The Employment Rights Bill has now completed the most intensive part of its passage through the House of Lords and is now heading into the final parliamentary stretch.
Employment Rights Bill completes House of Lords Second Reading
The Lords’ committee stage finished on 24 June after eleven days of line-by-line scrutiny. Peers tabled “hundreds” of amendments, but the overwhelming majority were technical rather than policy-shifting.
As a result the Bill has grown from 310 to 318 pages, with all headline reforms (e.g. day-one unfair dismissal rights, guaranteed hours requests for zero-hours staff, new restrictions on fire-and-rehire, the Fair Work Agency, fair-tipping rules and so on) remaining in the text unchanged at this point.
The next stage, the report stage, is timetabled for 14 and 16 July, with a third reading likely in the week commencing 21 July. Because the Commons rises for its summer recess on 22 July and the Lords follows on 24 July, the Bill will almost certainly run on into the autumn “ping-pong” phase between the two Houses.
Royal Assent is therefore likely no sooner than early autumn rather than before Parliament breaks for the summer.
An implementation roadmap was published shortly afterwards, which can be viewed here.
What is already clear is that only a handful of provisions are designed to switch on automatically. Notably, the repeal of the 2016 industrial action ballot rules will take effect two months after Royal Assent, and could still take effect before the end of 2025.
Everything else, however, would require secondary legislation and further consultation, which would push real-world implementation into 2026.
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In practical terms, the Bill is “nearly there” legislatively, but the policy substance will be poured over again in these final stages.
Employers should therefore track the Lords’ report stage papers in July, but the bigger compliance workload will come once the Government’s roadmap and draft regulations start to land later in the year.
To discuss the Bill’s reforms and how to prepare your organisation, contact us.
The latest version of the Employment Rights Bill can be read here >>
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Founder and Managing Director Anne Morris is a fully qualified solicitor and trusted adviser to large corporates through to SMEs, providing strategic immigration and global mobility advice to support employers with UK operations to meet their workforce needs through corporate immigration.
She is recognised by Legal 500 and Chambers as a legal expert and delivers Board-level advice on business migration and compliance risk management as well as overseeing the firm’s development of new client propositions and delivery of cost and time efficient processing of applications.
Anne is an active public speaker, immigration commentator, and immigration policy contributor and regularly hosts training sessions for employers and HR professionals.
