Legislation 'On Hold'

We will obviously be keeping an eye on developments and will update you as the situation changes.

• The Schools Bill - The Schools Bill 2022 is a wide-ranging piece of legislation covering attendance, inspection and the structure, regulation and funding of academies. Its passage through Parliament had already been the subject of major challenge, with a number of the clauses around academy intervention dropped. It now looks likely that it will be dropped completely, but we expect the provisions around attendance to be adopted via another legislative vehicle.
  
  
• UK GDPR - During her speech at the Conservative Party Conference, Ms Donelan suggested that the 'bureaucratic nature' of the UK GDPR limits the potential growth of UK businesses. She plans to remove this and replace it with some more user-friendly UK legislation. Ms Donelan claims that the new legislation will be 'co-designed' with businesses and that the Government will look to countries like Israel, Japan, South Korea, Canada and New Zealand for inspiration.
  
  It is likely that this new announcement will further delay (or potentially lead to the withdrawal of) the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. In the meantime, the current GDPR legislation remains in place and we await further detail of the Government's plans.

• EU Employment legislation - The Government has introduced the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022-2023 to the House of Commons. This Bill could prompt a significant shake-up of our established employment rights. Under the Bill, EU-derived subordinate legislation and retained EU legislation will be revoked across the UK at the end of December 2023. This could happen automatically, although the Bill also sets out a power to preserve specific laws, as well as a power to extend the designated revocation date in certain circumstances. Broadly speaking, the Bill is intended to confer more power on the UK Government to operate free of the constraints of retained EU law. Much of our UK employment law derives from EU law, including TUPE and the Working Time Regulations. The Government is yet to comment on what specific pieces of legislation it might seek to remove or retain if the Bill is passed. We will report on any major developments as the Bill is scrutinised by Parliament.

• Employment legislation for organisations with fewer than 500 employees - The now former Prime Minister, announced plans to relax rules for businesses with fewer than 500 employees to comply with certain regulatory and reporting requirements. Until now, the Government's starting point for policy development has been to exempt businesses with fewer than 50 employees from certain regulatory requirements. For new legislation, exemptions are likely to cover organisations with fewer than 500 employees, which would apply to a significant number of independent schools. The Government also intends to consult in future on the prospect of raising the threshold further so that the starting point would be that employers with fewer than 1,000 staff would be excused from reporting requirements. It is unclear currently which legislation will be covered by this but speculation is that it will include the gender pay gap reporting requirements.

For further information on the upcoming new legislation please contact our Independent schools team, or alternatively complete the form below.