Employment Rights Bill 2024-25: Progress of the bill

The Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 was introduced in the House of Commons on 10 October 2024 and received its second reading on 21 October 2024. It is bill 11 of the 2024-25 parliamentary session. It is listed for report stage in the Commons on 11 March 2025.

Most of the bill applies to England, Scotland and Wales, but not Northern Ireland where employment law is devolved. However, the territorial extent of some clauses differs – see for example discussion of new clause 5 in section 3.4 of this briefing.

The bill covers reforms to many areas of employment law, including unfair dismissal, flexible working, statutory sick pay, family leave, protections against harassment, fire and rehire, collective bargaining in the education and adult social care sectors, trade union law and enforcement of labour market rules.

For further detail of the contents of the bill as introduced, see the Library’s briefing produced ahead of second reading.

Committee stage

A public bill committee took evidence and examined the bill across 21 sittings between 26 November 2024 and 16 January 2025.

A total of 264 amendments were tabled to the bill in public bill committee. 149 of these, all government amendments, were agreed to by the committee. All opposition amendments were either withdrawn, not moved, or disagreed to in a division of the committee.

The two most significant new topics introduced to the bill through new clauses and amendments were:

• Increasing the time limits within which people can make a claim to an employment tribunal (for almost all claims), from three months to six months
• Introducing new powers to implement international maritime conventions and a Seafarer’s Charter through regulations

Major themes that led to significant debate in the committee included:

• Smaller employers – both Conservative and Liberal Democrat members of the committee raised the potential impact of many of the measures on small businesses, and whether smaller employers should be exempted from some of the provisions.
• Zero hours contracts – how strict the restrictions on zero hours contracts should be and whether or not these would lead to increased unemployment.
• Fire and rehire practices – how much flexibility to give struggling businesses from the ban on dismissing workers for refusing to agree to variation of contract.
• Unfair dismissal – the removal of the qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims. Opposition members raised concerns about the impact on businesses choosing to employ new staff and asked questions over how the new statutory probationary period would operate.
• Trade union access and industrial relations – Conservative members raised objections to various parts of the proposed trade union reforms, which they said might lead to an increase in industrial action. Labour members argued these reforms would improve industrial relations and provide a needed increase in bargaining power for workers.

Consultations and inquiries

The Business and Trade Select Committee has held an inquiry into the Employment Rights Bill, collecting written evidence and holding three oral evidence sessions between 17 December and 14 January.

The government held a series of four consultations, asking for feedback from stakeholders on specific aspects of the bill:

• Making Work Pay: Strengthening Statutory Sick Pay – focusing on what the percentage replacement rate should be for those earning below the current rate of Statutory Sick Pay (SSP). Ran from 21 October to 4December 2024.
• Making Work Pay: collective redundancy and fire and rehire – focusing on what stronger remedies should be where rules on collective redundancy and fire and rehire were broken. Ran from 21 October to 2December 2024.
• Making Work Pay: creating a modern framework for industrial relations – focusing on various rule changes around trade union ballots, access and notice. Ran from 21 October to 2 December 2024.
• Making Work Pay: the application of zero hours contracts measures to agency workers – focusing on what the balance of responsibility could be between employment agencies and end hirers if zero-hour contract protections were extended to cover agency workers. Ran from 21 October to 2 December 2024.

The government responded to all four consultations on 4 March 2025, along with a response to a fifth consultation Tackling non-compliance in the umbrella company market, which was launched under the previous government in June 2023. On the same day, the government published a press release, Employment Rights Bill to boost productivity for British workers and grow the economy, summarising the amendments that it would be tabling ahead of report stage in response to these consultations, including:

• Extending the application of the right to request regular hours contracts rules to agency workers
• Increasing the maximum period of the protective award in cases of collective redundnacy from 90 to 180 days
• Making a series of changes to trade union and strike rules such as changing the 7-day notice period for industrial action to 10 days and having industrial action mandates expire after 12 months instead of 6 months
• Setting the rate of SSP for those earning below the lower earnings limit at 80 percent of their weekly earnings or SSP, whichever is lower.

The consultation responses also set out plans to consult further on other issues such as electronic balloting for trade unions and further strengthening the collective redundancy framework.

The bill’s publications page has lists of all amendments, including those tabled for report stage, in various forms and as of various dates.