Employment Bill [HL]

I repeat how grateful I am to everyone who has spoken on this amendment. There are a number of objections to it. The first is, as some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, have said, a lack of confidence in ACAS being able to do the job. ACAS has expressly asked to take account of certain matters and to consult certain persons, including the Information Commissioner in subsections (2) and (3) of the amendment. I have great confidence in ACAS being able to do this job. I also have confidence in it being very appropriate to the Bill. This is an employment Bill and the problem of surveillance and monitoring comes out in an acute form in the employment relationship, in which the worker earns his wage and the employer observes some sort of civilised standards of behaviour. ACAS is perfectly capable in consultation—it normally consults all the relevant people. If one looks through its codes of practice, one sees all sorts of things where it has taken account of views of experts in the matter. Human rights do not stop at the office door or the factory gate. Human rights is a concept that we have come to understand rather better than we did in years gone by. I am long enough in the tooth to remember talking about not being unfairly dismissed as a human right. No doubt, today the arguments would place that outside the Bill. It will not do for the Government to say that this is not something to deal with now and that we should perhaps wait to consult all sorts of other people. No reassurance is given that they will consult anyone at all. I reject the view that the code issued by the Information Commissioner deals with the problem. That is a misreading of the amendment and it is completely out of date in terms of the kind of monitoring to which my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden referred. It is not good enough for the Government to take this relaxed view that nothing needs to be done. The Italian experience, of which I know something, shows that in 1970 it was absolutely justified to get in early on this problem and that has had an effect on industrial relations, despite all the other problems that everyone knows about in Italian industrial relations. It could have an effect here and would give a reassurance to workers that the matter has not been overlooked. I am very disappointed in the Government’s response to something on which many noble Lords saw the point and which has received such support in Committee. We shall have to consider this matter very carefully in view of what the Minister has said and see what we should do on Report. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 3 [Non-compliance with statutory Codes of Practice]: