As lawyers, we can’t help but
say: before you change something, look long and hard at the evidence. After all
if it isn’t broken, why fix it?
What is now amazing us is that the
Government’s own evidence indicates there are no sound, solid or non-political reasons
for changing the current employment laws we have in this country.
For example, according to the BIS
Employment Regulation Report for September 2012, UK employment regulation was already
in ‘good shape’ before any changes were made.
Vince Cable admitted as much in
November 2011 when he said, “the UK has one of the most effective and
lightly regulated labour markets among developed economies”.
The BIS Response to the ‘No Fault
Dismissals’ Consultation goes even further than this - identifying that the UK has
less employment protection than the BRICS economies – Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa – and other developing countries.
Yes, that’s right - the Government
itself believes we currently have less ‘red tape’ and employment law protection
than the world’s fastest growing and newly emerging economies – and that’s
before most of the proposed changes – watering down TUPE, bringing in ET fees,
scrapping equality questionnaires, removing protection from third party
harassment, cutting unfair dismissal compensation by possibly 2/3rds, bringing
in ‘employee owner’ contracts etc - come in. Those changes are not expected
till 2013.
It seems that all external data
(largely covering the period before the Government changes began!) support the
Government’s evidence:
- Employment Tribunals claims are
down 15% nationally.
- The OECD says the UK is already the
3rd least regulated and cheapest labour market (2008) behind only Canada and
US.
- The recent World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness
Report cited UK’s existing flexibility as to why it moved up from 10th to 8th
place in its global rankings.
- The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ rankings of 183 countries
shows the UK was already 7th in the world in 2011 for ‘ease of operating’
behind only Singapore 1st, Hong Kong 2nd, New Zealand 3rd,
USA 4th, Denmark 5th and Norway 6th.
So why change things? There seems
to be no financial or economic need to do so - and the more the Government
changes employment law, the more confused workers and businesses are about their
respective rights and obligations - creating more, not less uncertainty.
Regardless of this, the
Government seems set on a race to the bottom. Many European economies are
required to amend employment regulation as part of IMF and European financial
support conditions but we seem to be racing to beat them to become one of the
world’s worst places to work in terms of rights and protection.
David Sorensen - Partner
For further information on Employment Rights, please visit our website or call 0113 245 0733 and ask to speak with our Employment Rights team.
