The Employment Rights Bill is unlikely to become law until at least the autumn as it remains subject to amendments in the House of Lords.
The Bill is now at report stage in the House, and two sessions have so far been allocated for this: on 14 July and 16 July. The House rises for its summer recess on 24 July. At report stage, more amendments can be made to the measures and votes taken.
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Committee stage, with its line-by-line examination of the Bill’s clauses, was completed after 11 sessions on Tuesday this week.
Before being passed, the Bill will also need its third reading in the House, which is not likely to take place until September at the earliest. No time in the Lords calendar has yet been allocated to this.
At the third reading, further amendments can be made (although on nothing that has already been debated), which could require more debating time in the Commons – time that hasn’t as yet been allocated before the recess in late July.
Employment law expert Darren Newman said in a LinkedIn post that he expected the Bill to receive Royal Assent at the end of September or early October.
Newman added that, once passed and made law, this was “when the fun starts” because the government has said it would start consulting on regulations needed to implement some of the key measures.
“That is when we will discover how much the government has thought through the detail of what it is proposing and we can start to estimate when individual measures will actually come into effect. The next year or so is going to be a big one for employment law,” said Newman.
When will the Employment Rights Bill become law?
At the recent Acas conference, employment rights minister Justin Madders said there was no strict timetable for implementation of the Bill, adding that much of the work still needed to be done was in creating codes of practice and framing secondary legislation.
Earlier this month, he told delegates at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) annual conference that the government would issue a road map later this year.
While in the House of Lords, peers have raised concerns that key provisions – including bans on zero-hour contracts and so-called fire and rehire practices – would be unworkable. Amendments have been tabled to change work experience rules, the definition of harassment, statutory paternity pay, pay and leave for serious childhood illness, protection for political belief and affiliation, and whistleblowing.
Ministers have promised extensive consultation on regulations to put the zero-hour ban and new protections against unfair dismissal into effect.
The detailed provisions for many of the new rights included in the Bill have been subject to separate consultation, but many business leaders – such as CBI chairman Rupert Soames – have said ministers have not shifted enough and have failed to listen to concerns.
The Conservative Party has pledged to scrap the Employment Rights Bill if it returns to government, although a detailed YouGov MRP poll, published today, has suggested a general election would currently result in a hung parliament.
Reform UK would increase their representation from five MPs to 271. Labour would have 178 MPs (-233), the Liberal Democrats would have 81 (+9), while the Tories would only have 46 (-75).
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