Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act Receives Royal Assent

The Act is wide ranging. It contains many new measures, such as giving shareholders more say on directors’ pay, making reforms to Employment Tribunal procedures, establishing a new Competition and Markets Authority to tackle anti-competitive behaviour and modernising the UK’s copyright regime.

The Act also makes changes to some existing legislation, for example amending the Employment Rights Act 1996 so that a ‘whistleblowing’ disclosure will not be protected unless the employee making it reasonably believes that doing so is in the public interest, removing the qualification period before an employee is eligible to bring a claim for unfair dismissal in cases where the dismissal is on the ground of his or her political beliefs and adding discrimination on the ground of ‘caste’ to the protected characteristics covered by the Equality Act 2010. The Act will also repeal the provisions of the Equality Act that make an employer liable when a worker is harassed by a third party.