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“Unfair dismissal rights from Day One”, said the Labour Manifesto, subject always to a probationary period in which terminations will not be challengeable as unfair provided that employers operate “fair and transparent rules and procedures” to provide what Angela Rayner described as “basic rights”.

We are now told that the probationary period will be six months, but left outstanding is the key question of what those rules and procedures will be if that Day One pledge is not to be regarded as either breathtakingly naive or just outright misleading. While no-one should bet the farm on manifesto promises anyway, the difference between Day One and Day 183 is pretty material, and it would hardly be credible for the government to say that it had not anticipated the level of push-back from employers on this measure which it has received.

The problem the government has is two-fold. First, whatever those rules and procedures, it has to be possible for the employer to form a view of the employee and then go through them, all in the space of six months. If your employee is making widgets, that should be ample, but if they are doing something which takes time to learn or if “fit” is particularly important or performance is hard to measure over a few months only (many sales roles, for example) then that time period will place employers under considerable extra management strain and reduce materially the latitude which they may currently be willing to offer...

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