Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026
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Lord Leong
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 28 April be approved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, before I kick off, I am sure all noble Lords will want to join me in wishing the England team good luck and all the very best wishes for tonight’s match.
I note the regret amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I will address the points that he has raised. For context, these instruments were laid before Parliament on 28 April and approved by the other place today. Their purpose is straightforward: to extend the time for bringing certain employment tribunal claims from three to six months.
The draft Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026 apply across Great Britain. The draft Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026 applies to England and Wales. Subject to the approval of this House, both instruments will come into force on 1 October this year.
I turn first to the regret amendment. It raises concerns about the current capacity of the employment tribunal system and the possibility that a longer claims window could place further pressure on it. I assure the noble Lord that these issues have been carefully considered. We fully recognise the pressures faced by the employment tribunal system and the wider dispute resolution framework, including a growing case load. That is why we are working across government to ensure that the system is resilient and able to support the effective enforcement of measures introduced under the Employment Rights Act.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Department for Business and Trade and the Ministry of Justice have established a dispute resolution task force. It brings together representatives from business, trade unions, the legal profession and the third sector. We are pursuing a combination of immediate targeted measures and longer-term reforms. Together, these are intended to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and resilience of the system. We are taking a phased approach, with several measures already under way. This programme of reform will continue at pace to ensure that the employment tribunal system has the capacity that it needs for the future.
The noble Lord raised concerns that a longer claims window could prolong disputes and put greater pressure on the system. The current three-month limit was originally introduced when employment tribunals were intended to offer a quicker, more informal route to resolving workplace disputes. However, demand has increased significantly. Experience has shown that three months is often insufficient for claimants to prepare a robust case, a point that the Law Commission recognised in 2020. Extending the time limit to six months strikes a better balance. It preserves the principle of timely resolution while providing claimants with a realistic opportunity to prepare their case. Better prepared claims should improve the quality of proceedings, reduce the need for applications to extend time limits and allow judicial resources to be focused more effectively on delivering justice.
I turn now to the instruments. First, the draft Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026 extend the time limit from three months to six months for a range of workplace rights. These include rights for part-time workers, fixed-term employees, zero-hours workers, information and consultation representatives, negotiating representatives, trade union blacklists, and certain NHS-related protections. The regulations will apply where the relevant workplace issue arises on or after 1 October 2026. If the issue arose before that date, the existing three-month time limit will continue to apply.
Secondly, the Employment Tribunals Extension of Jurisdiction (England and Wales) (Amendment) Order 2026 extends the time limit for bringing employment tribunal claims for breach of contract or sums due under a contract of employment from three months to six months. This order applies only to England and Wales. It does not extend to Scotland because the power to amend the equivalent Scottish legislation rests with Scottish Ministers, not the UK Government. We are working closely with the Scottish Government to secure a corresponding change in Scotland. We expect the change to take effect in mid-November 2026. Clear guidance will be issued to ensure that individuals and employers in Scotland understand the temporary difference in time limits.
The order will apply where the termination giving rise to the breach of contract claim occurs on or after 1 October 2026. Where the contract was terminated before that date, the current three-month time limit will continue to apply. These instruments are necessary to ensure consistency with the changes introduced by the Employment Rights Act 2025. They also align these claims with the existing six-month limits that apply to statutory redundancy and equal pay claims. Without these changes, the system would become unnecessarily complex for employees and employers alike and would create additional administrative burdens.
In closing, these measures will give both employees and employers more time to resolve disputes internally, to engage in conciliation, and to properly consider the merits of bringing a claim. This is particularly important in sensitive cases where individuals may need extra time before deciding how to proceed. By encouraging better preparation and greater use of early resolution processes, these changes may help ease pressure on the employment tribunal system. I hope noble Lords will support these instruments and the wider programme of reform that sits behind them. I beg to move.
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, I will be speedy. First, I thank both noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions, which I respect. I will address the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made about the review of Section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999. The noble Lord is absolutely right: we are committed to reviewing Section 10. I am sure that we will update the House on that in due course, but I cannot say more at this stage.
On the dispute resolution task force, the Government are considering reform measures, from early resolution to enforcement, to ensure that the system is more efficient and resilient. The expertise of the task force—which, as I mentioned earlier, will be made up of representatives from across the various stakeholders—will help inform the Government’s development of these reform measures. We are working on a mix of both more immediate targeted measures intended to reduce the current pressures and longer-term, more ambitious reforms designed to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and resilience of the system. We intend to use a phased approach, rather than doing everything in one go, and we will work on some of the measures already in train, such as targeted awareness-raising to reduce workplace conflict.
The Government are continuing to invest in recruitment to build employment tribunal capacity. New salaried employment judges will be sitting from this summer, and recruitment is under way for up to 55 employment judges who will add capacity from 2027. In addition, recruitment for up to 150 non-legal members will also conclude this year, so we are adding capacity and recruiting as things stand today. For 2026-27, the employment tribunal has been funded for 34,590 sitting days, which is more than has been utilised in each of the last 12 financial years up to 2024-25. Remote hearings are expanding through virtual means, enabling around something like 20,000 sitting days annually without geographical limits.
As noble Lords know, one of the key points of the Employment Rights Act is the establishment of the Fair Work Agency, which will now enforce rights including the national minimum wage. In time, it will enforce additional rights, including holiday pay, and ease pressure on employment tribunals. From 2027, the Fair Work Agency will enforce key rights—as I said earlier, holiday pay and statutory sick pay—to make enforcement faster and more accessible for workers. We are working on a mix of both immediate targeted measures intended to reduce current pressures and more targeted, longer-term, more ambitious reforms designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the system. The Government’s longer-term view includes looking at opportunities for the Fair Work Agency to take on enforcement where that would help workers and businesses reach resolution more quickly without needing to go to the employment tribunal. With all this in place, we hope to see a reduction in some of the caseload that we currently experience.
In closing, I reiterate the positive impact that these regulations will have for employees and employers and commend our ongoing reforms of the employment tribunal system so that it is more resilient to any future changes.