A general election always holds the possibility sweeping change, whether you see that as a promise or a risk, and employment legislation is often a prime target. In this article we’re looking at the manifesto promises from the three main parliamentary parties, so you can anticipate what might happen.
We won’t include anything that wouldn’t directly affect our space, or where the action the party would take is not explicitly specified. We haven’t fact checked any claims, and we won’t give our opinions or advise workers how they should vote on 4th July. We’ll provide links to the relevant manifestos in case you want to read the detail for yourself.
As many of our employees work in education and health, we’ll include promises that will affect workers in those sectors, as well as those which will affect the wider worlds of employment, contracting and recruitment.
Conservative>>:
Pay and Taxes
- Cut employee NICs to 6% by April 2027
- Abolish the main rate of self-employed NICs by the end of the parliament
- Promise not to raise the rate of income tax or VAT
- Promise not to increase Corporation Tax
- Promise to maintain the National Living Wage each year of the next parliament at two thirds of median earnings.
Skills and training
- Mandatory national service for school-leavers at 18, offering a choice between a competitive placement in the military or civic service roles.
- Fund 100,000 apprenticeships be the end of the next parliament.
- Curbing the number of “poor-quality” university degrees.
- Adult access to loans to fund new qualifications from the 2025 academic year.
Working parents
- 30 hours/week free childcare for working parents of children aged 9 months to school age.
- Reform child benefit so no entitlement is not lost until household income reaches £120,000
- “Wraparound” childcare before and after school for all parents by September 2026.
Education
- Promise to “protect” day to day schools spending in real terms per pupil.
- Banning the use of mobile phones during the school day.
- Mandate 2 hours of PE every week for primary and secondary schools
- Introduce a new “Advanced British Standard” meaning more subjects and more time in the classroom for 16–19-year-olds.
- 60,000 more school places, and 15 new free schools for children with special educational needs.
- Expand mental health support from 50% to 100% of schools and collages in England by 2030
Health
- Increase NHS spending above inflation every year. This includes a promise to recruit 92,000 more nurses and 28,000 more doctors.
- 40 new hospitals by 2030
- “Dental recovery plan” to create more than 2.5 million more NHS dental appointments
- Reduce the number of NHS managers by 5,500
Liberal Democrats>>
Statutory sick pay:
- Making SSP available to workers earning less than £123 a week.
- Aligning the rate with the National Minimum Wage.
- Making payments available from the first day of missing work rather than the fourth.
- Supporting small employers with Statutory Sick Pay costs, consulting with them on the best way to do this.
Statutory Maternity/Paternity pay
- Making all parental pay and leave day-one rights, including for adoptive parents and kinship carers, and extending them to self-employed parents.
- Doubling Statutory Maternity and Shared Parental Pay to £350 a week.
- Increasing pay for paternity leave to 90% of earnings, with a cap for high earners.
- Introducing an extra use-it-or-lose-it month for fathers and partners, paid at 90% of earnings, with a cap for high earners.
- Requiring large employers to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
- Introducing a ‘Toddler Top-Up’: an enhanced rate of Child Benefit for one-year-olds.
Temporary workers:
- End retrospective tax changes such as the loan charge brought in by the Conservatives, and review the Government’s off-payroll working IR35 reforms to ensure self-employed people are treated fairly.
- Establishing a new ‘dependent contractor’ employment status in between employment and self-employment, with entitlements to basic rights such as minimum earnings levels, sick pay and holiday entitlement.
- Reviewing the tax and National Insurance status of employees, dependent contractors and freelancers to ensure fair and comparable treatment.
- Setting a 20% higher minimum wage for people on zero-hour contracts at times of normal demand to compensate them for the uncertainty of fluctuating hours of work.
- Giving a right to request a fixed-hours contract after 12 months for ‘zero hours’ and agency workers, not to be unreasonably refused.
- Reviewing rules concerning pensions so that those in the gig economy don’t lose out, and portability between roles is protected.
- Shifting the burden of proof in employment tribunals regarding employment status from individual to employer.
Health
- Create a new right to see a GP within 7 days, or 24 hours if urgent
- Guarantee access to an NHS dentist for everyone needing urgent and emergency care
- Introduce a guarantee for 100% of cancer patients to start treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral.
Education
- Ensure that every secondary school child is taught by a specialist teacher in their subject.
- Reforming the School Teachers’ Review Body to make it properly independent of government and able to recommend fair pay rises for teachers, and fully funding those rises every year
- Ensuring all trainee posts in school are paid.
- Introducing a clear and properly funded programme of high-quality professional development for all teachers, including training on effective parental engagement.
- Reform Ofsted inspections and end single-word judgements.
Labour>>
In addition to their manifesto, the Labour Party has published another document called their New Deal for Working People which contains several specific promises about action they would take or begin within the first 100 days after forming a government. As these promises directly affect our space, we’ve drawn from both documents to form this list:
Changes affecting workers and employers
- Workers with the employment status “worker” to have the same terms as employees with regards to employment rights and benefits.
- Day one rights for all workers. Parental leave and sick pay were provided as examples.
- Reform of Statutory Sick Pay to remove the 3-day waiting period, and increase the amount paid to £116.75/week.
- Ban zero hours contracts. Contracts to reflect the individual’s actual working pattern after 12-weeks.
- Making it unlawful to dismiss a woman who is pregnant for six months after her return to work, except in specific circumstances.
- Introduce the right to bereavement leave for all workers
- Updates to the National Living Wage to take the cost of living into account.
- Ban unpaid internships, except as part of an education or training course.
- Outsourced workers to be included in Gender Pay Gap reporting.
- Large employers will be required to produce Gender Pay Gap and Menopause action plans
- Create a single enforcement body to enforce workers’ rights
Health
- Cut NHS waiting times with 40,000 more appointments every week
- A new Dentistry Rescue Plan
- 8,500 additional mental health staff
- Provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments
Education
- Recruit 6,500 new teachers
- 3,000 new primary school-based nurseries
- Free breakfast clubs in every primary school
- Mental health support for every school
- Reinstating the School Support Staff Negotiating Body.
Obviously, our team will not advise you how to vote on July 4th, but if you have questions about any aspect of contractor employment or CIS solutions, please call our expert team on 01604 360222 or email registerme@fairpayservices.co.uk.