Employment Bill [HL]

I support the amendment, to which I have put my name, because it seemed to me that my noble friend Lord Wedderburn had identified what you might call a gap in procedures and attempted to fill it. It struck me, when I first heard about it, that this would be a particular help in many instances to migrant workers who are here legally, but who have no idea whether the employment contract that they are employed under is technically legal. They would not know about PAYE deductions or national insurance deductions; they would simply be very glad to have the job and take the payment when they got it. However, if they later face dismissal which they think is unfair, they might find that they are not deemed to have a legal contract and, therefore, would not be entitled to sue for unfair dismissal, even though they might have been dealt with very unfairly. The amendment makes it clear that if there has been connivance by the employee in illegality, that should count against the case, and it makes it clear that it would not be equitable to grant him any remedy. In other words, if they knew what was going on and decided not to say anything about it and not to pay the insurance contributions or have deductions made, that would be a sort of connivance, and they would not then be entitled to a remedy. There are very many cases when people simply do not know. If they are employed on that sort of basis, it may be that, when they want to sue for unfair dismissal because they feel that they have been unfairly dismissed, they do not have a case because they do not know the situation, whereas perhaps a worker who was born here and lived here does. Therefore, we hope that this wording will commend itself to the Government and that they will be prepared to accept what we have said.