Express & Star

Poll: Should the Government ditch plans to make it easier to sack workers?

Business Secretary Sajid Javid has signalled the Government is not planning to revisit plans to make it easier for businesses to sack employees.

Published

The Beecroft report recommended a major relaxation of employment laws, which included allowing firms to dismiss anyone without giving a reason provided they paid compensation.

The report explained an employer could simply state they were not happy with a worker's performance and then follow a set process, including giving notice and paying a defined level of compensation, without the action being considered as unfair dismissal.

But the "compensated no fault dismissal" approach was blocked by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition government.

Asked if he was planning to use the forthcoming Enterprise Bill to return to some of the Beecroft ideas - including no fault dismissals for small companies - Mr Javid told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC One: "No I won't be looking at that again.

"What we will be doing though is looking at deregulation, taking it even further.

"During the last Parliament we have saved businesses from about £10 billion of costs collectively in regulation and I think we can do at least that again.

"I've set out some of the examples in a speech I made recently about the kind of things that we can do in reducing red tape - I want to build on those.

"The other thing I want to do is help more small businesses with some of the challenges they face, not just red tape but especially the issue of late payments.

"So, small businesses in our country are owed I think about £30 billion - that's a record high in late payments so we're going to set up a small business conciliation service to help deal with that."

Pressed again about revisiting the Beecroft proposals, Mr Javid said "all sorts of issues" will be looked at, with businesses and others asked to bring forward ideas on deregulation.

He added: "I also want to take a look at regulators to see if regulators can be made part of a system to help cut regulation on businesses.

"In terms of what we will ultimately do, we will start setting out more information in the Queen's Speech but over the coming months I think there will be a lot more detail."

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.