My Lords, I will make a couple of quick points on this. I keep hearing this tale about how power lies with the employers. Noble Lords talk about large companies that have expensive and well
staffed HR departments and lawyers who work on this full time. I am afraid that the SME world that I live in a lot of the time is not like that. There, you cannot afford it. When you employ one, two, three, four or even up to 25 people, you cannot afford expensive HR advice every time you twitch, move, open your mouth or anything. That is what we have got down to because people say that the power lies with the employer. It does not.
We are seeing more and more vexatious demands over discrimination. In employment law, cases of sex, race, disability and age discrimination immediately mean unlimited liability. That means that your house and everything goes. If you are not a company—you may be a sole trader as a small employer—you will lose everything and be out in the street. Everything will be taken from you. If you incorporate, you are now told you are doing it for tax avoidance or evasion purposes and the press have a go at you for that instead. So in what way are you supposed to protect yourself?
The power may lie with the large employers. I do not know. I am not in that rich and rarefied world of some of the Silks who sit here and can afford that. As a small businessman I, and people like me, cannot afford the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. It would be wonderful if we could because we might get some protection as employers. For once, he might not represent the employee. I fear that it would normally be the other way round and we know who would win when someone was confronted with his incisive way of thinking.
All I want to tell noble Lords is that the world is not how some people see it. There are everyday problems out there and they limit employment. At the moment, half the people in the country are employed by microbusinesses and small and medium-sized enterprises of up to 250 people—there are very few in the bracket above 25 to 40 and below 250. Those are the people who need protection from a lot of this and we are not giving that in employment law as it stands today. Whatever noble Lords say, it is not there.
The charity world is another case. I know a charity that needed to rejig some things and wanted to bring in someone with greater expertise. It therefore needed another someone to move on to something else. It thought that it had reached a compromise agreement with him but then this chap did not sign it. When it came to the point of the tenth or eleventh month, when the charity thought it was all about to happen, he said, “I have not signed it yet and I have just gone to see some lawyers”. He is now trying to plead all the discriminations. I cannot see how he can, and nor can anyone else, but the cost of fighting that will be phenomenal. The fear of everyone, particularly the trustees of the charity—who are terrified—is their exposed position if he wins because the case can be proceeded against them. That is the bit that noble Lords forget about. They live in a dream world where we have a fair legal system, tribunals think fairly and lawyers always act in the best interests of law and not of these people. It is not like that. Therefore, I would like to see Clause 27 come in so that at least some people might negotiate a different arrangement. It is there for small businesses not large ones.