Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if he will make assessment of the potential impact of companies denying employees (a) continuous service pay rises and (b) other accumulated benefits after being transferred from rolling fixed-term contracts to permanent contracts on those employees.

There are no current plans to make such an assessment. Under the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002, employers must not treat employees less favourably because they are on fixed-term contracts than permanent employees doing the same or broadly similar work, unless justified on objective grounds.

Where transfers from one contract to another are being made through fire and rehire, the Employment Rights Bill will make it an automatic unfair dismissal if an employer dismisses an employee in order to change certain core terms in their contract such as a reduction to pay or leave, a change in overall hours or specified changes to shift patterns, unless the employer is in severe financial difficulties and could not reasonably have avoided the need to make the change.