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Several major pieces of government legislation including Labour’s flagship employment rights overhaul will not become law until at least the autumn after being caught up in the grindingly slow parliamentary process.
Bills on employment rules and reforming the rental market were widely expected to achieve “final assent” that makes them law before the summer recess, when MPs disappear on holiday from late July until early September.
Ministers had also hoped to publish the draft audit reform bill “no later than summer recess”, but this is now not expected until later in the year.
Officials insist the timetables were never set in stone, and blame a “choked” legislative schedule for their progress slipping into the next parliamentary session. But the policies have also met stiff opposition over their potential to backfire.
Debates over the employment rights bill, the government’s sweeping overhaul of workers’ rights, have dragged on in the House of Lords because of concerns that key provisions — including bans on zero-hour contracts and so-called fire and rehire practices — will be unworkable.
The delay means the bill will not be ready to receive royal assent by the summer as the government had intended, and means businesses face a longer wait before having to implement the changes.
Ministers have promised extensive consultation on regulations to put the zero-hour ban and new protections against unfair dismissal into effect.
“Unions may be disappointed,” said one business lobbyist, who said ministers had made it clear in earlier meetings with stakeholders that their intention was for the bill to be on the statute book by July.
Another of the delayed bills concerns renters’ rights, which was introduced by the government in September.
The bill will end “no fault” evictions under Section 21, which allows landlords to throw out tenants with no reason, and will also tighten standards for the conditions and maintenance of rented homes.
The last Conservative government promised similar legislation but had not done so by the general election last July.
The charity Shelter highlighted the urgency of the changes, saying that around 25,000 households have been threatened with homelessness due to a Section 21 since Sir Keir Starmer was elected nearly a year ago.
Director of Communications Mairi MacRae said Labour had made a manifesto promise to ban unfair no-fault evictions immediately if they came to power — but the legislation was still “tangled up” in parliament.
“For every day the government doesn’t pass this bill, another 70 households will be threatened with homelessness because no fault evictions are being kept on life-support for no good reason,” she said.
“The government has the power to stop this . . . it must make good on its manifesto commitment by passing the renters rights bill as soon as possible and naming an implementation date.”
One government official said: “We never said we would definitely get either bill on to the statute books by the summer.”
Long-delayed legislation aimed at reforming the audit market has also been pushed back to the autumn, after repeated assurances to the industry that it would be presented in the spring, or by July at the latest, according to four people with knowledge of the details.
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Financial Times in 2023 that a Labour government would push through the long-delayed reforms as a “priority” if elected.
These include updating the current regulator to become the more powerful Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority.
But three people familiar with ministers’ discussions with industry said the bill has proven difficult to draft, and that the employment rights’ bill had been a more urgent priority.
One of the sticking points in drafting the so-called audit reform and corporate governance bill has been a proposal to reclassify the largest private companies as “public interest entities”, which would force their audits into a tighter regulatory system, the people said.
Creating a new definition for public interest entities is proving to be so tricky that ministers are considering opening it up for consultation, five years after the principle was first promised by the Conservative government.
A second point that provoked a wave of lobbying and negotiations, delaying the bill further, was an attempt to make non-accountant directors of firms responsible for failures in financial reporting, the people said.
A third controversial measure — to force the Big Four accounting firms to share audits of the largest companies with smaller firms — has been dropped, two people with knowledge of the process added.
Other legislation that will be introduced before the summer recess will include the devolution bill that will give greater powers to local authorities, particularly through directly elected mayors.
