Clause 1
Employment Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley, Liberal Democrat)
My party, too, is sympathetic to the attempt to minimise the amount of paperwork involved in the process and to resolve issues on an informal basis at an early stage where possible. However, an eternal difficulty is that people are informed at the final stage—whatever that may be—of how much paperwork they should retain at the early stages, once they have had the experience. I have seen this matter from many different sides, in various circumstances as a representative of employees in internal disputes and as an employer. The steps to try to resolve things through written submissions rather than a hearing are crucial. The Government should be aware that whatever the final conclusions are, they will inform the early stages.
Although it is good news that the Government have recognised that things have become over-formal, unless serious efforts are made to ensure that the issues of dispute are identified at an earlier stage, we will end up with the same problem in the same circumstances. So this is generally a good direction, recognising the errors that were made previously, but it remains a challenging area to resolve.