News

Employment in the news | July 2025

31 July 2025

July saw the usual slew of government activity before the summer break, with the publication of one review, two calls for evidence and a report from the 2023 whistleblowing review. In Parliament, the Employment Rights Bill approached its final stages, but it won't become law before the autumn.

Chapter 1 End game for the Employment Rights Bill

The House of Lords continued reviewing the Employment Rights Bill. The government:

Confirmed that the new right to bereavement leave will apply to pregnancy loss;
Introduced a ban on NDAs/ confidentiality agreements relating to discrimination or harassment; and
Modified the rules on fire and re-hire.

The government also published an implementation roadmap, outlining when the key changes in the Bill will come into force. Notably, the new “day one” right not to be unfairly dismissed won’t take effect until 2027, a bit later than originally planned.

You can read more about the changes and the roadmap here.

During the Bill’s report stage, the House of Lords agreed various amendments watering down some of the government’s main proposals. The most significant changes included a six-month qualifying period for unfair dismissal claims and a right to request (instead of a right to be offered) guaranteed hours. However, the government seems unlikely to accept the amendments, so they probably won’t appear in the Bill’s final version.

Next steps

The Bill will have its third reading in the House of Lords on 3 September. It will then return to the House of Commons.
Although there will be changes to remove restrictions on industrial action shortly after the Bill receives Royal Assent, most changes will start coming into force from April 2026.
Keep an eye out for further consultations on the new requirements in late 2025 and early 2026.

Chapter 2 More questions than answers

We got a clearer idea of future government priorities with the publication of two reviews/ calls for evidence during July, one into parental leave and the other into unpaid internships.

The parental leave review and call for evidence is designed to understand what objectives a parental leave and pay system should meet and how they could be achieved. Existing family leave structures have developed piecemeal, leading to a complex set of rights that don't reflect modern caring responsibilities. You can read more about the review and its objectives here.

Another government priority is to ban unpaid internships that are not part of an educational or training course. Interns are already entitled to receive the minimum wage if their work means that they are workers. However, the government is concerned that some employers are not complying with this obligation or are using unpaid “work trials” to avoid it. The call for evidence seeks information about how employers use internships, unpaid work trials, voluntary workers (in the charitable sector), volunteers and work shadowing to inform future government action.

Finally, the government published Grant Thornton's independent report into whistleblowing. This was commissioned by the Sunak government in 2023 to explore how well the existing legal framework provides routes for whistleblowing disclosures, protects whistleblowers from detriment or dismissal and encourages whistleblowing through cultural change.

The report identifies stakeholder proposals for change, such as extending the categories of individuals who receive protection, expanding the matters in relation to which someone can blow the whistle and receive protection and requiring employers to put whistleblowing procedures in place. So far, the government has not said whether it will pursue any of the suggestions.

Next steps

The parental review will run for 18 months. The initial call for evidence closes on 26 August 2025.
The call for evidence on unpaid internships closes on 9 October 2025.

Authored by Ed Bowyer, Stefan Martin, and Jo Broadbent.