Category Archives: Legal

Britain, Business, Economic, Government, Legal, Politics, Society

Employment rights bill

BRITAIN

PRIOR to Labour coming into office, its general election manifesto said the government would introduce its workers’ rights package within its first 100 days. Yesterday, on day 97, it fulfilled that pledge. Parliament will debate the newly published employment rights bill in just over a week’s time. Even so, this is only one stage in a longer workplace reform journey that will take more than one parliamentary session to deal with. Many of the government’s decisions about changes to the world of work remain to be nailed down and are not part of the bill at all.

It has become easy to caricature the new legislation, and many are doing so. The Conservatives dismiss it all as rewards to Labour’s trade union paymasters. The Unite union says the plan is full of gaping holes. The Federation of Small Businesses says the plans are rushed and chaotic. But the British Chambers of Commerce says the government is listening and responsive. What isn’t in question, though, is the level of business fury. A leading legal publication says the package strikes positive notes with lawyers.

With views polarised, this is leading to a sterile, zero-sum debate on work issues. But the larger truth is that this is a bill about change. Employment law has not kept pace with developments in the worlds of work, family, and business. The stark reality is that a fresh approach, centred on the work issues of today and tomorrow rather than those of the past, is long overdue.

Unsurprisingly, then, the employment rights bill is multiple different things, not one simple ideal. The bill is large and wide-ranging. It comes in six discreet sections, containing 119 different clauses and runs to 158 pages. Most of it is about terms and conditions for individual employees, and the obligations that employers will have to follow. The bill also creates a Fair Work Agency to enforce it. Relatively little of it is actually about the law on trade unions at all, though you might not think so to listen to the political debate.

The most important rights in the bill belong to individual workers, and especially to new hires and to families. These include unfair dismissal protection from day one, along with day-one paternity and unpaid parental leave rights. Sick pay will apply from day one as well. Workers on zero-hours contracts will gain guaranteed hours if they want them. Fire and rehire on worse terms will be banned. Flexible working will be a default right.

The bill does not set all these rights in stone. A statutory probation period for new hires is still being discussed, during which greater flexibility would apply. Fire-and-rehire prohibitions may not be applied to businesses at risk of collapse. Small firms, some of which do not have HR departments to navigate these rules, are looking for a more adaptable approach too. It is better to get these issues right than to rush into them.

Some gaps remain. These include the right to switch off outside working hours, as well as a requirement for large employers to report on equalities pay gaps. Some unions want to roll back more of the restrictive legislation from the Conservative years. Nevertheless, the larger reality is that it is important that workforces should be well paid and treated fairly. This matters in terms of economic and employment justice, but also in making businesses more innovative and more productive. On this, at least, the Labour government’s approach is in line with the public mood – and rightly so.

Standard
Britain, Government, Legal, Politics, Society

Society calls on UK Government to keep the Human Rights Act

BILL OF RIGHTS

MORE than 150 civil society groups have written to the UK Government urging a commitment to retaining the Human Rights Act and rule out its replacement by a British bill of rights.

The position of the prime minister in regard to the proposed legislation is in doubt but Dominic Raab, having been reappointed as justice secretary, appears adamant to push through the new laws. It had previously been shelved under Liz Truss’s leadership.

The British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR) and 157 other organisations including Amnesty International UK, Human Rights Watch, Liberty, Child Poverty Action Group, End Violence Against Women Coalition, and Unison, have written to Rishi Sunak calling on him to abandon the plans to scrap the HRA once and for all.

The letter, which was written to coordinate with global human rights day – Saturday, 10 December – says they “write with heavy hearts that the UK government’s approach to our domestic law risks taking us further and further away from the legal protection of human rights”.

It continues: “Human rights laws are, necessarily, uncomfortable for governments because they set limits on the exercise of power, limits which are for the benefit of people.

“No UK government need fear this … [it] should embrace the fact that our Human Rights Act provides universal protections for everyone and ensures those with public power are accountable.”

The 1998 legislation incorporated into domestic law rights are set out in the European convention on human rights. The convention, which was ratified by 46 member states (including the UK), was intended to ensure governments could not dehumanise and abuse individuals’ rights.

