Legal News

Whistleblowing ( Reporting and Disruption of Fraud and Wrongdoing) Bill At a launch on 21 October 2024, lawyers, parliament and a retired judge backed the new Whistleblowing ( Reporting and Disruption of Fraud and Wrongdoing) Bill, asserting that, if passed, it would enhance protections for whistleblowers throughout the UK. Whistleblowers UK, the non-profit supporting the Bill, said it would create a government office for whistleblowers, headed by a commissioner appointed by the secretary of state. The office would have wide-ranging powers to: set, monitor and enforce standards seek information carry out investigations impose fines for retaliation Victoria Mc Cloud, a retired judge and director of Whistleblowers UK, said the UK is waking up and recognises that urgent steps are needed, with cross-party support in both the Lords and Commons, to bring the Whistleblowing Bill into law. A copy of the...

Mergers The Commission: gave conditional approval to JD Sports Fashion Plc Group’s planned purchase of Groupe Courir SAS—see further, press release authorised joint control of Odevo Mid Co AB by Fidelio Capital and CVC Capital Partners Plc ( M.11735) following a phase I review—see further, Midday Express approved Sonoco Products Company’s takeover of the Eviosys Group ( M.11637) after a phase I review—see further, Midday Express cleared Waterland Private Equity Investments B. V. to acquire sole control of Lebara Group B. V. ( M.11712) post phase I review—see further, Midday Express The Commission has received filings for: Investcorp/ PSP/ PKF O’ Connor Davies...

Why is a new strategy being consulted on? At this point, eight sectors have been singled out as offering strong potential for economic expansion. These ‘growth-driving sectors’ are: advanced manufacturing clean energy industries creative industries defence digital technologies financial services life sciences professional and business services As a green paper, the government is inviting views on the opportunities and obstacles facing each sector, while delving into niches that could become priority sub-sectors for growth. The next version of the strategy will set out tailored plans for all eight areas, informed by engagement with business, devolved governments, regions, and other relevant stakeholders. What are the key environmental aspects and other legal considerations arising from the consultation? Defence’s inclusion on a Labour list may seem unexpected, though it likely acknowledges the realities of ongoing conflicts worldwide. Lawyers advising clients in these fields will hope to see capital channelled into clean energy...

National Insurance ( NI) Contribution pension relief Hymans Robertson warned that the rumoured cut or scrapping of National Insurance ( NI) Contribution pension relief would deal a significant blow to employers—especially those seeking to lift retirement outcomes for staff by contributing beyond the statutory minimum. Removing the relief would leave a company paying an extra £442 each year on a 5% contribution for an employee earning £32,000 annually, it said. Hannah English, head of defined contribution consulting at Hymans Robertson, cautioned that proposals expected in the forthcoming Autumn budget could have far-reaching consequences for businesses. Our worry is the potential effect where today’s NI saving is used to boost pension contributions, English added. The implications for employers would be vast, Hymans stressed......

Market studies Government responds to the CMA’s housebuilding market study; accepts many of the CMA’s recommendations The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government ( MHCLG) has issued the Government’s reply to the CMA’s recommendations set out in the final report of its housebuilding market study undertaken. The CMA concluded that outcomes for consumers in housebuilding are falling short, and proposed a range of measures to tackle problems linked to the private stewardship of public facilities on new estates, the standard of newly built homes, and the service delivered by housebuilders, and how best to resolve them. The Government has welcomed the CMA’s findings and endorsed the conclusions, expressing a resolve to deliver better results across the housebuilding market......

See Practice Note: FAQs on After-the- Event insurance for insolvency practitioners. For a summary of the insolvency claim financing and enquiries, consult Funding of insolvency litigation and investigations—overview......

The IA, in a letter to the FCA published on 18 October 2024, warned that the regulator’s plan to score pension providers with a traffic‑light style label risks stifling market innovation. It argued that schemes ought to be judged chiefly on delivery against their own strategic objectives, rather than set against other plans pursuing different aims. The letter expresses strong misgivings about the comparative elements of the package, noting that the potential downsides of receiving a red or amber mark, when measured against peers, would remove any clear motivation for providers to innovate within their investment offerings. The FCA’s consultation on a proposed value‑for‑money framework for defined contribution schemes closed on 17 October 2024. Under the proposals, pension providers would be assigned red, amber or green ratings—the ‘ RAG’ approach—mirroring the colour coding used for food product grading. The IA said it was...

