RPC statement about the late submission of the Employment Rights Bill impact assessment
The Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) produces opinions of impact assessments (IAs) and Options Assessments (OAs) to help departments ensure that the evidence and analysis in them is sufficiently robust.
We provide an independent opinion to assist ministerial decision making and parliamentary scrutiny of regulatory proposals. We publish these to assist parliamentarians and to ensure that they are available to external stakeholders. Government departments are expected to submit IAs to the RPC in time for the RPC to issue an opinion before the relevant legislation is laid before Parliament.
As part of the King’s Speech, the Government made clear its intention to introduce an Employment Rights Bill. Since this was a manifesto commitment, the Better Regulation Framework urgent measures process allows the department (the Department for Business and Trade) to submit an IA for the proposal, rather than an OA as normally required.
The Employment Rights Bill was introduced to Parliament yesterday (10th October 2024). An IA has yet to be submitted to the RPC for scrutiny.
The RPC will, on receipt of the IA, produce its opinion as soon as possible. Our opinion will be made available to the Government and Parliament and published on our website as soon as it is complete, when we will update this statement.