Introduction
Thank you very much for this opportunity to celebrate the remarkable legacy of Thompsons Solicitors, a firm that has been a beacon of justice for over a century.
One of the features of my new life in government is that you are often give a very clear steer about what you have to talk about, so it was a particular pleasure to be invited to give a lecture with no title, and no particular ask as to what I should talk about at all – so let me thank you all for accepting an invitation to a lecture in which I suspect you have no idea at all about what I am about to say.
In the first days of government, the Prime Minister, in an article entitled ‘Our Government of Service’, set out how the first obligation of government is to provide security to those that they serve. By security, Keir, was not limiting himself to the military defence of our country but also security in the wider sense – drawing on his own life experience, Keir described seeing the security that his parents derived from having their own home, a pebble-dashed semi in Oxted – the security and dignity that comes with a key to your own home. But Keir went on to say this “It’s not just security at home that matters, but security at work. That’s why we will level-up rights at work to deliver security and dignity for working people. It’s what they deserve.”
The right to security is a fundamental human right, recognised in all the international human rights treaties which the UK has chosen to sign up to.
It also underpins many of the Government’s missions in its Plan for Change, and that Plan for Change is premised on the central insight that effective protection of people’s right to security often requires positive state action to protect the vulnerable against the privately powerful. Security at work is a principle that the has been fought for by generations [Redacted political content] – they have time and time again taken on vested interests to secure basic rights for working people, often with the help of lawyers such as Thompsons.
So, what I would like to do tonight is to seize this moment when the human right to security is central to the Government’s priorities and talk about the role that law can play in improving the security of working people in the workplace – how it plays a role as a standard setter for societal expectations of what is acceptable, what is not – what requires protection, and what does not.
And I would also like to talk about the role of lawyers in ensuing that protective laws are applied effectively and consistently- as well as ensuring that those who break the law are held to account and those workers who suffer as a result are adequately compensated – and I want to exemplify this by taking as my central theme our current efforts to bring the Employment Rights Bill into law in the context of attempts by reforming governments of the past to bring in radical change for the benefit of the people of this country.
This is, I hope both a timely theme and appropriate venue for such a talk.
It’s timely because the Employment Rights Bill is currently winding its way through Parliament. This is I believe landmark legislation that will significantly advance the human right to security by fundamentally changing workers protections.
Yet it is also legislation that faces sustained and alarmist criticism from sectors of society and our opponents in parliament who claim that (at best) it will curtail the UK’s competitiveness and (at worst) will bring the economy to a juddering halt. What I would like to do in part tonight is put these criticisms in their historical context – to show that these voices have always been present whenever reforming governments have sought to introduce progressive policies to make the lives of working people more secure but that these voices have consistently been shown to be misplaced.
I also think that the Thompson’s lecture is the perfect venue to talk about how Government intends to change working life for the better. Founded in 1921 by the visionary civil rights lawyer, Harry Thompson (who also once lived in Oxted for which I thank Wikipedia), this firm has always championed the rights of the injured and mistreated. The firm is an inspiring illustration of how the law can be used as a powerful tool to protect and uplift working people.
Driven by a profound commitment to social justice since its inception, Harry Thompson’s vision was clear: to create a legal practice that would serve as a shield for those who faced adversity and injustice. It has achieved this in large part through working in partnership with trade unions. The history of labour law in this country, the history of the establishment of the fundamental rights of labour to organise itself, the history of protections in the workplace and the history of the creation of employment rights, is the history of our trade union movement. That history is a source of immense national pride and Thompsons have realised a shared vision through partnership in tireless advocacy, groundbreaking legal victories, and unwavering dedication to the cause of justice and fairness.
My own connections with Thompsons extend back decades to my early years at the Bar. When I started at the Bar, instructions from Thompsons were a form of golden ticket to not only legally interesting cases but ones that made real differences to people’s lives.
