Select Committees publish response to Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices

The Work and Pensions Committee and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee have completed a joint inquiry into the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices which was published in July 2017. On 20 November 2017 the Committees published their report, ‘A Framework for Modern Employment.’

This makes 11 key recommendations for the Government, many of which reflect the findings of the Taylor Review. The report is accompanied by draft legislation designed to implement these recommendations. As yet there has been no specific response from the Government to the Taylor Review or this latest inquiry.

The Committees’ recommendations include:

• legislation to provide greater clarity on how to determine worker or employee status, setting out the relevant factors to consider;
• legislation to introduce a rebuttable presumption of worker status where employers have a self-employed workforce above a certain size;
• a pilot scheme enforcing a pay premium on the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage for workers who do not have guaranteed hours, in order to compensate them for this uncertainty;
• legislation to allow employees a gap in service of up to one month, rather than the current one week, without breaking continuity of employment for the purposes of accruing employment rights;
• legislation to allow class actions in disputes over wages, worker status and working time, in order to make it easier to enforce employment rights across a company’s workforce;
• an obligation on Employment Tribunals to consider punitive fines and costs orders if an employer has already lost a similar case;
  extend the right to receive a written statement of employment particulars to cover workers as well as employees, and within seven days of starting a new job rather than the current two months;
• allow workers to be counted towards the 50 employees needed for the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations to apply, and reduce the threshold for an employee request to negotiate from 10% to 2% of the workforce;
• abolish the Swedish Derogation and give the Employment Agency Standards Directorate greater powers and resources to enforce compliance with the Agency Workers Regulations 2010;
• introduce greater deterrents against repeat or serious breaches of employment legislation, including punitive fines and ‘naming and shaming’; and
• provide the Director of Labour Market Enforcement with sufficient resources to prevent the abuse of employment rights.