know is that at every point at which women’s rights have been improved in the labour market—the Equal Pay Act 1970, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the introduction of the national minimum wage, where women were the majority of those who benefited—there have always been some people who have said, “This will be disastrous for business and will lead us to stop employing women,” but that has not actually happened. The proportion of women in the labour market has gone up, and businesses have benefited from having an increased number of women in the labour market.

I think that what is proposed around paternity and parental leave is relatively minimal, compared with what is available in a number of other European countries, for example. I do not think that this will be disastrous for business. I do think that if we want women to be able to survive and thrive in the labour market, we have to redress the balance where women of child-bearing age are seen as much more of a risk for employers than men are. We know that in the long term we will all benefit from legislation that makes things better for parents and makes it easier for people to have children and to raise a family, because one of the crises that we are facing on a global scale is a falling birth rate. A society where there are not enough young people to work and pay the taxes that will support those of us here today when we are in our old age and to care for us when we are old is a society that is in trouble. Part of doing this is improving rights for parents when they have small children, so that people have the children they want to have, rather than thinking, “We can’t afford to do this.”

Q I want to follow on from the last question. A previous witness today said, “I think, if you introduce lots of rights like paternity rights and flexible working rights from day one, you risk having more problems and that will be a cost.” I just want to go a bit deeper into your assessment of that and whether you think family leave and flexible working should be viewed as a net cost.

Dr Stephenson: I am also an employer, and we have an incredibly flexible working policy. I think flexible work is largely beneficial for employers as well as workers, not least because it enables you to recruit and retain the best staff. At the moment, the labour market is relatively tight, particularly in some parts of the country and in some sectors. We have higher levels of, for example, economic inactivity among women than men and we know that this is something the Government want to do something about.

One of the reasons for economic inactivity among women is caring responsibilities. There are large numbers of women who are not in the labour market who said that they would like to be in paid work if they could find a job that gave them the flexibility they needed. That can only be a benefit to wider society, and ultimately to employers, first, because they can attract the best people and, secondly, because we are more likely to have a strong and growing economy.

Q Thank you, Dr Stephenson. I am really proud that my constituency is the home of the match girls’ strike; the fight for women’s rights in the workplace runs deep in the history of my politics. How do you think the measures in the Bill will benefit women’s workforce participation? You have talked about some of the broader views, but if there is one thing in particular that you think will mark a real difference, I would be keen to know it.

Dr Stephenson: As I said, the flexible working provisions particularly benefit women’s labour market participation. Some of it is not just about participation, but about improved pay and conditions; for example, the end to exploitative zero-hours contracts improves women’s position in the labour market, which means they are less likely to leave the labour market.

Another thing is the fair pay agreements in social care, if they were seen as a starting point and extended so that, having started out with social care and looked at how it worked, you looked at other sectors such as early education and childcare. That is a sector very similar to social care, particularly now we have the big extension of funded hours coming in—largely private provision delivering public services that are majority publicly funded, with a majority female workforce on low pay and often working part time. That model of fair pay agreements could not just support women working in those sectors, but support more women into the labour market, if you had available, affordable early education and childcare.

We did some work with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies last year looking at the loss to the economy from women’s under-participation compared with men, and that loss comes to £88.7 billion. Enabling women to enter the labour market, to stay in the labour market or to increase their working hours has the potential to bring real benefit to both the national and local economy.

Q Some 20% of all employees in my Scarborough and Whitby constituency work in the hospitality sector, and obviously a large number will be women. According to the latest Office for National Statistics figures, 50% of women in part-time jobs in my constituency were paid below the living wage. Can you drill down a little more into how the Bill will lead to greater income security for women working in hospitality?

Dr Stephenson: Having a better enforcement body and proper enforcement of the living wage and equalising minimum wage rates with living wage rates for workers under 21—the hospitality industry in particular employs large numbers of younger people—will be really important. Good employers want to do the right thing, and they are undercut by bad employers who are deliberately breaking the law, so better enforcement is important.