To just pick two examples of cases that will always stay with me – Mick Antoniw, then a partner in the Cardiff office, now an Member of the Senedd and former Counsel General of Wales, instructed me to work with him on a tragic case of a 17 year old, Daniel Dennis, who on his very first day of work was sent up to work on a roof of a warehouse in Cwmbran without training or safety equipment. Daniel fell to his death and Thompsons worked tirelessly to ensure justice for his family, overcoming a deeply disappointing and unfair inquest result, successfully judicially reviewing a CPS decision not to prosecute his employer leading eventually to his conviction for manslaughter of that employer. Working in partnership with a bereaved family, Thompsons took on the company, took on the coronial system, took on the CPS in a successful fight for justice and it was a privilege to be part of it.
In another case, I was instructed by Thompsons to represent the family of a young council workers, Ryan Preece and Robert Simpson, who had been sent down into the sewers in Crymlyn Burrows near Swansea to unblock drains only to be overcome and killed by fumes. A long inquest and subsequent civil claims including a group action showed that the cause of death was exposure to a covered-up spill from a nearby chemical factory – a coroner’s jury after many days returned an unlawful killing verdict and the company were forced to pay compensation, and Local Authority employers pleaded guilty to offences under the Health & Safety Act. It was a long, hard legal battle fought for the seemingly powerless against large vested interests who at one stage would have appeared invincible – the type of work for which Thompsons is famed and no doubt of which Harry Thomspon would have been proud. This was in the late 1990’s and I was instructed by a young, brilliant and utterly committed solicitor at Thompsons by the name of Jo Stevens, now a cabinet colleague and Secretary of State for Wales – applying those same qualities in her new job to the benefit of all of us.
Enough of the reminiscing – let me turn to the substance of tonight’s talk.
The Employment Rights Bill –
As we know all too well, more than four million people in the UK are in precarious employment, with over one million employed on zero-hours contracts. Millions more lack access to proper sick pay schemes, leaving them vulnerable and unsupported in times of need.
Wage growth under the previous government was worse than any other period since the 1920s. This stagnation has had a profound impact on our collective living standards, making it harder for working families to make ends meet.
The government is now taking significant steps to address these issues through the introduction of new workers’ rights laws via the Employment Rights Bill, as I said, currently being debated in Parliament.
This plan to make people’s lives less precarious, by making work pay, was developed in collaboration with both unions and business and as our Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said, on the Bill’s introduction, this is the biggest upgrade to rights at work for a generation, boosting pay and productivity with employment laws fit for a modern economy.
It is a long, hugely ambitious Bill whose impact reaches across many aspects of working life and working conditions, so I will not dwell on every aspect but allow me to highlight some particular measures:
As an aside, time and time again, there are some people saying we aren’t doing anything to help real people. As I was typing away at this speech, I reminded myself of how excellent this Bill is.
First are a raft of measures designed to provide far greater guarantees for working people – addressing the scourge of the lack of security that so many in our society feel from zero hours contracts, lack of guaranteed hours, lack of day-one rights etc, standards that most would consider reflect basic decency. The Bill will:
- introduce new rights to guaranteed hours, reasonable notice of shifts and compensation payments for shift cancellation, and for movement and curtailment at short notice for those on zero and other specified contracts
- provide a right to request flexible working, remove the waiting period and lower earnings limit which apply in relation to statutory sick pay and strengthen protections in relation to tips and gratuities.
Second the Bill will address the economic inequalities faced by women at work, manifested through higher levels of poverty and lack of financial independence, which evidence shows are linked to another area of government priority namely addressing violence against women and girls.
The Bill:
- provides a right to parental leave from day one of employment. It introduces provisions to require employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment at work and to prevent harassment at work by third parties.
- It’ll make sure whistleblowing protections are extended to apply to disclosures relating to sexual harassment.
- It introduces workplace support for women going through menopause
Third, the Bill will modernise trade union legislation giving trade unions greater freedom to organise, represent and negotiate on behalf of their workers. This includes:
- Repealing the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023, a punitive piece of legislation that set trade unionists’ rights back decades.
- Strengthening trade unions’ right of access, including providing for digital access, allowing unions to operate more effectively.
- Simplifying the trade union recognition process, including providing better access arrangements for unions and dealing more effectively with unfair practices.
- Introducing new rights and protections for trade unions representatives.
