General Election 2024 — proposed policies for employers and employment law

A change of government could herald the biggest shift in employment rights since the 1990s, with the UK’s main political parties engaging with the issue of jobs and the rights of individual employees in very different ways. 

This leaves employers bracing for the outcome of the election, which could have a major impact throughout the country. 

Here, employment law specialists Joseph Shelston and Susan McKenzie outline some of the key areas of focus for The Conservative Party, The Labour Party and The Liberal Democrats on employment law.

The Conservative Party

The Conservative Party manifesto contains a number of policies relating to work, including:

• Improving the fit note process by transferring the process away from GPs to specialist work and health professionals. 
• Abolishing National Insurance for the self employed and reducing employee National Insurance contributions.
• Maintaining the level of National Living Wage at two-thirds of median earnings. 
• Funding 100,000 more high-quality apprenticeships in England each year.
• Continuing with the minimum strike levels legislation in respect of public services. 
• Introducing legislation to clarify that the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex. 
• Changes in business immigration including a “binding, legal cap” on migration.

While a number of consultations have taken place, there have been limited changes to employment rights under the current government, with many of the changes we’ve seen resulting from private member’s bills.

The Labour Party

In its manifesto, Labour commits to implementing its ‘Labour’s Plan to Make Work Pay: Delivering A New Deal for Working People’. 

This contains a large number of work-related policies — most notably, the introduction of a draft Employment Bill within the first 100 days in office. 

There are some potentially significant changes proposed by Labour, including:

• Creating day-one rights (i.e., no qualifying service needed) for unfair dismissal, parental leave and sick pay. Currently, to claim ordinary unfair dismissal, employees must have a minimum of two years’ continuous employment with their employer. If this were to be introduced, it would be a major change. However, it seems that this wouldn’t prevent employers from using “probationary periods with fair and transparent rules and processes”.
• Replacing the three types of employment status (employee, worker and self-employed) with only two types of employment status — a single status of “worker” to cover workers and employees and another for the genuinely self-employed.
• Banning “exploitative zero hours contracts”. Workers would have the right to a contract that reflects hours regularly worked over a twelve-week reference period and reasonable notice for shift/working time changes and paying compensation.
• Banning fire and rehire practices.
• Making flexible working a day-one right by default for all workers unless it’s “not reasonably feasible” (this would be different to the existing default right to request from day one). 
• Increasing time limits to bring claims in the employment tribunal to six months.
• Ensuring that National Minimum Wage is a living wage and removing the age bands that currently allow for different rates for workers of different ages.
• Introducing a new duty for employers to tell new employees in their section 1 statement of terms that they have the right to join a trade union — and to regularly tell all employees of this right. Labour is also committing to amend the procedure for trade union recognition. 
• Introducing a “right to switch off” by adopting a similar approach to what’s in place in Ireland and Belgium. 
• Changing when collective redundancy consultation is required — taking into account the number of people affected across a business, rather than in one workplace (seemingly reversing the decision in the famous Woolworths cases). 
• Re-introducing protection from third party harassment in respect of sexual harassment and making the duty to prevent sexual harassment (to be introduced in October 2024) more demanding for employers.   
• Labour would introduce guidance on menopause in the workplace and require large employers to introduce Menopause Action Plans to set out how they would support employees through the menopause.
• Requiring employers with over 250 employees to publish mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap information.
• Proposing changes to business immigration.

It’s surprising that Labour’s plans around employment law haven’t attracted more attention in the run up to July’s vote. Employers and their representatives must be ready to play an active part in the consultation processes that are likely to follow.

The Liberal Democrats

The Liberal Democrats manifesto sets out their work-related policies, including:

• Reforming employment status to create a “dependent contractor” category of worker (in-between employment and self-employment) that would have basic employment rights. In addition, the burden of proof in employment status cases in the employment tribunal would shift to the employer (rather than the individual).
• Increasing the number of people doing apprenticeships and replacing the apprenticeship levy.
• Promoting employee ownership by giving staff in listed companies with more than 250 employees the right to request shares, which would be held in trust for the employees’ benefit.
• Proposing changes to business immigration.
• Reforming statutory sick pay by making it available to workers earning less than £123 a week — aligning the rate with National Minimum Wage and making payments available from the first day of absence.   
• Giving “everyone” a new right to flexible working and every disabled person a right to work from home unless “significant business reasons” make that impossible.
• Granting zero-hour and agency workers the right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months, which an employer couldn’t unreasonably refuse.
• Requiring large employers to monitor and publish diversity data and aspirational targets for diversity.
• Making all parental pay and leave day-one rights — widening them out to cover self- employed parents.
• Raising statutory maternity pay and shared parental pay to £350 a week and paternity pay to 90% of earnings (capped for high earners), with further changes to family leave/pay proposed in the future.

What about legislation that’s due to come into force after the general election?

Various pieces of employment-related legislation have taken effect during the last Parliament, such as carer’s leave, changes to paternity leave, enhanced redundancy protection and the right to request flexible working becoming a day-one right.

Many more are scheduled to come into force after the general election. These include the Statutory Code of Practice on dismissal and re-engagement (commonly known as ‘fire and rehire’ and due to come into force on 18 July 2024), duty to prevent sexual harassment (due to come into force in October 2024) and neonatal care leave and pay (expected to come into force in April 2025).  

We’ll have to wait and see what happens with those pieces of legislation, as well as any others that were passing through Parliament. Their future will likely be determined by whichever political party (or parties) finds itself in power after the general election. 

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