To go back to my earlier point, outwith this Bill it is also important to look at access to proper legal advice for people in those situations. It can be very difficult—we have advice deserts in this country. One of the impacts of cuts to civil legal aid has been a reduction in any lawyers with specialism in certain areas, because the loss of legal aid has meant less money in the sector and fewer people going in to develop that specialism. Even if you can afford to pay, it can be quite hard to find a lawyer for certain areas. The enforcement mechanism will make a big difference, but we also need to look at legal aid.

Q I have two questions. First, to pick up on your point about the economic inactivity of women with caring responsibilities, can you reflect on the value of the maternity leave and paternity leave protections in the Bill for women and their job retention and economic activity? As part of that, what other opportunities are there in relation to paternity and parental leave to strengthen women’s economic activity?

Secondly, we heard from an earlier witness that they were not certain whether the Bill would lead to a decrease in jobs among people with protected characteristics. What is your perspective on the role of the Bill in positively affecting those who have protected characteristics, particularly women and disabled women?

Dr Stephenson: On your first point, as I said earlier, women’s unpaid work is at the heart of their economic inequality. One thing we need to do is to have a better balance of those unpaid caring responsibilities between women and men.

The paternity and parental leave changes in the Bill are a step—a small step. We need to go much further, because we still have one of the biggest gaps in Europe between the entitlement for fathers and second parents and the entitlement for mothers. We also need men to have periods of leave in their own right that they are not taking while the mother is on leave.

The thing about paternity leave is that it is generally taken immediately after the birth and it is about providing support to a new mother just after she has given birth. It is a very difficult time: the first time you do not know what you are doing, and the second time you normally have a toddler to look after as well as a baby, so you need more than one pair of hands.

If we are going to change patterns of caring, there needs to be provision that would encourage and support men to have leave after their partners have gone back to work, where they are the sole carer, because it is not until you are the sole carer in charge of a baby that you actually understand what it is really like. If you are one of two parents at all times, there is always somebody else to do it. That needs a different type of leave.

We have called for a period of maternity leave, which is about recovering from childbirth, establishing breastfeeding and so on; for a period of paternity/partner leave, which is about supporting a new mother; and then for both parents to have a period of what we would call parental leave, which is about caring for a child. Both of those need to be paid, and they need to be individualised. We think that would make a difference. That is something that we hope would come out of longer-term reviews of maternity, paternity and parental leave.

In terms of whether the Bill would lead to a decrease in jobs for people with protected characteristics, as I said earlier, that warning is often heard when you improve employment rights—that actually, it will lead to job losses. That has not proved to be the case thus far, and I do not think the changes in the Bill are so significant that they would lead to job losses. For example, the changes to paternity leave are relatively minimal—it is about making it a day one right, rather than making people wait. It will really help those whom it benefits, but it would be unusual for an employer to go, “Actually, men now have a day one right to paternity leave, therefore I’m not going to employ them.” Of course, men have a protected characteristic of sex, just as women do.

In many areas, improving the situation of workers on zero-hours contracts, who are more likely to be from ethnic minority backgrounds, is more likely to improve their overall standard of living. It will help to lift them and their families out of poverty, so it is more likely to be beneficial.

Q Dr Stephenson, I would like to ask about outsourcing and outsourced workers, an often-overlooked part of the labour market. We know that women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to be outsourced. What is your opinion of the clauses in this Bill in relation to the extension of gender pay gap reporting to outsourced workers and the restoration of the two-tier code for outsourced workers from the public sector?

Dr Stephenson: I can speak to the first question; the second is probably beyond my area of knowledge. We welcome the move to include outsourced workers in gender pay gap reporting. We think that this has been a gap. We are very conscious that you will quite often see that the lowest paid workers, particularly in the public sector, are now outsourced. One of the reasons why people say pay in the public sector is better on average than in the private sector is not because it is better job for job; it is because the lowest paid workers have been moved out of the public sector and into the private sector, and a large proportion of those workers are women, for example cleaners, canteen cooks and so on.

Counting those workers in is really important, as is anything that encourages greater insourcing of workers. What we have seen with outsourcing is that the efficiencies and so-called savings have been largely at the expense of the pay and conditions of those outsourced workers.

