This week’s edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) a further important update on the HMCTS reform project, including a link to a YouTube video walking professional users through the online portal process, (2) the calling of a General Election on 4 July 2024 and the implications for employment law and pensions reform, (3) the latest Labour Party plans for employment rights, (4) regulations completing the commencement of REUL(RR)A 2023, (5) regulations to bring into effect the Code of Practice on Dismissal and Re-engagement, (6) company car advisory fuel rates from 1 June 2024, (7) an EAT decision finding a tribunal had applied the wrong test when considering liability of agents under the Equality Act 2010, (8) a Court of Appeal decision on the scope of contract worker discrimination, (9) a letter from the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee setting out key the themes and conclusions of its inquiry into the rights of older people, (10) publication of the Inclusive Britain second update report, (11) the Paternity Leave (Bereavement) Act 2024, (12) a First Tier Tax Tribunal decision on CJRS claims, (13) the ‘falling’ of the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill in the General Election ‘wash-up’, (14) a successful High Court trade union strike out application of claims arising from a workforce reorganisation, (15) a High Court decision upholding the confidentiality of misappropriated documents, despite previous deployment in tribunal proceedings, (16) the Council of the EU adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, (17) a new Practice Note from the Lexis+® UK Employment team tracking the main political party employment pledges and policies ahead of the General Election, (18) dates for your diary, (19) updates to our case tracker, legislation tracker and horizon scanner, and (20) new Q&As.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) House of Lords amendments to the Employment Rights Bill (ERB) pinged back to the House of Commons, (2) the launch of four ERB-related consultations, (3) a Home Office consultation on extending the Right to Work Scheme, (4) the adoption by the EU Council of a Directive revising the European Works Council Directive, (5) publication by ONS of UK gender pay gap data for 2025, (6) the latest whistleblowing data from the Financial Conduct Authority, (7) article by Gemma Finlayson and Tor Walberg at Lewis Silkin exploring the challenges that employers can face from AI-assisted grievances, (8) a Court of Appeal judgment clarifying the consequences of failure to comply with early conciliation requirements, (9) an EAT decision considering timing for assessing prospects of success in costs applications, (10) a finding by the EAT that dismissal without notice during a probationary period where there was no contractual PILON was wrongful, (11) dates for your diary, and (12) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) a Court of Appeal decision confirming that time a worker spends travelling between home and various work locations is not ‘time work’, (2) an increase in the Law Society’s recommended minimum salary for trainee solicitors and SQE candidates, (3) the High Court’s decision to refuse Liberty’s application for judicial review of EHRC’s six-week response period for its Code of Practice consultation, (4) DSIT’s four-stage commencement plan for the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 (DUAA 2025), (5) a decision by the EAT to overturn the dismissal of a disability discrimination claim for non-compliance with an unless order, (6) publication of a new Practice Note on the employment implications of DUAA 2025, (7) dates for your diary, and (8) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.

