Employment Edit: 14 August 2025

Legal Updates

Employment Rights Bill handbook

Last month, several important government-backed amendments to the Employment Rights Bill were approved by the House of Lords. These included significant changes to the original ‘fire and rehire’ provisions, a new right to pregnancy loss bereavement leave, and a ban on the use of non-disclosure agreements to prevent disclosures relating to harassment and discrimination. You can read more about these changes here.

We have updated our employer’s handbook to reflect these amendments and now await the next stage of Parliament’s review of the Bill in September. Check out the latest version of our handbook below for the latest position. If you are concerned about how the ERB will affect your organisation and would like to arrange a planning session to discuss approach, please do get in touch with your usual Burges Salmon contact or email [email protected].

Failure to prevent fraud

A new corporate criminal offence of ‘failure to prevent fraud’ comes into force on 1 September 2025. In broad terms, a large organisation can be guilty of the offence if an ‘associate’ commits a fraud offence intending to benefit the organisation or its clients. The term ‘associate’ includes employees and anyone who performs services for or on behalf of the organisation. Where a relevant fraud has been committed, an organisation will have a complete defence if it had in place ‘reasonable’ procedures to prevent fraud.

With just a few weeks left for organisations to get ready for its implementation, Carlene Nicol considers the new offence and explores what may be considered to be ‘reasonable’ procedures.

Race discrimination

The Court of Appeal has upheld a finding of direct race discrimination where the employer had failed at tribunal to show that race was not the reason for the difference in treatment.

The claimant, who is of Indian origin, was subject to a disciplinary investigation which involved only vague allegations of misconduct. The disciplinary process ultimately concluded that there was no case to answer. In arguing that she had been discriminated against on the grounds of her race, the claimant alleged that a disproportionately high number of BAME senior managers in her division had been disciplined. She also alleged that white colleagues were not treated in the same way, relying in particular on the respondent’s failure to investigate alleged safeguarding failings of two white senior managers.

The tribunal held that the claimant had successfully made out that she had been treated less favourably when the respondent instigated a disciplinary process against her. The tribunal concluded that there was nothing of substance to start a disciplinary investigation. This shifted the burden of proof to the respondent to show that there was a non-discriminatory reason for the treatment. The tribunal also noted that the respondent had been slow to move to formal measures where allegations were raised against white employees and had failed to disclose relevant evidence, including notes of the investigation interviews. Taking these and other factors into account, the tribunal held that the respondent had failed to establish a non-discriminatory reason for the less favourable treatment. The Court of Appeal upheld these findings, concluding that it was open to the tribunal to draw an inference from the failure to disclose the relevant evidence and to conclude that the comparators were sufficiently similar to the claimant to mean that their different treatment supported an inference of discrimination.

(Leicester City Council v Parmar)

Thought-leadership, themes and trends

Workplace investigations – common pitfalls

With workplace investigations becoming increasingly commonplace (not to mention complex) we share below the first in a series of articles we are writing for People Management where we look at the various different aspects of the process. Employment partner, Katie Russell, who heads our workplace investigations team, identifies some common employer pitfalls when handling investigations and shares her thoughts on how to steer clear of them.

Give the gift of HR

Last week, City AM reported that the government is contemplating introducing a voucher scheme that would enable small businesses to access specialist HR advice to help them navigate the changes flowing from the Employment Rights Bill. In his blog, James Leeman explores what this potential scheme tells us about the Bill and the crucial role that HR and People team professionals are set to play in the coming months and years.