Employment Bill [HL]

I ask the Committee to remember that the words about abuse, the use of economic power and the like, and the need for legislative intervention were used not by me but by Mr Justice Elias, who has enormous experience of employment cases and who also made reference to flexibility in the labour market; and by Lord Justice Mummery, who pointed out, if it needs pointing out, the enormous explosion in the numbers of agencies where people go to get a job. Of course I understand the desire that the Minister mentioned of a woman with children getting into a job in this way, if there is no other way to get it, but I do not like the fact that she can be disposed of at will without any notice, and chucked out of her job because she has no employment rights. Secondly, my noble friends know that I do not often pray in aid as a force the European Commission, but I do on this occasion. Its Green Paper on the future of labour law pointed out that there must be a balance to achieve what it calls, and what is now the new word in all the writing on the subject, ““flexicurity””. It is not yet in the dictionary, but flexicurity, it explains, contains two things—first, a flexible market that especially the employer will find extremely useful in the day-to-day and even long-term running of his business; and secondly, security for workers in regard to employment rights. The European Commission’s whole Green Paper is based on that balance. It is not very easy to achieve a balance. Sometimes in the debate today I felt that we were back in 1971, when people suggested to the Conservative Government, who wished to introduce it, that the right of unfair dismissal to be allowed to workers in employment tribunals would totally upset the labour market. Unfair dismissal has been with us a long time. Agency workers are entitled to that right as much as other workers with whom they work cheek by jowl at the workplace. The amendment is intended to promote that balance, first by new powers. The amendment takes the regulation route. Maybe that is wrong. My honourable friend’s Bill in the other place may be a better way of moving the situation forward. One thing is absolutely clear: we are in a moving situation. The Prime Minister’s offer proves that we are not now static on agency workers. The unfairness of the legal position for agency workers has been recognised by a number of judges and people who know more than I do about their status. We aim for flexicurity, as the Green Paper suggests, and want a balance. Of course, I do not suggest that all employers act in an abusive manner towards either permanent or agency workers. As with the right to complain of an unfair dismissal, the amendment is intended to stop the minority of employers who abuse their power to dismiss. I can only say that anyone who reads the report of the debate of last Friday in the House of Commons and pays attention to what has been said will see that we are in a moving situation, whether the answer is a European directive or a new statute, as my honourable friend Mr Miller suggested in the Commons, or whether, as the amendment suggests, the Minister makes use of existing powers in the 1999 Act to improve the position of a substantial group of workers. That was the object of the amendment, and I hope that we can all agree, having read last Friday’s debate and the terms of my suggestion, that we want flexicurity. We want a flexible labour market, but you cannot have one in the 21st century without giving agency workers basic rights which we have come to see as fairness at the place of work. I thank everyone who has spoken in the debate.