1 Mar 2013
Carol Smith
Job Title
In Croner’s latest article for VBJ, Carol Smith looks at what is coming up in the employment law calendar in 2013.
The main purpose of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is to encourage long-term growth and simplify regulation, a large part of which relates to employment law. Items that will come into effect in 2013 are the following:
• All employment tribunal claimants will have to submit their complaint to ACAS before a tribunal to try to first resolve disputes through conciliation.
• The facilitation of a “Rapid Resolution Scheme”, where claims can be decided by a legal officer without a tribunal hearing.
• There is a power in the bill for employment tribunals to levy a financial penalty on employers found to have breached employment rights, but only if the tribunal “is of the opinion that the breach has one or more aggravating features” (what constitutes this will be decided by the employment tribunal). The penalty, payable to HM Treasury, will be in addition to compensation awarded to the claimant. In normal cases, the financial penalty will be 50 per cent of the amount awarded to the claimant, with a minimum £100 and an upper ceiling of £5,000 – this amount will be reduced to 50 per cent for prompt payment (within 21 days).
• Compromise agreements will be renamed “settlement agreements”.
• The Government is planning to change the limit of the compensatory award in unfair dismissal cases to give employers more certainty about their liability and to give employees a better understanding of the value of unfair dismissal claims. The limit from April 2013, where a limit applies, will be £74,200.
From March 2013, the Government will increase unpaid parental leave from 13 to 18 weeks to comply with the revised EU Parental Leave Directive.
In 2015, it will increase the current children’s age limit on parental leave, giving each parent the right to up to 18 weeks’ unpaid parental leave for each child under 18.
In October 2012, the chancellor announced a new type of employment contract. Under these arrangements, an employee would give up a large proportion of their UK employment rights in return for a shareholding in the company.
Discrimination rights under the Equality Act would not be affected. The shares will be worth £2,000 or more. Companies are expected to be able to offer the new employee-shareholder contracts from April 2013.
A number of changes to the tribunal system were made in April 2012. The Government has since announced it is to introduce financial penalties for unsuccessful respondents and fees for making claims to employment tribunals. From summer 2013, claimants will have to pay to bring an employment tribunal case. There will be two levels of fees.
• Level one claims include those for breach of contract, a redundancy payment, unauthorised deductions from wages and claims relating to annual leave under the Working Time Regulations. This will attract a £160 issue fee and a £230 hearing fee.
• Level two claims include unfair dismissal, discrimination, equal pay and the vast majority of other claims. The issue fee for this will be £250 and the hearing fee £950. Tribunals will have the power to order the unsuccessful party to reimburse the fees paid by the successful party. There will also be fees for appeals to the Employment Appeal Tribunal, with an issue fee of £400 and a hearing fee of £1,200.
