David Cameron moves to water down new EU job laws.
12/09/2011
David Cameron moves to water down new EU job laws
David Cameron may overrule Vince Cable by diluting controversial new EU employment laws to be introduced next month, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The Prime Minister’s office secretly commissioned its own legal advice on the Agency Workers Directive, which concluded that the impact of the new laws could be moderated.
The directive, to be introduced under EU law, will give temporary agency workers the same rights as full-time workers to pay, holiday and maternity leave after 12 weeks of employment. The laws are expected to cost British businesses almost £2 billion a year.
But Downing Street has been told by lawyers that the Business Secretary’s department has “gold-plated” the legislation with additional rules that need not have been included, despite a pledge by the Coalition not to introduce unnecessary regulation that undermines business.
Mr Cameron’s advisers are weighing up whether to strip out some of these provisions.
One option suggested is the “Armageddon” tactic of simply refusing to introduce the new laws, a move that could result in multi-million pound EU fines for the Government.
With the changes looming, Steve Hilton, Mr Cameron’s director of policy, is understood to have hired Martin Howe QC to provide confidential legal advice on the Government’s options regarding the directive.
The Agency Workers Directive was introduced by Labour but it was re-analysed by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills after the election, after which Liberal Democrat ministers announced it would be implemented as planned.
It is understood that Mr Howe suggested that the Government effectively had three choices if it did not wish to adopt the directive in its entirety: to water down and delay the planned laws; to seek to introduce new legislation in Parliament that could overrule the EU diktat; or to simply ignore the EU directive.
Source: The Telepgraph, 5 September 2011
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