CFG's Head of Policy, Richard Sagar, takes a look at the King's Speech following the election of a new Labour Government and sets out what it could mean for charities.
With 40 new bills announced, this was the most for any King’s Speech in recent history. There were a myriad of new laws proposed impacting everything from the nationalisation of railways, water companies, the creation of a ‘GB Energy’ and much else besides.
Six main themes were set out:
- Economic Stability and Growth’
- Great British Energy and Clean Energy Superpower’
- Secure Borders
- Cracking Down on Anti Social Behaviour and Take Back Our Streets
- Break Down the Barriers to Opportunity and Health
- National Security and Serving the Country
Many of these will be of interest to specific charities in different sectors. For instance, the Renters’ Rights Bill will be relevant to those working on homelessness, and the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will be important to cancer and public health charities.
These areas drew on many of Labour's Manifesto commitments. Alongside these, there was also a number of proposals that will impact how charities operate. The exact details of each Bill are, as yet, unknown so the precise impact of them, and next steps, cannot be fully determined.
However, there are some good indications, thanks to the accompanying background briefing notes to the King's Speech, but it's wise to wait. Bills are always likely to be amended as they pass through the Houses of Parliament.
With all these caveats in mind, please find further details on the relevant pieces of legislation to the sector:
Employment Rights Bill
This Bill proposes multiple changes to employment rights, including:
- Banning zero-hours contracts, and requiring workers get reasonable notice of any changes of shifts.
- Ending ‘fire and rehire’ and ‘fire and replace’, amending the existing statutory code.
- Parental leave, sick pay and protection from unfair dismissal will be available from day one on the job for all workers.
- There are also proposals to strengthen statutory sick pay by removing the lower earnings limit.
- Make flexible working the default from day-one for all workers, with employees 'required to accommodate this as far as is reasonable'.
- Protections for new mothers are also strengthened making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who has had a baby for six months after her return to work.
Once passed into law, all charities will need to update their existing employment practices to reflect these changes.
English Devolution Bill
This Bill puts forward an ambitious set of plans to ‘transfer power out of Westminster and into our local communities’. It proposes to do this by:
- Putting a more ambitious standardised devolution framework into legislation to give local leaders greater powers over the levers of local growth…. new powers and duties for local leaders to produce Local Growth Plans.
- Making devolution the default setting.
- Making it easier to provide devolved powers quickly to more areas.
- Improving and unblocking local decision making.
- Empowering local communities with a strong new ‘right to buy’ for valued community assets, such as empty shops, pubs and community spaces. This will help to revamp high streets and end the blight of empty premises.
Locality described the Bill as a “major opportunity” and the community right to buy “a big help to communities trying to save valued local spaces”. We look forward to further details being provided in due course.
Skills England Bill
- This will develop 'a single picture of national and local skills needs'.
- Replace the ‘Apprenticeship Levy’ with a ‘Growth and Skills Levy’ and to shift powers from IFATE to Skills England.
- Identify the training for which the Growth and Skills Levy will be accessible.
- Ensure that the national and regional skills systems are meeting skills needs and are aligned.
- No further details on how the new levy would operate.
For some time employees in the charity sector have pointed to problems with the Apprenticeship Levy, with many having to pay but not being able to use these funds to train apprentices.
We hope that the new ‘Growth and Skills Levy’ will help to address this problem, and we will work with sector partners to try to ensure that it can.
Draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill
- Enshrining in law the full right to equal pay for ethnic minorities and disabled people (making it easier for them to make equal pay claims).
- Introducing mandatory ethnicity and disability pay reporting for larger employers (those with 250+ employees) to help close the ethnicity and disability pay gaps.
The additional requirement for larger employers to introduce ethnicity and disability pay gaps is much needed to address inequalities, but it will also require additional work for these organisations to implement.
We look forward to further guidance in due course to help larger organisations achieve this as simply and smoothly as possible.
Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill
Often referred to as ‘Martyn’s law’ this was initially introduced by the previous government but did not pass due to a sooner than expected General Election.
Now in Opposition, the Conservative Party has said that it will support this so we can expect a relatively simple passage of the Bill. CFG has written in detail about the Bill and its implication for charity venues which can be found here.
Additional announcements
Alongside the new Bills the new government is planning to introduce, there were several other announcements that will be of interest to the sector.
They repeated that “measures will be brought forward to remove the exemption from Value Added Tax for private school fees”.
Importantly, there was no mention of removing Business Rates Relief as mentioned in their manifesto, although it is perfectly possible that this oversight was merely a truncated version of their proposal on private schools.
We expect more details on this at the upcoming fiscal event in the Autumn (the date of which will be set by the Chancellor prior to Summer recess at the end of July).
The new government has committed to remove age bands so every adult worker benefits, something alluded to in the manifesto commitments to deliver a ‘genuine living wage’ which takes into account the cost of living.
In practice we think this will mean a single rate of National Living Wage (NLW), regardless of age (i.e. removing the National Minimum Wage for workers under 20). For charities that hire workers on the NLW this could mean an increased wage bill in the near future. As with amendments to VAT and private schools, we will expect further details in the upcoming fiscal event in the Autumn.
Do you have any questions?
If you've any questions, or concerns, please get in touch with the team. We're always happy to help!