News 16 - 23 May 2022

News 16 - 23 May 2022

Hello and welcome to this week’s news.

We start this week with a look back at the P&O redundancies debacle and its lasting impact.(1) Next we jump into caselaw and take a look at the implications of the appeal decision in HMRC v Atholl House Productions Limited, the high profile case involving BBC presenter Kaye Adams.(2)The TUC looks at the government’s response to the ‘cost-of-living crisis’ and find it is insufficient.(3)

Personnel Today report that nurses are continuing to leave the NHS in droves due to the increased pressure and the draconian work practices which have flourished in the post COVID workplace for healthcare workers.(4)On a similar note, contractor jobs have fared about as badly.(5)

The TUC Report that the gender pensions gap is now so wide that in any given year women receive the equivalent of just 7.5 months in a year compared to the 12 months that their male counterparts receive.(6)The Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has managed to complicate further the slippery issue of ‘long COVID’ with a tweet suggesting that in the absence of case law, long COVID should not be considered a disability.(7)

The government’s ‘Future of Work’ review is now ‘out of date’, ‘lacklustre,’ and ‘ridiculous’ depending on which critic you listen to, so here’s some further detail on the government’s shambolic reform of the IR35 rules.(8)The TUC comment on minimum service levels during strike action, (9)in light of Grant Schapps hinting at the introduction of bizarre ‘nonsense’ legislation that would effectively require unions to provide ‘minimum service levels’ before being able to strike.(10)