UK employment law round-up: July 2024

Labour's proposed Employment Rights bill – what you need to know now  

The King’s Speech on 17 July 2024 outlined Labour's proposed legislative agenda, and contained several measures around employment. The most prominent of these changes is the seemingly imminent 'first 100 days' Employment Rights bill that will be introduced before 13 October 2024. 

In the proposals for this bill alone, there are between 10 and 20 measures that could potentially impact the people profession. Headline grabbers such as making unfair dismissal a day-one right, banning 'exploitative' zero hours contracts and creating a new state enforcement body called the Fair Work Agency...to name but a few. 

There is also the Draft Equality (Race and Disability) bill which aims to extend the equal pay regime to cover race and disability and introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for employers with at least 250 people.

Labour has said that it intends to 'hit the ground running’ when it comes to protecting workers rights. Hopefully, most of these proposals will undergo a full consultation. Indeed, the CIPD urges the new government to use the first 100 days as a space to demonstrate its commitment to partnership with industry. 

For HR professionals concerned with the breadth of proposed change, while the government are keen to introduce such a bill to parliament before the end of Labour's first 100 days (which ends on 13 October 2024), it is likely that the majority of these measures will be brought in following primary legislation so there will be time before employment law changes commence.

CIPD members can keep up to date with these proposals on the employment law timetable. 

Fire and rehire – confused?

Fire and rehire is ill-advised but not illegal. From 18 July 2024, a new statutory code of practice (introduced by the previous government) is in effect in England, Scotland and Wales.    

Despite the compliance with the code now being law, Labour used the King’s Speech to reinforce its commitment to place stronger restrictions on 'fire and rehire' and 'fire and replace', except where there is genuinely no alternative. Indeed, the pledge from Labour forms part of the ‘first 100 days’ Employment Rights bill and it plans to replace the new code with a stronger version.   

Until we hear more on this matter the code still stands. The CIPD provides a guide on how to avoid the practice and how to adhere to the code should you need to invoke fire and rehire as a last resort. 

EHRC consultation on sexual harassment technical guidance  

The EHRC published its consultation on the technical guidance around the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 just days after the General Election. The act imposes a positive duty on employers to take steps to prevent the sexual harassment of their employees.   

The other notable change in the consultation guidance is the element of ‘third party sexual harassment’, which was removed under the previous government. In the EHRC consultation, this matter has been brought back into the draft proposals, meaning that employers may have a duty to attempt to prevent sexual harassment by both employees and third parties. It reads "Therefore, if an employer does not take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers by third parties, the preventative duty will be breached." 

The law commences from 26 October 2024. From this point, tribunals will have the power to uplift any compensation by up to 25% when employers are found in breach.  

The consultation on the EHRC technical guidance closes on 6 August 2024.  

The final technical guidance from this consultation will be published just weeks before the law comes into effect. If you wish to prepare ahead of time, the CIPD provides a guide for members on tackling sexual harassment. 

And finally  

If you are curious what happens to the laws that were ‘nearly ready to go’ but not mentioned by Labour, then read on...    

For acts that have received royal assent, and are uncontroversial, it is likely that commencement regulations will be made. Of course, Labour could repeal them or just leave them on the statute book without bringing them into force, but for acts with all-party support, this would be unlikely.   

Come back to the employment law timetable for updates are we get them.