Employment Bill [HL]

I congratulate the noble Lord on the timely nature of his amendment, which deals with surveillance and monitoring. Today we have heard a Statement in the Chamber about the Government or one of their agencies bugging one of their own MPs and Whips as he visited a constituent in prison. This is a serious matter. Obviously, a great deal of this is going on, and there is a great deal of abuse of the system. None of us had the chance to hear what was said in the Statement, but no doubt we will be able to discuss it at a later stage. As the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn, made clear, there is already a great deal of perfectly legitimate surveillance of employees at work; whether it is an HGV driver recording details in the cab to ensure that he does not drive excessive hours, or whatever. However, this matter must be dealt with to ensure that it is at the right level. Whether ACAS is the right body to produce such a code of practice when the issue goes much wider, as evidenced by the Statement being made in another place, is another matter. I do not know whether we need to have a bigger debate, particularly in the light of that, looking at the articles referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wedderburn. We might want to come back to the subject on Report and have a fuller discussion. Alternatively, the Government, in the interests of joined-up government, might want to discuss the matter with the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office to consider whether they should be giving further assurances, not only in regard to disputes concerning the surveillance and monitoring of employees, but the wider question surrounding surveillance and monitoring in what many of us consider a 1984 type of society that has been created.