Employment Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his description of the Bill and his valiant attempt to explain the Government’s intentions in the areas that the Bill covers. I had hoped that his presence on the Bench opposite would signify a change in the Government’s approach to employment law. If he still held to his earlier opinion that this Government should really learn to understand business before pronouncing on it, I would look forward to a new consensus developing between Her Majesty’s Government and the Opposition. But he stated in 2002 that the DTI did not really understand the business agenda, and sadly this Bill shows that it still does not. No wonder the Minister continues to refuse to join the Labour Party. He is sitting on the wrong Benches and he knows it. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, will disagree with me and say that his Government have always understood the business agenda and are doing all that they can to reduce complexity and administration costs. But the facts do not bear that out. Since 1997, the Government have brought forward 28 Acts and 280 statutory instruments dealing with employment. We have now been told by PricewaterhouseCoopers that a third of businesses are avoiding taking on more employees because of the complexity of hiring and firing. The Minister said that he did not want anybody to say, ““Don’t invest here””, but that seems to be the message that employers are hearing; PricewaterhouseCoopers’s word is pretty big in this area. It is a shame that the only area of employment law that the Government can conceive of simplifying is that of dispute resolution. All we have here are seven clauses of deregulation. I am very supportive of those seven clauses and am glad that they are in this Bill, but is this really all that the Government can do? The original provisions, as I am sure my noble friends will enjoy reminding the Government, were opposed by my party. We were convinced that they would not reduce the number of employment disputes that escalated to tribunal cases and we were proved right. The Gibbons review shows that the number of tribunal cases has instead risen by 30 per cent and the costs to both businesses and government have shot up. The review states that the regulations cost firms nearly £290 million a year and that the Government spent £120 million on the Tribunals Service and ACAS in 2005-06. It also notes the enormous damage that is done to employees bringing cases before the tribunal, both to their health and to their employment prospects. I am therefore very relieved that the Government have seen sense and followed the review’s advice to repeal these provisions.