- And finally introducing a duty for employers to inform workers of their right to join a trade union. This is vital, because employers should not withhold information from workers that grants them greater protection- which joining a union does
Fourth, is a point of critical importance – though under-reported – is the focus on enforcement of these new rights. The Bill will establish the Fair Work Agency, which will bring together the enforcement of domestic agency rules, the National Minimum Wage, licensing of gangmasters, and action against serious labour exploitation. It will also take on additional functions such as the enforcement of holiday pay. Its new powers will allow it to investigate, inspect and take action against businesses that are flouting the law. These include powers to investigate a wider range of cases of labour abuse, issue penalties, and bring cases to the employment tribunal on the behalf of workers.
If delivered in full, this bill will benefit over 10 million workers, including many on low incomes. This is not just about improving individual lives; it’s about creating a fairer, more just society where all of us has the opportunity to thrive, and the privately powerful cannot exploit the vulnerable.
The reaction to the Bill has been for the most part extremely positive. YouGov polling showed that 68% of the country were in favour of banning zero hours contract, 65% want to see the right to work flexible hours expanded and 62% are in favour of employment protections from day one. The reaction from business was also supportive – for example the Chief Executive of Centrica said this: “This isn’t just the right thing to do – its a foundation for the high growth, high skill economy the UK needs. While no one business has all the answers, our experience [at Centrica] show that our business thrives when our people thrive – so stronger rights for workers means stronger businesses, and that’s a win for everyone.”
The Pushback
Yet – although this Bill is self-evidently for the benefit of millions of working people, the reaction to it in some quarters has taken an often apocalyptic/feverish tone.
A recent newspaper headline trivialised the significance of this Bill in ordinary workers’ lives, declaring that the Government believes a “Pub ‘banter ban’ is needed so anxious staff can feel safe at work […] and warned it could let workers ‘sue employers for hurt feelings’.”
This, it turns out, refers to the Bill’s requirement that employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment of their staff by third parties.
An opposition peer claimed that the “Workers’ rights bill will bring back ‘chaos of the 1970s’.” The Institute for Economic Affairs says that the Bill would stifle economic growth while hurting the very workers the Bill intends to protect. This is scaremongering, again seeking to distract from the benefits that workers stand to gain.
There has been some concern about the costs involved and of course I recognise that is entirely legitimate for business leaders to seek detail on what changes mean for them.
But the answer to this, as very many businesses big and small appreciate, is that improving worker well-being, reducing workplace conflict, and creating a more level playing field for good employers has the effect of increasing productivity – and we consider will lead to benefits worth billions of pounds a year. To give an insight on this, the Bill as I have described seeks to make work a safer and better place of work for women – obviously vitally important in itself but with huge potential impact on our growth agenda in the context of evidence showing that an increase in employment of women by 5% adds £125billion a year to the economy. That type of benefit is why as TUC research shows there’s strong backing among managers for better workers’ rights – a clear majority believe they will improve workforce retention, profits and productivity.
But despite the values in this Bill, despite the evidence of positive impact on working people’s lives and on productivity –– there are those on the opposite benches in parliament who continue to claim that the Bill will be a drag on the economy.
Then: resisting progressive legislation
As a history graduate, I have a natural bias in believing that contemporary problems benefit from analysis in their historical context. Here, it is not simply interesting but instructive to see how the current criticisms of the Bill mirror attacks on earlier reforms to the improve the lives of working people. That is because it demonstrates that not simply were past reforms not nearly as damaging as the doomsayers predicted, not simply did they markedly improve the lives of millions of working people, but they were actually stimulants rather than drags on the economy.
The history of social reform, legislation aiming to give ordinary people the most basic of rights, is littered with examples of doomsaying – that they would crash the economy or give rise to any number of social ills. Criticism in almost exactly the same terms as today and equally as misplaced.
Let me start with an Act that predates the formation of the Labour Party, indeed was passed by the conservative government of Lord Salisbury, namely the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1897 a landmark British law that established the principle of employer liability for workplace injuries irrespective of fault and mandated insurance in place to pay for compensation.
