Employment Rights Bill

The Employment Rights Bill will strengthen protections for pregnant employees and returning mothers.

In April 2024, protections for parents facing redundancy were extended. The priority for offers of suitable alternative employment now exists for an extended ‘protected period’ – from when an employee informs their employer that they are pregnant until 18 months after the expected week of childbirth.

The Bill gives the government powers to introduce regulations to cover other dismissals - which are not redundancies - taking place during pregnancy, maternity leave or following a return to work.

Such increased protections will also apply to other forms of family leave such as adoption leave, shared parental leave, neonatal care leave and bereaved partners’ paternity leave.

Regulations will expand on this but it’s expected that this will involve a ban on dismissals of women who are pregnant, on maternity leave, and during a six-month return to work period, except in specific circumstances.

A consultation paper seeks views on how protections might be further enhanced. In terms of the 'specific circumstances' for a lawful dismissal of a pregnant employee or new mother, it puts forward a number of options including:

• introducing a stricter test for the fairness of the dismissal. The employer would still have to show one of the current fair reasons for dismissal (conduct, capability, SOSR, redundancy, illegality) but the current 'range of reasonable responses' test would be replaced with a stricter standard; or
• narrowing the scope of and/or removing some of the current fair dismissal reasons (as listed above).