Reviewing Our UK Business Law Predictions For 2023: How Are We Doing At The Half-Way Point?

• Published date: 21 July 2023
• Subject Matter: Corporate/Commercial Law, Employment and HR, Environment, Corporate and Company Law, Corporate Governance, Redundancy/Layoff, Environmental Law
• Law Firm: Osborne Clarke
• Author: Mr Osborne Clarke

In January 2023 our Osborne Clarke Knowledge Lawyers made their business law predictions for 2023. Here, we see how those predictions are faring.

General

We thought that "businesses and their advisers are likely to sharpen their focus on the Opposition's emerging plans for the economy"- perhaps not the craziest of predictions, and we can put a tick next to that one. The Labour Party has been setting out its "five missions" for when and if it enters government, one of which is to "make Britain a clean energy superpower", as we discuss in this Insight.

On Brexit, we expected a "growing awareness and frustration, extending beyond the business community, of the frictions that Brexit has introduced into UK-EU relations". In polling results released in June 2023, the think tank UK in a Changing Europe found that only 18% of 2016 "Leave" voters thought Brexit is going well. Although, optimistically, 61% of those voters think it will turn out well in the end.

Still in Brexit-land, we guessed that the Retained EU (Revocation and Reform) Bill would "run into the sand amid opposition in the Lords and overwhelming scepticism in Whitehall". This was spot on. The bill made it into law, but its principal feature - the "sunset" of all retained EU law on the statute book at the end of 2023 - was abandoned, as we discuss in our detailed Insight.

Employment

Our experts expected "further legislative reform on industrial action and strike law". With strikes continuing across a number of sectors, the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill has not yet received Royal Assent but has passed through both the Commons and the Lords, with amendments now being considered.

Regulations the government introduced back in 2022 essentially permitting the use of agency staff to cover for striking workers or those taking part in other industrial action (or to cover the work of an employee who is covering the work of an employee taking part in a strike) have been subject to legal challenge. The High Court has now ruled that the regulations are unlawful and are quashed with effect from 10 August 2023. The position will therefore revert back to that pre-July 2022, meaning that the use of agency workers to cover these specific circumstances are once again prohibited. Read more.

In January, we noted that "there are currently a number of proposed legislative reforms progressing through parliament aimed at supporting employee wellbeing throughout employment", and indeed legislation has now been passed...