May 20, 2015

After my recent posts regarding pre-election employment law pledges, I had always been planning a post-election follow up to report on the likely changes that we now know will be coming down the tracks. I expected this was going to involve me analysing the key things a minority government might have been able to push through, or alternatively perhaps would have seen me delving into a new coalition agreement for any relevant HR tidbits. However, after such a ground breaking election result, my job’s slightly easier. Now we know that there will be a majority Tory government for the next 5 years, we have a good idea of what to expect. Or do we? As I reported in my post on the Tory pledges, there isn’t really a great deal to get excited about from an employment law perspective. Tribunal fees are likely here to stay (subject to any further legal challenges) and the focus will be on increasing employment levels even more (with the Conservatives making particular promises on ensuring more disabled people enter the workplace and getting those off-sick due to addictions and obesity back to work as soon as possible). We of course also shouldn’t forget the new right to paid volunteering leave which Cameron announced mid campaign – I do have my doubts though as to whether this will ever actually materialise. If it does, I imagine it will have such limited application as to be largely irrelevant. What’s fundamentally more interesting though from an employment law perspective is the fact that we are now walking towards a guaranteed referendum on our EU membership, with a certain Labour leadership candidate even pushing for this to happen as early as next year. Whatever the date, Europe’s clearly a burning issue for many – the number who voted UKIP makes that abundantly clear. It’s notable that the guarantee of a referendum appeared to be Cameron’s only red line in the election based on his comments in the last pre-election TV event – I’d be surprised if there weren’t many thousands who chose the Tories for this one reason alone. Despite all this, I do wonder whether the Euro-skeptics out there have actually thought about the potential impact on their employment rights should we leave the Union. While immigration would seem to be the number one concern regarding our place in Europe, the potential ramifications on employment law if we left the EU are nothing short of huge. Holiday pay, working time, TUPE, discrimination, family friendly rights, redundancy, data protection… UK law in all of these areas is based on mandatory European principles. A post-exit government would have free reign on all of employment law and we could therefore be on the verge of the biggest shake up to employment rights in a generation. I personally find that prospect slightly scary, although whatever your view, there are certainly some interesting times ahead.