New right to neonatal leave and pay will be introduced from 6th April 2025

On Monday 20 January 2025 the Government confirmed that working families with babies in neonatal care will be entitled to additional time off as a day one right.

Currently, many working families across the UK are having to return to work while their babies are sick in hospital, and these measures aim to address some of the difficulties that thousands of parents face when their baby is in neonatal care.  

Neonatal Care Leave will apply to parents of babies who are admitted into neonatal care up to 28 days old and who have a continuous stay in hospital of 7 full days or longer.

These measures will allow eligible parents to take up to 12 weeks of leave (and, if eligible, pay) on top of any other leave they may be entitled to, including maternity and paternity leave. 

The government has laid regulations to implement the change, which subject to Parliamentary approval, will take effect from 6 April 2025 and follows the passing of the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Act in 2023. 

Further details can be found here

Preventing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace - what the new law means for employers

The Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into effect on October 26, 2024, and requires employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.  This includes harassment from other employees, customers, or clients, and also harassment that occurs on social media. 

The main steps every employer is expected to take are:

• Conducting a risk assessment. 

• Having a robust policy in place – that is updated at least once a year.

• Putting in place meaningful training for managers - at least once a year and immediately for all new managers.

• An awareness programme for employees – so that they know what is not acceptable, from day one (so part of their induction).

• A reporting system – that also allows for anonymous complaints.

• A process by which all complaints are treated seriously, investigated (which requires further training for managers/approved investigators) and actioned.

• A support system for those who need it.

Further guidance can be found here

Planned Changes to Employment Law

Following the Labour Government’s first King’s Speech on 17 July 2024, the newly formed Government promised two employment-related bills:

• An Employment Rights Bill

• A draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill

  
  

The new Government has promised to introduce its Employment Rights Bill within the first one hundred days (somewhere between 12 and 25 October 2024). 

According to the briefing notes, the Employment Rights Bill will:

• Ban exploitative zero-hours contracts.

• End "fire and rehire" and "fire and replace".

• Make parental leave, sick pay, and protection from unfair dismissal a day one right for all workers (subject to probationary periods to allow employers to assess new hires).

• Remove the lower earnings limit and the waiting period for Statutory Sick Pay. 

• Make flexible working the default from day one for all workers.

• Strengthen protections for new mothers, making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work, other than in exceptional circumstances.

• Establish a Fair Work Agency to strengthen enforcement of workplace rights.

• Update trade union legislation, removing restrictions on trade union activity.

  
  
  
  

The draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill

According to the briefing notes, the Government intends to “tackle inequality for ethnic minority and disabled people” by:

• Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people.

• Introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for large employers (those with 250+ employees).

Additional implications for employers

In the future, the Government intends to introduce a “genuine living wage”, including removing what it describes as “discriminatory age bands”.

What happens next?

We will need to wait and see the draft legislation itself in order to fully understand what changes are being introduced, and how the reforms might work in practice.

The introduction of a bill is the first step in a process which includes a number of stages. This first step of the process is expected to happen somewhere between 12 and 25 October 2024.