UK employment law round-up: October 2024

Employment Rights Bill 

The Employment Rights Bill arrived on 10 October 2024 in 150 pages. At the time of writing, the government has launched four consultations, issued 11 factsheets and published 23 impact assessments...it is reasonable to say that matters are progressing at pace. 

Since July 2024, the CIPD Public Policy team has been actively engaging with the government through informal and formal discussions on the bill and we will continue to champion the interests of the profession on all matters. 

There will, of course, be a lot of information on this bill, and the broader plan to Make Work Pay. We intend to provide updates as follows: 

• The tracker of law changes monitors the proposed changes. It details the  evolution of proposals and provides links to current CIPD content that will be useful if you want to prepare ahead of any potential change. It also offers insights from the CIPD Public Policy team into the areas of likely reform.  
• The employment law timetable catalogues any formal legal stage of law changes.  

People professionals should note that the current open consultations on Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), zero hours contracts, fire and rehire and trade unions have short consultation periods, only running until the start of December 2024. If you wish to have your say, please follow the links in the employment tracker.  

New sexual harassment law...now set to change? 

Since the 26 October 2024, under the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023, employers have been accountable to the new obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of their employees; including sexual harassment by third parties.

Many organisations have been making changes in advance of this update – running additional risk assessments, identifying training needs and redelivering guidance.  

This law still stands. Employers are subject to potential enforcement action from the EHRC and/or tribunal uplifts of up to 25% for non-compliance with the law and supporting Technical Guidance.  

But there’s more... 

A further development of this sexual harassment obligation was mentioned in the Employment Rights Bill – with the proposal to update the obligation to “all reasonable steps”.  

The word “all” is key here. “All” mirrors section 109(4) of the Equality Act 2010, meaning that an employer would be vicariously liable for sexual harassment, and potentially third-party sexual harassment, unless it can demonstrate that it took all reasonable steps to prevent it.  

The difference between ‘reasonable steps’ and ‘all reasonable steps’ could, for example, be: 

• Reasonable steps: An employer performing sexual harassment risk assessments and delivering training and reissuing guidance on this to teams in a regular schedule. 
• All reasonable steps: An employer not considering that this ‘regular schedule’ may need to flex for the changing size or needs of the workforce. For example, conducting a mass recruitment round but then waiting two months for the ‘regular’ calendar of sexual harassment training to come around. 

For now, practitioners know that sexual harassment is never permissible and therefore carrying out risk assessments to identify all levels of risk – and acting on these outcomes – is advisable. 

Modern slavery  

The suitability of the current Modern Slavery Act 2015 is back in the spotlight this month. The act is widely recognised as in need of updating. Many state that the act, despite being world-leading at the time of publication, has now fallen behind internationally. The former government mandated an independent review of the act in 2019, and the subsequent Modern Slavery (Amendment) Bill was introduced to the House of Lords in 2021, but has since stalled.  

In January 2024 the House of Lords Modern Slavery Act 2015 Committee formed to report on the effectiveness and impact of the act.  

The new report from the committee was published in October. For the HR sector, two notable points stand out: 

• A call to move compliance monitoring away from the Home Office and bring it under a dedicated body “to ensure stronger compliance with relevant labour rights and standards, which should act as a single point of contact for labour exploitation across all sectors” 
• A call for organisations that meet the reporting threshold to be accountable to investigating modern slavery in their supply chains (a step further than producing audits and assessments of supply chains) 

The recommendations are published in the same month that the reporting restrictions were lifted on the case of modern slavery in McDonald’s supply chain. The case, summarised in a BBC investigation, highlighted a series of important matters. For employers, the case put a spotlight on the need for business' to interrogate whether organisational systems are suitable to identify potential risk. For example, in the case, the exploited individuals had little to no English and yet were completing online tests in English and there were multiple wage packets being paid into the same, or similarly-named bank accounts (not the account of the worker). 

Members can access the key facts on identifying modern slavery risk, and we will keep you updated on any changes in legislation in this area.   

Finally... 

The editorial team at People Management have highlighted notable tribunal rulings from the month: 

In Mrs R Davies v Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust (2019), an administrator was compensated £27,000 after an office failed to make reasonable adjustments to her noise sensitivity (which followed a brain haemorrhage).  

In Mrs K Hibbert v The Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police (2020) a police officer was found to have been constructively dismissed for running a ‘side hustle’ while off sick, despite transparently communicating with the employer on the matter.  

You can stay up-to-date with all case law and legislative changes that impact the people profession in the employment law timetable, and across the law pages. Plus, monitor the progress of the Employment Rights Bill in the dedicated tracker.