On 15 September, the House of Commons rejected all but the governmental amendments made to the Bill during its passage through the House of Lords. A few technical amendments were also made, and the Bill will now return to the House of Lords on 28 October. This will give the Lords the chance to agree or disagree with the Commons' rejection of their amendments.
Before Royal Assent can be received, both Houses must agree the text of a Bill. Until that happens the Bill could "ping pong" back and forth between the Houses. While that is possible, due to parliamentary convention, it is reasonably likely that they will approve the Bill on 28 October. If that happens, we can expect Royal Assent in early November. According to the UK Government's implementation timetable, that means we can expect to see the repeal of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and the majority of the Trade Union Act 2016 in fairly early course.
Consultations
The implementation timetable was published on 1 July 2025. It seems some of the proposed timings referred to have already slipped, certainly in relation to consultations. Amongst others, consultation on day 1 protection from unfair dismissal was scheduled for Summer/Autumn 2025 but is yet to be published. Autumn, where we surely are now, has consultations scheduled on fire and rehire, bereavement leave, rights for pregnant workers, the use of zero hours contracts and a number of trade union measures. Winter has consultations including collective redundancy, flexible working and more trade union measures scheduled. It remains to be seen to what extent these timescales slip.
Will slipped timescales for consultations impact on implementation of the new rights? For many of the more high-profile ones such as unfair dismissal and ending exploitative use of zero hours contracts, the answer is probably not as they are scheduled for 2027. If the Bill does receive Royal Assent in November, we can expect the new year to start with a bang.
