Employment Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady talks as though there are absolutes of flexibility. There are no absolutes. The Conservative Government left a relatively flexible economy in place, but it has steadily become less flexible under this Labour Government. The first aspect of the Bill that I wish to discuss is the clauses dealing with dispute resolution. Clause 1 repeals clauses and schedules of the Government's Employment Act 2002 and removes the statutory procedures for resolving disputes in the workplace in their entirety. We support that conceptually, but it should be appreciated that that is a desperately embarrassing U-turn for the Government, who doggedly defended the procedures when the provisions in the 2002 Act were initially examined by the Standing Committee. It would serve as a useful reminder of the cost of that change of heart, both in terms of the House's time and taxpayers' money, if I ran through some of the warnings that my hon. Friends gave the Government about the existing statutory procedures, and highlighted some of the Government's reasons, now proven to be flawed, for implementing that legislation. In debate in the Standing Committee, on 13 December 2001, my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) quoted a number of parties' misgivings about the statutory procedures. The Engineering Employers Federation argued that the"““the proposals are unclear, complicated and might prove counter productive.””—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 13 December 2001; c. 139.]" The Law Society said that they would ““undermine the ACAS…Code.”” ACAS has been in existence since 1975, and it is dedicated to preventing and resolving employment disputes. When the Employment Act 2002 was passed nearly 30 years later, it made reference to the ACAS code but did not implement it in full. That was clearly a mistake, and it has led to much confusion for both employers and employees.