Several major government laws, including overhauls of Labour’s flagship employment rights, do not become law after being caught up in an incredibly late parliamentary process, at least until the fall.
Invoices for employment rules and rental market reforms were widely expected to achieve a “final consent” that would create laws before summer vacation before MPs left from late July to early September.
Ministers also wanted to issue a draft audit reform bill “within summer holidays,” but now it is not expected until the second half of the year.
Officials denounce the “suffocated” legislative schedule for progress that has never been set on stones and falls into the next parliamentary session. However, the policy also meets harsh opposition about the possibility that they may backfire.
The debate over the Employment Rights Bill, a drastic overhaul of government workers’ rights, was dragged out in the House of Representatives due to concerns that key provisions, including zero-hour contracts and bans on so-called fires and Lehier practices, would not work.
The delay means that by summer, the bill is not ready to receive royal consent, as the government intended, and that businesses will face a longer wait before implementing the changes.
Ministers have pledged extensive consultations on regulations to enable a zero-hour ban and new protections against unfair dismissals.
“The union may be disappointed,” one business lobbyist said the pastor revealed in a previous meeting with stakeholders that the bill was intended to be in the statute by July.
Another delayed invoice concerns tenants’ rights introduced by the government in September.
The bill terminates “no obstacle” evictions under section 21. This allows landlords to abandon their tenants for no reason, and also strengthens the terms and standards of maintenance of rental housing.
The last conservative government promised similar laws, but did not do so before the general election last July.
The Charity Shelter highlighted the urgency of change, saying that around 25,000 households have been threatened with homelessness due to Section 21 since they were elected almost a year ago.
Communications Director Mairi McRae said he had made the manifesto promise to ban unfair, unstable evictions immediately if Labour came to power, but in Congress the law was still “tangled.”
“As the government doesn’t pass this bill every day, another 70 households will be threatened with homelessness.
“The government has the power to stop this. … We must do well with our manifesto commitments by passing the tenant rights bill as soon as possible and naming it on the date of implementation.”
One government official said, “I never said I would definitely get an invoice in my statute book by the summer.”
According to four people with detailed knowledge, many years of law aimed at reforming the audit market were also pushed back into the fall after being repeatedly guaranteed to the industry, after being repeatedly guaranteed to the industry.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Financial Times in 2023 that he would promote long-lagged reforms as “priority” if the labour government is elected.
These will update current regulators and become stronger audit, reporting and governance authority.
However, the three people familiar with the minister’s discussion with the industry said drafting the bill has proven difficult and that the employment rights bill was a more urgent priority.
One of the sticking points in drafting the so-called audit reform and corporate governance bill is the proposal to reclassify the largest private companies as “utilities,” which he said would force audits into a more stringent regulatory system.
Creating a new definition of a utility has proven to be extremely difficult, so the Minister is considering opening it for consultation five years after the principles originally promised by the Conservative Government were first promised.
The second point that delayed the bill further and caused a wave of lobbying and negotiations was an attempt to create non-financial donors for businesses that were responsible for financial reporting failures, people said.
Third controversial measure – Two people with knowledge of the process have been removed to force four large accounting firms to share large enterprise audits with small businesses.
Other laws introduced prior to summer holidays include delegation laws that grant more power to local governments, particularly through directly elected mayors.