The 1897 Act covered industrial workers, including those in railways, mining, quarrying, factory work, and laundry work – work in which safety standards were minimal and the rate of injuries high – at a time in which injured workers and their families had no meaningful support from the state – indeed it was still 30 years still before the abolition of the poor house .
And yet, the introduction of the legislation met opposition painting a dystopian picture of the consequences of compensating workers irrespective of fault – in particular an argument was advanced that it would lead to a massive drop in production because it was feared workers would deliberately chose to injure themselves in order to receive compensation. The Mining Association particularly objected to being, in their own words ‘selected for an experiment in legislation of the most novel and revolutionary character’.
The argument made by one Geoffrey Drage MP, to understand the level of outrage in the House of Commons. Drage was a former secretary of the Royal Commission on Labour Relations and in the parliamentary debate listed issues that had arisen when a similar bill was passed in German. In short, Drage believed that to give a right of compensation would lead to endless false claims from workers and the massive reduction in productivity – in other words, workers were simply not to be trusted with basic rights.
First, Drage said there had been “a remarkable increase in the number of industrial accidents in Germany” as “the working men showed increased carelessness, and, what was far more serious, an amount of negligence and malingering hitherto absent”.
Second, he argued that “The workman in Germany had shown no scruples in preying on the [insurance] funds.” Drage suggested these new insurance schemes created an “extreme resentment” amongst the working classes if there were any delays or refusals for payouts, and in a lie echoed by the IEA today that “in the long run, the expense would be borne by the working classes, either as wage-earners, or as consumers, or as taxpayers.”
Finally, Drage warned “that employers would not subscribe to charitable purposes so liberally as before” and that “a scheme of this kind would press heavily on the small employer, who was gradually being crushed out of existence.”
In summary, the London Evening News (11/05/1897) recorded Geoffrey Drage’s views as denouncing the Bill “as a measure destructive of social peace in the industrial world.” All of this, scaremongering and hyperbole in response to the proposal that injured workers should have a right to compensation in an economy with no social safety nets beyond the Poor House.
The Trade Boards Act 1909 represented a state-driven effort to control low pay, the first for virtually a century. It is a fitting Act to recall on VE day because it was introduced by the then President of the Board of Trade, Winston Churchill who when introducing the Bill said “it is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions”. That’s 1909. The Bill established trade boards with the authority to set legally enforceable minimum wages.
These boards consisted of representatives from workers, employers, and appointed government members – somewhat revolutionary when one considers that the Act came into force only a few decades after collective bargaining and strike action were finally decriminalised.
So trenchant was the criticism of the Boards and the introduction of a power to set minimum wages that the Government set up the Cave Commission at which some employers argued that the Boards were the source of huge economic damage – as the Labour MP Rhys Davies noted in the House the arguments were akin to those where employers in the cotton mills of Lancashire used to say, nearly a century ago, that if you took away children of eight and ten years of age from the textile industry, that industry could not possibly be carried on at a profit, and the statements made by employers, particularly in the distributing and allied domestic trades, before this Cave Commission, are just of that type which are made from age to age by bad employers in all parts of the world
By way of aside, then, as now, immigrants received much of the blame for stifling economic opportunities for domestic workers. In what was not, I suggest a high point for a trade union leader, John Burnett’s report on London’s East End, stated that Jewish immigrants, through their competition for work, reduced native labour to the verge of destitution. I pause to reflect that very few contemporary political moments do not have political and historical resonance.
More surprising still for contemporary tastes is the opposition mounted to the Equal Pay Act 1970, ground-breaking legislation that I am sure for many of us here will be forever associated by the late, great Labour giant, Barbara Castle.
It came into full effect in 1975, laying the groundwork for further advancements in gender equality and a precursor to the more comprehensive Equality Act 2010. The notion that women should receive equal rights in the workplace was not simply opposed by many, but was portrayed as a threat to very existence of ordered society.
