Home / Updates on Employment Rights Bill – July 2025
31st July 2025
Lauren Ogden, Associate
The Employment Rights Bill “(ERB”) has been progressing through Parliament, most recently through the House of Lords. We take a look at some of the amendments that have been proposed below:
In line with its manifesto, the Labour government intends to make unfair dismissal a day-one right. The initial drafts of the ERB therefore removed the current two-year qualification period instead replacing it with an “initial period” in which employers could use a light touch procedure for dismissals, expected to be around 9 months. However, the House of Lords have now proposed keeping a qualification period but instead reducing it from two-years to six-months.
Whether the government will agree to this is yet to be seen. However, the House of Lords have voted in favour of the six-month qualification period on the basis that it is simpler than the government’s concept of an ‘initial period”, during which it may be fair to dismiss an employee (despite the day-one right).
Initially, the government’s intended ban on fire and re-hire covered changes to any contractual term without an employee’s agreement, except when a business was in extreme financial difficulty.
The government has now softened the ban, which will now only prevent dismissals to make changes to contractual terms on pay, working hours, pensions, shift times and length and rights to time off. It is expected that other precluded changes will be defined in regulations at a later date.
The amendments have also made it clear that it will be automatically unfair to dismiss an employee where the reason for the dismissal is to replace them with someone who is not an employee, such as an agency worker, to do substantially the same work.
Currently, employees have a statutory right to two weeks of parental bereavement leave and pay when an employee’s child under the age of 18 dies, which includes a stillbirth after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
The government has now confirmed that the ERB will be amended to include pregnancy loss before 24 weeks, but as it stands the right to leave in these circumstances will be unpaid and limited to one week.
Since publication, the ERB been silent on reforms to NDAs, despite the government’s promise to crackdown on them. The most recent amendments to the ERB have now addressed NDAs, as it seeks to ban employers from using them to silence employees who have been subjected to harassment and abuse. This likely means that confidentiality clauses in documents such as settlement agreements, will now be void if it prevents the employee from speaking about an allegation of harassment and discrimination.
The House of Lords have also proposed that the duty to offer workers a guaranteed hours contract is instead replaced by a right for an employee to request a guaranteed hours contract.
If this amendment is included in the final version of the Bill, it means that employers would not be obliged to offer employees a guaranteed hours contract unless an employee actually requests one.
The ERB will require employers to pay compensation to employees where their shifts are cancelled with short notice. The House of Lords have proposed to amend the ERB so that “short notice” means 48 hours.
The extent to which many of these changes will be accepted and included in the final version of the legislation is currently unknown, particularly some have been proposed by opposition members of the House of Lords. However, we do know that the government intends to implement the Bill via a staggered approach. Please see our earlier article on the government’s ERB implementation roadmap for more information on when these changes can be expected and for more specific information about the proposed reforms our earlier articles What does the Employment Rights Bill mean for your Business? | Kuits Solicitors and Updates to the Employment Rights Bill – March 2025 | Kuits Solicitors.
Our September HR Breakfast will also focus on the Employment Rights Bill and you can find further details and book your free place here