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Employment Bill [HL]

I take that to be a question—I was in a semi-recumbent position—but I agree with a lot of it. I think that my noble friend Lord Watson referred to parallel rights for agency workers. Slight differences may be desirable to stop this minority of employers abusing, as Mr Justice Elias said, their economic power over people who have no rights. When we introduced the notion of unfair dismissal to the Conservative Government, we did not say that all employers dismissed unfairly; we said that there were such cases and that workers should have a right to appeal against it. I do not think that the Minister referred to the European Commission’s Green Paper and the notion of flexicurity, which is now spattered throughout the literature of western Europe. I did not suggest that we should have the same law as France or Germany—that would be absurd. It would be as absurd as Michael Gibbons’s reference to adopting part of New Zealand law without going into the special circumstances that make it relevant to New Zealand. I say that we should have a right to promote fairness in the workplace, and that moves us to discussions on agency workers, whether that is put to a royal commission or any other inquiry. In 10 years’ time, I do not believe that agency workers in Britain will be deprived by the law of rights that are equivalent to those of permanent workers, as they are today. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 6 agreed to.