Hewston v Ofsted ( Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills) CA-2023-001757 On 17 October 2024, the Court of Appeal held that the Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills ( Ofsted) had unfairly dismissed Andrew Hewston, finding there was no explicit policy making contact with children a potential ground for dismissal. In reaching that conclusion, the appellate court confirmed the 2023 Employment Appeal Tribunal ( EAT) ruling that Ofsted acted unfairly when it ended his employment after he touched a child's head and placed his hand on their shoulder. This stood in contrast to the initial decision of the employment tribunal, which had determined the dismissal was fair. Opting to defer publication of its reasons, the Court of Appeal’s chair, Justice Nicholas Underhill, remarked on 17 October 2024, 'as you'll appreciate we're not in a position to deliver...

According to Steam's owner Valve Valve says that in 2023 Bucher launched a mass‑arbitration drive through his new practice, The Bucher Law Firm. As part of this push, he advised Steam users that pursuing arbitration alleging the platform monopolised the gaming market to keep prices artificially high was a better route than a class action. Valve also contends Bucher embarked on the campaign after being dismissed from Zaiger LLC and accused of taking its client list, again urging users to choose arbitration over a class action. His firm then issued a settlement demand that Valve characterises as extreme and beyond any plausible recovery, and submitted thousands of arbitration filings to the American Arbitration Association. In May, Bucher Law sought rulings in four of its cases to have the arbitration clause in the company’s former subscriber agreement declared unenforceable. Those applications were granted in July, after which Steam...

Market Standards Trend Report— Trends in UK public M& A in Q3 2024 Background and approach Market Standards has undertaken analysis to explore prevailing trends in relation to UK public M& A. The findings are drawn from the Market Standards transaction data analysis tool, which enables users to access, analyse and compare the particular characteristics of numerous corporate transactions. This serves as an update to our Public M& A deals H1 2024— UK— Market Standards Trend Report, where we reviewed firm and possible offers announced during the first half of 2024. For the purposes of this update, our assessment covers the period from 1 July 2024 to 30 September 2024 ( Q3 2024). Although comparisons have been undertaken with the prior quarter in 2024 (1 April 2024 to 30 June 2024) and with the equivalent period in 2023 (1 July 2023 to 30...

Havering London Borough Council v Stokes and others [2024] EWHC 2496 ( KB) What are the practical implications of this case? This judgment again alerts practitioners to the need, when framing a bespoke order, to shape the relief sought to fit the facts of the dispute and, where necessary, to each separate defendant. Because a final injunction is a severe measure, particularly where it binds persons unknown who receive no notice, careful thought should be given to mitigating policies to soften its effects, in tandem with the usual liberty to apply for variation or discharge. LBH advanced a policy enabling travellers to seek planning permission after the event, or to be treated as having applied if unaware of the policy. Although narrow in reach, it proved a crucial device in persuading the court to grant injunctive relief. In the wake of...

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill The rise of online marketplaces, the presence of lithium batteries in ebikes, and fresh product risks and technologies such as AI have increased the urgency of revising post- Brexit UK product safety rules, ministers and officials told lawmakers yesterday as they defended the wide powers set out in a new draft law. Junior business minister Justin Madders told Parliament that the far-reaching Product Regulation and Metrology Bill aims to support ministers in managing more than 150 separate regulations that regularly require technical updates, covering areas from toys and cosmetics to lifts and noise-generating products, before even accounting for emerging domains that also need safeguards. For example, he said, there must be clear accountability for online marketplaces and certainty about how they are positioned within the framework......

See Q& A: Are sanctioned persons entitled to receive interest on sums owed to them that accrue during the period in which they are sanctioned? Do the sanctions affect the statute of limitations? Are sanctioned persons entitled to receive interest on sums owed to them that accrue during the period in which they are sanctioned? UK financial sanctions commonly include asset freezes. These measures bar any handling of a designated person’s frozen funds or economic resources, prevent making funds available to them, and prohibit attempts to sidestep these restrictions—see Practice Note: Understanding the financial sanctions regime. Defined offences capture dealing with a designated person’s funds and providing funds to them—see Practice Note Financial sanctions—offences. Where a breach of this kind is committed by a firm authorised under Part 4A of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 ( FSMA 2000), there will be...

Practice Direction of the Employment Appeal Tribunal 2024 What are the practical implications of these changes? In practical terms, the new direction clarifies when it starts to bite, where it applies, and how documents must be filed. The 2024 EAT Practice Direction ( EAT PD 2024): covers all appeals begun on or after 1 February 2025 also applies to appeals issued before that date where any step occurs on or after 1 February 2025 applies across England, Wales and Scotland amends and replaces the Employment Appeal Tribunal Practice Direction 2023 (archived) An interim Practice Direction on presenting responses, effective from 6 April 2024, was released in late March 2024. A refreshed direction had been expected to commence on 1 October 2024; instead, EAT PD 2024 has arrived slightly later and will govern appeals started on or after 1 February 2025. The principal change is the adoption of directions for using the My HMCTS...

