King’s Speech: Key pieces of legislation to be aware of

“My Government is committed to making work pay and will legislate to introduce a new deal for working people to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights [Employment Rights Bill]. It will seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models.”

 

According to the accompanying briefing note, as well as delivering an Employment Rights Bill within the first 100 days of office, Labour will also deliver a genuine living wage and remove the “discriminatory” National Minimum Wage age bands “to ensure every adult worker benefits”.

The briefing note states that the Government will deliver its New Deal for Working People in full and the Employment Bill will deliver on policies in the Plan to Make Work Pay that require primary legislation to implement.

Rather than then setting out what will be included in the Employment Rights Bill, the briefing note then sets out the commitments that are in the Plan to Make Work Pay (which can be found in this earlier article here). By way of reminder these are:

• Banning exploitative zero-hours contracts.

• Ending the Scourges of “Fire and Rehire” and “Fire and Replace”.

• Making parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal available from day 1 on the job for all workers. “We will continue to ensure employers can operate probationary periods to assess new hires”.

• Strengthen SSP by removing the Lower Earnings Limit and the waiting period.

• Making flexible working the default from day one for all workers with employers required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable.

• Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work, except in specific circumstances.

• Establishing a new Single Enforcement Body to strengthen workplace rights.

• Creating the Fair Work Agency to enforce workplace rights.

• Establishing a Fair Pay Agreement in the adult social care sector.

• Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.

• Updating trade union legislation by removing “unnecessary restrictions” on trade union activity such as the minimum service levels.

• Simplifying the process of statutory recognition.

“My Ministers will seek to raise educational standards and break down barriers to opportunity. Action will be taken to get people back in employment following the impact of the pandemic. A Bill will be introduced to raise standards in education and promote children’s wellbeing [Children’s Wellbeing Bill]. Measures will be brought forward to remove the exemption from Value Added Tax for private school fees, which will enable the funding of six and a half thousand new teachers. My Government will establish Skills England which will have a new partnership with employers at its heart [Skills England Bill], and my Ministers will reform the apprenticeship levy.”

The briefing note clarifies that the following will be included in the Children’s Wellbeing Bill:

• Strengthening multi-agency child protection and safeguarding arrangements.

• Requiring free breakfast clubs in every primary school.

• Limiting the number of branded items of uniform and PE kits that a school can require.

• Creating a duty on local authorities to have and maintain Children Not in School registers, and provide support to home-educating parents.

• Legislating to give Ofsted stronger powers to investigate the offence of operating an unregistered independent school.

• Making changes to enable serious teacher misconduct to be investigated, regardless of when the misconduct occurred, the setting the teacher is employed in and how the misconduct is uncovered.

• Requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions, SEND inclusion and place planning.

• Ensuring greater consistency between academies and maintained schools by requiring all schools to teach the national curriculum. This measure will be commenced after the review of curriculum and assessment is concluded and is reflected in Programmes of Study.

• Ensuring that any new teacher entering the classroom has, or is working towards, Qualified Teacher Status.

• Bringing multi-academy trusts into the inspection system to make the system fairer and more transparent and ”enable direct intervention when schools and trusts are not performing to the highest standards.”

The briefing note also confirms what will be included in the Skills England Bill, which is as follows:

• The Bill will transfer functions from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to Skills England.

• Skills England will provide greater coherence to the assessment of skills needs and training landscape and will convene employers, unions, education and training providers and experts with national government to:

  • Develop a single picture of national and local skills needs.

  • Identify the training for which the Growth and Skills Levy will be accessible.

  • Ensure that the national and regional skills systems are meeting skills needs and are aligned.

“Legislation on race equality will be published in draft to enshrine the full right to equal pay in law [Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill].”

The Briefing note sets out what will be included in the draft Bill, with the aim being to tackle inequality for ethnic minority and disabled people by:

• Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people, making it easier for them to bring unequal pay claims.

• Introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for employers with more than 250 employees.