Ms Wendy Gray:

I thank the Deputy. With regard to the remote work policy employers must have, when drafting the Bill, the thinking was that it can be tricky to legislate to exempt whole sectors or professions because we could inadvertently omit somebody who could be facilitated. For example, we might have chosen to exempt manufacturing. While machine operators cannot work remotely, there may be administrative or clerical people who could easily be facilitated. In the case of schools, people who do the accounts or secretarial work might easily be facilitated. That is the reason we are not legislating to rule out and exempt whole sectors or businesses. If an employer, such as the example of a hairdresser the Deputy mentioned or a butcher, has examined all roles, the policy may simply state that all the roles in the organisation have been examined and that remote work cannot be facilitated. It could be as simple as that. The plan is to provide templates for companies to work through in drafting their policies, assisting them so that they do not have the burden of trying to come up with things themselves. We will assist companies and promote templates for how to write a policy, including policies that state the business cannot facilitate remote working. We will mitigate that burden on employers.

With regard to the Deputy's queries on hybrid working, we absolutely envisage that many employers and employees will want a mix rather than a full five days at home. Hybrid working will absolutely be there. We envisage employers' remote working policies covering how hybrid working is to be dealt with. Some employers may not want 100% remote working while others may. That will be part of their own policies. It will also be part of the guidelines in the code of practice that will be developed to support the understanding of the rights and obligations involved.

On the issue of revocation, this is part of the normal terms and conditions of employment and will also be set out in the remote working policy. The employer may not have desks or something like that and may say that he needs two or three weeks' notice if somebody is choosing to come back into the workplace permanently.

Again, we will be providing guidelines that should be set out easily for workers to understand where their rights are in giving up the remote work scenario. That will be all set out to assist employees in the policy as well.

On equipment, the employer is responsible for providing the correct equipment for an employee to carry out their role. Similarly, with health and safety, that obligation on employers should not change. I am not sure that many employers would be happy if someone would choose to use their own private laptop or something, so I think many employers would want to provide the appropriate protections and security protections on a laptop or whatever. We would envisage that there would be no change on the applications to the employer to support the worker to carry out his work properly.