Government plan to reduce EU laws
The government has presented a new bill focused on scrapping all EU driven labour rules by December 2023. This is in The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill which was published last week. It will automatically repeal any retained EU law as of 31st December 2023 unless specific legislation is introduced to retain it. For the potential chopping block therefore are
- TUPE
- The Working Time Regulations, e.g.
- Limits on the working week (48 hours)
- Holiday Pay
- The Part-time and Fixed-term Worker Regulations
- The Agency Worker Regulations
The government represents all of us, but a good number of us may feel that at least some of these regulations, whilst making life harder for employers, actually improved our society. There is little doubt that employment standards improved throughout the first decade of this century. We wonder where the evidence is that people want these all scrapped or that we want to go back to a previous existence.
A good deal of tidying up would be welcome though to simplify everything, and the Bill does allow for the regulations selected by the government to be retained. But how much time will be spent in the plethora of consultations that may ensue, when arguably focus should really be on improving productivity and thus keeping a happy workforce. Just wondering!
We will be covering the Agency Worker Regulations at our upcoming Lawspeed seminar on January 24th 2023. Click here for more information.
