Alexander Ehmann: Employment law has been the most significant area of regulatory concern among our Members, certainly for as long as I have been working for the institute. There is an awful lot of evidence to suggest that the UK has moved backwards over the past few years in its competitiveness in this area. The World Bank’s “Doing Business” report in 2010—the last time that it evaluated labour market flexibility—saw the UK down in 35th when in 2007 it was in 17th.

Specifically on the measures on employment law that are in the Bill, we would say that on issues such as settlement agreements, which we may well get on to, 60% of our members say that the changes would relieve a burden on their business. Importantly, about a quarter of them say that they would be more inclined to take on staff as a result of these changes. The critical point that I want to convey to the Committee is that a lot of the measures that are discussed around dismissal and tribunal changes are actually measures that slightly counterintuitively incentivise employment on the part of employers. They are not measures to try to reduce the size of work forces or to arbitrarily dismiss staff.