Business Secretary denounces "heavy handed" European employment regulations

In an opinion piece written for the Daily Telegraph, Cable denounced the "red tape factories of Brussels" for the introduction of laws such as the Working Time Directive (WTD), which limits the working week to 48 hours.

"The directive incorporates the idea that is most clearly expressed in the French 35-hour week: that work should be compulsorily restricted and shared out, whether or not it suits the needs of individual workers or firms," he said. "Not only is this dreadful economics, it is also deeply illiberal."

He said that the UK, which insisted on retaining the right for workers to opt out of the limit, was no longer the only European country opposed to the EU's "heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all approach".

Cable added that he was "fighting" to restrict the impact of other European employment law changes, including proposed European Parliament amendments to the Pregnant Workers Directive and recent "damaging" rulings by the European Court of Justice.

"One ruling decrees that employers should be forced to give their employees more time off work if they are injured or fall ill while on holiday. This proposition goes far beyond what was originally intended by the WTD and would simply strangle small businesses," he said. "I have instructed my officials to roll back these damaging rulings wherever possible, ensuring we strike a balance between protecting employees and giving employers the flexibility they need to help grow this country out of recession."

However employment law expert Amy Brokenshire of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that there were limits to what the Government could do to 'resist' European regulations.

"We are, after all, part of Europe and Mr Cable is not suggesting that we change that," she said. "Accordingly, the UK is going to be subject to European legislation going forwards, and the Government won't be able to simply pick and choose which bits of European legislation should and shouldn't apply."

The Government is due to unveil an Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill as part of its legislative agenda for the next Parliamentary session tomorrow, according to press reports. The plans will reportedly bring in changes to the pay of top executives and a streamlined employment tribunal system, as well as reducing the regulatory burden for small businesses.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) recently led a consultation process on a package of measures it described as "the most radical reform to employment law for decades". It has proposed reducing the 90-day minimum consultation period for collective redundancies, streamlining criminal records checks and introducing 'protected conversations' which would allow employers and employees to have frank discussions about workplace issues future plans without risk of any comments being used against them in a tribunal.

Proposed changes to the tribunal system include the introduction of fees for anyone wishing to take a claim to an employment tribunal. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) recently consulted on the best method of doing this, with separate fees to lodge a claim then take it to a hearing proposed. Alternatively a threshold could be introduced, so that those seeking a tribunal award of more than £30,000 will have to pay more to bring a claim.

The Government also set out its plans to allow shareholders a binding vote on executive salaries, alongside other measures designed to address growing concerns about rising executive pay levels, in March.

Some of the measures that are likely to be covered in the Queen's Speech have already come into force, said Brokenshire. For example, some employment judges have already begun to sit alone while hearing unfair dismissal cases.

"However, we are still waiting for a firm date for the introduction of early ACAS conciliation and the proposals in relation to employment tribunal fees and protected conversation are still subject to consultation," she said. "In the absence of further detail about these proposals, it is difficult to understand how they will be expected to work in practice. In particular, the concept of protected conversations has been pitched as a fairly radical proposal for change, and yet at present it remains entirely unclear how these conversations will be expected to be used by employers and employees in practice."