Andy Burnham faces early decisions over a raft of unfinished employment and equality reforms, with businesses on tenterhooks over whether he will accelerate Sir Keir Starmer’s workers’ rights agenda or draw a line under further regulation.
Andy Burnham will enter Downing Street with plenty already waiting in his in-tray, not least an employment law agenda that Sir Keir Starmer leaves conspicuously incomplete.
Burnham, who was confirmed as Labour leader on Friday (17 July) and is set to be formally appointed prime minister by the King later today, has promised a “distinctively Labour” government while also presenting himself as pro-business. What that combination means for employers, however, remains far from clear. Among the unfinished business are proposals to extend equal-pay protections to ethnic minority and disabled workers, plans for ethnicity and disability pay-gap reporting and substantial parts of the Employment Rights Act that have made it on to the statute book but are still waiting for regulations or commencement.
Nick Henderson-Mayo, head of compliance at compliance training provider VinciWorks, gives Starmer a decidedly mixed report card.
“Keir Starmer has been shown the door at Downing Street just two years after getting behind the desk,” he observed. “We have marked his compliance papers, and the result is a B: some serious legislation, an impressive pile of consultations and far too many promises still waiting for a timetable.”
VinciWorks assessed the...
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