The Employment Rights Bill, which was introduced to Parliament on 10 October 2024, completed the House of Commons committee stage last month, bringing it one step closer to becoming law. The overall content of the Bill has not changed significantly. The most noteworthy amendment, if passed, would extend the time limit for issuing most types of Employment Tribunal claims from three to six months.
The Bill is the most significant employment-related legislation for decades and aims to implement the Government’s Plan to Make Work Pay, and proposes the following changes to law:
- Unfair Dismissal – abolishing the two-year qualifying period and introducing a new framework for a lighter touch regime during an initial probationary period.
- Flexible Working – providing that an employer may only refuse a flexible working request if it can show it was reasonable to do so on one of the specific grounds.
- Family Rights – removing the qualifying period of employment for parental leave and paternity leave, and creating a new, broader right to bereavement leave.
- Protection from Harassment – re-introducing protection against all types of third-party harassment and strengthening the duty on employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers during the course of employment.
- Fire and Re-hire – making it automatically unfair to dismiss an employee for not agreeing to a variation to their contract.
- Zero-hours Contracts – introducing a number of measures to protect those on zero-hours contracts, including the right to guaranteed hours, the right to reasonable notice of shifts and the right to payment for cancelled or rearranged shifts without sufficient notice.
It will take about a year for the Bill to complete all the stages through Parliament and for the new regulations to be published, meaning that the majority of the new legislation won’t come into effect until 2026.
If you require further advice and support on the upcoming changes, please contact our employment team on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and a member of our Team will be in touch.