An amendment paper dated 22nd April 2025 has been published, containing proposed amendments to the Employment Rights Bill, which will be considered at Committee Stage in the House of Lords.
On 10th October 2024, the Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 was introduced into Parliament. It completed its House of Commons stages on 12th March 2025. Its Committee Stage in the House of Lords begins on 29th April 2025.
An amendment paper was published on 23rd April 2025, containing all proposed amendments put forward up to and including 22nd April 2025, for consideration at Committee Stage. It contains a number of amendments from Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), to the zero hours and low hours workers provisions of the Bill.
Among the proposals are amendments which, if approved, would:
- Expand the categories of automatically unfair dismissal to include dismissals where the reason for dismissal is that the employer has incorrectly given the employee a notice withdrawing a guaranteed hours offer in specified circumstances (page 13).
- Clarify that, for the purposes of any detriment claim, it is immaterial whether the relevant proceedings brought by a worker were well-founded, provided that the worker acted in good faith. Similarly, it is immaterial whether any circumstances alleged by a worker as being grounds for a claim were well-founded and the worker does not need to expressly refer to the possibility of proceedings (pages 12-14).
- Make provision about the calculation of the number of hours for which an employer is required to make work available, where hours may be made available either within a reference period or another period (page 3).
- Expand the meaning of the movement of a shift to cover changes to the start time of part of a shift or the division of a shift into two parts (pages 5 and 7), and change the date by which payment for a cancelled, curtailed or moved shift must be made in order to disapply the requirement for an employer to serve a notice explaining why no payment is due (pages 6 and 8).
- Apply the financial penalties provisions from the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 to hirers, work-finding agencies, or other relevant persons with an adverse finding against them in specified circumstances (pages 8-9).
- Protect payments for cancelled, curtailed or moved shifts in the event of the employer’s insolvency (pages 9, 14 and 16).
