Employment Bill [HL]

First, I thank my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden for her support. That comes from extremely long experience of trade union work and work in this House on employment matters. I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for her praise of the director of Public Concern at Work, who has been, as she rightly said, there since the beginning, 10 years ago, and has done distinguished work on behalf of employers and employees in securing some sort of remedy for those who suffer through giving information to the proper authorities about wrong-doing in the workplace. I am bound to say that I am disappointed by the Minister’s response. He expressed concern about publication of the claim, the response and the settlement and so on if there was no hearing. He either did not mention or did not stress my point that the employer’s case would also be on the record. I have no doubt that, if my amendment were accepted, employers, no doubt seeking the best legal advice in the circumstances—perhaps more than they do at the moment—would ensure that their response and the wording of any settlement and so on did justice to their case. The idea that the record will merely show unproven allegations seems to me to be incorrect. I also have to say that I feel that the Minister rather ignored the evils of secrecy that currently exist. I mention that in mid-January the Financial Times carried a report that the former head of Cantor Fitzgerald’s spread-betting unit was bringing a claim under the Public Interest Disclosure Act alleging that he had been dismissed following raising concerns about legal and financial irregularities in the firm. A week later the Financial Times reported that the dispute had been settled for £15 million and that the employee had withdrawn his allegations. I do not know whether there was a serious matter costing punters and taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds or whether it was some insignificant matter that the employee had blown up out of all proportion in order to leverage the maximum compensation he could get. In other words, I have no idea what lay behind that, nor does the general public, and nor do regulators interested in financial matters in the City, yet there may be a very strong public interest reason that they should know. In the light of the Minister’s response, of course I will discuss matters with my advisers. He rightly says that I have had the benefit of discussions with the Minister for Employment, Mr Pat McFadden, who sits in another place. In the past I have had the benefit of discussions, and I have seen pronouncements on the subject by previous Ministers. In 2004, not so very long ago when employment tribunal regulations came before this Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, indicated that he was in favour of open justice. Similar words were used by Mr Gerry Sutcliffe, the noble Lord’s opposite number in the other place. Now the curtain of secrecy has come down again, and it will be a very serious matter if one cannot get over that, especially, I may note, when, in the High Court, Civil Procedure Rules enable non-parties, outsiders, to get access to the claims and the defences raised, which seems a better possibility than this almost absolute secrecy.