Employment Edit: 31 July 2025

Legal Updates

Employment Rights Bill – latest news

The Employment Rights Bill continues to progress through Parliament with the House of Lords’ report stage coming to an end last week. As the House of Lords has now started its summer recess, the next stage, the third reading, is scheduled for 3 September 2025. In our last edition of Edit, we covered the key changes that were accepted by the House of Lords. To read more about the three key areas of government amendment, take a look at our briefing here.

One of the government amendments accepted by the House of Lords was the introduction of new restrictions on non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) where allegations of harassment or discrimination have been raised. This amendment sets out the potential for the Secretary of State to issue regulations specifying certain ‘excepted agreements’ which would not be subject to the NDA ban. We now have a bit more of an idea of what types of agreements may be excepted, following the publication of an impact assessment into the proposal to ban NDAs of this type. The impact assessment indicates that the narrow list of excepted agreements will include an option enabling the worker to request confidentiality. At this stage, it is unclear how the parties would be required to evidence that the worker requested the confidentiality, but further details are expected to be included in draft regulations in due course.

Unpaid internships

In its Plan to Make Work Pay (published last year prior to the general election), the Labour Party indicated that it would ban unpaid internships except where they are part of an education or training course. As a first step towards introducing such a ban, the government recently launched a call for evidence on unpaid internships.

In the call for evidence, which closes on 9 October 2025, the government is looking to understand the circumstances in which interns are either unpaid or are paid below the National Minimum Wage. It also seeks views on the reasons for this and on whether to define the term ‘intern’ in legislation. With these factors in mind, the call for evidence takes a broad approach and requests information about unpaid internships, work trials, voluntary work, volunteering and work shadowing. Organisations that currently offer any form of unpaid work might want to consider responding to the call for evidence to ensure that the government is aware of the circumstances in which unpaid schemes are operated. The government plans to respond to the call for evidence in January/February 2026.

Changes to the Immigration Rules

As we covered in a recent edition of Edit, significant changes came into force this month which affect employers who sponsor workers in the UK. From 22 July 2025, salary requirements for various workers (including those applying for Skilled Worker visas) increased and the number of roles that are eligible for sponsorship decreased. Hannah Malone and Hayley Ainsworth have written a blog post exploring these changes in more detail.

Workwell pilots

The eagle-eyed amongst you may remember us reporting last summer on the launch of ‘WorkWell’ pilots across 15 areas in England from October 2024. By connecting individuals with health conditions and disabilities with appropriate local support services, these pilots aimed to help the individuals stay in, or return to, work.

Last week, the government announced new funding to support WorkWell sites to connect patients who receive a fit note with local support services to provide work and health advice. The government’s press release lists some examples of the type of interventions that the WorkWell sites might offer including hiring work and health coaches, social prescribers or occupational therapists (OTs) and upskilling physios and OTs to issue fit notes.

Thought-leadership, themes and trends

Changing terms and conditions

The government’s original approach to ending the practice of ‘fire and rehire’ and significantly limiting employers’ ability to change terms and conditions, as set out in the first version of the Employment Rights Bill, was one of the key areas of the Bill causing concern for employers. Following publication earlier this month of the government’s amendments to the original ‘fire and rehire’ provisions, Luke Bowery was pleased to be quoted in a Personnel Today article looking at the amended proposals. Read what Luke had to say below.

DEI in Financial Services

In the first half of this year, several US and global companies have rowed back on DEI initiatives in response to pressure from the US government. Against this backdrop, Pip Galland and Hayley Ainsworth were both interviewed by Financial Accountant magazine on the future of DEI within the Financial Services sector. You can read their thoughts about the topic on page 25 of the magazine linked below.