Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)

My Lords, the instrument before us is, on the face of it, a technical one. As the Minister explained, it ensures that enforcement officers of the new Fair Work Agency inherit the same communications data powers, under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, that officers of the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority held before them. However, the creation of the Fair Work Agency is the moment at which this Committee confers covert investigatory powers on a body whose structure, resourcing and operating principles remain, to a troubling degree, undefined. I turn first to what I regard as the most fundamental concern: the departure from the settled policy of targeted, sector-specific enforcement. The GLAA was created for a reason. It was designed to address the specific and acute vulnerabilities of workers in agriculture, food processing, shellfish gathering and related sectors—industries where the risk of exploitation and labour abuse was demonstrably high and where ordinary enforcement mechanisms were plainly insufficient. The Fair Work Agency sweeps that away. It appears that it will have a broad mandate to inspect any business in any sector at any time. That is a significant departure; we were given no adequate explanation for it during Committee or Report on the Employment Rights Act 2025. On what evidential basis have the Government decided that the enforcement problems, which were previously confined to high-risk sectors, now require a body with universal reach? What assessment has been made of the risk that this broader mandate will dilute the quality and focus of enforcement, rather than improving it? The Minister just mentioned a framework agreement, but am I not right in saying that this Committee has not yet seen even a draft of it? Perhaps the Minister will clarify that aspect. This matters acutely for small and medium-sized enterprises, which are already facing more than £600 million in costs flowing from the Employment Rights Act—costs that are, in large part, administrative in nature, such as in record-keeping, compliance processes and reporting obligations. These activities will now fall within the Fair Work Agency’s line of sight. These businesses, many of which are without dedicated human resources functions or legal support, will be exposed to an agency that is armed with powers of entry, powers to seize documents and electronic records, and now, through this instrument, powers to obtain communications data covertly. What guidance will be issued to ensure that enforcement action against small businesses is proportionate? What safeguards exist to distinguish a genuine, minor administrative error from deliberate wrongdoing? Will businesses that make honest mistakes face the prospect of document seizure, substantial financial penalties and the full weight of this agency’s investigatory apparatus? Businesses have said that they want any action taken against them to be proportionate, and that the Fair Work Agency should function primarily as a compliance partner, not as a punitive instrument. The Minister has said that she shares that aspiration, and I invite her to say how that aspiration will be given legal and operational effect.