Giving evidence to parliament’s justice committee, Mr Raab, who has also returned to the role of deputy prime minister, said the bill of rights would “restore some common sense to articulate a more UK-wide set of priorities for human rights and to curb some of the abuses of it”.

He also claimed it would protect victims and the public “perhaps more than was possible under the HRA,” for instance by boosting free speech.

But critics of the proposals have called it a “rights removal bill”. The BIHR specifically highlights several weaknesses and says it would:

. Fundamentally weaken the right to respect for private and family life.

. Remove the legal duty on courts and public bodies to interpret other laws compatibly with human rights, exposing people to the arbitrary use of laws with no checks.

. Limit access to justice by adding barriers to bringing a human rights case to court.

. Destroy the positive obligation on public bodies to take proactive steps to protect people from harm, including protecting domestic and child abuse survivors.

Sanchita Hosali, the chief executive of the BIHR, said: “Despite the rhetoric, even a cursory reading of the rights removal bill shows it does not create new rights or strengthen existing protections. It does the exact opposite, weakening people’s current rights and access to them.

“The rights removal bill is unprincipled, unevidenced, unworkable and unnecessary.”

BIHR said the signatories represented the interests of millions of people across the UK.

Other organisations that have put their names to the letter include Stonewall, the Muslim Council of Britain, Freedom from Torture, the Runnymede Trust, Rethink Mental Illness, Parkinson’s UK, and the Prison Reform Trust.

A spokesperson for the government said: “The government is committed to protecting human rights and will always continue to champion them internationally and at home.”

Standard
Legal, Policing, Scotland, Society

Nine police officers are attacked on duty each day

POLICE SCOTLAND

NEW figures published show that police officers were subjected to more than 800 assaults over the course of just three months.

An average of more than nine assaults were inflicted every day on serving officers during the first quarter of this year.

During this period, 860 attacks were committed, with an average of five working days lost for every assault.

This was slightly down from the 1,031 over the same time period in 2020-21, which was a significant rise from 764 assaults in 2019-20.

Injuries such as stabbings with needles doubled in 2020-21, and injuries during an arrest rose by 12.5 per cent.

In 1919 Magazine, the policing magazine, which focuses on Scotland’s justice and social affairs, an experienced Police Scotland officer said: “The main underlying cause of violence against police is lack of police officers. You’re lucky if you’re sending two cops to go to a call where historically there might have been four, five, six in two or three cars.”

In the first quarter of the year there were five cases of officers being injured by needles.

The most common injuries were bruising and inflammation with 233 cases, followed by 222 cases of exposure to a hazardous substance, and 133 reports of a cut or laceration.

Last year, a thug was jailed after choking an officer and rendering him unconscious. Colleagues feared the officer had been killed after the assailant attacked him at a disturbance in Coatbridge, Lanarkshire. A total of 225 working days were lost over the three-month period. This is in comparison to 910 days lost due to potential or confirmed exposure to Covid.

The statistics come from a health and safety report, sent to the Scottish Police Authority’s People’s Committee last month. This report highlights a series of incidents.

It includes a case of an officer attending a violent domestic incident in Glasgow where a man was brandishing a knife close to paramedics. He swung the knife at officers when they tried to engage with him and struck one on the chest.

The report raised the “continued increase in police officer and police staff assaults” as an area of “concern”.

A senior police officer said: “Officers and staff work with dedication and a commitment to helping people, and violence against them is deplorable and unacceptable.

“It is simply not part of the job, and it will not be tolerated.

“It causes physical and psychological harm to dedicated public servants and there is also a cost to the public purse through days lost to ill-health or personal injury claims.”

Those who carry out serious attacks on police officers can face up to life imprisonment under common law offences.

There are also specific offences relating to police assaults in the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act and Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act.

The Scottish Government said: “No one should be the victim of abuse or violence at work, and assaults on police officers are completely unacceptable.

“The health and safety of police officers is a matter for the chief constable, who has made a commitment for 2021/22 that he will continue to take action to reduce the impact on officers and staff of violence in all its forms.”

Standard