Regulatory Policy Committee publishes its Opinion on the Employment Rights Bill
In the end of November, the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) published its assessment of the Employment Rights Bill (ERB).
About the RPC
The RPC is the independent regulatory scrutiny body for government, responsible for assessing the quality of evidence and analysis informing government regulatory proposals, to ensure that policy decisions are based on accurate evidence.
RPC scrutinises Impact Assessment (IA) and provides to ministers opinions on the quality of analysis and evidence presented. These opinions inform the decisions of ministers as to whether or not to proceed with proposals.
RPC Opinion on the ERB IAs
The RPC analysed both the summary Impact Assessment (IA) for ERB and its 23 further IAs on specific policy proposals, 8 of those are deemed ‘not fit for purpose’, including 6 in the highest impact measure category of the summary AI. As a consequence, the ERB was rated red, that is ‘not fit for purpose’.
Given the extensive impact of the proposals, the RPC recommended that IAs should undertake labour market and broader macroeconomic analysis, to consider the overall impact on employment, wages and output, including pass-through of employer costs to employees. According to the committee, the absence of this further analysis makes it challenging to validate the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) estimates in the IAs. Based on the information available, RPC has a low level of confidence in the estimated direct impacts included in the IA.
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