| HR & EMPLOYMENT LAW
Jackie Le Poidevin, Editor-in-Chief, HR Adviser |
The Queen’s Speech: Businesses in Limbo as Employment Bill is Delayed Again
The Queen’s Speech has once again made no mention of the Employment Bill which the government pledged to introduce in 2019 to boost workers’ rights. The TUC claimed the bill, which ministers have committed to introduce on at least 20 occasions, may now be ditched for good. This uncertainty about a growing backlog of proposals isn’t helpful for anyone.
The bill, announced in the 2019 Queen’s Speech, would have included:
- A right to request flexible working from day 1 of employment.
- A new right for workers to request a more predictable contract.
- A requirement for workers to receive tips in full.
- Extended protection from discrimination in redundancy situations for employees who are pregnant, on or returning from maternity leave.
- New rights to neonatal and carer’s leave.
- The creation of a single enforcement body for employment rights.
Beyond the Employment Bill, the fate of various other proposals is also unknown, including:
- The right for workers to have reasonable notice of shifts allocated and cancelled, and payments for cancelled shifts.
- An enhanced duty to prevent sexual harassment.
- New legislation on non-disclosure agreements.
- Measures to regulate non-compete clauses.
- Reforms aimed at making it easier to determine individuals’ employment status.
Was Anything New Announced?
The day before the Queen’s Speech, the government announced its response to its December 2020 consultation on exclusivity clauses. It said it will extend the existing ban on exclusivity clauses in zero-hours contracts to all workers who earn less than the Lower Earnings Limit. This means that employment contract clauses that prevent a worker from working for someone else or from doing so without the employer’s consent will be unenforceable, unless the worker has guaranteed weekly earnings of £123 or more per week (on current rates).
The government claims this will benefit 1.5m workers on short-hours contracts. However, legal commentators have pointed out that this is a minor change compared to the commitments that have been shelved. New legislation to implement this measure is due to be laid before Parliament later this year.
Some bills were also announced in the Queen’s Speech that (if they are introduced) may have an impact on employers. These include a:
- Bill of Rights: this would replace the Human Rights Act and could affect the way some employment legislation is interpreted.
- Data Reform Bill: this may make subject access requests less burdensome.
- Modern Slavery Bill: this will strengthen the existing requirement on companies with an annual turnover of over £36 million to publish an annual statement on the steps they are taking to prevent modern slavery.
- Harbours (Seafarers’ Remuneration) Bill: this is being brought forward in response to the P&O dismissals and would empower harbour authorities to refuse access to ferry companies that do not pay the equivalent of the National Minimum Wage to their seafarers while in UK waters. Clearly, this won’t affect the vast majority of employers.
- Brexit Freedoms Bill: this would make it easier to update or remove EU-derived laws. A ‘bonfire’ of EU-derived employment legislation seems unlikely but we might eventually see some simplification of things like the working time rules.
What Does this Mean for You?
Many employers are well ahead of the government and are voluntarily offering all staff and job seekers flexible working options. Many also offer enhanced rights to working parents. If you already follow good employment practices and take steps to make yourself attractive as an employer, you may notice little change in your policies and procedures if the Employment Bill and other delayed proposals are introduced or not.
However, the cost-of-living crisis will hit workers on insecure contracts and other vulnerable people such as unpaid carers hardest. The bill would have helped them and helped to prevent businesses that are trying to do the right thing being undercut by less scrupulous competitors.
| HEALTH & SAFETY
Michael Ellerby, Editorial Board Member, Health & Safety Adviser and Risk Assessment & Compliance |
Mast Climbing Work Platforms: Also Apply HSE’s Latest Safety Alert to MEWPs
We’re all familiar with scaffolding on buildings that are being built or refurbished. But most of us are less familiar with mast climbing work platforms (MCWPs), which can be a fast and convenient alternative to scaffolding access in the construction industry. Mast climbers are equipped with a powered drive unit that propels the work platform up and down a vertical mast structure. MCWPs can lift platforms with people and equipment, providing access as well as a platform from which to work on tall buildings, and can be used to attach external components such as cladding.
Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Safety Alert
The HSE has issued a safety alert relating to a serious technical fault. They warn that platforms could fall from height, with disastrous consequences, where mechanical faults in drive units go undetected. While this alert is restricted to MCWPs, the same principles can be applied to all lifting equipment (such as mobile elevated work platforms, or MEWPs) and many other types of machinery where undetected simple mechanical failures can lead to accidents, such as brake failures in vehicles.
