Clause 11 - Penalties: failure to comply
Employment Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 182, in page 24, line 23, after ''record'', insert
''which is or was at the time of the request in his possession or which he is required by this Act or any regulation made under it to keep.''.
The amendment, like the next one, seeks to deal with the way in which the penalties clause, clause 11, will operate in practice. Clause 11(1)(a) says that where a person
''fails to produce any document or record, provide any information or make any return, in accordance with regulations under section 8 . . . he shall be liable to the penalties mentioned in subsection (2) below''.
That is a wide-ranging power and does not, in my view, spell out sufficiently clearly that the requirement to produce documents on pain of a financial penalty will be limited to documents specified in regulations as ones that the person being addressed is required to keep.
In other words, as is the practice with taxation and payroll matters generally, if someone knows that they must keep their records for six years, seven years or whatever it is, they must be able to produce them and can expect to be penalised if they cannot do so. In the absence of a document being specifically defined as one that must be kept, it seems unreasonably onerous on our good friends small employers—whom I cite one more time before getting to the end of today's proceedings—to include the clause with unlimited scope.