Lord Leong (Lab)

To a certain extent, we are not ruling anything in or out. We are basically saying that we will be consulting with all stakeholders. I take the noble Lord’s point—yes, the amendment says that, and I am responding to the amendment by saying that we will be undertaking further consultation and bringing forward regulations in due course. I believe the noble Lord wishes instead to provide that a right to short-notice payment will arise only where the worker has received formal confirmation that they will work the shift from their employer, or, in the case of agency workers, hirer or work-finding agency. The Government’s view is that it would be overly prescriptive to specify that the right to short-notice payments arises only in cases where formal confirmation has been provided. While in many cases, a reasonable belief will arise only where the worker has received confirmation in writing from the employer that they will work the shift, different businesses have different practices when arranging shifts, and it would not be appropriate to adopt a universal, one-size-fits-all approach. For example, when a worker agrees to work the shift after being contacted individually to work it, they would likely reasonably believe that their agreement corresponds to them being needed to work the shift, if it is standard practice that they will be needed to work despite additional confirmation not being provided. So, it is fair that the worker in this scenario should receive a payment if the shift is then cancelled, as they expected to work it and may have incurred costs preparing to do so. It would also be overly burdensome for the employers to have to provide confirmation where this would not otherwise be needed in order to be confident that they will have staff for that particular shift. The Government believe that, in most cases, it will be clear to both the worker and the employer, or the agency worker and the agency or hirer, whether the worker was expected to work a shift. The Government will also publish guidance to help with interpretation. As a last resort, where disputes cannot be settled, employment tribunals will be able to determine whether a worker had a reasonable belief that they were needed to work a shift with a result that is fair. We wish to retain this flexibility to allow for the broad range of circumstances that may arise.