Speakers: Neil Carberry, Chief Executive, Recruitment & Employment Confederation
Neil Carberry: Hi, everyone. It's Neil here from the REC a big day today with the Employment Rights Bill being tabled, probably the biggest non COVID intervention in our labour market by a Government in 20 or 30 years. I've been in the Department for Business today, I was in seeing the Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Business earlier in the week. So the REC has been at the table throughout this period and clearly it's a big intervention. But actually today's really only a mile post. The first thing you need to know is that nothing in this Bill is changing your business in 2025. This is all stuff that will happen in 2026 and later. That means there is time to get things right. The second thing you need to know is the Bill while it's big because it's got a lot of things in it, is actually quite light on the detail. They're taking regulations, so you might have seen me and other business voices saying it's difficult to be thumbs up, thumbs down today. That's actually because the real battles, the real arguments are still to come about the regulations. Thirdly things you need to be aware of changes to Statutory Sick Pay proposal that that comes in from day one, not day four, I think really importantly unfair dismissal from day one. But a fantastic acknowledgement that there will be a nine-month statutory probation period for new starters. So some of your clients have been worrying about hiring. Now they're looking at day one unfair dismissal not starting until 2026. But also having a lighter touch statutory probation period to test people out. So people should feel less frightened of that hopefully. That's a good bit of progress on the business side. Zero hours contracts regulations, that's going to be about where people are working a similar week, week after week with a set number of hours and yet are still on a zero hours contract and giving them the right to have a contract that matches their hours. It's not about banning zero hours contracts. Again Again good progress there. Very complex though. We're delighted that we've actually carved agency workers out of the initial draft of the Bill to have a specialist agency worker and zero hours contract consultation that will be coming big win for the REC there to get that conversation going and then other things. Employment status, not yet, not in this Bill. No changes to Limb B worker status, that's good news. But also think you might have heard about the right to switch off or or other things related to reaching into businesses. Those are going to be advisory that further down the track, lots of work to do on some other aspects of the Bill. But actually as a package really today is about government setting out its timescale and its plans 28 measures in the Bill. Then there's a lot of consultation to come. So why am I telling you this? Well, one calm your clients down. It's not all changing in 2025. Two, there's a lot of work to do to get this right. We are hammering the table on, not putting off people from investing from being entrepreneurs from creating jobs in the in the UK. We need your support to keep winning that battle and the big battles come from now through to the end of 2025 as we work on those regulations. So keep in touch with the REC we've got a place at the table as I said, seen the Deputy Prime Minister and the, and the Secretary of State for Business on this a couple of times over the last couple of months. We're getting great access, but we need you to, feed in so that we can get the right outcomes for you on what is a big and potentially quite threatening piece of legislation. But only if we don't get our work right. As always get in touch with your REC Account Manager, get in touch with me to share your views. I look forward to hearing from you.
