News
Employment law review
13 May 2011
Hard on the heels of its consultation on reform of Employment Tribunals and its plans to increase the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims, the Government has announced that further areas of employment law "red tape" will be considered for review this year.In a speech at the Institute for Economic Affairs on Wednesday the Employment Minister, Ed Davey, signalled that the Government now intends to consider reforming the current rules on collective redundancy consultation periods, the TUPE Regulations and the unlimited compensation which may be awarded by employment tribunals in discrimination cases, saying:
“The areas we are reviewing are priorities for employers. We want to make it easier for businesses to take on staff and grow.
“We will be looking carefully at the arguments for reform. Fairness for individuals will not be compromised – but where we can make legislation easier to understand, improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary bureaucracy we will.”
The BIS press release detailing the thinking behind this move is here.
Putting some sort of cap back on discrimination awards is likely to be particularly challenging, since the present rules are largely determined by a 1993 European judgment (in Marshall No. 2) in which the ECJ ruled that a fixed upper limit on the compensation which can be awarded for the loss and damage suffered as a result of sex discrimination was contrary to European law. A summary of that case can be found here.
The announcement concludes by saying that the Government believes that a flexible labour market is not simply about making life easy for employers. Apparently, we’ll see a new consultation launched next week on plans to extend the right to request flexible working to all employees and introduce a new system of shared parental leave from 2015.
Some reflections on whether it’s right or sensible to put both unnecessary regulations and important primary legislation like the Equality Act through the Red Tape Challenge can be found in Martin Kettle’s article in yesterday’s Guardian.