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26 July 2024 / Charles Pigott
Issue: 8081 / Categories: Features , Employment
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Overhauling employment

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How is Labour planning to make work pay? Charles Pigott examines the planned changes to employment policy under the new government
  • The Labour party’s election manifesto included a commitment to implement its ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ in full.
  • This would represent the most radical overhaul of domestic employment and trade union law in a generation.
  • This article considers the proposed changes, including their knock-on effects.

After years of policy announcements and adjustments, the Labour Party published its ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ on 24 May. A few weeks later, its election manifesto highlighted the plan’s key commitments and promised to implement it ‘in full’. The King’s Speech on 17 July included, as widely expected, an Employment Rights Bill in the list of measures announced, plus a draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

We still have no clear information about likely timings, other than the frequently re-iterated promise to ‘introduce legislation within 100 days’. The new legislation will apply to Great Britain but not Northern Ireland.

A new kind of landslide

Labour

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Clarke Willmott—Matthew Roach

Clarke Willmott—Matthew Roach

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Farrer & Co—Richard Lane

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Bird & Bird—Sue McLean

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Commercial team in London welcomes technology specialist as partner

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Bereavement leave is undergoing a quiet but profound transformation. Writing in NLJ this week, Robert Hargreaves of York St John University explains how the Employment Rights Act 2025 introduces a day-one right to leave for a wider range of losses, alongside new provisions for pregnancy loss and bereaved partners
Courts are beginning to grapple with whether AI-generated material is legally privileged—and the answers are mixed. In this week's issue of NLJ, Stacie Bourton, Tom Whittaker & Beata Kolodziej of Burges Salmon examine US rulings showing how easily privilege can be lost
New guidance seeks to bring order to the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in expert evidence. Writing in NLJ this week, Minesh Tanna and David Bridge of Simmons & Simmons set out a framework stressing ‘transparency’, ‘explainability’ and ‘reliability’
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