Your Immediate Actions
If you use MCWPs you are advised to check immediately that the necessary control measures are in place. We go further and suggest that this advice also applies to MEWPs. Failures in drive units can mean that neither the centrifugal brakes (which are intended to limit the speed of descent) nor the automatic brakes (which are intended to engage when powered travel is stopped) within the drive units are able to have an effect.
Don’t Delay
Failure of equipment used for working at height can lead to fatalities. If the control measures are not in place, you need to withdraw the MCWPs or MEWPs from use until those responsible for supply, installation, use, inspection, servicing, maintenance and for thorough examination ensure that:
- There is the means to identify a loss of mechanical integrity in each drive unit where this is the system to prevent falling with overspeed.
- Each individual drive unit is fitted with a mechanical device (such as a centrifugal brake) that automatically prevents the work platform from descending at excessive speed.
- Damage to drive units due to platforms being powered onto buffers/base frames is prevented.
- Platforms and associated equipment are not damaged by physical overloading.
- Thorough examinations, inspections and tests, and visual and functional checks are appropriately planned and carried out.
Understand Your ‘Absolute Duty’ on PUWER
The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (Reg 5) are explicit in detailing the need for maintaining work equipment in a safe condition. This may be achieved through routine maintained, and planned preventive maintenance. The Court of Appeal case of Stark v Post Office (2000) established beyond doubt that maintenance of work equipment to ensure safe and efficient operation is an absolute duty (not one to be modified by ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’).
| PAYROLL
Sarah Bradford, Editor-in-Chief, Pay & Benefits Adviser |
P60 Deadline Approaching: What You Need to Do Now
As an employer, there is certain information that you need to provide to employees. The list includes a P60 certificate of pay and deductions and, where benefits-in-kind have been payrolled, details of those benefits. The deadline for providing this information is fast approaching.
Your Duties on P60s
A P60 is a certificate showing the employee’s pay for the tax year, and also the tax and National Insurance deducted from their pay. A worker may need this information if they have to complete a self-assessment tax return. It can also be used a proof of income to support mortgage applications and suchlike.
As an employer, you are legally obliged to give each person who was on your payroll on 5 April at the end of the tax year a P60. This must be done no later than 31 May after the end of the tax year. Consequently, employees who were on the payroll on 5 April 2022 must be given a P60 for the 2021/22 tax year by 31 May 2022.
You do not have to give a P60 to any employees who worked for you during the 2021/22 tax year, but who left before 5 April 2022. You will have provided them with details of their pay and deductions while in your employment on their P45 when they left.
Generating the P60
The P60 will normally be generated by the payroll software package. Where HMRC’s basic PAYE tools is used, this too will produce a P60.
There is no obligation to give the employee a paper copy of their P60 – it can be delivered electronically, for example, by email.
Key P60 Information
- Employee’s name.
- Employee’s National Insurance number.
- Pay in previous employments in the tax year (if any).
- Pay in current employment.
- Total pay for the year.
- Tax deducted in previous employments in the tax year (if any).
- Tax deducted in current employment.
- Total tax deducted for the year.
- National Insurance contributions paid in the current employment.
- Details of any statutory payments received (shown separately for each type of payment).
- Details of student loan deductions.
- Details of post graduate loan deductions.
- Employer’s details (name, address and PAYE reference).
As far as National Insurance is concerned, details are provided of the employee’s earnings at or below the lower earnings limit, earnings above the lower earnings limit up to the primary threshold, earnings above the primary threshold up to the upper earnings limit and contributions paid the employee.
Payrolled Benefits
If you have opted to payroll benefits-in-kind and deal with them through the payroll, you will need to provide your employees with details of the payrolled benefits they received in the tax year. Payrolled benefits are not reported to HMRC on form P11D, and consequently employees must be given details of their payrolled benefits separately.
If you payrolled benefits in the 2021/22 tax year, you must provide the following information to each employee who received payrolled benefits by 1 June 2022:
- Details of the payrolled benefits that they received, including the cash equivalent value.
- Details of any payrolled benefits provided under an optional remuneration arrangement, such as a salary sacrifice arrangement, and details of the relevant amount.
The information can be provided on payslip, by letter or by email.
This means that employees are unable to claim the relief if they simply choose to work from home or opt to do so under flexible working arrangements.
Details of benefits that have not been payrolled must be reported to HMRC on form P11D by 6 July 2022, and a copy of the P11D (or details on information contained on it) must be given to the employee by the same date.