Clause 5
Employment Bill [Lords]
11:45 am
Pat McFadden (Minister of State (Employment Relations and Postal Affairs), Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Wolverhampton South East, Labour)
Mediation is a perfectly fair and appropriate part of the armoury. I have not heard under the wire or on the grapevine that ACAS is somehow reluctant to engage in mediation or is hostile to it. The question that has been in ACAS’s mind is the one that I raised in my opening remarks on the clause. It has a duty to carry out pre-claim conciliation, but it has no capacity to target that where it can be most effective. Therefore, that service and duty are not promoted. That situation ends up where we do not want to be, which is with less pre-claim conciliation than we would like to see.
The clause will free up ACAS and, at the same time, give it more resources. In clauses 1 to 7 we are attempting to create a system that provides the maximum chance for disputes to be resolved before they get to the door of the tribunal.