I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I think that people can make up their own minds about the ideology and ethos of the report.
Amendment 80 deals with fees and their impact on ACAS early conciliation. In Committee we pressed amendments to assist applicants and to ensure that ACAS was properly resourced. The amendment covers a similar concern that we have about the new deposit orders. We welcome the new role for compulsory early conciliation by ACAS, but we are concerned that the insertion of the fees system after the ACAS conciliation process will dilute the effectiveness of conciliation and put employees in the untenable position of having to settle their dispute or find the necessary £1,200 to take it beyond the ACAS system.
Ed Sweeney, the chair of ACAS—I have mentioned this already—said during his evidence to the Committee that
“we do not know whether charging for tribunals would have an adverse effect on either employers or employees…Will there be less, from an employer’s point of view, of engaging in conciliation”?––[Official Report, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Public Bill Committee, 19 June 2012; c. 68, Q146.]
The Minister herself has admitted that there could be an issue and will deal with that after the system is up and running. Despite being pressed time and again on this issue in Committee, she has refused to produce an impact assessment on the impact of ACAS conciliation when low-paid and vulnerable workers will have to find a fee to enter the employment tribunal system.
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Amendment 81 merely asks the Government to delete clause 12, because it is an ill-thought-out clause on settlement agreements, which are the key dividing point between us. The Government are trying to mix protected conversations with the current without prejudice rules, while adding a touch of Beecroft no-fault dismissal. Let me be totally clear: the reason why Opposition Members are against the clause is that it is bad for business.
Current compromise agreements can be used when there is a dispute between employee and employer. Indeed, they are already widely used—Thompsons Solicitors alone used nearly 6,000 of them last year. Under the new rules, employers will be able to offer an employee a sum of money if they agree to leave employment and sign a new settlement agreement. Any conversations or offers made with a view to terminating employment by agreement will be treated as confidential and will not be able to be considered by an employment tribunal in an unfair dismissal case, unless the employer has behaved
improperly. The amount of satellite litigation in the potential attempts to define what improper behaviour is will grind the employment tribunal to a halt.
This also applies to cases involving impropriety with regards to discrimination. If someone who wants to have an honest and open conversation about age uses a settlement agreement, they will end up in an employment tribunal as a result of age discrimination legislation. Essentially, the Government will allow employers to make minimal offers to workers to leave, then gag those very same workers from even mentioning that at an employment tribunal.
The new process may even undermine this country’s redundancy regime. At present, employers must follow a proper procedure in order to dismiss under-performing workers. To challenge the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon, I have run my own business and have dismissed employees, but every single working day I left my house to go to work to look after the biggest assets in my business, namely the employees. The new process will encourage bad practices. It will send a signal to employers that there is no longer a need to follow a formal disciplinary process and that they can try to push people out of the organisation by offering them a sum of money. That sounds like Adrian Beecroft’s report by the back door.