Employment Rights Act 2025

The government has set out the way in which it will, from October 2027, strengthen dismissal protections for pregnant women and new mothers.

Legal protections against dismissal related to pregnancy and maternity already exist and were strengthened in 2024 to include enhanced redundancy protections for pregnancy, maternity leave and other family leave and on return.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 gives the government powers to introduce regulations to make it unlawful to dismiss pregnant women, mothers on maternity leave, and mothers who return to work for at least a 6-month period after they return (‘the protected period’) – except in specific circumstances.

A consultation on this was published in 2025 and the government has responded with its plans to take this forward.

New test of fairness for deciding whether a pregnant woman or new mother was fairly dismissed during the protected period

The government has decided to retain all 5 of the existing fair reasons for dismissal, while strengthening the framework for assessing fairness during the protected period.

To that end, the current ‘band of reasonable responses’ test for unfair dismissal will be replaced with the proportionality test that is a defence to a number of discrimination claims under the Equality Act 2010 (commonly referred to as the ‘objective justification’ test) – a far higher threshold of ‘reasonableness’ for employers.

This will require employers not only to set out a legitimate business aim on which they rely, but also to demonstrate that the serious step of dismissing the employee is a proportionate way of achieving that aim. This will ordinarily require an employer to consider whether there are no reasonably viable, less discriminatory alternatives to dismissal. This would typically include consideration of how the employee could be supported to remain in work, for example through workplace adjustments, temporary measures, or the identification of suitable alternative roles, before dismissal is pursued.

The government does not intend specifying how the test should operate in regulations. However, guidance will set out how to approach complying with the test in practice, including the expectation that employers will consider alternatives to dismissal where appropriate.

The government will legislate so that enhanced dismissal protections are a Day 1 right, with no qualifying period, aligning with existing automatic unfair dismissal and pregnancy or maternity discrimination protections and ensuring coverage from the start of employment.

Protections will begin when an employee informs her employer (either in writing or verbally) that she is pregnant.