Employment Rights Bill ‘a starting point’ for primary care nurses

The Employment Rights Bill has been described as ‘a starting point’ for nurses working in primary care and other independent settings, but funding concerns and calls for further sector changes remain.

The bill, which was introduced to Parliament on October 10 and affects most UK workplaces, looks to bring major changes to the independent health and social care sector, including to zero-hour contracts and sick pay, and to establish an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body for pay.

Claire Sutton, transformational lead for the independent health and social care sector at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said the bill was a ‘starting point’ that the college wants to ‘build on’.

Adult Social Care Negotiating Body

The changes proposed by the bill include the establishment of an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body for pay.

Ms Sutton told Nursing in Practice that given the scale of the social care sector, which amounts to around 18,000 care organisations in almost 40,000 establishments, a single centralised body is vital for negotiating pay.

‘You can’t possibly negotiate with that many employers separately,’ she said.

‘So, a negotiating body for the patients and conditions for people who are providing social care is really required to get the best results for people who work in the sector, which then enables them to be able to provide the best care for those people who need to access it.’

Statutory sick pay

In the bill, the government has also committed to ensuring statutory sick pay is ‘strengthened for those who need it most’, by removing the waiting period for sick pay so that all employees can claim statutory sick pay from day one of their sickness absence, including those working in general practice.

Ongoing concerns have been raised around the disparities faced by general practice nurses (GPNs) in terms of their sick pay and sick leave – particularly compared to NHS colleagues.

Earlier this year, GPNs shared their concerns about sick pay in a Nursing in Practice roundtable, in which one nurse shared how she had been advised to work avoid a career in general practice due to the poorer pay and sick leave conditions.

Ms Sutton told Nursing in Practice of the risks of nurses not being given adequate sick pay and conditions.

‘Sick people can’t support sick people. People need to be able to be well, and we should not be expecting staff to go into work when they are unwell

‘And unfortunately, if you don’t have access to good occupational sick pay, you will be forced to go into work when you are not unwell enough to work.’

Separately, the bull also commits to bringing in some protections for those on zero-hour contracts.

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The bill would give those on these contracts the right to notice of shifts, and payment for cancelled shifts and shifts finishing unexpectedly early.

Workers will also have the right to guaranteed hours, if they work regular hours over a defined period.

Sufficient funding needed

Ms Sutton warned that ‘without a doubt’ the bill cannot deliver on any of its proposals without sufficient funding to pay for any changes.

‘If the funding isn’t provided to these organisations to be able to pay their staff properly and offer their staff really good terms and conditions of employment, then it’s never going to be implementable,’ she explained.

‘The government has got to provide the right money to local authorities, for them to be able to provide the right money to care providers, for them to be able to offer their staff good pay terms and conditions.’

Earlier this month, the RCN issued new ‘employment standards’ for GP practices and care homes, including recommendations that the union would like employees to implement, alongside the Employment Rights Bill.

Steph Thornton, RCN employment relations officer, helped shape the standards which focus on pay, wellbeing, workplace culture and more – and which she sees as the baseline for what nurses in these settings ‘deserve’.

In an interview with Nursing in Practice Ms Thornton said the government’s bill is only the first step in a series of changes needed for the nursing workforce.

‘It’s a good starting point but there does need to be more, and the [RCN] standards are going to help us embed that and get it into the workplaces where employees don’t have a large portion of these already as a standard in their employment conditions,’ she said.

The bill follows the latest social care workforce report from Skills for Care which found 43% of all home care workers were employed on zero-hours contracts in 2023-24, compared with 21% of all adult social care posts overall.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘We are committed to delivering a Fair Pay Agreement for adult social care workers to properly reward hard-working staff and improve recruitment and retention.

‘To deliver this, it is vital to consult widely to ensure the policy is right for workers, providers and people who draw on care and support.’

The government expects to start consulting on the reforms in 2025, meaning most of the reforms would take effect no sooner than 2026.

Major changes proposed in the bill include:

Zero hours contracts – introducing a right to reasonable notice of shifts and to be offered a contract with guaranteed hours, reflecting hours regularly worked.
Flexible working – requiring employers to justify the refusal of flexible working requests.
Statutory sick pay – removing the three-day waiting period (so employees are eligible from the first day of illness or injury) and the lower earnings limit test for eligibility.
Family leave – removing the qualifying period for paternity leave and ordinary parental leave (so employees have the right from the first day of employment), and expanding eligibility for bereavement leave.
Protection from harassment – expanding employers’ duties to prevent harassment of staff.
Unfair dismissal – removing the two-year qualifying period (so employees are protected from unfair dismissal from the first day of employment), subject to a potential probationary period.
Fire and rehire – making it automatically unfair to dismiss workers because they refuse to agree to a variation of contract.
Sectoral collective bargaining – reintroducing the School Staff Negotiating Body and creating an Adult Social Care Negotiating Body, which could determine pay and other terms and conditions for workers in these sectors.
Trade unions – introducing rights for trade unions to access workplaces, and repealing the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and most provisions of the Trade Union Act 2016.
Enforcement – bringing together powers of existing labour market enforcement bodies, along with some new powers, under the Secretary of State and enforcement officers