Member

Business groups often default to warning about economic damage whenever stronger worker protections are proposed. I do not need to remind noble Lords that we saw this with the minimum wage in the late 1990s and with shared parental leave more recently. In hindsight, many of those reforms had either neutral or positive effects on growth and employment. I also gently remind noble Lords, with respect, that, by framing the Bill as an economic catastrophe, business lobbies are deflecting from the more basic truth that certain business models, especially those heavily dependent on insecure, low-wage labour, might have to adapt or change if the law passes.