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…

INTERVIEW: There can’t have been many candidates less likely to make Queen’s Counsel, that most venerable rank of legal distinction, than Stefan Cross, writes Jon Robins. To say that the 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…

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says that ‘the era of gagging NHS staff from raising their real worries about patient care’ must end. He says there will be an immediate ban 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…

Worse than doing nothing – that was Labour’s damning indictment of the coalition’s flagship Work Programme following the publication last week of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)’s report on the 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…

Earlier this week it was ruled that the Government’s Work Programme was unlawful. The three judges who heard this case in the Court of Appeal ruled that the Secretary of 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…

ADVICE GUIDE: Your right not to be discriminated against at work. In the third of our JusticeGap series (here), I’m going to cover the law relating to workplace discrimination in more…

Your right not to be discriminated against at work: In the third of our JusticeGap series (here), I’m going to cover the law relating to workplace discrimination in the United more…

Last week, the business secretary Vince Cable announced that more reforms were planned to make it ‘easier for firms to hire staff while protecting basic labour rights’. Further details of more…

JUSTICE GAP GUIDE: This is the second in a series of articles on employment law aimed at the public and specifically looking at the practice and procedure in the employment 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…

This is the first in a series of articles on employment law aimed at the public and specifically looking at the practice and procedure in the employment tribunal. The aim 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…

Is the employment tribunal backlog at a record high?  Is the employment tribunal system ‘completely overstretched’?  The Telegraph would have you believe it is so. One in four tribunal cases 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…

ANALYSIS: On 23 May, the Government published its Enterprise & Regulatory Reform Bill, as trailed in the Queen’s Speech, writes Richard Dunstan. With the aim of ‘improving the employment tribunal more…

Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday attacked ‘ideological zealots who want to encourage British firms to fire at will’.  He was speaking after a draft of the venture capitalist Adrian Beecroft’s 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…

The cavalier approach of some NHS trusts to spending public money to defend the indefensible is in the news again. When the JusticeGap reported Elliot Browne was awarded almost £1m 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…

LIVE TWEETING AND BLOGGING  from the courts today and tomorrow. Jon Robins (@JusticeGap) is taking part in the Guardian Live Justice project this week. On April 3rd Jon is reporting 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…

It might be possible for a banker to earn a six figure sum and survive public hostility but it’s not so easy if you head the body that is supposed 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…

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has been heftily criticised in the last year for numerous failings, but its ability to shoot itself in the foot appears unabated. The news that 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…

Earlier this month many NHS staff joined Doreen and Neville Lawrence in welcoming the jailing of their son’s racist killers. Their campaigning led to an understanding of ‘institutional discrimination’, in 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…

Registering concerns about patient care is not as Health Minister Anne Milton said on Tuesday night on the Channel 4 News ‘a right’ of NHS workers. It is a professional more…

Whistle blowers in the NHS should be ‘championed’ and not served with gagging clauses, argued the doctor who blew the whistle on the inadequacies of the department in which Baby 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…

Vince Cable yesterday announced ‘the most radical reform to the employment law system for decades’ – as part of the Government’s plan for ‘cutting unnecessary demands on business while safeguarding 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…

Scrapping legal aid for employment will have ‘the perverse effect’ of increasing tribunal cases, according to a new report by Citizens Advice out today. You can read the full report more…

Government plans to double the qualification period for the right to claim unfair dismissal from one to two years as part of a move to ‘increase business confidence to take more…

Workers will have to pay over £1,000 to bring unfair dismissal claims, the government announced. The chancellor, George Osborne is proposing that applicants will have to cover the costs of more…