As I pen this, I am imagining HM King Charles III sitting at his breakfast table and down plonks a 300-page document, splashing the milk out of his cocoa pops and spilling his tea…. “Your Majesty, the Employment Rights Bill for Royal Assent”, intones his butler. Hopefully, there will be no problem with the pen (I am remembering #pengate pre Coronation) and this Bill can finally become an Act.

What does it mean?

First, it means I am probably due a holiday if I am hallucinating about the Bill and its appearance at the Royal breakfast table.

Second and more importantly, it means very little in the immediate term. Those of you who have tracked this Bill from its publication in October 2024 know that the provisions of this extensive piece of legislation will be rolled out over the next two years. This has not changed. The timeframe is now a little tighter owing to the delay in getting the Bill to pass over the autumn and we wait to see whether the Government's original roadmap for implementation will be tweaked to reflect that.  

What it will mean is that we expect more consultations to come flooding in once 2026 kicks off - so much of the Bill will need consultations and secondary legislation, it's going to be busy. Keep an eye on these updates and the consultation landing page on our Hub.

Any last-minute changes?

The changes to unfair dismissal provisions and the compensation cap for unfair dismissal as we reported on last week, have been agreed.  

• Six-month qualification period for unfair dismissal claims.
• The compensation cap (both the 52-week and the maximum amount) has been lifted so unlimited compensation for unfair dismissal.

We understand that the unfair dismissal right will apply to any employee with six months' continuous service on or after 1st January 2027.  We have, however, no implementation date for the removal of the compensation cap.  

Guaranteed hours offer opt-out 

A casualty of the ‘horse trading’ over the unfair dismissal rights changes was the House of Lords' amendment that workers could opt out of a GHO after an initial offer. This is bad news for employers who rely on irregular contracts, as this offered a workable solution to the huge administrative burden of the GHO regime. We need to await more detail on this regime to see how it can be worked out in practice. The 2027 date for the implementation of GHOs remains.  

As we have said in all the 14 updates which have come before this one, keep checking our Hub for details and updates. 

Have a lovely Christmas from all of us in the employment and pensions team!