Hard at work

In last month’s column I was rash/stupid enough to say that the government’s employment law review seemed to have gone temporarily to sleep. This obviously aroused the ire of the gods in charge of that well known area of British jurisprudence, the Law of Sod, because we have seen this month a veritable outpouring of papers and announcements (most recently in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement) on proposed and possible reforms.
 

• The Department for Business, Information and Skills (BIS) and the Courts and Tribunals Service published Resolving Workplace Disputes: Government response to the consultation,
• the BIS/DWP working party on reforms to sickness absence laws reported,
• and Underhill P has been deputed to review the Employment Tribunal Rules of Procedure by next spring.

This has been supplemented quite separately by an informal report for the prime minister by a ministerial adviser (Adrian Beecroft—strangely perhaps not Adam Werritty) which argues for a more root and branch approach, and in particular has spawned