Lord Marland:
First, I would like to make a couple of points on training, which is of great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green. We all agree that training is absolutely fundamental and his knowledge, expertise and commitment to it are very high. This Government have spent a huge amount of money on training, on mentoring and on various other things. We must be getting something right because a million new jobs have been taken on board in the past two years in the private sector. We do not have a load of people running away from employment. It demonstrates clearly that, with unemployment going down and employment in the private sector going up, the policies that we have created to foster employment are working and seem to be working satisfactorily. I do not think that this is a block to training or ongoing employment. The noble Lord would have been right to point it out had this Government not been keen that we should do it.
Let us be fair. All of us are keen that employers should meet their obligations to their employees. That is what we are all here for. None of us is here saying that we want to withdraw this and that. We are arguing around the margins. Throughout this, as I have also argued, ultimately it is up to the tribunal. As we have said, and as the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, has rightly said, a tribunal is the last place where we want things to go to. We want them to have gone to ACAS beforehand, as we have previously agreed, and we want the employer and the employee to have sorted it out by themselves. I am compelled by the point made by the noble Baroness.
Ultimately it is the tribunal that will be making the decision if it gets to that point. We hope that it does not. It will ultimately determine whether there are aggravating features and we cannot be too prescriptive about aggravating features. Paragraphs 86 and 87 on page 18 make it clear how we see this. With that, I rest my case, other than to say that these tribunals have it in their power to take these issues into account. They can uplift the award by 25% should they so wish and we would obviously urge them to do so because we all want to see the right and fair things for employees and employers. With that I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.