Employment Bill [HL]

It is a great pleasure to be with the Grand Committee. I am here as a result of paragraph 7.52, ““Admissibility of amendments””, of the Companion. As the Committee knows, when noble Lords want to put down an amendment a procedure from the Companion is involved. It says that the Clerks, who serve us extremely well, will advise on the admissibility or otherwise of amendments. In this case, the advice from the Clerks was that the amendments proposed by my noble friends Lord Wedderburn and Lady Turner fell outside the scope of the Bill and, therefore, should not be put forward. Yesterday, I discussed this with my noble friend Lord Wedderburn and I am very grateful for his time. Quite reasonably, under the rules, my noble friends are allowed to ask, none the less, for these amendments to be printed and tabled, which they are before this Committee. However, the Companion goes on to say that it falls to the Leader of the House to come to the Committee and to invite it to follow our practice; that is, where advice has been clearly given that this is inadmissible in the terms of the Bill, the Committee should say that it does not wish to see the amendments taken forward. I do this in the spirit of saying to my noble friends that I completely understand the importance of the issues that are being raised. I know that my noble friends Lord Bach and Lord Jones of Birmingham would be very pleased to discuss the issues and I invite my noble friends to discuss with the noble Baroness the Chief Whip the possibility of further debate and discussion on this. So I take nothing away from the importance of the issues. Having taken a large number of Bills through your Lordships’ House, I have always felt that it is very important to make sure that what we have before us is relevant to the legislation being debated. In this case, the clear advice from the Clerks is that it would not be in these circumstances. I hope my noble friends accept that; but, if not, I must invite the Committee to endorse our Clerks and to endorse what I have just said.