Policy Talks | A Review of Summer 2024

Despite the Parliamentary recess, the Labour government had Whitehall working hard over the summer, particularly the new teams set up in Department of Business and Trade to draft the Employment Rights Bill in the first 100 days of the new Labour Government.  

The Employment Rights Bill 

What do we know and what can we share? 

•  We should expect a legislative framework to be set out in the Bill, to be heard in Parliament by 13th October, which will need detailed Regulations to be enacted fully. 

• Temporary contractors will be in scope of the changes including zero-hour contracts and day-one rights. 

• Look out for twenty plus consultations post the Budget on 30th October! 

• Enactment of the changes will take much longer and we are promised time to consult fully towards the end of the year and into 2025.  

• Read our recent blog for more details. 

Calls to policy makers 

In the meantime, I have been busy engaging with the CBI and other sector trade organisations, with a joint letter to the Secretary of State for Business copied to Angela Rayner, articulating the value of self-employed contractors and temporary workers.  

Differentiating the professionally employed and self-employed contractors from those in precarious, low paid work remains as important as ever, to avoid the unintended consequences we have come to expect on reform of our sector and employment status. 

We continue our focus on apprenticeship levy reform with the launch of our latest Campaign - Unshackle Skills Investment through the Growth and Skills Levy.  I worked with members over the summer on powerful case studies and this launch is timed for conference season.  We are asking for flexible modular training to be the target of extended levy spend, and for any accredited courses to be within scope, genuinely enabling our members and their clients to access levy funds to scale up initiatives such as hire, train, deploy models and reskilling programmes. 
 

Skills England is being formed this autumn and they are currently advertising for Board members, and we are expecting their first report at the end of September. 

Conference season is in full swing 

What struck me at the TUC conference earlier this week were the synergies between our asks on apprenticeship levy reform and union members, particularly on their call for a Just Transition to green jobs. Transition to new skills and roles doesn’t just happen – it takes structure and cooperation between supply chains and workers and their representatives, particularly acute in North Sea oil and gas. 

Next week will find me again on another day trip to Brighton to attend the Liberal Democrat conference. I’m interested to see their key focuses and I’m feeding into a roundtable on their response to the Employment Rights Bill.  
 
Autumn is set to be very busy, but we’re ready and have dispatched our Treasury submission to the Chancellor ahead of her first budget on 30th October. 

I look forward to regularly updating you via our website, weekly Political Bulletin mailer, and relevant Member events and forums.