Employment Bill [HL]

I am grateful to my noble friend, but we are definitely now in Alice Through the Looking-Glass. Things get worse and worse. The more that we prod on this, the more we justify the grave concerns of the association of lay members of tribunals, which we heard earlier this afternoon. Despite the way in which the Bill does not prescribe it, we thought that this fast-track procedure would be very limited in character. I shall not try to repeat it in case I get it wrong—I shall read it in Hansard—but I believe when Members of the Committee read what my noble friend has just said they will find that the possibilities of single-chairman hearings will become very extensive indeed. That was the worry that we always had about Clause 4. I take everything that has been said about consent, but we have not made much progress on that matter. We only got an undertaking to look again at written consent, and there is insistence that it will include deemed consent, which is a concept that I find quite repugnant, no matter what advice people have had. Now we are told that when there is deemed consent, the worker cannot pop up at the hearing with the judge alone. He does not have his day in court, as my noble friend Lady Turner said on a previous occasion. If that really is the situation, I shall find it very difficult to lend my support to the Bill with that width of fast-track procedure. As I said, I could not write down all the jurisdictions that it will apply to. I thought there were five but, if there are only five, that should be in the Bill. If the provision is going to be limited to those five jurisdictions, why are the Government so coy about telling us that in the Bill? I hope that my noble friend can give us some reassurance about that list of jurisdictions this afternoon, because he must know the Government’s intention. Do they intend that it applies to breach of contract, national minimum wage and three other jurisdictions that I think I could specify but cannot do so confidently because I did not write them down? Will my noble friend tell us that he will go away and reconsider the wording of Clause 4 and written consent, as he said he would? Will he consider new subsection (3AA)(b) to make it clear that the Government include deemed consent? We do not like that, but if it is going to be in the Bill, it had better be stated. Will he also consider whether it would be right for Parliament to say that you cannot have a proper employment tribunal but only a one-person decision if you have deemed consent to this matter? What is he going to say to the association of lay members of tribunals when it says—as it has said—that it is very concerned that the whole nature of employment tribunal justice is going to change? I do not say that the association is absolutely right in its concerns, but it has a very good case, much stronger than before we considered the Bill this afternoon. It is very worrying indeed. I have to admit that the argument has taken such twists and turns that I am not sure where I am. I think that I am on Amendment No. 15, which the Minister has shown could not possibly be accepted by the Government. He has shown that it raises enormous problems, which I had no idea existed when we first came to the Bill today. I suppose that the correct step for me to take is to beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 4 agreed to.