Lord Fox (LD)

My Lords, we have heard two spirited supporters of this statutory instrument. I will add my spirits to the support of these regulations. As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, observed, many millions of workers have suffered a severe fallback in their living conditions as a result of a variety of measures, not least inflation, energy costs and the like. This has happened to a great degree over the past few years. Therefore, to some degree, this instrument is getting them back to a place they have slipped from. It is debatable whether it is protecting millions of workers, as the noble Baroness said, or helping ameliorate some of the problems they have. On that basis, we should be welcoming it. In her speech, the Minister talked about the fair work agency, which will be enforcing this. It would be useful for us to find out what will be different. What will the fair work agency be doing that has not been done before? Quite clearly, this provision has been on the statute before and, as the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, pointed out, there have been many businesses that do not uphold it. How will the fair work agency be any different? What will it be doing to achieve that? We have to put this into context. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, spoke about the aim to create a genuine living wage for everyone. To do that, we have to have businesses that are profitable and workers that have the skills to earn those wages. This measure cannot be taken in isolation. For business, there is not just this instrument, which I think most good businesses will welcome. Most good businesses are paying more than these wages already, but the cumulative effect on our businesses is already rolling up. It is the perception of that roll up that is causing the problems for the Chancellor at the moment, with very low growth and investment falling back. I think we all welcome this measure but then we have the employers’ national insurance contribution, which we do not welcome. The noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I will be in the same camp on this. There is then the non-domestic rate rises for businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, which are the businesses most likely to be paying the minimum wage. They will have a huge increase in their rates, notwithstanding the small variations that can happen. The loss of the Covid reliefs will leave them paying two or three times the non-domestic rate that they are currently pay. These are the businesses that will be laying off workers because they cannot afford to pay them even the current minimum wage. There is a big discontinuity in government policy at this point. Finally, the noble Baroness mentioned the Employment Rights Bill. There are good and bad things in that Bill; there are puts and takes. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Jones, said, only four pages of these documents are the statutory instrument. The rest is an Explanatory Memorandum, which is an example of what we want from those and from impact assessments. It is a comprehensive and well-prepared document. I hope the noble Baroness will pass that on to all her colleagues. On page 13, the impact assessment says that the aim—the Government’s preferred option—has been to minimise “administrative and compliance costs”. When we come to the Employment Rights Bill, the minimising of administration and compliance costs should be their preferred option for those rights. The little work I have already done on that Bill indicates that it is complicating things and making things harder for businesses to comply. Even where we agree with the measures in that Bill, the legalistic approach through which they will be brought about will not meet the Government’s objective, which, quite rightly, was applied to this legislation.