Welcome to our autumn round-up of key developments in employment law. Explore recent updates from our Employment team, government guidance, and what’s on the horizon for employers. To help you navigate this content, the links below will take you straight to content by topic.
- Gender equality: Government publishes guidance for employers
- Neonatal Care Leave and Pay: Government guidance for employers
- EHRC Services Code of Practice: updated draft still awaiting Government approval
- Employment Rights Bill in final parliamentary stage
- Duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace: rise in calls to ACAS and upcoming introduction of requirement to take “all” reasonable steps
- NDAs and Settlement Agreements: recent and upcoming restrictions on confidentiality clauses
- Employment Tribunals: Government confirms it will not be reintroducing fees
Gender equality: Government publishes guidance for employers
On 11 August 2025, the Government published new guidance for employers on improving gender equality at work.
The guidance summarises “effective” and “promising” actions and approaches to improve outcomes for gender equality, and highlights these within four categories:
- Hiring and selection. Employers are encouraged to: offer flexible working by default in job adverts; use structured interviews for recruitment and promotions; and make expectations around salaries and negotiation clear. Employers are also encouraged to explore: using targeted referrals; using neutral language in job adverts; making job requirements clear, specific and behaviour-based; advertising specific benefits and policies available; recruiting returners; making it possible to list experience in years not dates in CVs; using skill-based assessment tasks in recruitment; attracting more applications from women to increase diversity on shortlists; making decisions about applicants in batches; and encouraging candidates to reapply.
- Talent management, learning and development. Employers are encouraged to: increase transparency in promotion, pay and reward processes. Employers are also encouraged to explore: using calibrations for important decisions; requesting advice for actionable ways to improve instead of “feedback” on past performance; offering mentoring and sponsorship; offering networking programmes; defaulting employees into applying for promotion; and offering internships, traineeships and work experience.
- Inclusion and retention. Employers are encouraged to: share local support for parental leave and flexible working; and improve workplace flexibility for men and women. Employers are also encouraged to explore: encouraging all parents to take up Shared Parental Leave; and reviewing formal guidance procedures.
- Leadership and accountability. Employers are encouraged to: set internal targets for gender representation and equality; and appoint diversity leads and / or diversity taskforces.
The guidance recommends that employers evaluate the effectiveness of any actions they decide to implement, before rolling them out more widely. Explore the guidance here.
Neonatal Care Leave and Pay: Government guidance for employers
On 6 April 2025, the Government introduced a new statutory right entitlement to paid leave of up to 12 weeks, in circumstances where an employee’s child requires specialist neonatal care in the first 28 days following birth.
On 22 August 2025, the Department for Business and Trade published a “Technical Guide” for employers to support them in implementing the new statutory entitlement to neonatal care leave and pay (“Guide”). This set out the scope of the entitlement, eligibility criteria and how to calculate leave and pay. It also provided clarification around more complex issues, such as how the entitlement applies in the cases of multiple births.
On this latter point, the Guide clarifies that, where more than one baby from the same pregnancy is admitted to neonatal care, and there is an overlap of seven or more continuous days, only one entitlement to Neonatal Care Leave and Pay is triggered – the entitlement is not duplicated for each baby.
The Guide also explains how Neonatal Care Leave and Pay interact with other types of family related leave (such as maternity, paternity, adoption and shared parental leave).
The approach set out in the Guide will require careful record-keeping and communication between employers and employees, particularly in cases where neonatal care relates to multiple children and dates.
Our articles providing further detail on entitlement to Neonatal Care Leave and Pay and the Guide can be found here and here. A copy of the Guide can be found here.
EHRC Services Code of Practice: updated draft still awaiting Government approval
On around 5 September 2025, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (“EHRC”) submitted an updated draft of its Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (“Code of Practice”) to the Government for approval. The Services Code of Practice has been updated to reflect the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the definition of “sex” for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. Find out more about this judgment here.
It is now in the process of being considered by the Government and, subject to ministerial approval, will be laid before Parliament for 40 days before coming into force. Once the Services Code of Practice has been approved, the EHRC’s Employment Code of Practice will also be updated along similar lines. See our article on this here.
In the interim, the Chair of the EHRC has urged organisations not to wait for the formal publication of the Services Code of Practice before reviewing and revising their policies to ensure compliance with equalities law. In addition, the EHRC has already begun regulatory action against organisations whose policies misrepresent the law on gender self-identification and access to single-sex spaces (see our article on the latter here).
On 15 October, the EHRC wrote to the Minister for Women and Equalities, urging the Government to ensure that accurate and up-to-date statutory guidance on the Equality Act 2010 is available to those who need it as soon as possible. It pointed out that it has now been six months since the Supreme Court’s judgment in For Women Scotland, and six weeks since the updated Services Code of Practice was sent to the Government for consideration. The EHRC’s announcement on this can be found here, and its letter to the Government can be found here.
Employers should take this opportunity to review relevant policies and prepare for updated guidance, seeking legal advice where necessary.
Employment Rights Bill in final parliamentary stage
The Employment Rights Bill (“ERB”), which was debated and amended extensively over the course of the summer in both the House of Commons and House of Lords, returned to the House of Lords on 15 September 2025 in what is likely to be its final form, to either be accepted or rejected (via a vote which is due to take place on 28 October 2025).
For more detail on the amendments which were made to the ERB over the summer, see our recent article on this here.
It is likely that the House of Lords will accept the House of Commons’ latest amendments to the ERB and, if so, that the Bill will be approved and receive Royal Assent. The latter could take place as early as November 2025, with the first provisions in the ERB coming into force at the start of 2026.
Organisations should ensure that they are up to speed on the significant changes which the ERB is due to usher in. Our recent article on the Government’s roadmap for implementation may help in this regard and can be accessed here.
Duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace: rise in calls to ACAS and upcoming introduction of requirement to take “all” reasonable steps
On 26 October 2024, the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 came into force; introducing a positive, proactive legal duty on all employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace (“Duty”). Employers must be able to show that they have and are taking reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment before it happens in order to comply with the Duty. Failure to comply can result in an up to 25% uplift in any compensation awarded by an Employment Tribunal. The Equality and Human Rights Commission can also take enforcement action against organisations who do not comply.
On 17 September 2025, ACAS reported that is has seen a 39% increase in calls to its helpline relating to sexual harassment in the workplace since the Duty came into force.
The Employment Rights Bill (“ERB”), which is currently making its way through Parliament (see above), is due to introduce further provisions aimed at strengthening the Duty – requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. This is obviously a higher threshold than the current obligation to take “reasonable steps”, meaning that greater preventative measures will be expected in order to comply with the Duty.
The ERB will also explicitly introduce provisions requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment (of all kinds, not just sexual harassment) by third parties, such as clients, customers, service users, contractors, etc. These changes shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that many have already assumed that the current Duty already implicitly applies to third party harassment.
It is important to bear in mind too that any disclosures about sexual harassment will qualify as protected disclosures under whistleblowing legislation.
Further government regulations will be drafted shortly, to provide details of the steps that may be considered to be reasonable to take in order to comply with the Duty, but it is already widely accepted that the following are likely necessary:
- Having clear anti-harassment policies and procedures in place.
- Providing regular staff and manager training on the Duty.
- Having effective reporting mechanisms and promptly responding to any complaints.
- Carrying out regular risk assessments and reviews (to ensure that measures put in place are meeting objectives).
Our articles setting out details of the Duty, and our top tips for complying with it, can be found here and here. Our training tool for managers can be found here.
NDAs and Settlement Agreements: recent and upcoming restrictions on confidentiality clauses
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023
On 1 August 2025, Section 1 of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 came into force. This prohibits the entering into of confidentiality provisions in Non-Disclosure Agreements (“NDAs”) and Settlement Agreements in relation to complaints of sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual misconduct or any other bullying or harassment.
This prohibition covers NDAs and Settlement Agreements with staff, students, visiting speakers and members. Our article explaining the restrictions in more detail can be found here.
It is only relevant to employers in the higher education sector but see below regarding similar provisions applicable to all employers.
The Victims and Prisoners Act 2024
On 1 October 2025, Section 17 of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 came into force. This provides that any confidentiality provisions in NDAs and Settlement Agreements will be void to the extent that they seek to prevent a victim of crime (or a person who reasonably believes they are a victim) from disclosing information to certain listed persons (including the police, qualified lawyers, regulated professionals, victim support services, regulators and the victim’s close family) for specified purposes relating to the crime. Our article explaining the restrictions in more detail can be found here.
The Ministry of Justice has also published new guidance relating to these provisions, which explains that they apply to all agreements signed on or after 1 October 2025 and apply in respect of all relationships and circumstances where NDAs and confidentiality clauses are used. A copy of the guidance can be found here.
The Employment Rights Bill
In addition to the above, the Government is currently proposing to include provisions in the Employment Rights Bill (“ERB”) which would void any confidentiality provisions in NDAs and Settlement Agreements that attempt to prevent the disclosure of allegations of work-related discrimination and harassment (or how the employer responded to such allegations) by workers.
There will be “excepted agreements” which will fall outside of the scope of this prohibition but the Government is yet to confirm what these will be. More details about these provisions can be found in our recent article here.
The ERB is currently still making its way through Parliament and is due to be reviewed again by the House of Lords on 28 October 2025. It is expected to receive Royal Assent in around November 2025, with the first provisions coming into force at the start of 2026. The Government has pledged to “move as fast as possible” to bring the provisions relating to NDAs into force. Our article outlining the Government’s roadmap for implementing the ERB can be found here.
What does this mean for organisations?
While these provisions will be welcomed by many – as a way of encouraging the calling out of discrimination and harassment in the workplace and enabling victims to speak out about their experiences – in practice they may simply serve to severely limit the circumstances in which employers are willing to settle such claims given that confidentiality is often a key consideration when deciding whether to settle a dispute.
Employers should review their standard form Settlement Agreements and NDAs in light of these changes, to ensure compliance, and may also wish to explore having an alternative dispute resolution mechanism in place for handling these types of complaints.
Employment Tribunals: Government confirms it will not be reintroducing fees
On 1 October 2025, the Guardian newspaper reported that the Government was considering re-introducing Employment Tribunal fees.
Fees have not been payable in the Employment Tribunals (or Employment Appeal Tribunal) since 2017; when the previous regime was declared unlawful by the Supreme Court. The previous Conservative government did subsequently consult on the re-introduction of fees in 2024, the outcome of which was a proposal of a “modest” £55 issue / appeal fee.
However, the coming into force of the Employment Rights Bill (likely at the end of this year / start of 2026) is expected to result in a significant increase in Employment Tribunal claims, which could in turn result in further delays to a system already facing significant delays and a lack of resources.
On 9 October 2025, the new Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, David Lammy MP, advised that the Government would not be re-introducing fees in Employment Tribunals. He observed that it is a fundamental principle that everyone should (regardless of income) have access to justice to challenge unfair behaviour in the workplace.
Please contact our Employment team if you would like further information or advice on any of the topics covered above.
The material in this article is provided for guidance and general information only and is not intended to constitute legal or other professional advice upon which you should rely. In particular, the information should not be used as a substitute for a full and proper consultation with a suitably qualified professional. Please do contact the Bates Wells team if you require further information.