Baroness Noakes (Con)

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Grady of Upper Holloway, and I took part in the debates on the 2023 Bill when it went through your Lordships’ House—obviously, on different Benches. She is right that no employer sought to use the powers in the 2023 Act, but the Act had only a relatively short existence in which it was available to employers before, in effect, we went into an election period. I accept that, at the time, employers did not wish to take advantage of the Act’s provisions. The main purpose of the Act was to protect individual citizens to ensure that they had the levels of service that they needed. That goes beyond safety issues, which are the minimum levels to which unions tend to sign up for, so that ordinary citizens have minimum service levels to get themselves to work, to get themselves to their hospital appointments and so on. We did not give that Act enough time to see: first, whether it would work in practice, which I believe it would; and, secondly, whether it would be popular with the British public, which I am absolutely certain it would have been, if it had had a proper amount of time to come into effect. I accept that those in the party opposite, throughout the passage of that Bill, registered their strong opposition to it. So I understand that, in power, they seek to expunge it from the statute book. However, that is a grave mistake that ignores the needs of ordinary citizens and places unions above the needs of ordinary citizens. I particularly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Fox, which seeks an impact assessment on SMEs. I will always support an impact assessment on SMEs, because we have not had a proper one yet. I do not believe that Part 4 of the Bill will have the biggest impact on SMEs—other parts, particularly Part 1, will decimate SMEs—but I support any opportunity to get full public exposure of the impact of the provisions throughout the Bill on the health of our very important SME sector.