Derek McDowell (Labour)

The difficulty will arise with large companies. The minimum number of employees we are talking about is 50. I do not have a problem with the canteen meetings that Senator White described but it will not be practical to hold them in larger undertakings. It will not be possible to hold a fireside meeting with several thousand employees of Microsoft. The normal way such a company would choose to consult with its employees would be on a pyramid basis, which involves an employee's line manager talking to him or her if there is a particular problem affecting his or her part of the employment. My difficulty with this is that it is not very transparent; it is almost on a one-to-one basis. It is not possible to find out what has been said, the process is not very prescriptive and it is impossible to ascertain if everyone is getting the same information or standard of information. This is why it is so much easier to provide that it should be done on a collective or representative basis that we can set out.

There is not much point in providing for a representative structure, as we do elsewhere in the Bill, if we do not insist that it be invoked for the purposes of consultation. I am pleased by the Minister of State's assurance that it will not be sufficient to simply send an e-mail and tell employees to contact the human resources manager if they have any views on it. It would not surprise me if some companies thought this was adequate by way of consultation. It is important that it is put on the record of this House and the other House that this is insufficient. I ask the Minister of State to go further because, at the very least, it is necessary that there be at least two people on a representative basis within four walls talking about a particular issue and that there be a mechanism of talking and listening which does not simply involve exchanging e-mails.