Employment Rights Bill 2024-25: Lords stages and amendments

The Employment Rights Bill 2024-25 completed its passage through the Commons on 12 March 2025. For details of the bill as introduced and it’s Commons committee stage, see the Library briefing on the bill as introduced and the Library briefing produced ahead of Commons report stage.

The bill was introduced in the House of Lords on 14 March 2025 and received its second reading on 27 March 2025. It passed without division.

The bill had 11 sittings in Lords committee stage between 29 April and 24 June 2025. The bill then spent four days in Lords report stage between 14 July and 23 July 2025.

The bill received its Lords third reading on 3 September 2025 and passed without a division. The bill is listed to return to the Commons for consideration of Lords amendments on Monday 15 September 2025.

How many Lords amendments were tabled?

646 amendments were tabled at committee stage, of which 78 were agreed to.

215 amendments were tabled at report stage, of which 90 were agreed to.

One amendment was also agreed to at third reading.

There are therefore 169 Lords amendments in total for the Commons to consider.

What do the Lords amendments focus on?

Many of the amendments tabled in the Lords, particularly at committee stage, are technical or consequential in nature.

Government amendments

There were two main areas in which government amendments made substantial changes to the bill:

• Making non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) invalid if they prevent disclosures of work-related harassment or discrimination.
• Limiting the way in which automatic fire-and-rehire protections apply so they only extend to defined ‘restricted variations’ of contract, rather than all variations of contract. This set of amendments also expanded the fire-and-rehire protections to cases where employees are replaced with agency workers or contractors on a like-for-like basis.

Opposition amendments

There were also several areas in which opposition amendments made substantial changes to the bill:

• limiting the right for workers on zero-hours contracts to be offered a guaranteed hours contract only “if requested by an employee”
• defining “short notice” for the purpose of shift-cancellation payments as under 48 hours.
• extending rights to time off work for public duties to employees who are special constables
• reducing the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal claims to six months, instead of abolishing it altogether as the bill would have originally done
• requiring the Secretary of State to make regulations extending existing whistleblowing protections
• extending the right to be accompanied at disciplinary and grievance hearings to other people certified by certain professional bodies for that purpose, even if not trade union officials or fellow workers
• requiring the provisions in part 1 of the bill to be subject to consultation and to “have regard to” the nature of seasonal work
• removing some restrictions on the ability of children to undertake voluntary work on heritage railways
• removing the planned repeal of the Trade Union Act 2016’s requirement for industrial action ballots to achieve at least 50% turnout
• removing the planned repeal of the Trade Union Act 2016’s restrictions on trade unions operating opt-out political funds