Last week the government delivered its Queen's Speech for 2022. Regular readers of this blog will be getting a sense of déjà vu. I asked the same question last year and came up with exactly the same answer: in short, very little.
The conservative government has been promising to 'protect and enhance worker rights' since the Brexit referendum. Six years later, we've had consultations and announcements (including a commitment to introduce an Employment Bill in the 2019 Queen's speech). But nothing has happened and it doesn't look as though we'll be seeing one anytime soon.
What was in the Queen's speech?
1. Brexit/EU law
A Brexit Freedoms Bill will give ministers new powers to overhaul EU laws they copied over after the UK left the EU. According to the government's briefing notes, this will enable 'the UK to be the best regulated economy in the world and create a regulatory environment that encourages prosperity, innovation, entrepreneurship and the cutting of 1 billion of burdensome EU red tape for businesses'.
The BBC suggest that the government is likely to concentrate on barriers to trade rather than employment legislation derived from the EU, but only time will tell. It certainly won't be an easy task for the government to row back on fundamental rights employees currently enjoy such restrictions on how long someone can work on a daily and weekly basis and the minimum amount of holiday they should enjoy - an issue we explored here.
2. Bill of Rights
The government...
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