Queen's Speech December 2019 - Employment Bill

Employment Bill

“Measures will be brought forward to encourage flexible working, to introduce the entitlement to leave for unpaid carers..."

The purpose of the Bill is to:

• ●  Protect and enhance workers’ rights as the UK leaves the EU, making Britain the best place in the world to work.

• ●  Promote fairness in the workplace, striking the right balance between the flexibility that the economy needs and the security that workers deserve.

• ●  Strengthen workers’ ability to get redress for poor treatment by creating a new, single enforcement body.

• ●  Offer greater protections for workers by prioritising fairness in the workplace, and introducing better support for working families.

• ●  Build on existing employment law with measures that protect those in low-paid work and the gig economy.

  The main benefits of the Bill would be:

  • ●  Better support for working families and workplace participation for all, alongside establishing a new £1 billion fund to help create more high quality childcare.

  • ●  Ensuring fairness by protecting the majority of businesses who strive to do the right thing by their workers from being undercut by the small minority who seek to avoid their responsibilities.

  • ●  Encouraging flexible working, ensuring that both employers and employees get the maximum benefits from flexible working.

  • ●  Contributing to an environment of high employment and high standards, aligning with an increasingly automated economy undergoing rapid changes to business and employment models.

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The main elements of the Bill are:

• ●  Creating a new, single enforcement body, offering greater protections for workers.

• ●  Ensuring that tips left for workers go to them in full.

• ●  Introducing a new right for all workers to request a more predictable contract.

• ●  Extending redundancy protections to prevent pregnancy and maternity discrimination.

• ●  Allowing parents to take extended leave for neonatal care; and introducing an entitlement to one weeks leave for unpaid carers.

• ●  Subject to consultation, the Bill will make flexible working the default unless employers have good reason not to.

  Other measures

• ●  We want Britain to be the best country in the world to start and grow a business – a place where entrepreneurs know they can build on their ideas and find success.

• ●  We will clamp down on late payment more broadly and strengthen the powers of the Small Business Commissioner to support small businesses that are exploited by their larger partners.

• ●  Good regulation is essential to successful businesses: we will strive to achieve the right regulatory balance between supporting excellent business practice and protecting workers, consumers and the environment.

• ●  We will also develop proposals on company audit and corporate reporting, including a stronger regulator with all the powers necessary to reform the sector. These proposals aim to improve public trust in business, following the three independent reviews commissioned in 2018. It will also help workers employed by a large company in future to know how resilient it is.

  Territorial extent and application

● The Bill's provisions would extend and apply in the main to England, Wales, and Scotland. Employment law is devolved to Northern Ireland.

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Key facts

• ●  Employment rates in the UK are at an record high and unemployment is at its lowest level since 1974. Economic participation is also at a record high, demonstrating that our flexible labour market is working.

• ●  Over the last year, unemployment has continued to fall, even as average real wages have increased.

• ●  Since 2010, the Government has helped more than 1,000 people on average into work every day.

• ●  The majority of jobs created since 2010 were based outside London and the South East and were full-time and high quality.

• ●  The Government has already made significant progress in implementing recommendations arising from the Taylor Review, including legislating for stronger protections for vulnerable agency workers and extending the right to a written statement to workers, ensuring all workers have the right to a written record of their core terms of employment.

• ●  The three reviews of audit commissioned by the Government in 2018 were:

  • ○  The Independent Review of the Financial Reporting Council, led by Sir John Kingman, published on 18 December 2018;

  • ○  The Competition and Markets Authority’s study of competition in the audit market, published in April 2019; and,

  • ○  The Independent Review into the quality and effectiveness of audit led by Sir Donald Brydon, published on 18 December 2019.