Ministers are seeking to exempt firms with up to 500 staff from new regulations, with unions warning that they could soon be spared from reporting on gender pay gaps and executive pay ratios in a “cynical and reckless” move.
Liz Truss announced on Sunday that companies with up to 500 staff would now be treated the same way as small businesses with fewer than 50 staff, which are exempt when new regulations are introduced.
In a statement, the government said the change in the threshold would apply to all new regulations under development as well as those under current and future review, including retained EU laws. It will look at raising the threshold even more to companies with fewer than 1,000 staff in future.
Chris Philp, a Treasury minister, suggested the government would go even further than preventing new regulations for businesses with up to 500 staff.
“We are going to be reducing business regulation,” Philp told a fringe event for the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Institute for Economic Affairs.
“Jacob Rees-Mogg [the business secretary] has a whole load of ideas to do that – one of which is making sure no business under 500 employees gets subject to business regulation, another critically important move. Jacob is going to lay out a whole load more ideas in that area.”
The government insisted the exemption will be applied in a “proportionate way to ensure workers’ rights and other standards will be protected, while at the same time reducing the burden for growing businesses”.
But the Trades Union Congress said it believed this would see businesses with fewer than 500 workers no longer required to report on gender pay gaps and executive pay ratios. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary, said: “Make no mistake. These changes represent real threats to workers.
“Obligations on businesses which were put in place to help improve the lives of working people, like reporting on gender pay gaps and executive pay ratios, are set to disappear for employers with under 500 workers.
“Scrapping gender pay gap reporting for businesses up and down the country risks turning the clock back for women at work. And ditching reporting on pay ratios for these businesses will be a boon to greedy bosses.
“Yet again we are seeing reckless and cynical deregulation. Not content with throwing the economy into turmoil, Tory ministers now have their sights set on business and employment regulation too.
“Let’s be clear. It’s not regulation that’s holding business back – it’s botched Tory economics which has led to low pay, depressed demand and continuous uncertainty.”
