Do you – and your partner, if you have one – have total savings of more than £3,000? Something to supplement your (reduced value) pension during your imminent retirement, perhaps, more…

Last month on this blog, I set out my utterly brilliant six-point plan for the next Labour government to ‘protect vulnerable workers’, and promised I would be expanding on each more…

‘A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on’, said the then Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan in the 1970s (though earlier versions more…

Raising the Titanic: what Labour must do to protect vulnerable workers. By 2015, the Coalition Government will have transformed the UK’s legal framework for the protection of vulnerable workers. Transformed, more…

What was looking like a quiet Friday in the office – I’d even started to tidy my desk – was brought to life just before lunchtime, by publication of the more…

Whilst Coalition ministers claim that they want to ‘make work pay’, someone in government is considering how to freeze or even cut the National Minimum Wage. Yes, really. Last week, more…

Yesterday I took myself off to the Resolution Foundation, in Saville Row, to hear a speech by the BIS skills minister, Matthew Hancock MP, on ‘a Conservative agenda for tackling more…

Business perceptions of the ‘burden’ of employment law do not reflect reality, according to a government-commissioned research study published last week by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS). more…

In the wake of a flurry of press and media reports of the growing trend for NHS Trusts to employ ‘key clinical staff’ on so-called zero-hours contracts, under which workers have no more…

Over some 30 years as a policy wonk, I have attended a fair number of report launches.  Some have been good, a few have been bad, but most have simply more…

In 2010, under pressure from a series of Citizens Advice reports and faced with a research finding that half of all ET awards go unpaid, the Ministry of Justice introduced more…

To consult, or not to consult: that is the question. On which there will be no consultation. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when Nick Clegg was more…

At the Conservative Party conference in October, the Chancellor, George Osborne, grabbed a few headlines by announcing plans to create a new ‘employee-owner’ status, under which workers will be able more…

The weekend before last the Observer’s front page reported that Labour party leader Ed Miliband has joined forces with his brother David to work up plans to deliver a ‘living more…

I have previously suggested on the JusticeGap that one way to improve the shockingly low rate of compliance with employment tribunal (ET) awards might be to rework clause 13 of the Enterprise & more…

You might think that the introduction of a power for employment tribunals to impose a (moderate) financial penalty, in addition to an award, on ‘repeat offenders’ and rogue employers who more…

New employment tribunal statistics released this week by the Ministry of Justice, in reply to a parliamentary question by Caroline Lucas MP, show that the combined number of new single more…

So, despite hardly any of the 140 organisations and individuals who responded to the Government’s consultation on employment tribunal (ET) fees expressing much, if any, support for its proposed fee more…

Amid continuing uncertainty around the Government’s Modern Workplaces proposals for reform of maternity and paternity rights at work, and continuing media reports of an increase in the number of pregnant more…

At a meeting in the House of Commons yesterday, representatives from the CBI, the TUC, the Chartered Institute of Personnel Directors, the Law Society  and the Equality & Human Rights more…

Monday’s second reading of the Enterprise & Regulatory Reform Bill was a surprisingly bi-partisan affair, with not a single Liberal Democrat back-bench MP speaking in support of the Liberal Democrat more…

There was much pomp and ceremony at Westminster as the Queen set out her Government’s legislative programme for the forthcoming parliamentary session earlier this month.  As expected, the Queen’s Speech more…

On 10 April, the Sun newspaper carried (under an ‘exclusive’ banner) a news story entitled ‘Hair Hitlers: EU rules to ban hairdressers from wearing rings and heels’. Under a photo of more…

Last week, I went along to the somewhat incongruously swanky offices of the Resolution Foundation think tank for a seminar on the National Minimum Wage (NMW). The Foundation was launching more…

Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. It’s an ages-old warning, but seemingly one that the CBI and other employer lobby groups failed to heed when more…

Pointy-headed policy wonks like me who have elected to bat for the have-nots of society lead a strange, and strangely monotonous, work life. For long periods – years, decades even more…

Captains of industry being what they are, there is nothing that newspapers out to bash the employment tribunal system like better than a nice, cuddly charity boss.  Early last year, more…

A few weeks ago, I was attending a meeting on employment tribunal (ET) procedure when, somewhat predictably, the representative of the British Chambers of Commerce robustly voiced their concern that more…

With the Budget approaching, dark forces within and around the Coalition Government have been trying to re-launch their seemingly stalled campaign for a right for employers to fire workers at more…

The UK Border Agency is to be split in two following an official inquiry by John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector. In a report published at the end of last month, more…

Regular readers of this blog (hello, Mum) will know that I am not too impressed with the Ministry of Justice’s two options for an employment tribunal (ET) fees regime.  Both more…

Contrary to the impression given by much press and media reporting – that the number of employment tribunal claims is spiralling upwards due to a wave of ‘vexatious’ or ‘speculative’ more…

The Government’s principal – if not only – defence against the charge that its proposed fees of up to £1,750 for employment tribunal (ET) claimants would create a substantial barrier more…

My blog here last week on the Government’s proposals for an employment tribunal fees regime generated a fair bit of comment (Pass the Ibuprofen).  Much of the response was supportive more…

Over the past few days, I have been trying to get my head around the Government’s proposals for charging fees in employment tribunals, as set out in the consultation paper more…

For the past 12 months or so, the press and other media have been awash with stories about the ‘spiralling’, ‘out of control’ number of ‘vexatious’ and ‘speculative’ employment tribunal more…

Picking up where the Department of Business Innovation and Skills and the Ministry of Justice left off at the end of 2011 – hailing their erosion of hard-won workers’ rights more…

Money for nothing – or how the Ministry of Injustice plans to leave employment tribunal claimants in dire straits. Christmas came early to the CBI and its members, when on more…

Earlier this month, the Employment Relations Minister, Ed Davey, told a conference of trade unionists: ‘I like to be evidence-based in the policies that I make.’  Music to my policy more…

Well, the phoney war is over, and now we employment policy wonks can start sinking our teeth into some actual new policy, as opposed to mere proposals ‘under consultation’ or more…

Yesterday morning I went along to hear the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, set out how the Government intends to proceed with reform of both employment law and the employment tribunal more…

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, a newly-elected Prime Minister called Tony Blair claimed to have invented a wondrous thing: joined-up government. From now on, the then more…