Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he will take steps to preclude employers from entering into consultations on redundancy while furloughing those staff.

Employment law continues to apply to those furloughed on the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, alongside protection rights for workers, including the existing redundancy consultation periods for employers.

An employer has a statutory duty to consult when they propose to dismiss 20 or more employees in a single establishment within a rolling 90-day period. If the employer proposes to dismiss 100 or more employees in a single establishment the minimum consultation period is 45 days.

The employer is entitled to start to furlough employees who have agreed to participate in the furlough scheme before or in parallel to conducting any collective consultation which is required, as long as consultation takes place in good time and, in any event, within the statutory minimum periods before any dismissals take effect.

Consultation must be undertaken with a view to reaching agreement, although sometimes agreement may not be possible. The consultation must seek to reach agreement on ways to avoid redundancies, or to reduce or mitigate their impact.

The requirement for a minimum period of consultation is accompanied by the need to notify my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State of potential large scale redundancies so that Government can help assist redundant staff either through payments from the National Insurance Fund, universal credit or finding alternative local job opportunities.