I quote directly from Martin Maddan MP in the Commons:
If we invest highly in the training of all women, will there then be pressure on those women to continue their careers rather than to have children?” … “There is evidence that working mothers, especially those working full-time, may become less sensitive to the emotional and psychological, as well as the physical, needs of their children… Today’’s grandmothers are used to looking after children all day. What will be the position with tomorrow’’s grannies who have not devoted themselves to looking after children?
Similarly, the implementation of minimum wage legislation in the 1990s was fiercely contested by employers who predicted economic ruin and job losses.
A choice headline from the Daily Express in May 1998 shouted:
Bosses wage war” – Jobs will be lost if a national minimum wage is brought in, bosses warned yesterday. Small firms groups said staff in pubs, petrol stations and the textile industry would face lay-offs. Industry chiefs and Tory MPs also warned that the figure of £3.60 an hour, proposed by the Low Pay Commission, could stoke inflation.
The CBI argued until 1995 that a minimum wage – even if low – would create major problems for wage structures in a wide range of companies and destroy opportunities. That hasn’t aged well.
[Redacted political content]
So, despite dire warnings, the minimum wage has proven to be a success, raising living standards without the predicted negative impacts on employment. And it was a great moment last month to be part of a Government where we were able to raise the national minimum wage by £1,400 a year for a full-time eligible worker and a record cash increase for young workers and apprentices.
Takeaways
This is no more than a light touch review that can never aspire to even begin to do justice to the two hundred plus years of the modern struggle to establish basic labour rights in this country, the right to a union, the right to collective bargaining, the right to fair wages, the right to be safe in the workplace, the right not to be discriminated against in the workplace – and indeed the associated struggles to create, through law, the welfare state to support those unable to work through reasons of injury, infirmity, age or in times of economic hardship. At each turn these have been opposed, as now, by forces that sought to paint them, as existential threats to the economy and or our way of life, developments now accepted as having been of enormous benefit to the wealth as well as health of the nation.
Let me then turn to this history of success in face of fierce opposition and seek to draw out five observations about the nature of law in the protection of working people, about the role of lawyers and finally to outline the political moral underpinnings of what the current Bill represents in the context of what has come before it.
My first observation is how law, specifically in the form of legislation can radically change for the better what we as a society consider to be acceptable behaviour – it lifts us up and sets standards. Of course, there will always be a wide variety of reason why societal attitudes change over time but legislation is most certainly capable of playing its role. Here the struggles of the trade union movement, realised in the last 100 years most materially by Labour governments, has been to legislate in order to entrench into society standards of behaviour that at the time may have seen radical, indeed revolutionary but shortly thereafter were accepted as little more basic rights.
The coming into force of these laws has of itself helped inform and change societies conception of what is right and what is wrong in the workplace. In the classroom this would be defined as a normative theory of law – how legal frameworks help set standards – it’s real world application has led to a fundamental change about how we perceive the nature of work and the value we attach to labour and the protections that working people must be afforded as part of their rights.
My second observation is how this system of laws has brought enormous practical benefits to ordinary working people – drastically improving the quality of life for millions.
It is at once inspiring and instructive to remind ourselves of the breadth of the ambition of those who brought in these fundamental transformations – the changes wrought by Unions, politicians and campaigners from fighting for the rights of their members, to ensure that people earned enough for their labour to live in dignity, to ensure equality in the workplace, to ensure that that workplaces were safe – these are measures that have had a profoundly positive impact on the quality of life for millions.
To give one example, The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, was brought in the wake of the Aberfan disaster, introduced by Michael Foot. It’s success can be measured in a very simple metric, namely the lives and limbs saved: since 1974 occupational deaths and injuries have decreased by over 75%. Considering economic and occupational changes, fatalities at work have declined from 2.9 per 100,000 workers in 1974 to 0.42 per 100,000 workers in 2023-24. The simple fact is that legislation saved lives, limbs, sight and hearing.
Of course there will always be push back – there will be those who argue that health and safety laws place an unnecessary burden on the economy. Yet, having acted for victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster I was struck how what seemed like a growing trend amongst some sectors of society to mock and ridicule ‘health & safety’ came to an abrupt stop on the night of 14 June 2017. It provides a cruel, stark but unanswerable example of the importance of compliance with health and safety laws and its measured by the converse – the tragic consequences measured in human life when we do not.
