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Employment Bill [HL]

Briefly, we will obviously be discussing ACAS later on when we come to the code of practice. At this point, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bach, for finally getting a letter to us dealing with some of the questions raised at Second Reading; it would be useful to mention this on the first amendment. I note that the noble Lord kindly sent his letter to my noble friend Lady Wilcox on 31 January; I received my copy this morning. Sadly, my noble friend has not yet received her copy, but that does not matter because she has seen mine. No doubt the noble Lord will want to chase that up in due course. Again, we will be dealing with this when we get to the code. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that he would do his utmost to make the draft ACAS code available to the Committee. I was intrigued that he used those words because, having said that he would do his utmost, he then attached it to the end of the letter. It might have been easier if he actually said in the letter that he had included it, because I thought that it was still not there. I am interested in what the noble Baroness says about her amendment. It seems to expand the role of ACAS somewhat unnecessarily. I do not see why we cannot leave things as they are; leaving it to the employers and employees to negotiate what they wish in terms of providing the appropriate procedures for the resolution of disputes at work.