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Business: Redundancy

Asked by Alex BrewerLiberal DemocratDepartment for Business and TradeTabled Answered 15 October 2025UIN 80529

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to help ensure (a) legal and (b) ethical business practices are followed when firms undertake redundancies.

Answered by Kate Dearden

The government’s Plan to Make Work Pay committed to strengthening collective redundancy protections. The Employment Rights Bill will double the maximum period of the protective award that can be made for an employer’s failure to comply with their collective redundancy consultation obligations, from 90 to 180 days’ pay. This will deter unscrupulous businesses from deliberately avoiding their obligations. We are also requiring employers to collectively consult affected employees’ representatives whenever a threshold number of redundancies are proposed across an entire organisation, rather than just at one establishment. This threshold number will be set following a public consultation.

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