Employment Rights Act 1996 (Itemised Pay Statement) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-04-16
Topic: Labor
Oliver Michael Robert Eden (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Monks, and to all other noble Lords for the very constructive approach they have taken to this order. I trust that this constructive approach will be noticed by the House and will be continued throughout the week on all business that comes before us I hope to deal with some of the questions that have been raised by noble Lords. However, I start off by correcting some of my earlier words to save myself making a Personal Statement tomorrow. In my opening remarks I said that some 30,000 workers did not receive a payslip. The paragraph I read out stated: "Although a significant number of employers already provide their workers with a payslip, up to 30,000 workers do not receive one". I should have said that, "up to 300,000 do not receive one". They will now receive one. I just want the House to be aware: for "30,000", please read "300,000" Perhaps I may deal briefly with some of the questions put by noble Lords. First, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, asked whether it might be appropriate to have uniform payslips. That sounds very attractive, but this order is designed to ensure convergence with best practice, and I think that it would be right to leave employers with a degree of flexibility in how they continue to provide that. However, I note what he said I also noted what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, had to say about common commencement dates. He has criticised me in the past, so I was grateful that he spotted that on this occasion we have observed the rules on having a common commencement date, although he regretted that it would not be until April 2019. We could have gone for the other common convergence date in 2018, but that would have given employers considerably less time to prepare for this matter, and we therefore decided that 2019 would be better The noble Lord, Lord Fox, asked whether hourly rates could be included in payslips. We listened to arguments for including even greater detail on payslips, which is what this would amount to. I accept that he makes a perfectly valid point and we notice that UNISON provided input on this to the Government. However, we tested the idea of requiring employers to include a full disaggregation of hours, including those on employees’ payslips, but the costs of doing so for employers would be high and, we reckoned, disproportionate. However, again, I note the arguments put forward by the noble Lord The noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Stevenson, made a number of comments about the difficulties faced by independent contractors involving the definitions of "employee" and "worker". We all know the difficulties of managing the distinction between "employee" and "self-employed"—a matter that has only recently gone to the Supreme Court and one that we have discussed in this House. This goes slightly beyond what we are discussing today. I accept that these are very difficult matters and obviously they will be taken into account in continuing to deal with the Taylor review. I certainly remember from my Bar exams some 40 years ago the difficulties around the definitions of "self-employed" and "employee". The fact that it is going to the Supreme Court indicates that it is a very difficult matter. We also know that, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said when talking about the gig economy, times are changing. Again, these are difficult issues—but we have the Taylor review, which we will continue to consider I am grateful for all the remarks that have been made about this order and its relevance, and I think that I have had a degree of support from around the House. As I said, long may that continue. I commend the order to the House.