The employment reform jigsaw - further pieces in the puzzle

In May we reviewed the state of play on a plethora of employment law reforms currently under consideration by the Government, but already a month on progress has been made in a number of areas.

Employment law reform featured early in the Coalition Government's plans with the launch of a 'comprehensive employment law review' announced in March 2011 and a highlighted feature of the Red Tape Challenge. The recent publication of the controversial 'Beecroft Report on Employment Law' has made employment law reform a political hot potato. News headlines included 'War on workers' and 'MPs clash over Beecroft report'.

While only available to the public in the last few weeks, the Beecroft Report was written back in October 2011. Since that time, we have had a number of Government consultations, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' (BIS) Employment Law Review Annual Update, the Queen's Speech, numerous announcements from various Government departments and now the draft Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill laid before Parliament on 23 May. MPs will have their first opportunity to debate the contents of the Bill at the second reading on 11 June.

Here, we give an update to our earlier 'Employment reform jigsaw' alert and highlight key changes over the last month covering:

• Dispute resolution and unfair dismissal (updated since May)
• Tribunal reform
• Discrimination (updated since May)
• Developments in family-friendly laws
• Working time
• Sickness absence
• Whistleblowing
• Redundancy (updated since May)
• Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE)
• Safeguarding (updated since May)
• Agency workers
• Directors' pay and national minimum wage legislation (updated since May).

For the analysis in one go, read our full employment reform jigsaw analysis.