Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)

My Lords, I will briefly clarify the situation. I have just checked with my party, and we are not in coalition with the Green Party, that is for sure. But the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, makes a valid point. It is valid because of the societal change post Covid, where the number of people working from home now is exponential to what it was before Covid. I go back to my days as a British Gas engineer, when I had a bleeper and was on call. We would dread the bleeper beeping, but I was on emergency calls and so I had to go out and do it. That was then and this is now. There are so many people who are working from home who cannot switch off—the emails and alerts come through on their mobile phones. There needs to be some recognition of that within the legislation. Clearly, some organisations may need to contact people, but that should be by an arrangement that is agreed and supported by both parties. We are almost in a cowboy society again, where an unscrupulous company director of a small business with a small number of people wants to get things done and the deal has got to be made tonight—at 10 pm or 11 pm, when children are in bed—and so the phone goes and you have got to do it. If you do not, you face the consequences. These employees are probably not unionised, so it is difficult for them to resist. It is a never-ending circle. I would like the Government to understand the importance of considering the framework set out in this amendment to provide a fair and practical approach that looks after the worker but protects the legitimate needs of the employers. It comes back to this idea of reasonableness and proportionality—the thread that seems to run through all this legislation. If it is reasonable and proportional then by and large it is fairly acceptable, but you have always got the unscrupulous person on either side. I have seen employees on call who have not replied when they should have, and they have been disciplined. That is correct; if you have an agreement and are on call, but you do not do it, there is a price to be paid. The pendulum swings very slowly one way but very fast the other, to all those people who are working from home now and have no protection from the unscrupulous employer who just wants results 24 hours a day. We live in a 24-hour society—there is no escape from it. It happens with Ministers, spokespeople and friends I know. I have to turn my phone off—sometimes at 9 pm I switch the thing off until the morning, and then I get messages asking why I did not answer it. My answer is, “Because it was quarter to one in the morning and I was fast asleep”. These messages are from friends and colleagues. If you put that in the context of a work environment, where it is about your livelihood, marriage and children, it comes more into focus. I want the Government to look at this and see that there must be a way that we can strike a balance between the needs of an employer and the rights of a worker.