Employment Bill [HL]

When the noble Lord comes to rethink the amendment, will he again consider his remarks about the work which has been done, which at one point he seemed to dismiss as—in a nasty sense—academic? The 1954 book by Geoffrey Sharpe and the one that Paul Davies and I wrote were both based on groundwork. We spent two years going around the Ministry of Labour and various industries in order to understand that ministry’s evidence to the Donovan commission—the third work that the noble Lord should read. I have no ideological objection to mediation. Where it works, it is very valuable. It works in financial services and some parts—not all—of commercial law, but ACAS has shown that it does not want to choose it for employment disputes and there are good reasons for that. That is not an academic judgment, but that of the people who actually do the work with the workers and employers at the place of work. I hope that the noble Lord will look at his speech and rethink how he dismissed the published books.