Q I am slightly bemused by having a member of the Committee also answering questions. Many of the things that I and my colleagues from the official Opposition will be asking you will come in the line-by-line sessions in the coming weeks, but may I briefly ask you about the Regulatory Policy Committee? I fully appreciate that you are going to want to stand by your Bill and defend it rigorously, and fundamentally I am not going to criticise you for that, because that is your job. However, it is pretty unusual in the legislation of this Government and previous Governments of all political persuasions—I accept that we are still in early days—to have a body such as the RPC so comprehensively say that the impact assessments are not fit for purpose. Do you accept any of its criticisms, and what are you and the Department doing to answer those criticisms?

Justin Madders: Thank you for the question. I think the first thing to say is that it is not that unusual. In the last three years, there have been 10 red-rated Bills. Obviously, as the shadow Minister, you will be aware that it was your Government that introduced those. I think there is a challenge here that that all newly elected Governments face: obviously, we have a clear manifesto commitment to deliver on our agenda to make work pay and a clear manifesto commitment to introduce the legislation within 100 days of taking office. That means that, by definition, there is not the time and scope for the normal dialogue and informal conversations that you would get between the Department and the RPC before the final impact assessment is published. I think there is a fundamental challenge there.

As you would expect, we undertook quite a lot work in opposition to develop our policies, but because that is not part of the formal process, we were not able to take that into account. The alternative was for us to wait six or 12 months before we got that impact assessment into a position where the RPC was happy with it, and I do not think the public would really forgive us for having that hiatus between taking office and legislating.

It is also worth saying that, if you look at the individual assessments, two thirds of them have been greenlit, so they are getting approval from the RPC. We acknowledge that there is more work to do on some of them, and we will continue to work with the RPC. I also have a little sympathy with some of the difficulties that the RPC had in coming to its conclusions.

A good example of that is the repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, which the RPC has noted was red-rated when it was introduced as a Bill anyway. As that Act was poorly evidence-based in the first place, and has never actually been used since it came into force, it was very difficult for the RPC to have any real evidence on what the impact of a repeal would be. Our critique would be that the reason for that is because it was unworkable anyway, but I understand in the circumstances why the RPC would have some difficulty making a judgment on that.

On some of the other measures where it said that there was no evidence base, such as some of the equalities measures, we heard some pretty clear evidence both today and on Tuesday—for example, from the Fawcett Society and Pregnant Then Screwed—about some of the real impacts on individuals of the policies in the Bill. I would also say that I do not think there was any real evidence that there is not a need for this legislation. The general thrust from most witnesses was that this Bill would deal with some of the challenges in the labour market. Although not every witness said that, that was generally the case. Of course, as we move forward and get more evidence, we will happily work with the RPC to try to improve those reds to greens.

Q Thank you for that answer; we will explore that more in coming weeks. I accept the political narrative of doing something in 100 days. That is well-established for Governments around the world, and Conservative Governments in the past may well have been guilty of it too. However, this is a big, reforming piece of legislation—I might not agree with all of it, but I accept that it is a big, reforming piece of legislation, on which we have heard a lot of evidence. It is obvious to anyone who reads the Bill that it has an extraordinary requirement for secondary legislation down the line. Beyond the political optics, was there any reason to get it published in 100 days, given that you have a mandate of five years through to August 2029?

Justin Madders: I think it is important that we stick to our promises, and this measure was very popular with the public during the election. I think they wanted to see action quickly. We have had 14 years of atrophy and decline in the labour market—you are obviously not going to agree with that comment, but that would be our analysis—so the need to act quickly was there. A lot of these provisions will not actually become law for a number of months, if not years—in particular unfair dismissal, which we are saying will come in in autumn 2026 at the earliest. There is an awful lot more time to continue to engage and consult, and we intend to do that. Of course, because of the very detailed nature of employment law, a lot of it is developed in secondary legislation and also codes of practice. That is the completely normal practice, and that is why a lot of it is framed in this way.

Q I have two more points, if I may. First, clearly, some of the most striking evidence we heard that did not agree with much of the Bill was from Luke Johnson and Michael Lorimer earlier. Do you feel that the Government have engaged those who run businesses and employ people in the private sector, as opposed to representative bodies of businesses, enough in the research and drafting of the Bill?

