Contribution
My Lords, Amendment 94 seeks to give the Secretary of State power to introduce exemptions from Part 1 of this Bill. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, for adding his name to the amendment. In Committee and on Report, noble Lords have warned about the impact that this Bill could have on businesses. The right to guaranteed hours, the statutory sick pay changes and the day-one rights which we debated earlier all create problems for businesses, especially small businesses and micro-businesses. The Government are ignoring these concerns.
These provisions directly affect businesses, but noble Lords opposite should share our concerns that the real effect of these new rights will be fewer job opportunities. As we have heard, employees with risk factors, from the employer’s perspective, will find it harder to get work because of day-one rights and the statutory sick pay changes. These include young people, people with incomplete job histories, people with a history of illness and ex-offenders. People who value part-time flexible work—this particularly affects women and students—might find fewer opportunities because employers fear triggering the guaranteed-hours requirements.
The Government are introducing these changes at a time of great economic uncertainty. While the employment numbers continue to edge upwards, there are warning signs in a rising unemployment rate, falling job vacancies and falling average hours worked. Business surveys are consistently flagging a reluctance to hire among businesses and increased expectations of workforce reductions. Even the Governor of the Bank of England, not a man to be careless with words, has flagged a slowdown in the jobs market. Growth is virtually non-existent and our inflation rate is now the highest in the G7. This economic background increases the likelihood that this Bill will create real pain for some businesses, and that pain will inevitably end up being felt in the workforce.
In Committee, I argued for exemptions from Part 1 being hardwired into the Bill for small and micro-businesses. My noble friend Lord Sharpe of Epsom’s Amendment 159 in this group is similar. His Amendment 107 would exempt farm businesses of all sizes from some of the provisions. These are both great amendments, but my guess is that the Government are not yet psychologically ready to admit that some sorts of businesses would be so hard hit by this Bill that they should be exempt from its scope. The Government have rejected exemptions, citing the need to avoid creating a two-tier workforce, despite the fact that in an open economy such as ours, workforce tiering occurs naturally and is certainly a feature of the current UK workplace.
My amendment is a simple one. It does not require the Government to do anything. It is a reserve power which the Government can use to assist the UK economy if things turn out as badly as we fear. It gives the Government power to create exemptions from all or any of the Part 1 provisions to categories of employer as defined by the Secretary of State. It thus allows very targeted interventions if the Government believe that it is necessary.
Some of the potential pain points in the Bill can be dealt with in the way that detailed regulations are framed. Amendment 105 in this group helpfully requires the Secretary of State to have regard to seasonal work when making regulations. However, regulations cannot deal with removing burdens from, for example, small and micro-businesses, which are the focus of several amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley. They cannot address whole sectors, such as hospitality or agriculture, nor home in on subsectors of those sectors, such as the pub sector, which could be massively impacted by Clause 20, or particular types of farm.
It would do no harm to the Government’s position if they accepted Amendment 94. They can press ahead with plan A and see what happens. If, however, they discover real problems of the kinds that many noble Lords from across this House have described, it would give the Government a backstop power if they, and they alone, think that it is necessary. On this basis, I commend Amendment 94 to the Government and I beg to move.