Ms Patricia King:

Ms McElwee and I know that codes of practice, even with statutory provision, are just that. All codes of practice mean is that if a person takes a case, cites the code of practice and the adjudicator in the WRC looks at the code of practice, they may very well tell the employer that it has not complied with it. When it suits the employer, it will argue that it did not have to because it is only a code of practice. That is the answer to that. Codes of practice fall on their feet. They do not stand up to robust opposition. That is the reality. If they did, they would be used a lot more than they are currently. In a situation where we need to have a legislation that states that a worker can request remote working and that the refusal has to be on objective grounds, if it is left freefall and open for an employer to pick whatever ground it likes and that cannot be appealed, it is of no meaningful assistance to the worker who wants to achieve home working. I understand that Ms McElwee has gone into great detail on some of the issues that might arise. However, some of the issues that she cited might arise whether a person works from home or not. For example, if a person is a professional working in a legal company and has to read papers for the next morning, he or she could take them home to read at night and could inadvertently leave them on a table. A person does not have to be working from home for breaches of confidentiality to occur. There are lots of circumstances around everybody's work that can present those sort of risks.