The Minister’s point exemplifies exactly what I anticipated might happen. I was just about to say that the second line of defence from the Government, after proclaiming that they would abstain from using the powers that they are so keen to give themselves, is that, in any case, they would have to bring any change to the House for a vote. Indeed, that is what
has occurred just now. We are all aware of the difference between passing a measure through the ordinary legislative procedure, with the amount of scrutiny that that receives, and passing a measure through the type of approach that the Minister has mentioned just now. I regret that this appears to be part of a piece, with a broader trend to exempt new policies from the parliamentary scrutiny that they deserve, and which the British public have rightly come to expect from its elected representatives.
Arrangements for those facing redundancy are not, and should not be, a matter of purely technocratic interest. The Government’s failure to raise the tax-free threshold for statutory redundancy pay has meant that it has already lost much of its original real value. That perhaps explains why, when the Government consulted on this issue, there was no conclusive evidence in the consultation either of widespread abuse in this area or of a clamour for a reduction in the threshold.
We are also asking the Government to reconsider their plans on injury to feelings payments as part of termination payments.