The government will not implement a raft of controversial policies designed to relax employment laws contained in a report made for the coalition, according to Business Secretary Sajid Javid.
The Liberal Democrats had strongly opposed recommendations made in the Beecroft Report which included allowing firms to dismiss anyone without giving a reason provided they paid compensation.
Pro-worker measures to be announced include taking minimum wage earners out of income tax all together, extending free child care allowances and reviewing business rates on small firms.
Javid was asked on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show whether the Tories would now implement the recommendations that venture capitalist Adrian Beecrof made to the government in 2012.
Among the proposals was a cap on loss-of-earnings compensation and shifting responsibility for checking foreign workers’ eligibility from companies to the government.
“No, I won’t be looking at that again. What we will be doing though is looking at deregulation, taking it even further,” Mr Javid said.
“During the last Parliament we have saved businesses from about £10 billion of costs collectively in regulation and I think we can do at least that again.
“I’ve set out some of the examples in a speech I made recently about the kind of things that we can do in reducing red tape – I want to build on those.
“The other thing I want to do is help more small businesses with some of the challenges they face, not just red tape but especially the issue of late payments.
“So, small businesses in our country are owed I think about £30 billion – that’s a record high in late payments so we’re going to set up a small business conciliation service to help deal with that.”
