Ms Marguerite Bolger:

Yes. The overall aim in the Long Title, the notion of the right to increased hours and object justification is good but the Bill as drafted is simply not fit for purpose, to the point that it is at real risk of being found to be unconstitutional.

It would be better to do that through existing legislation. There is a famous line to the effect that the more law one creates, the more lawyers one brings in, which is not necessarily a good thing.

The point one must remember is that in the employment space - someone talked about identifying the problem - one of the issues is that a lot of people are not members of trade unions and they go online to inform themselves. People are much more empowered now in terms of asserting their own position. It is important to keep it as simple and uncomplex as possible. Where possible, changes, particularly those impacting in a very real way on vulnerable employees who might not have much access to support and advice, should be made in as simple a way as possible. We would go so far as to say, in truth, we feel the committee should be rethinking how it might best go about achieving the laudable aims and perhaps not just look at redrafting the Bill, which is certainly something that we think needs to be done. The committee might decide it is going to proceed by way of separate legislation, but we urge members to give serious consideration to how those aims could be effectively incorporated into existing legislation. Incidentally, by fitting the changes into existing legislation, one would also expand on the remedies and avail of orders, compensation, unfair dismissal and penalisation.