Last week, three Private Members Bills received royal assent which will, when in force, give new rights to parents and carers, namely:
Paid neonatal leave of up to 12 weeks for employed parents whose children are admitted into neonatal care. This will be in addition to existing leave entitlements such as maternity and paternity leave.
Enhancement of existing redundancy protections for pregnant women and new parents for a periodof time after they return to work.
A week of flexible unpaid leave per year for unpaid carers who have dependants with long-term care needs.
When the GDPR first came into force five years ago, the big headline-grabber was the potential for large fines – up to €20m or 4% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher. In recent months we have seen some significant penalties being applied by UK and EU supervisory authorities, and the news this week from the Irish Data Protection Commission was that it had concluded its investigation into Facebook parent company Meta and decided to issue it with an administrative fine of €1.2billion in respect of its data transfers to the US.
On 10 May 2023 the UK Government published the ‘Smarter Regulation’ policy paper which announced a number of post-Brexit employment law reform measures. The package of regulatory reforms includes:
During April 2023 there are a number of employment law changes.
Click on the image to access our updated Employment Team Fact Card PDF guide.
The ICO has issued another headline-grabbing fine to a social media company – this time to TikTok, who have been fined £12.7 million for misusing children’s data, in particular by processing personal data of children aged under 13 without parental consent and taking insufficient steps to check the age of those using their platform and removing those underage.
On 8 March 2023, the government withdrew its previous data protection bill, which had been scheduled for a second reading, and instead published a revised new bill, the Data Protection and Digital Information (No. 2) Bill.
At the end of October our Residential Property Manager, Jacqui Dougray, emailed all the staff and partners and suggested that this year, rather than organising the annual firm-wide Secret Santa, people might consider donating either money or food/staple household items to the local charity, CFine (Community Food Initiatives North East). It was immediately obvious that the whole firm wanted to get on board.
What is the Register of Overseas Entities?
Following the introduction of the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 (the “Act”) earlier this year, a new public register controlled by Companies House, the Register of Overseas Entities (the “ROE”), launched on 1 August 2022. The Act had been expected to be introduced for a number of years, however, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Act was fast-tracked to the top of the political agenda and received royal assent on 15 March 2022. The main purpose of the ROE is to provide transparency by recording details of foreign owners of property and land in the UK to ensure these individuals cannot hide their identity behind a chain of shell companies. This should allow law enforcement agencies to investigate suspicious wealth more effectively.