What we have learned from the King’s Speech?
The Government announced an Employment Rights Bill in the King’s Speech on 17 July, aiming to “ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights”.
The Bill, reflecting Labour’s pre-election manifesto and their ‘New Deal for Working People’, will be introduced within the first 100 days of the new parliament. The government has described the Bill as “the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation”.
Headlines of the proposed Employment Rights Bill
- Day-One Rights: Immediate rights to parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal (with provision for probationary periods).
- Statutory Sick Pay (SSP): Removing the lower earnings limit and making SSP available to all workers from day one of their sickness absence.
- Flexible Working: Making flexible working the default from day one for all workers, putting the onus on employers to accommodate flexible working “as far as is reasonable”.
- Ban on “exploitative” Zero-Hour Contracts: Ensuring workers have contracts that match their regular hours with reasonable shift change notices, ending “one-sided flexibility.”
- End Fire and Rehire: Reforming the law to provide effective remedies and replacing the previous statutory code with a strengthened version.
- Increased Protection for New Mothers: Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman within six months of returning to work after having a baby, except in specific circumstances.
- Fair Work Agency: Establishing a new body to monitor and enforce workplace rights.
- Fair Pay Agreement: Introducing this in the adult social care sector, with potential expansion to other sectors.
- School Support Staff Negotiating Body: To reinstate the SSSNB to agree national terms and conditions, career progression, and pay rates for school staff.
- Trade Union Activity: Removing “unnecessary” restrictions, including repealing the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, to promote good faith negotiation.
- Statutory Recognition: Simplifying the process to ensure workers can access unions at their workplaces.
Additional proposals
- Changes to the living wage: While no detail is currently available, in the briefing notes to the King’s Speech, the government has reiterated its commitment to updating the living wage to accommodate for increases in the cost of living. The government has indicated that this will include the removal of the current age bands.
- Skills England Bill: This bill aims to simplify the skills system in England and Wales, transferring the work of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to Skills England, and renaming the apprenticeship levy to the Growth and Skills Levy. The intention is to streamline and refocus the skills system, prioritising development in the workplace.
- Equality (Race and Disability) Bill: This Bill intends to introduce mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for employers with over 250 employees. This will echo the current gender pay reporting and equal pay legislation.
Conclusion
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has welcomed the proposals from the new Government, emphasising the need for “thorough consultation with employers, and potentially compromise in places”. We echo this sentiment, particularly the need to engage with employers to ensure any changes have a positive impact on workplace practices and employment opportunities. The proposals are currently light on detail and we are sure that, as we learn more over the coming months, we will be able to comment further on how employers might wish to navigate these potentially transformative changes.
