On 10th May 2023 the Secretary of State for the Department for Business and Trade, Kemi Badenoch MP issued a written statement outlining some of the proposed EU laws which the Government intends to revoke from retained EU Law. The goal, according to Ms Badenoch MP is to have laws which will “no longer tie business up in red tape”. Read the full written statement here.
The main highlights which are being proposed:
Non-Compete Clauses
Non-compete clauses will be limited to 3 months; however, this time cap is unlikely to exiting employees poaching clients or staff, non-solicitation and non-compete clauses are different in their contractual intention.
TUPE
TUPE applies to all businesses, at present businesses with fewer than 10 employees are not required to invite the election of representatives for consultation purposes if no existing arrangements are in place.
The proposed revocation will mean there will be no obligation for small businesses with fewer than 50 employees and where the transfer affects fewer than 10 employees to first consult with elected representatives, consultation can start directly with the 10 or less affected individuals who will transfer.
Holiday Pay
The statutory basic holiday entitlement of 4 weeks granted under the Working Time Regulations, and the additional entitlement to 1.6 weeks leave individual employees currently receive under domestic law are to be combined to calculate the individual’s annual leave entitlement. This will simply holiday entitlement calculations, but it will also certainly affect how holiday pay is calculated particularly where there has been a period of sickness during annual leave.
Rolling up holiday pay is set to be reintroduced under domestic law. Rolled up holiday pay refers to a situation where employees are routinely paid a sum of money with their usual wages which is labelled as “holiday pay”, even though they are not actually taking any time off. When the employee comes to take a holiday, they are paid nothing, as they have already had the money. The practice of rolled-up holiday pay was traditionally used to deal with the holiday entitlement of casual or short-term workers and was previously unlawful under EU law.
Finally, the intention is that employers will no longer require to keep a record of working hours to demonstrate compliance with working time.
EU Law
The current “sunset clause”, which the government is expected to remove by 31st December 2023, means EU laws are set to automatically expire if they have not been revised or retained. More than 1,000 EU laws have been revoked since the UK left the EU. The government proposes to revoke a further 600 laws directly through the Retained EU Law Bill, the Financial Services and Markets Bill and Procurement Bill will revoke another 500 pieces of retained EU law. Whether or not civil servants can meet this incredibly demanding task is yet to be seen.
Changes to legislation will be introduced ‘when Parliamentary time allows’, we do not anticipate that this will be in 2023, possibly maybe in 2024, who knows. We will keep you updated when they are.