Sunset Strip- Forecast for Employers: FfE news for the year ahead in employment law:
2023-03-22Forecast for Employers: FfE news for the year ahead in employment law:
In the infamous words of Bob Dylan: “These times they are a-changing”. As the current financial year comes to a close, what changes are afoot in the year ahead? Forewarned is, as they say, forearmed. But the law is not set in stone until Parliament and the House of Lords says so. So, what’s on their cards for the coming year?
A Bonfire of Vanities:
The government shows no signs of ‘rowing back’ from its Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill which in itself is a mouthful, and if passed, will “sunset” (in less romantic terms ‘get rid of’) all employment and health and safety legislation derived from the EU by the end of 2023. That’s not long! (although the government will be able to extend that deadline to 2026).
This means that the government must take positive action if it wants to retain many existing employment protections beyond 31 December 2023 (23 June 2026), allowing it to make sweeping changes to established laws in respect of:
- working time and holidays,
- discrimination,
- TUPE,
- agency workers,
- part-time workers,
- fixed-term employees, and
- new parents.
The government will have to legislate to re-introduce (with modifications) the EU laws it wants to keep before the deadline. There are over 2,400 pieces of retained EU law across 300 unique policy areas and 21 sectors of the economy. Time waits for no man and there is the very real possibility that important rights will fall off the statute books without anything in place to replace them, creating disastrous uncertainty for employers and employees alike, which could result in an increase in staff dissatisfaction, industrial action and employment claims.
JP view: this is a ‘can of worms’ that may never happen. Time restraints and other matters are likely to mean that the extension to June 2026 is implemented. With a general election scheduled for January 2025, we may never see this Bill make it to the statute books.
