The Queen’s speech – Employment Reforms Announced
A number of employment related measures were announced in the recent Queen’s speech, including what was described as a ‘crack down’ on costly Tribunal delays, abuses of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and zero-hours contracts.
It is proposed that the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill will contain the following measures:
- Tackling NMW abuse and crack down on the abuse of zero-hour contracts. A Liberal Democrat press release suggests that the measures to deal with NMW abuse will be the previously announced change to legislation – employers who fail to pay NMW will face financial penalties of up to £20,000 per employee as opposed to £20,000 in total, which is currently the case.
- Crack down on costly Employment Tribunal delays (no detail was given as to the Government’s intentions in this regard).
- Making some childcare regulations more flexible to meet the needs of working families.
- Stopping highly paid public sector employees keeping redundancy payments when they come back to the same part of the public sector within a short period of time.
When the Bills are published they will appear on the “Bills before Parliament page for the 2014/2015 session”. www.parliament.uk
Clare Walsh, Employment Solictor