Employment Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 24AA: 24AA: After Clause 13, insert the following new Clause— ““Voluntary workers In the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 (c. 39), in section 44 (voluntary workers), after subsection (1) insert— ““(1A) For the purposes of subsection (1)(a) above, expenses which— (a) are incurred in order to enable the worker to perform his duties, (b) are reasonably so incurred, and (c) are not accommodation expenses, are to be regarded as actually incurred in the performance of his duties.”””” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 24AA amends Section 44 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998 to broaden the type of expenses that can be reimbursed to voluntary workers without triggering eligibility for the minimum wage. I am very proud that I can stand here and move this amendment, because in my former life I was involved in the hospice movement in various ways, and I saw this happen on the ground often in my home city of Birmingham. To have the chance to make a difference today is a privilege. The amendment will mean that, as well as being able to reimburse expenses incurred in the performance of duties, voluntary organisations will be able, should they wish, to reimburse expenses necessary to enable the voluntary worker to perform the duties. That does not normally apply in employee situations, although, in the eyes of the Revenue, for years it has applied in self-employed situations. Voluntary workers are a special class of employee. They are exempt from the minimum wage. They can be employed only by charities, voluntary organisations, associated fund-raising bodies or statutory bodies. For brevity, therefore, although the amendment applies to that broad nature of voluntary worker, I shall refer to them as voluntary organisations to cover all of them. During the development of the national minimum wage legislation, it was recognised that an exemption was necessary for voluntary workers to ensure the successful continued operation of the voluntary sector. The exemption in Section 44 of the 1998 Act means that voluntary workers can continue to work for free without being eligible for the minimum wage, and that voluntary organisations in turn can continue to benefit from that dedication. Section 44 specifies that no monetary payments can be made to a voluntary worker apart from the reimbursement of expenses actually incurred in the performance of the worker’s duties. That was to ensure that voluntary workers would not be out of pocket in doing the job that they had volunteered for, and that only relevant expenses could be repaid. In that way jobs could not emerge in the voluntary sector which, through the reimbursement of spurious expenses paid at sub-minimum wage levels, could exploit the most vulnerable, for obvious reasons. However, following the Government’s consultation on the national minimum wage and voluntary workers last year, we heard compelling arguments from voluntary organisations that there were expenses which voluntary workers necessarily incurred in order to perform their duties but which were not actually incurred in the performance of those duties. The Government feel that those should similarly be reimbursable without bringing minimum wage entitlement. We recognise that voluntary workers should not suffer financially and end up in a negative position simply as a result of the good work that they do. We agree that voluntary organisations should have the ability to reimburse those expenses—to render the voluntary worker in a neutral position without such reimbursement meaning that they fall into the national minimum wage basket. Those expenses could be, for instance, for childcare or care for a dependent relative such as the elderly while voluntary workers are at their place of voluntary work; for travel between home and the place of voluntary work; for meals taken during breaks in the voluntary day; and for any specialist clothing and equipment that they may need, such as protective gloves or boots. To fall within the scope of the exemption, such an expense would have to meet three tests. First, the expense must actually—not ““may””—be incurred or reasonably estimated to have been incurred. That is already the position for the expenses currently permissible under Section 44, and means that the voluntary worker will have to have made the outlay already and should not be reimbursed more than that specific outlay. The reimbursement of any expense will never bring a voluntary worker into any sort of profit. Secondly, the expense must be necessary to enable the worker to perform their duties. For example, if a voluntary worker claims for the cost of work boots—protective boots—but in fact only undertakes office duties, that would not be allowed to fall into the exemption. Thirdly, the expense must be reasonably incurred. It would not be reasonable for a voluntary worker to incur the expense of a new car merely to travel to the place of work, and to have that expense totally reimbursed. A car would of course provide a significant benefit which could be used beyond the voluntary work. I hope that that is obvious. However, it would be reasonable for the voluntary worker to incur the cost of public transport to travel to the place of work and have that fall within the protective net. Members of the Committee may also have noticed that accommodation expenses are not permitted by the new clause. That maintains the current position that voluntary organisations cannot reimburse rent to voluntary workers. Instead, Section 44 permits voluntary organisations to provide accommodation directly to the voluntary worker in such cases as needed. Amendment No. 28A enables the provision to commence two months after Royal Assent. Voluntary organisations such as the Association of Volunteer Managers have urged us to make the change as swiftly as possible, as it is having real effect in various areas of the voluntary sector. We are working with voluntary organisations to produce guidance which will include these changes, should they become part of the legislation. Amendment No. 30 changes the Long Title, which I am sure will be welcomed as great news in every part of the Committee, to indicate that the Bill now covers voluntary workers. I commend these additions to the Bill. If the consultation on the national minimum wage and voluntary workers had yielded the response that we have subsequently had on this issue, I believe that such provisions would have been here from the outset, frankly, as they open up the accessibility and fairness of voluntary work by removing some financial barriers for parents, carers and those who would struggle to afford to participate. This, in turn, should allow more people to gain from the benefits that voluntary work brings to the individual and the community. So often in my former life I saw cases where voluntary organisations could not employ certain people because they were going to be caught by national minimum wage legislation, for which the 1998 Act was never intended. The community suffered, which is surely not the intention of anyone in the Committee. I beg to move.