Recent employment law developments (England & Wales)

Below are links to some of our recent blog posts on employment law developments covering the state of play on employment law reform proposals, discrimination, unfair dismissal, financial services developments and other topics. Please click through for further details and do get in touch with your usual HSF contact if you would like to discuss the impact of any of these developments.

Legislative reforms

• Queen’s Speech, data protection reform, labour market review, and other announcements
• Summer update on employment law reform proposals

Discrimination

• Tribunal rules that ‘bald’ insult is harassment related to sex
• Failure to provide facilities to express breastmilk can be harassment related to sex
• Tribunal confirms long Covid symptoms could amount to disability
• No protection for belief in moral obligation to break the law
• Protection for ‘beliefs’ may cover a limited right to express a belief, but not misgendering vulnerable clients

Unfair dismissal

• First EAT ruling on Covid-related automatic unfair dismissal claim
• Employers at risk of paying more than statutory cap on unfair dismissal compensatory awards in some cases
• Acas Code on disciplinary procedures may apply to more types of dismissal than employers expect
• Dismissal for whistleblower’s manner or conduct may not be automatically unfair even if the whistleblower’s behaviour was not objectively unreasonable

Statutory holiday pay

• Holiday for part-year workers cannot be proportionately reduced to reflect non-working weeks

Financial services

• AI fairness in UK financial services - details of the white paper we have prepared in collaboration with UK Finance
• FCA publishes final rules on diversity-related disclosures by listed companies
• Podcast: a spotlight on D&I in the financial services sector

Restrictive covenants

• Court of Appeal ruling highlights challenges in obtaining interim injunction to enforce non-compete

Without prejudice privilege and disclosure

• Tribunal considers limits of ‘without prejudice’ protection for settlement correspondence
• EAT orders party to disclose tribunal documents to the Press months after hearing

Collective bargaining

• Direct pay offer made when union negotiations were at an impasse was unlawful inducement

Covid-19 guidance

• 1 April guidance for employers in England