Justin Madders: Yes, I do. I have to say, I did not agree with much of their evidence. I think it would be fair to say that they are outliers in what we heard while we engaged with businesses. Most businesses understood the importance of engaging and of enhancing workplace rights, and see the benefits of it. I can provide you with a list of all the organisations we have engaged with. It is certainly over 140 organisations. The majority of those are employers or employer organisations, so I think we have been pretty comprehensive. We are continuing that next week and will continue to do it for the rest of the Bill’s passage.

Q I hope my last point might be more consensual as we move forward. I was very sympathetic to one of the sides of this coin before the Committee started, and the evidence today has given me food for thought on the other one. The first part is bereavement leave in the event of pregnancy loss, which is a position I have a lot of sympathy for. The other is the differential we heard about from Dr Stephenson around maternity pay versus maternity allowance and how that intersects with universal credit. I thought that was a powerfully made point. I am not expecting a cast-iron answer now, but are the Government willing to consider changing the Bill to incorporate those two asks?

Justin Madders: I have sympathy with what was said there. The first thing to say is that the rates for maternity leave and allowance are set by the Department for Work and Pensions. I probably cannot say much more than that at this stage, although I have had some initial discussions with that Department about what we can do to reform this area, because we recognise that it is quite an outdated system.

And on bereavement leave?

Justin Madders: Again, that is something I am sympathetic to. I understand that the Women and Equalities Committee is undertaking an inquiry on that at the moment, and we are going to see what it says.

Q May I ask about the evidence we heard about industrial relations, both from representatives of business and from the many trade unions that we have heard from? How do you see this Bill affecting industrial relations in Britain, and what do you think will be the long-term impact of that on the economy?

Justin Madders: Over the last 14 years, there has been a pretty hostile environment for trade unionists. That has been ramped up in recent years, which is why we have seen in the last couple of years the highest number of industrial relations disputes for about 40 years. The solution is not to continue to legislate to make it harder for people to strike; it is actually to change the culture and attitude towards industrial relations.

We are trying to make sure that trade unions have the opportunity to operate on a level playing field, and I think that we have heard plenty of evidence from both employers and trade unions that when there is a constructive relationship, businesses benefit and individual workers benefit. There is plenty of evidence that trade union members usually have better pay, and better terms and conditions—that is recognised throughout the world—and that is something that we want to help facilitate under this legislation.

Q Do you personally want to see increased unionisation in Britain, and do you hope and/or expect that the Bill will deliver it?

Justin Madders: I think that is actually a challenge for the trade union movement. I think that they would accept that this is really up to them. Personally, as a trade union member and someone who has been actively involved in the trade union movement for many years, I see the absolute advantages and benefits of being a trade union member, but it is really up to them to get into the workplaces, explain their advantages to the workforce and then engage on a tripartite basis with Government, business and workers to improve everyone’s working lives.

Q Thank you. Can you name a CEO of a real business—not a representative body—employing more than, say, 100 people who would say that this Bill is unambiguously good for the economy? How many of them do you think there are?

Justin Madders: I would imagine that there are quite a few.

Can you name some?

Justin Madders: I cannot name individual CEOs. Octopus has been very positive, Sainsbury’s has been very positive and, as we heard today, the Co-op has been very positive. I think the CBI welcomed the Bill and welcomed the engagement as well, and Make UK too. There are quite a lot of organisations on the employer side that are generally welcoming of the intentions of the Bill, and I think that has been reflected in the evidence.

Q But the only real businesspeople who have been here have been unambiguously against it.

Justin Madders: I think you will find that the Co-op is a real business, and it employs an awful lot of people.

That is true. That is a correction.

Q Minister, we have touched on adult social care today. There are 1.6 million workers in the sector. I know that news of the adult social care negotiating body has been warmly welcomed. Can you expand on why a fair pay agreement is so important for the adult social care sector?

Justin Madders: That is a really good question. One of the reasons was in your question—there are 1.6 million people employed in the sector. It is a huge part of the economy. Unfortunately, at the moment, as we heard in the evidence, it is characterised by poor terms and conditions and high numbers of zero-hours contracts, and quite often minimum wage is not enforced properly. These are people doing really important jobs in our society. They deserve a voice and a collective opportunity to raise terms and conditions, and the opportunity to work with employers to develop a career path. This is a transformative structure that will hopefully change the lives of many working people and, of course, the people they care for.

