Employment Edit: 25 September 2025

Legal Updates

Employment Rights progress

Last week, the Employment Rights Bill returned to the House of Commons for consideration of amendments proposed by the House of Lords. Some significant non-government amendments were approved by the House of Lords in July, including amendments which would:

• introduce a six-month qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims, rather than making unfair dismissal a ‘day one’ right.
• make the right to a guaranteed hours contract a right to request, rather than a right to be offered, such a contract.

Both of these amendments would have represented a significant change of tack by the government, particularly the first amendment as that would have been contrary to the government’s manifesto commitment to introduce basic ‘day one’ rights (including unfair dismissal) for all employees.

Whilst there was some uncertainty and trade union concern as to whether the government’s position might have changed after the recent cabinet reshuffle (more on that in Katie Wooller’s recent blog post, which you can read here), the government quelled those concerns last week by rejecting these amendments in the House of Commons. The government’s original position – that unfair dismissal will become a ‘day one’ right and that the right to a guaranteed hours contract is a right to be offered such a contract – has therefore been reinstated pending further consideration by the House of Lords. The date for the House of Lords’ consideration of these last few points (which it is expected to concede) is not yet scheduled but we anticipate it will take place in the second half of October following the party conference season, with the Bill likely to receive Royal Assent in late October or early November.

Non-disclosure agreements

Aside from its rejection of the non-government amendments detailed above, the main update following the House of Commons’ review of the Bill last week relates to the ban on certain non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality clauses. Under the ban, which we wrote about in more detail in this article, any clause which seeks to prevent a worker from making a permitted harassment or discrimination disclosure will be void in so far as it prevents them from making that disclosure.

The original provisions setting out the detail of the ban covered disclosures relating to all types of harassment and most types of discrimination. However, the ban did not extend to disclosures relating to a failure to make reasonable adjustments or victimisation. There was not an obvious reason for this omission. The House of Commons has now rectified the first point, so that a clause would also be void to the extent that it seeks to prevent a worker from making an allegation of a failure to make reasonable adjustments. Interestingly, allegations relating to victimisation are still not covered and it remains to be seen whether this will be corrected before the Bill is passed.

Harassment – course of employment

The EAT has provided guidance on the factors that may be relevant to determining whether harassment took place ‘in the course of employment’. Although a final decision on the facts of this case is not yet known, the EAT’s decision is an important reminder of the potential for employers to be fixed with liability for harassment that takes place outside of working hours and not on employer premises and the importance of taking reasonable steps to prevent such harassment from occurring.

The claimant, who worked for a hospitality agency, arrived at the respondent’s office mistakenly believing that she was due to work a shift that day. The transport arranged by the respondent to take staff to the shift had already left. Instead, one of her colleagues (who was also not due to work that shift and had been texting the claimant the night before whilst he was working a different shift for the respondent) offered to give her a lift. Once the claimant was in his car, the colleague relayed the message that she was not in fact required to work that day and drove her to a different location before sexually harassing her.

At first instance, the tribunal concluded that the colleague was not acting in the course of his employment and so the respondent was not liable for the sexual harassment. The tribunal noted in particular that the colleague was not due to work that shift and his offer to give the claimant a lift (which the respondent was not aware of) was not arranged or sanctioned by the respondent.

On appeal, the EAT found that the tribunal had not properly analysed the question of whether the colleague’s offer of a lift was an ‘extension of work’ – the tribunal had not considered potentially relevant factors such as the colleague’s conduct prior to the incident in texting the claimant whilst he was working on a different shift, whether the colleague’s actions ought to have been considered as a course of conduct together with that earlier texting and/or the closeness of the connection between the colleague’s job and why the claimant was in the car with the colleague (including the fact that the colleague had previously driven the claimant to a job). The case has been remitted to the tribunal to reconsider the issue.

(AB v Grafters Group Ltd, trading as CSI Catering Services International)

Thought-leadership, themes and trends

Employment Rights Bill implications

For more information on the wide-ranging reforms in the Employment Rights Bill and our take on what the reforms mean for employers, don’t forget to check out our employer’s handbook below.