My Lords, I am delighted to welcome my noble friend Lady O’Grady, my close colleague and friend. She will continue to liven up our debates with her passion and commitment, as she has done this afternoon, and we look forward to many future contributions. We also look forward to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Bray, shortly.
As the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, said, the Government have produced a blank cheque for themselves to obliterate most of the 40 years of UK membership of the EU. Because of the skeletal nature of that Bill, we do not know what we are approving today except for some procedural issues which we will debate as this Bill goes through the House. A purge is going on: a purge of what the EU years did for this country. I happen to think that most of them did very well—plenty probably did not—but surely the resources that are going into this purge could be better deployed. By the way, perhaps we could be told how many civil servants have been transferred to work on this Bill, because it seems that a lot of people and resources are being thrown at a problem which is being totally exaggerated.
My focus today is on employment law, a topic that I am sure the Government have in their gun-sights—they have ever since the Maastricht treaty. In recent debates on EU employment law, the Minister has liked to downplay the EU influence on workers’ rights in the UK. He is right that many of the UK’s positive employment laws are homegrown: in fact, they were enacted by Labour Governments. But it is completely wrong to downplay the EU influence at the same time.
There are 60-odd laws on employment with an EU origin, but I will quickly pick out four areas that I want to focus and comment on. The first is TUPE, the regulations on transfer of undertakings. They protect workers’ terms and conditions on a change of employer; for example, under a privatisation. Is that really for the chop? Are the Government going to come forward on that issue?
The second is working time, which was a controversial issue in its day but is not any more. I draw particular attention to the provision on four weeks’ paid holiday. As the Minister has pointed out previously to the House, the average Brit might get more than that, but there are many who do not. By the way, before that was introduced, British workers were lucky to get three weeks’ paid holiday a year. Is that underpinning to be binned? It is not archaic or out of date.
The third is the requirement for a company to provide information and consult on changes in company strategy and key issues such as redundancy, and the related provisions for large multinational companies to have European works councils. When I left the European Trade Union Confederation in 2011, we had about 750 EWCs, with UK companies and workers playing a prominent part in 500. Are those very positive processes—European works councils, and information and consultation—to be consigned to the knacker’s yard in future?
Fourthly and finally, the EU took a particular interest in vulnerable workers: part-timers, fixed-term workers and agency workers. Are they now at risk?
The Government are very good at inventing problems, when they have enough problems of their own to deal with. Noble Lords will have a crucial part to play in combating that tendency, playing their part with vigour and commitment in getting a better outcome than this Bill will ever do.
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