Will the Employment Rights Act make work pay?
Wednesday 25 February 12:30 until 14:00
Online : https://digit-research.org/events/will-the-employment-rights-act-make-work-pay/
Speaker: Simon Deakin, Christine Carter, Kamelia Pourkermani, Tim Sharp
Part of the series: Digit Debates
The UK Government’s new Employment Rights Act became law in December 2025 but how significant is it for workers’ rights in the UK? And what impact will it have on the economy?
The Employment Rights Act has been welcomed by the TUC as the “biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation”, but some business organisations continue to express reservations. With plenty of detail to be determined through secondary legislation, the Recruitment and Employers’ Confederation has said that “there is a lot to sort out in the implementation of these worrying new regulations”.
This Digit Debates event presents evidence about the legal and economic impacts of the Act from a new report by a team of Digit researchers, commissioned by the Department of Business and Trade. The report benchmarks the new rights conferred by the Act against other OECD countries. It also reports an econometric analysis of the relationship between labour law and the economy over the past 50 years in the UK.
Our research finds that the new Act will bring UK workers’ rights closer to the OECD average and is likely to have a small positive effect on employment, representing an increase of around 0.1% in the employment level. In those areas where the Act breaks new ground for UK law, including zero hours contract laws, analysis indicates that the adoption of similar laws in other OECD countries in the recent past has led to productivity and employment improvements.
The research team will present the findings, followed by a panel discussion.
Related reading
Assessing the legal and economic implications of the Employment Rights Act 2025. Christine Carter, Simon Deakin, Conor McCormack, Kamelia Pourkermani
Bios
Simon Deakin is a professor of law and director of the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge. He specialises in the economic and empirical analysis of law, with particular reference to labour and financial markets. He has carried out empirical legal research in numerous countries including Japan, China, Russia, India and South Africa. He is currently researching the implications for law of machine learning.
Christine Carter is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge.
Kamelia Pourkermani studied economics at the undergraduate level in Iran and the postgraduate level in the UK. She earned her masters from the Royal Holloway University of London and her Ph.D. at the University of Bath. She has had extensive experience in data analysis, research evaluation, and statistical modelling.
Tim Sharp is head of employment rights at the Trades Union Congress, which brings together 5.5 million working people who make up its 47 member unions. He leads the TUC’s activity on employment rights policy and legislation, having previously overseen its pensions work. Tim is a trustee of the Good Business Foundation, which accredits businesses that meet minimum standards in areas such as pay and working hours. Before joining the TUC in 2014, Tim was the London-based City Editor for Scotland’s Herald newspaper.
By: Gemma Smith
Further information: https://digit-research.org/events/will-the-employment-rights-act-make-work-pay/
Last updated: Monday, 9 February 2026