This week’s edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) key employment announcements in the Autumn Budget 2024, (2) an article discussing the ESG ‘washing’ phenomenon, (3) confirmation of the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW) rates from 1 April 2025, (4) the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2024 annual survey of working hours and earnings, (5) analysis by Rowena Wisniewska Sethi, barrister and Isabella Taylor, pupil at 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square of a First Tier Tribunal decision varying a ‘disproportionate’ escalating penalty issued by the Pensions Regulator, (6) a reminder that the duty to prevent workplace sexual harassment has come into force, (7) an EAT decision on the Armed Forces provisions of the Equality Act 2010, (8) UK gender pay gap data for 2024 from the ONS, (9) the increasing involvement of white collar crime lawyers in investigations of allegations of non-financial misconduct, (10) analysis by Victoria Hordern, partner at Taylor Wessing LLP, Kuan Hon, Of Counsel at Dentons, and Dan Whitehead, Counsel at Hogan Lovells of the Data (Use and Access) Bill, (11) Regulations making provision for the TUPE transfer of staff from the Phone-paid Services Authority Ltd (PSA) to the Office of Communications (OFCOM) on 1 February 2025, (12) a Court of Appeal decision rejecting the EAT’s suggestion that ‘general workforce consultation’ is required in small-scale redundancies in order for a dismissal to be fair, (13) updates to various Worker and Temporary Worker sponsor guidance documents confirming that the Home Office has commenced the roll-out of its new ‘Sponsor UK’ IT system, (14) a House of Lords report on modern slavery, (15) an Irish Order specifying the national minimum hourly rate of pay and board and lodging rates in Ireland from 1 January 2025, (16) dates for your diary, (17) updates to our case and legislation trackers and horizon scanner, and (18) new Q&As.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) a summary of the key employment law changes occurring in April 2024, (2) the Home office Global Talent visa report, (3) the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology guidance on responsible use of AI in recruitment, (4) the Code of Practice (Requests for Flexible Working) Order 2024, (5) Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023 (Commencement) Regulations 2024, (6) an EAT judgment looking at what a decision-maker must know about the contents of a disclosure to be fixed with liability for a whistleblowing dismissal, when the disclosure was not made directly to them, (7) updated guidance from the Department for Business and Trade on holiday entitlement and pay, (8) the Low Pay Commission consultation on the rates of the National Living Wage and National Minimum Wage from April 2025, (9) the National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No 2) Regulations 2024, (10) the government’s plans to ‘clarify’ the law governing non-disclosure agreements, (11) an Interim Practice Direction issued by the Presidents of Employment Tribunals on the presentation of responses, (12) a consultation by the Tribunal Procedure Committee on possible changes to Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure, (13) the Employment Rights (Increase of Limits) Order (Northern Ireland) 2024, (14) dates for your diary, (15) updates to our legislation and consultation trackers and to our horizon scanner, and (16) new Q&As.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) the government U-turn on day-one unfair dismissal rights and pledge to lift the compensation cap, (2) Budget 2025 measure to make apprenticeships for under-25s ‘free’ for SMEs, (3) what is believed to be the first published employment tribunal ruling on non-binary gender identity since the April 2025 landmark Supreme Court ruling in For Women Scotland, (4) Court of Appeal decisions on whistleblowing detriment and arbitral proceedings, and the appropriate forum in a claim for misuse of trade secrets and copyright infringement, (5) EAT judgments providing a helpful summary of principles to be applied when considering the material factor defence in equal pay claims, with comment from Emma Darlow Stearn of Cloisters Chambers, and on the need for dismissing officers to consider performance during the most recent capability review period, (6) analysis by Tarun Tawakley, Rebecca Jobling and Carly Mather of Lewis Silkin of the growing role of AI use and disclosure obligations in employment tribunal proceedings, (7) dates for your diary, and (8) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) what you need to know about the General Election, including the parliamentary process, wash-up and manifesto pledges, (2) an EAT judgment about the employment status of an accountant who was found by the employment tribunal to be a partner and a worker, (3) an extension to the Department for Business and Trade consultation on reform of the Commercial Agents Regulations 1993, (4) an EAT judgment that time spent travelling on an employer’s minibus to and from the place of work is not ‘time work’ for national minimum wage purposes, (5) an employment tribunal decision that a Christian social worker was directly discriminated against when a job offer was revoked because of his views on homosexuality, (6) a High Court ruling that a trade union is entitled to bring a claim for libel in its own name, (7) an EAT judgment that a GP could not rely on TUPE 2006 in his dismissal claim against a clinical commissioning body, (8) an update by the Solicitors Regulation Authority to its warning notice on the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), (9) a New Law Journal article on ‘Home or away: workplace disputes’, (10) dates for your diary, (11) updates to our legislation and consultation trackers and to our Horizon scanner, and (12) a new Q&A.