The government will move quickly to safeguard people using BNPL products, which let borrowers spread the price of purchases into regular instalments but can result in significant debt and harm, the Treasury said. Tulip Siddiq, economic secretary to the Treasury, said millions use Buy- Now, Pay- Later to organise their finances, yet the previous government’s dither and delay left them without protection, adding that ministers promised to act before the election and are now following through. The government also highlighted worries that, despite widespread take-up, the sector currently falls outside the FCA’s remit; FCA findings show 14m consumers used BNPL in the six months to January 2023. The FCA will finalise rules 12 months from......

The rollout of the JCT 2024 suite has progressed with the issue of 2024 editions of the JCT Major Project, Constructing Excellence, and Prime Cost Building contracts (together with their related guides and sub-contracts) on 16 October 2024. For analysis of the revisions to the Major Project form, see News Analysis: The JCT Major Project Construction Contract 2024—what’s changed? In this piece, we set out the principal updates to the Prime Cost Building Contract 2024 ( PCC 2024), measured against its 2016 predecessor and other documents in the JCT 2024 suite. Reference copies of PCC 2024 and the Prime Cost Building Contract Guide 2024 ( PCC/ G 2024) will shortly be accessible on Lexis+® Construction, within our sub-topic ‘ JCT contracts 2024’ (housed under the main topic, ‘ Standard form construction contracts’), and also via Practice Note: JCT contracts...

Victims of Brazil's worst ever environmental disaster Survivors of Brazil’s gravest environmental catastrophe are asking the High Court to hold BHP — then listed on the London Stock Exchange — responsible for the 2015 collapse of the Fundão dam, a facility it partly operated. The Brazilian claimants say their homes and means of earning a living were destroyed. Damages sought for an upcoming civil trial, brought on behalf of over 640,000 people, 46 Brazilian municipalities, companies and Indigenous peoples, are estimated at £36bn. Tom Cummins, a partner at Ashurst LLP, said the hearing will be closely watched because it spotlights issues often seen in cases brought in England by foreign claimants against multinationals. These include whether compensation should be pursued before an English court rather than in the country where the incident happened, and the degree to which multinational groups can be held...

Investcom Global Ltd (incorporated under the laws of the British Virgin Islands) v PLC Investments Ltd (incorporated under the laws of The Republic of Liberia) and others [2024] EWHC 2505 ( Comm) What are the practical implications of this case? As ever, commercial parties and their advisers should remain alert to the hazards created by a defective or pathological arbitration clause. In this dispute, the arbitration provision within a shareholders’ agreement ( SHA) neither unequivocally identified any administering institution nor specified a juridical seat. That scenario forced the claimant to commence with an institution whose authority was later put in issue, and to accept that institution’s nomination of the arbitral seat, set as Toronto. When two respondents then brought Liberian proceedings to halt the arbitration, the English Court concluded it lacked jurisdiction to keep the injunction in place, because the claimant lacked a good...

R (on the application of Fluid Systems Technologies ( Scotland) and others) v HMRC [2024] UKUT 322 ( TCC) This judicial review challenged the legality of HMRC’s decision ultimately to refuse the taxpayer’s applications for repayment under the Disguised Remuneration Repayment Scheme created by section 20 of the Finance Act 2020 ( FA 2020). The scheme enables the repayment of particular amounts previously remitted by agreement with HMRC in order to avoid the imposition of the loan charge. A key criterion of the scheme was whether there had been reasonable disclosure and, specifically, whether the information provided was ‘as was sufficient for it to be apparent that a reasonable case could have made that the amount concerned was payable to the Commissioners’ ( FA 2020, s 20(5)(d))......

Most of the revisions mirror the CMA’s expanded powers under the UK Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Act 2024 ( DMCCA), which received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024 and is now law. The government has indicated it intends to commence the competition and merger control provisions in December 2024 or January 2025. The DMCCA represents the most far‑reaching overhaul of UK competition rules since the Enterprise Act 2002 reshaped the merger control regime more than two decades ago. Merger control While the DMCCA establishes a bespoke reporting regime for designated tech firms, the bulk of the new rules cut across all sectors, not just technology. It: recalibrates the UK’s jurisdictional thresholds; introduces the UK’s first hybrid, no‑increment share of supply test to catch so‑called killer acquisitions as well as vertical and conglomerate mergers; and creates a safe harbour for smaller...