So near, and yet so far……!
The Government has failed in its latest attempt to get the Employment Rights Bill over the line.
This evening, the House of Lords voted 244 to 220 to reject the removal of the cap on compensatory awards for unfair dismissal in favour of a requirement for the Government to conduct a review of the issue.
It is clear that the very late stage at which this major change was introduced into the Bill, together with some ambiguity about exactly what business representatives had agreed to, was what lost it for the Government. The Bill must now return again to the House of Commons for another round of ‘ping-pong’.
The Lords did accept the Government amendments on the issue of guaranteed hours, dropping their insistence on this becoming a ‘right to request’ an offer rather than an obligation on the employer to provide one. They also accepted the Government amendments on the reform of trade union political funds. The final issue was the issue of the need for a 50% turnout in industrial action ballots. The Lords voted 223 to 219 to agree to the removal of that threshold in line with the Government’s position.
This means that the only remaining issue for the Bill is that of the compensation limit for unfair dismissal. We think the Government will almost certainly want to bring this back to the Commons before Christmas – but they will certainly not be happy with the outcome tonight.