Clause 7 - funding of employers' liabilities
Employment Bill
6:00 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
It is amendment No. 175 that I intend to address substantively. Amendments Nos. 173 and 176 cover territory that we have debated and it would not be appropriate to go round that loop again. The same applies to amendment No. 181.
Amendment No. 175 is slightly different and would amend clause 8(2). Clause 8(1) provides that the
''Secretary of State may make regulations with respect to the payment . . . of statutory paternity pay and statutory adoption pay.''
Clause 8(2) states:
''Regulations under subsection (1) may, in particular, include provision''.
I have always thought that those subsections were strange. Having said that the Secretary of State has power to make regulations, what is the point in then saying that those regulations ''may, in particular'' include provision but in no way limit the discretion of the Secretary of State to do what paragraphs (a) to (d) provide? The purpose is not clear, unless it is to signal an intention to do something. It seems that if the Secretary of State makes regulations under subsection (1)
''with respect to the payment by employers of statutory paternity pay'',
employers will have an absolute requirement to know what records they are required to keep. We shall discuss situations in which people fail to produce records that they are supposed to keep.
If regulations are made under clause 8(1), I suggest that the question is not that the Secretary of State or the regulations may include provision for records to be kept, but that they must include provision for records to be kept. The amendment suggests that clause 8(2) should state that if regulations are made under subsection (1) they shall ''in particular, include provision'' and so on. It would then be clear that if subsection (1) is used, subsection (2) will provide detailed requirements in regulations about the records that are to be kept. Everyone would then know exactly where they stand.