Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, until my earlier rant on trade unions, I had not been available to speak consistently in the debates on Clauses 1 to 8, although I have been listening in or following them. I have not been able to be here because of the problems of contemporary work: a portfolio career running from one job to another and never having time to do everything I want to do. One of the reasons I am very keen on an impact assessment on the impacts of Clauses 1 to 8 on these sectors—the subject of the amendment to which I added my name, looking at hospitality, retail and health and social care—is that I feel as though the modern employment landscape has changed so dramatically. Despite the fact that we have a Bill about modernising employment rights, I have sometimes felt that there has not been an adequate recognition of how things have changed. As I hinted at earlier, there is a rather caricatured view on a variety of sides of the Committee, as though we were stuck in the 1970s and every employee and every worker was a public sector worker with a nine-to-five job. That is just not what it is like. The contemporary workplace often needs flexibility, for the sake of the workers as much as anything. But it is an argument, and I am not going to go into the details. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Sharpe of Epsom and Lord Hunt—of wherever—for allowing me to put my name to this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, explained well the different issues that have been raised in the debates until now, as I understand them. On different Bills I have raised the problems in these sectors, so I will not repeat them. But I note that, in a debate on Martyn’s law—which has now become an Act of Parliament as the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act—I raised the real problems that the hospitality sector is facing at the moment because it is under the cosh and overregulated. People who work in that sector feel that it is not going to survive. There are the national insurance contributions and the regulations being brought in. The retail sector, such as convenience stores, will now face a whole barrage of assaults in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill; I talked about that at great length, so I will not repeat that. I fear that the health and social care sector has exploited care workers via zero-hour contracts; I have talked about that in the past. A modernisation of the health and social care sector is required, and I am disappointed that the present Government have not brought that forward. The one thing that I would like a Bill on is the modernisation of the health and social care sector, instead of these other Bills, which I think do some damage. Despite that, all that the amendment I am supporting calls for is an impact assessment of Clauses 1 to 8.