Q We heard from two business voices today that were not perhaps entirely reflective of the rest of our views. I have more than 12,500 businesses in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, of which more than 5,500 are small and medium-sized businesses. I have met lots of them over the course of the last year. I have certainly not heard similar views. We also heard from legal experts, who said that the Bill brings us closer to OECD norms than perhaps was said. Can you tell us how businesses will benefit from the Bill?

Justin Madders: There is generally an acceptance, both in the economic analysis we have heard from some of the witnesses today and from businesses themselves, that getting a motivated, engaged and retained workforce is good for productivity and the business overall. Having a more engaged and well-remunerated workforce has been shown to actually boost profits. The fact that the OECD was referred to by the Resolution Foundation as a body that believes that greater workers’ rights actually improve the economic outcome of the country is a really important factor that we need to emphasise.

Q Picking up from the last question, we have heard how the Bill will benefit employers; what other groups of people in the country do you think it will benefit?

Justin Madders: There are an awful lot of people who will benefit if we get this right. I am talking about people who do not know from one week to the next how many hours they will have or whether they will be paid enough to put food on the table. Our reforms on zero-hours contracts will really help with that. People who can be arbitrarily sacked for no reason for the first two years of their employment—about 9 million people—will benefit from that. The 1.6 million people in the social care sector will benefit. There are 900,000 people a year who will benefit from bereavement leave entitlements. Overall, as ACAS has suggested, the cost of disputes to the economy can be up to £30 billion a year. Just imagine what a difference it would make if we could shave a fraction off that. I think that the Bill is setting a new culture in our country about how we do workplace relations. It is putting the value of the worker/employee relationship with businesses at the heart of everything we do.

Q Seven children in every classroom of 30 in my constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge are in poverty. Can you set out more broadly the economic benefits of the Bill, many of which were set out in the TUC’s report this week? In particular, while you have mentioned some just now, can you focus on the economic benefits for working people and working families?

Justin Madders: Obviously, the TUC report is not an official Government document, but it has some interesting figures. It reckons that we could gain up to £974 million from reducing the number of days that people take off due to stress and anxiety because of poor working conditions; another £930 million a year from improved staff wellbeing; £168 million a year from improved minimum wage compliance; £510 million a year from reduced industrial action; £8 billion a year, potentially, from improved industrial relations; and up to £2.6 billion a year from increased labour market participation—there are a number of reasons why that might be the case. We do not know how much of those figures will be delivered, because an awful lot of variables are in there, but it is an impressive attempt to quantify, in a way that we cannot, given the rules of Government the positive impacts of the Bill on the wider economy.

Q Minister, you spoke earlier about some of the engagement you have had on the Bill, and some of the witnesses earlier today spoke about tripartite meetings that they had been at between the Government, unions and businesses. Could you set out some of your planned future engagement on the Bill?

Justin Madders: Engagement continues, and there will be more next week—we are meeting a group of small and medium-sized businesses—but to date 140 different stakeholders have attended official or ministerial meetings. You will have heard from many of the witnesses that they have been quite impressed, I think, with the level of engagement and how we have listened to concerns expressed about the Bill. We also undertook extensive engagement in opposition. We will continue to do that. We are moving through some live consultations at the moment. As we develop the Bill and some of the regulations and codes of practice that will follow it, there will continue to be engagement throughout. We are very clear that that is the best way to deliver excellent legislation, and we will continue it.

Q Minister, over the past two years, we have seen some of the highest levels of industrial action since the 1980s. Could you tell us what effect you think the Bill will have on the conduct of industrial relations?

Justin Madders: I hope it will have a positive impact on industrial relations. The way strike action spiralled in recent years was probably the result of frustration with a Government who were not listening to the voice of workers, were not prepared to address their concerns, and were actively moving to frustrate legitimate acts by trade unions to take industrial action. It is about the culture and the level of engagement, as much as it is about the legislation, but there is no suggestion, as far as I can see, that the Bill will massively increase strike action, as some people might have suggested.