Parliament’s Private Members’ Bills ballot gives backbench MPs the opportunity to propose new legislation or changes to existing laws on a topic of their choice. We wouldn’t normally report on Private Members’ Bills as very few of them ever become actual law and some are downright silly – if you can still find it, take a look at the Dignity at Work Bill, a brilliant Monty Python spoof of a real employment proposal aimed at addressing workplace upset, almost however trivial, by a vast and rigid mechanical process with more steps for the employer to fall down than the Eiffel Tower. However, on 15 July, two employment-focussed Bills were given airtime in Parliament under that process and as both reflect previous “commitments” made by the government, they may stand a greater chance of making it over the finish line to the statute books.
The Bills in question are the Neonatal Care (Leave and Pay) Bill and the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill. Sound familiar?
The former seeks to create a new statutory right to leave and pay for working parents whose child is receiving, or has received, neonatal care. According to the Office for National Statistics, an estimated 100,000 babies every year across the UK are admitted to neonatal care. The government previously committed to introducing such a right along with a number of other measures as part of a new Employment Bill, but this has yet to materialise and, as it was not mentioned in the most recent Queen’s Speech, seems unlikely...
Attorneys for three friends of Nolan Xavier Wells filed six more defamation lawsuits Tuesday in federal and state court, accusing social media users of making false claims about the young men in co...