Colin Foote - Employment Law

13/04/2023

http://cflaw.co.uk/government-to-delay-state-pension-age-to-68/

The decision to bring forward the rise in the State Pension age to 68 will be delayed until after the 2024 general election, the government has confirmed. At present, the State Pension age for both men and women is 66, and will rise to 68 from 2044, but there were reports that the government plann....

13/04/2023

Government to delay State Pension age to 68

by
Harriet Meyer Restless

The decision to bring forward the rise in the State Pension age to 68 will be delayed until after the 2024 general election, the government has confirmed.

At present, the State Pension age for both men and women is 66, and will rise to 68 from 2044, but there were reports that the government planned to bring the increase forward to as early as 2035. You can also read more in our article How the State Pension works.

Mel Strike, work and pensions secretary, announced the delay today to MPs in Parliament, when he updated them on the latest State Pension age review.

A decision on whether to bring forward the rise in the State Pension age is now expected to be made in 2026. The announcement follows reports that plans to bring forward the State Pension age rise would be delayed amid concerns about civil unrest if the State Pension age rise is brought forward. The last week has seen a series of strikes and riots in France following President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64.

The current review of the State Pension age by Baroness Neville-Rolfe considers which factors should form part of any increase, including preventing Britons from spending more than a third of their adult life in retirement.

Alice Guy, head of pensions and savings at interactive investor, said: “Today’s reported decision to shelve plans to raise the State Pension age more quickly comes after sad news that life expectancies are currently falling rather than rising.

“The State Pension age is closely linked to life expectancies. The regular report into the State Pension age is due out any time soon and its recommendations are based on us spending an average of one-third of our lives in retirement.

“It’s a sad fact that life expectancies are falling in Britain for a whole host of reasons and it’s difficult for the government to justify raising the State Pension age more quickly.

“Not only are life expectancies slightly falling, reducing by seven weeks for men between 2017 to 2020 (ONS figures), they also vary widely around the country with life expectancies three years lower in the North East compared with the South East (ONS figures) and are also often linked to income level. It’s also a sad reality that those with chronic health conditions often live for less time in retirement.”

At present, the State Pension age will increase to 67 for those born on or after 5 April 1960 between 2026 and 2028. Between 2044 and 2046, there will be a gradual rise to 68 for those born on or after 5 April 1977. Think tank the Institute Fiscal Studies (IFS) reported that every year that the government delays the raise the age to 68 after 2037 would cost the Treasury between £8bn and £9bn.

The government is required by law to review the State Pension age every six years and the next review will be published by May 7, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. A recent report found life expectancy for retiring Britons is now two years lower than when the government last reviewed the state pension age in 2017.

From 6 April, State Pension payments will increase by 10.1% in line with the rising cost of living. Read more about why pensioners are receiving a record-breaking increase in the State Pension in our article What is the pension triple lock?

That means the full flat rate State Pension will be worth £203.85 a week (up from £185.15) and £156.20 a week (up from £141.85) for the full basic State Pension (for those who reached State Pension age before April 2016).

30/03/2023

Solicitor Forced To Quit After Firm Forged Review Signature

By Silvia Martelli ·

Law360, London (March 29, 2023, 8:10 PM BST) -- An employment tribunal has ruled that a solicitor had no choice but to resign when her employer forged her signature on a document wrongly saying that she and her manager had agreed to extend her probationary period.

In a ruling published Tuesday, the Employment Tribunal said the solicitor, only identified as L. Singh, resigned as a result of Optimal Claim Ltd., trading as Optimal Solicitors, breaching her trust and confidence by faking her signature.

Singh joined the law firm in September 2021 and resigned three months later, after she realized the law firm had forged her electronic signature on her review documents, the March 15 ruling says.

"This is an aspect of the conduct of the respondent which, the tribunal considers ... amounted in itself to a fundamental breach of the implied term of trust and confidence," the tribunal said.

The review also falsely stated that Singh had agreed with her manager that her probation would be extended for another three months, Judge Peter Holmes found.

The law firm's actions eroded Singh's trust and confidence in the company and resulted in her resignation, the tribunal ruled.

"It is hard to imagine anything more likely to seriously damage the relationship of trust and confidence between employer and employee than forging internal documents to give a misleading impression of what was agreed in a meeting to consider extending the probationary period," the tribunal added.

The law firm also breached Singh's trust by failing to tell her that a client had complained about her and by only bringing up the issue during a meeting to discuss her review, the judge said.

The law firm should have promptly raised the topic when the client brought it to its attention, the judge said, which would have given Singh a chance to fix the issue and improve her performance.

"That, coupled with other instances where the respondent accepted in the grievance outcome that the claimant should have been given more warning and feedback, begin to form the basis for a finding that the respondent had, to a degree, so conducted itself in a manner, if not calculated to, likely to, destroy or seriously damage the relationship of trust and confidence between employee and employer," the judge wrote.

Neither side was immediately available for comment Tuesday.

Singh is represented by Tim Kenward of 7 Harringdon Street.

Optimal is represented by Frankie Jaffier of FJ Employment Law.

The case is Miss L Singh v. Optimal Claim Ltd (T/a Optimal Solicitors), case number 2402039/2022, in the Employment Tribunal.

--Editing by Lakshna Mehta.

05/11/2018

Changes for Employers following the Autumn 2018 Budget

This Autumn's budget has seen the UK Government introduce changes which will have a significant impact on employers who will now have a larger responsibility to determine the correct tax status for their staff.

Since April 2017, it has only been public sector employers who have been charged with the responsibility of identifying who should be treated as employees for the purposes of income tax and national insurance contributions. Now, however, this obligation will also fall upon medium and large scale private employers.

No longer should private employers assume they are protected because they are using self-employed contractors engaged through intermediary companies. If these employers do not get things right they will be left carrying the can for the income tax and national insurance contributions which should have been paid to HMRC. Financial penalties are also likely to follow.

Significantly, this change will not be introduced until April 2020. This is to allow private businesses a fair and reasonable opportunity to put their houses in order before they might be hit by any penalties. On considering this, the government has acknowledged it takes a certain amount of time to put in place significant changes in and around the area of payroll as was the case previously with the introduction of auto-enrolment for workplace pensions.

This change to the legislation is seen as one of several moves from the Chancellor towards collecting more tax from large scale private employers following the backlash that has arisen in recent years regarding Amazon, Google and other successful companies who have been accused of UK tax avoidance.

Some have criticised the change that it does accurately reflect the gig economy which we now live in where more and more people work for themselves on a project to project basis. Others have said the change fails to fix the problem where the courts and HMRC still have an entirely different take on what represents an 'employee'. Time will tell in terms of how this affects employers and what additional money (if any) is generated for the government's coffers.

Colin Foote Employment Law