Conservative Employment Law Pledges

As you will no doubt be aware, following the recent election on 7 May 2015, the Conservative party won the election by a majority with David Cameron being appointed Prime Minister. We therefore thought it appropriate to review, at this stage, the Conservative’s key policy statements and pledges relating to Employment Law.

The Conservative’s 10 main policies/proposed changes in relation to Employment Law are as set out below:

1) Zero hours contracts – eradicate exclusivity in zero hours contracts that do not guarantee hours of work. This means that such zero hours contracts which contain exclusivity clauses which prevent a worker performing services under another contract (or under any other arrangement) or, doing work or performing services under another contract (or under any other arrangement) without the employer’s consent, will be unenforceable.

2) National Minimum Wage (“NMW”) – increase the NMW to £6.70 by autumn 2015 with a view to increasing the NMW to over £8.00 an hour by the end of 2020. The Living Wage will also be supported and businesses will be encouraged to pay it, if they can afford it.

3) Work and families – increase the entitlement to free childcare to 30 hours for all parents with three and four year olds.

4) Public sector termination payments – ending taxpayer funded six-figure payoffs for the best paid public sector workers. It has been indicated that this will be achieved by introducing new legislation capping public sector enhanced redundancy payments to £95,000.

5) Trade unions and industrial action – introduce:

a.         A tougher threshold for strike action.

b.         Ensuring strike action cannot be called “on the basis of ballots conducted years before”.

c.          Repealing the ban on employers from using agency workers to cover striking employees.

d.         Tackling the intimidation of non-striking workers.

e.         Introducing legislation to promote a transparent opt-in for union subscriptions by trade unions.

6) Apprenticeships – creating an extra three million apprenticeships over the next five years.

7) Migrant Workers – introducing new legislation to reduce the exploitation of migrant workers. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 received Royal Assent on 26 March 2015 and is aimed at protecting vulnerable people from exploitation. It will introduce tougher market regulation to tackle illegal working and exploitation and use data from multiple agencies to identify businesses that employ illegal workers. It will take tougher action on employers who do not pay the minimum wage by allowing inspection teams to reinvest more of the money raised by fines levied on employers.

8) Bill of Rights – introduce a British Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act 1998. The aim of this being to break the link between British courts and the European Court of Human Rights and to make the Supreme Court the ultimate arbiter of human rights matters in the UK.

9) Fitness to work – ensure that those suffering from long-term yet treatable conditions get back into work by ensuring the right medical treatment is provided. If the individual refuses a recommended treatment, their benefits may be reduced.

10) Paid volunteering leave – making volunteering for three days a year a workplace entitlement for people working in large companies and the public sector.