Employment Bill [Lords]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Employers who pay the minimum wage, however reluctantly, feel very aggrieved when a competitor down the road undercuts them on price because they are cheating the law. Employers who flout minimum wage legislation often deny other statutory rights, such as the right to paid holiday, statutory sick pay and paid maternity leave—the citizens advice bureaux have found evidence of that in the cases that they have dealt with. Concern about those rights, particularly for temporary and agency workers, lead to pressure on the Government, particularly from some Labour Back Benchers, to equalise rights with those of permanent employees. The trade unions, the Government and the CBI appear to have found a compromise on this matter, and we await legislation in this area in the next parliamentary Session so that we can scrutinise just how the Government intend to deal with it. I remain concerned that merely creating new rights will not necessarily yield an improvement for workers unless there is a practical way of enforcing them. I recognise that the Bill strengthens powers to inspect employment agencies, but, in practice, most vulnerable workers who wish to take action against exploitation must battle through the tribunal system, which, for many of them, is not a practical solution in enforcing statutory rights. The system is lengthy, stressful and legalistic, and even when it finds in favour of the employee it may fail to yield a payment to the individual. There is an obvious need for an agency that is able to work across fields to tackle issues of non-compliance in a proactive way. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington touched on the issue of information that is permitted to be exchanged in the Bill and whether there is a more proactive means of tackling non-compliance. A number of suggestions have been made, including a broad-based fair employment commission, extending the work already done on the national minimum wage. I wonder whether the Minister's winding-up speech will inform the House as to whether the Government are actively considering that possibility—I know that they have considered it in the past. The problem that many workers have with the employment tribunal system is that even if they manage to navigate it and get a ruling in their favour, which is no mean feat, many employers just fail to pay up. Citizens Advice, which works with employees exploited by rogue employers, estimates that it sees about 1,000 cases of unpaid employment awards every year. I have seen such cases in my constituency, and they are incredibly stressful for the individuals concerned. Citizens Advice estimates that across the country the level of non-payment of tribunal awards may actually be as high as one in 10 of the 13,000 monetary awards made by tribunals each year. The only route for claimants in that situation is to take action through the civil courts, but, yet again, that process is complex, time-consuming and often prohibitively expensive. For some rogue employers, the knowledge that the enforcement route is so difficult makes non-compliance a gamble worth taking, allowing them to flout the system with near impunity. The cost of the non-payment of awards to individuals is considerable. Citizens Advice estimates that of the 1,000 cases it dealt with in the past financial year, the total value of unpaid awards was in the region of £4.5 million—the sums involved for the individuals concerned are thus considerable. In recognition of that problem, the Government made some changes to the system in the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. Principally, the Act made the registration of non-payment of an award at county court automatic and free, and it also allowed enforcement action to be taken without registration. Those provisions will come into force in April 2009, when this Bill is also due to come into force. Although those changes were welcome, it is not the process of registration of non-payment at the county court that is so difficult for claimants; the problem is the process that follows, which is prohibitively expensive and complex. That brings me to my gravest concern about the omissions in the Bill. How clear people's statutory rights are and how efficient the tribunal system is are of no matter if, when the tribunal rules in favour of the claimant, they are simply unable to go the next leg of the journey to wrench the money that they are owed from their employer. The Bill is a serious missed opportunity, and the Government must find a way of giving claimants access to the fruits of the justice that they have already attained.