Proposals to make it easier to get rid of staff have come under fire from a range of trade bodies.

The Beecroft report proposes that employers should have the freedom to dismiss workers without a reason, provided they gave due notice and made a tax-free compensation payment linked to salary, age and service up to a maximum of £12,000, so protecting them from an unfair dismissal claim.

The Report has been rejected by manufacturing organisation EEF, which said that the plans would be ‘counterproductive’, and the Federation of Small Businesses, which sees the existing unfair dismissal laws as fit for purpose.

They’re not the only ones against the measures. Mike Emmott, employee relations adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, believes that employers don’t spend all their time worrying about unfair dismissal claims.

When you investigate this viewpoint, it does ring true. According to the government’s own research, unfair dismissal doesn’t even figure in the list of top ten regulations discouraging them from recruiting staff. So what are the merits of the Report?

Well, Nick Waldron, managing director of recruitment company Resource Solutions Group says that returning to greater levels of flexibility in employment law may well assist small businesses, which rely on the application and commitment of their workforce to drive growth, but can be crippled by malicious and/or spurious claims.

But this perspective is tempered somewhat by the feeling that would-be employees could be discouraged from working for the smallest businesses for fear of being let go, making it harder for such companies to attract good quality staff.

As James Willis, solicitor at Thomson Snell & Passmore says, ‘These measures are intended not only to help businesses by easing the regulatory burden, but also to support job creation.

'But when talking to the employers with whom we work, they are telling us that they are unconvinced that these changes will have the sort of favourable impact that Mr Beecroft and the Conservatives suggest.’

See also: Chancellor could favour enterprise in Pre-Budget Report