Clause 33 - Non-completion of statutory procedure: exclusion of claims
Employment Bill
11:30 am
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
Interestingly, the Trades Union Congress brief on the Bill expresses the view that the Government would table amendments to clause 33. I will be fascinated to learn whether any hon. Members can throw light on what those might have been. I have no information, but I studied the provisional selection list and the blue pages of the Order Paper on Monday morning in eager anticipation of seeing Government amendments. If the Minister intends to table amendments to the clause at a later stage, it would be courteous of him to tell the Committee. It would be odd to consider a clause that the Government already anticipate that they will amend.
Amendment No. 63 will be familiar to those members of the Committee who have been awake throughout the proceedings. It would replace the word ''may'' with ''shall'' in the first line of the clause, and so make it clear that the Secretary of State will use regulation-making powers to make provision for the purpose of excluding claims in cases where statutory procedure has not been complied with. I understand the preference for using the permissive term in the architecture of the Bill, so this is a probing amendment to ensure that the Minister will use its powers. Without wanting to labour a point that has been mentioned many times, the Bill is a package of measures, some of which will help employees to enforce their rights, others of which will help employers to deal with vexatious or unreasonable claims, or with claims that had not complied with procedures that would have dealt with them better than an application to a tribunal.
To put the point bluntly, if there are six clauses, all of which say that the Secretary of State may do something, three of which will greatly benefit the employees and three of which will benefit the employers, there would be a problem if the Secretary of State implemented the three favourable to one side and did not implement the three favourable to the other side. That is why I seek an assurance from the Minister that he intends to use the powers to make provision for excluding a claim where procedures have not been followed.
Amendment No. 59 would mean that the Secretary of State's regulation excluding a claim where procedures had not been followed would have to apply to all the jurisdictions listed in schedule 3, and not to a cherry-picked selection. It may or may not be right for the Secretary of State to select some jurisdictions as appropriate for exclusion of claims where procedure has not been followed, and for others not to be appropriate. If the Committee is to scrutinise the Bill and understand what its intention, the Minister has to come clean about which jurisdictions he would and would not intend to apply the power to. I look forward to hearing the Minister's response, and in particular, to hearing whether he can throw any light on the suggestion in the TUC brief, that there will be Government amendments.