The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Baroness Lloyd of Effra) (Lab)

My Lords, in moving this Motion, I will also speak to Motion A1. Throughout the passage of this Bill, which arrived in your Lordships’ House nine months ago yesterday, we have scrutinised, deliberated and debated all areas. Once again, I thank noble Lords for fulfilling their scrutiny role and, in the course of doing so, providing their invaluable insight. However, we are now in round 4 of ping-pong on a Bill that the Government have a clear electoral mandate to deliver. We cannot be accused of attempting to push the Bill through without listening to the concerns raised by noble Lords. We are immensely grateful for the more than 60 occasions on which noble Lords have engaged with us, offering rigorous scrutiny and thoughtful challenge. It is because of this valuable feedback that the Government have been able to act and make changes where appropriate, including through technical amendments in Committee and on Report and the publication of an implementation road map outlining what the Government will consult on, when, and at what point new rights are expected to go live. The Government are pleased to have found commonality in the three previous rounds of ping-pong on 11 of the 12 issues the House asked the Government to look at again. The contributions of noble Lords from across the House have helped bring forward solutions on a range of specific issues, from heritage railways to paid time off for special constables. On a number of other issues, such as the right to be accompanied, the Government have made non-legislative commitments which noble Lords have recognised as important progress. Most recently, during ping-pong, the Government brought forward amendments to the Bill on zero-hours contracts, seasonal work, trade union ballot thresholds and trade union political funds, which will help to ensure that stakeholders’ views and insights are represented in the final policy outcomes as we shift into the implementation phase for this Bill. On the final issue of unfair dismissal, in the face of successive Lords votes against day-one rights to protection from unfair dismissal, itself a manifesto commitment, the Government took the extraordinary step of convening a series of constructive conversations between business representative organisations and trade unions, which reached a workable agreement on the unfair dismissal provisions. Yesterday, those representatives—from the British Chambers of Commerce, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, Small Business Britain, the Federation of Small Businesses, and the Confederation of British Industry—wrote to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, stating that the outcome of the dialogue “represented a significant step forward which will have a positive impact on growth and opportunities”.