Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)

I am not sure that I agree. I have sat on a German company. Growth is very poor in Germany at the moment. A company I worked in exited France because of the difficulty with employment protections. Employment protection is not the only issue we are talking about. In my opinion, we are trying to find the right employment protection mix to make sure that the economy continues to flourish. Before closing, I highlight two of the less obvious perverse effects. The provisions will require significant extra internal resources to ensure compliance, in addition to the cost of the various measures in the Bill. If anyone has been through the sad process of sacking someone, they will understand this point. It is necessary to be extremely organised and have a cast-iron paper or email trail to avoid losing in a tribunal. This approach will now be necessary for the 9 million employees who currently work for less than two years in a job. Even if the Government introduce a lighter touch probationary period—now expected to be nine months—it will still be necessary to implement cumbersome administrative procedures across all businesses for all employees, including in the public sector. It will make the introduction of Making Tax Digital, deferred a number of times because of the difficulties businesses faced, look extremely easy in comparison. Above all, it will increase costs, thereby reducing investment and growth. The second perverse consequence, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, has already said, will be the increase in traffic through employment tribunals. There is already a tremendous backlog of 50,000 cases in the system. I met someone yesterday whose case has been listed in 2027. The changes look as if they will plunge the employment sector into the sort of chaos we saw in the past on passports and in several other areas as a result of Covid. I am extremely keen to find a way out of this unfortunate set of circumstances and am open as to how the problem is resolved. The fact is that sometimes appointments do not work out and it is no one’s fault. I accept that that should normally be clear within nine months. If the changes on unfair dismissal are to be workable, let alone a success, the Government must listen and come forward with firm proposals before Report. These can be consulted on in parallel, as has already happened in other parts of the Bill. This House cannot agree to delegate this vital matter to the Executive in a statutory instrument that we have not even seen in draft. The proposed nine-month probation period is a welcome start. However, so far, the only way forward I can see is to amend the Bill to allow the termination of employment during a probation period without giving rise to an unfair dismissal claim, as proposed in our amendment.