Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke in this brief debate. I confess that I will have to go back and bone up on my Stanley Baldwin history—I was not expecting that. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, accused me of ignorance of industrial relations. He asked why anyone would agree to detrimental terms, but that is missing the point, I fear. We are saying that they should be allowed to agree to different terms. Why should a worker not be allowed to trade some holiday entitlement for extra pay, for example? We agree that we need significantly less litigation. We have been discussing that throughout the passage of the Bill. Unfortunately, as we have also discussed, so much of the Bill is likely to lead to rather more. I was very interested in the noble Lord’s comments about the workforce up until 1990, but my noble friend Lady Verma hit the nail on the head when she talked about small businesses. The fact is that the workplace has changed so dramatically in the last 35 years that I do not think that necessarily remains a valid comparison. We have argued that free negotiation between employers and employees must be the foundation of any fair and modern employment framework. But we regret that what we see here is a model rooted in uniformity and prescription. That is flawed not just in detail but in principle, because a one-size-fits-all approach flattens the complexity and diversity of real working life and ignores the dignity and agency of the individual. Having said that, I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Leong, carefully and, on this occasion, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 125.