Guides
An employer’s handbook to the Employment Rights Bill and beyond
6 Nov 2024
3 min read
Guides
In this handbook, we keep a track of the government’s programme of employment law reforms in the Employment Rights Bill and beyond and consider what the changes mean for employers
In its ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’, the Labour party detailed an ambitious and wide-ranging set of employment law proposals. The Employment Rights Bill, which the government issued within its first 100 days in power, is the first significant step of Labour making good on its promise to deliver ‘the biggest upgrade to rights at work in a generation’. With wide-ranging provisions that will deliver a host of new individual and collective rights as well as a more prominent role for trade unions, the Bill will have far-reaching consequences for employers when it becomes law.
To help employers navigate the road ahead, we have put together a user-friendly handbook where we look at each of the key, proposed reforms and consider what they mean for employers. Now updated to reflect amendments made during the House of Commons debates on the Bill, we will continue to update the handbook regularly over the coming months and years as the reforms begin to take effect.
Download the handbook hereOur handbook at a glance
In this handbook, you will find information, in an easy-to-read format, about each of the key proposed reforms, including the current legal position, details of the proposed changes and our commentary on the impact for employers.
Looking ahead
The Bill is currently progressing through Parliament and some of its provisions have been amended during this process. We have updated the handbook to reflect the amendments made during the House of Commons debates on the Bill. For more information on some of the key changes made during that stage, check out our update here.
Additional (and necessary) detail to many of the reforms in the Bill will be issued as separate regulations. These regulations will be subject to consultation prior to issue – indeed consultations on several issues have already been completed. This means that, even though the Bill is expected to become law in summer 2025, many of the new rights will not come into force until much later – the government has said that the majority of reforms will take effect no earlier than 2026 and that changes to the unfair dismissal regime, which will see employees awarded protection from day one of employment, will not come into force until autumn 2026 at the earliest.
Whilst the Bill is the vehicle for many of the government’s proposed reforms, it does not include all of them. The government intends to bring forward a wide range of other reforms through other mechanisms including through additional primary legislation, regulations and codes of practice. Some of these measures will be alongside the Bill and others will be in the longer term.
Contact Us
If you would like to discuss any of the proposed reforms contained in the Employment Rights Bill or other anticipated changes, contact Luke Bowery or your usual Burges Salmon representative from our wider Employment team.
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