My Lords, I will make two very brief interventions on this. There is not much left to say, following the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Davies of Brixton, but it is important just to note a couple of things.
First, from these Benches, we contest the assumption of the Government that implementing the 2019 judgment to the CJEU, known as the CCOO case, would be
“disproportionate, particularly while the economy is recovering from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the impacts of war in Ukraine”.
I can completely understand the concern about the effect of the pandemic. Having been health spokesperson during the first three years of it, I really understand why that is the case. But I struggle to understand exactly what the effect of the war in Ukraine is on record keeping by employers. I would be grateful if the Minister could give me some guidance on that, because I do not see a logic.
Secondly, the Government keep talking about using artificial intelligence to reduce bureaucracy. Many companies already use such systems. The hand-written timekeeping systems that I used in my youth are long gone. Even the spreadsheets of a decade ago are gone. One now fills in something that feeds straight back into a database that runs the organisation. It takes far more information than just the 15 minutes of work, or whatever it is, on a particular project, and it is then used to assess the progress of the company and the progress of individuals—whether some of that is right or not is another matter, but it is there. It seems to me that a Government who are arguing that we should be focusing on using AI are—by saying, “Actually, we’re assuming there is a massive burden”—not keeping up with what is happening in the workplace at the moment. So can the Minister explain this massive burden, in the light of the way that records are currently kept by most organisations?
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Finally on this particular point, I say thank you very much for the three impact assessments; far too many SIs do not have them, and at least we do have the impact assessment here. It sets out:
“Option 0: Do Nothing, i.e. allow continued legal uncertainty about record keeping obligations”.
The answer is, “Well, we don’t want the uncertainty so we’re just going to legislate to remove it”. That seems a rather large jump, so can the Minister can explain exactly why that is justified, particularly in light of the comments I have just made about reducing bureaucracy?
I have an even briefer comment on the TUPE regulations. It was a pleasure to follow the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Davies. I am not surprised that the trade unions are concerned that this will undermine the role of unions in the workplace. From these Benches, we say that, at times of TUPE, whether there is a small or a large number of people in a firm, that is the exact point at which they need support and advice from people who are not their employer but who understand the roles that are being considered to be TUPE-ed. I wonder whether the Minister might comment on that.
The impact assessment and the Explanatory Memorandum go into some detail in explaining why they will now add large firms proposing to TUPE fewer than 10 employees. Is there any assessment of whether firms might game the system by doing TUPEs in small numbers to be able to avoid having to use this system?
Other than that, I echo the points made by both the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Davies, on concerns about the reduction of workers’ rights more generally, which I believe we need to be concerned about.