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) a government consultation on zero hours and similar contract reforms under the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025), (2) the latest commencement regulations bringing into force ERA 2025 unfair dismissal reforms, (3) a summary of stakeholder feedback on unfair dismissal compensation reforms, (4) the addition of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to the list of prescribed persons for whistleblowing purposes, (5) analysis of the implications of the Victims and Courts Act 2026 for non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality provisions by Richard Hanstock, barrister and founder of Deeptech Legal, (6) a record 1,042-day extension of time for appealing granted by the EAT President in a state immunity case, (7) dates for your diary, and (8) other updates and resources of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) action by EHRC against 19 organisations that are continuing to misrepresent the law on access to single-sex spaces and services, (2) publication by the Home Office, in collaboration with the Australian and Canadian governments, of an optional international reporting template to support organisations in meeting supply chain reporting requirements under modern slavery legislation in all three jurisdictions, (3) the new failure to prevent fraud offence introduced from 1 September 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, including an analysis by Aziz Rahman of Rahman Ravelli assessing the effectiveness of the offence in holding corporate bodies to account for economic crime, (4) an EAT decision granting an extension of time for submission of a Notice of Appeal where there had been an honest mistake re missing documents and timely rectification, (5) dates for your diary, (6) four new Q&As and (7) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) the High Pay Centre’s ‘Charter for Fair Pay’, (2) an EAT judgment about harassment related to the claimant’s accent, (3) an EAT judgment about what needs to be included in the employment tribunal’s reasons in disability harassment claims, (4) a Ministry of Justice Call for Evidence on costs protection in discrimination claims, (5) an EAT judgment on whether a claimant could run a high value Parry v Cleaver argument for the first time on appeal, (6) analysis of the proposal to change the time limit to bring employment tribunal claims from three to six months, (7) our new Practice Note on neonatal care leave and pay, (8) our new risk assessment, checklist, action plan and monitoring log for employers to use when taking steps to prevent sexual harassment, (9) dates for your diary, and (10) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) an updated timeline for implementing the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA 2025), (2) four ERA 2025-related consultations on fire and rehire, the revised draft code of practice on trade union recognition and e-balloting practices, flexible working and tipping (3) EAT decisions on the worker status of a former army reservist and the approach to evidence in discrimination claims, (4) publication of the rates and thresholds for employers 2026/27, (5) further commencement regulations relating to the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, (6) publication by the Tribunal Procedure Committee of consultation outcomes on changes to ET Rules and written reasons for decisions (7) news of phased LGPS reforms, (8) dates for your diary and (10) other news and resources of interest to employment practitioners.

This edition of Employment weekly highlights includes: (1) an analysis of the recent immigration White Paper by Ben Maitland of Vanessa Ganguin Immigration Law, (2) an analysis of reforms to reduce discrimination in the Local Government Pension Scheme by David Gallagher and Daniel Fowler at Fieldfisher, (3) an EAT decision that a claimant’s aversion to wearing a mask lacked the necessary cogency, seriousness, and cohesion to qualify as a protected philosophical belief, (4) an ET decision that a teacher’s dismissal was not the result of her whistleblowing over the school’s policy on trans children, (5) an analysis of a Court of Appeal decision that UK gender recognition certificates do not allow gender to be recorded as non-binary by Harini Iyengar at 11KBW, (6) a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research on the challenges surrounding surveillance in the workplace, (7) the publication of the latest UK Stewardship Code by the Financial Reporting Council, (8) new guidance and legislation on amendments to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) under the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024, (9) a successful appeal to the EAT against a ‘gisting order’ in an unfair dismissal claim amid national security concerns, (10) two new Practice Notes on providing toilet, washing and changing facilities in the workplace following the Supreme Court decision in For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers, and on the right to disconnect produced in partnership with Rosie Moore and Simon Swaine of Lewis Silkin, (11) dates for your diary, and (12) other news items of interest to employment practitioners.