Employment Rights Bill | Unfair Dismissal

Employment law changes will give employees the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one, removing the two-year qualifying period.

The two-year qualifying service requirement for making a claim for unfair dismissal* will be removed, and employees will have the right not to be unfairly dismissed from day 1. However, employers will still be able to dismiss fairly during an “initial period of employment”, i.e. a probationary period (likely to be limited to nine months in length, although this is subject to consultation), by following a shorter, light-touch process (to be confirmed).

Only employees who have started employment will have the right to claim unfair dismissal.

This will likely include a meeting with the employee to explain the concerns and offer them the right to be accompanied, prior to dismissal. Employers will only be able to fairly dismiss in this manner, where the reason for dismissal is conduct, performance, a statutory restriction, or SOSR (where the reason relates to the employee, not to change their terms and conditions) – but not redundancy.

One slight complicating factor during the House of Lords Report Stage was that an opposition amendment, which would change this so that the current qualifying service requirement for unfair dismissal would simply be reduced from two years to six months, was accepted after a vote in the House of Lords. These amendments will be considered in the House of Commons, and it’s very unlikely that they will be accepted given that day one unfair dismissal rights was an election manifesto pledge. This could, however, either result in further concessions being made or a delay in the Bill receiving Royal Assent. 

*Any dismissal linked to an automatically unfair reason does not require two years of continuous service to make a claim.