My third observation is the essential role played by lawyers such as Thompsons and many others in the enforcement of this legislative framework and the work that they do to ensure accountability for victims of violations of those laws. A good legal framework is only half the battle – without legal professionals dedicated to ensuring through public law that laws are upheld and rights defended, without legal professionals ensuring through private law that those injured by failures to comply with obligations are adequately compensated then those laws risk becoming ineffective. A right without a remedy is no right at all – and the essential job of labour lawyers, employment lawyers and personal injury lawyers for generations has been to ensure that working people’s hard won legislative gains are capable of vindication and a determined effort to ensure that common law keeps step – the work of these lawyers is an essential part of the system.
My fourth observation draws from the history of the struggle to secure rights for working people and the determination to deliver notwithstanding the opposition faced. That spirit of determination, to effect real positive change in the lives of millions of people in this country, is what drives this Government to place the Employment Rights Bill at the centre of our agenda of change. Of course we want to make the Bill as good as possible, of course we are not as arrogant to think that every criticism of the Bill during its passage through Parliament has to be dismissed out of hand – but nobody should underestimate on our single minded determination to deliver, borne out of a belief that the changes we seek to bring about will make a real difference to the lives of those we serve.
None of this I stress should be taken in any sense as being anti-business. To the contrary, under Keir gone are the days in which there was a binary choice between labour and business.
I passionately believe that good employers recognise, even as matter of enlightened self-interest, that laws which protect the fundamental rights of their workforce are a source of good and lead to greater not less economic productivity. Similarly, I think it is well understood in the labour movement that this country needs an environment in which business flourish, our economy grows and investment flows. Thus we are advancing this package of ambitious change in the Bill at the same time as, and complimentary to, the ongoing work of Rachel Reeves and Jonny Reynolds to boost economic growth and attract investment – in a week we got two trade deals and a Bank of England cut in interest rates. The country has an incredible offer to investors – we are a stable democracy at a time of global uncertainty, we have one of the most advanced economies in the world and are well placed to lead in a changing world not least in AI and green technology, whilst at the same time, as our intervention in Scunthorpe demonstrated, a will not hesitate to act to protect vital parts of our infrastructure.
A workforce whose fundamental rights are protected by law is a boon to an economy – an economy in which people feel valued, in which legal protections reflect the values in which they are held, is far more likely to be a strong and resilient economy.
My fifth and final observation is to reflect upon the motivation and principles that lie behind our determination to introduce this Bill which brings me back to the central importance for this Government of the fundamental right to security for the people of this country. The measures are of course about securing increased justice and equality in the workplace but underlying this is a profound belief in the dignity of every human being and an understanding that the role of the State is to ensure that each person is accorded dignity in all aspects of their lives, including where necessary by regulating private power, not least in the realm of employment.
Our belief in the dignity of each person is also mirrored in our anger at how so many are mistreated in the workplace disdainfully, patronisingly, without respect, belittled and bullied. This belief in the dignity of all drives our determination to ensure that every person is afforded the opportunity to work, that we have the opportunity to realise our potential at work, that we are employed in decent, safe workplaces, that we are protected from exploitation and discrimination and that we are paid a fair wage. We go further – this Bill is designed to empower people to flourish in our workplaces. It recognises that the workplace is one of the most important domains in British citizens’ lives, where we will spend most of our time, and we should be able to flourish in this setting as we do with our families and in our communities.
The promotion and protection of the dignity of all of us lies at the heart of what the labour and trade union movement fought for decade upon decade.
As the ILO Constitution puts it, we have “a right to pursue our material well being and spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.”
[Redacted political content]
So, to draw all these points together–- A belief in the dignity of all, a commitment to giving practical effect to the human right to security, a sense of boiling anger when those around us are not treated with dignity and respect – and a steely determination to do something about it.
These are the qualities that no doubt inspired Harry Thompson to create this great firm, that inspired the Trade Union and labour movement to effect fundamental change in society and will continue to be a guiding force for this Labour government, this government of service, in creating the change that this country needs.
