August

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will force through a culture change in terms of attitudes to data privacy, according to the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who has warned that organizations risking damaging their brands and their business if they are seen to be cavalier with personal data.
 
GDPR is also a key HR issue, and data protection will become one of the major issues, and potentially source of disputes, in the employment context in the next few years.
 
Employers will need to adopt a whole new culture in relation to the processing of HR data in light of more restrictions on processing, new and strengthened rights for employees and much more stringent penalties.

A December 2016 parliamentary Work and Pensions Committee report has suggested that employers should be offered tax incentives for recruiting ex-offenders.

Despite this incentive, more than 50 percent of surveyed businesses stated that they would not consider hiring an ex-offender. Reasons include perceived risk to security and prevention of harm, concerns that ex-offenders lack honesty and reliability and the potential damage to the image of the business.

mployers can currently obtain information about criminal history by requesting voluntary disclosure by the employee or by carrying out official checks through the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The majority of spent convictions do not need to be disclosed by the individual, even where a request has been made.

The incoming Government has been tasked with reconsidering record disclosure rules after defeat in the Court of Appeal over the process of filtering out less serious or long-standing convictions.
 
The recent decision in R (on the application of P and others) v Secretary of State for Justice is the latest case to challenge the disclosure to prospective employers of less serious offences or those that were committed many years ago or when the offender was a minor.
 
Changes were made in 2013 that allow criminal record checks to filter out single convictions for some offences. The "multiple conviction rule", however, was up for challenge. In the above-mentioned case, two individuals were successful in challenging the revised scheme in a judicial review application in the High Court for offences that had taken place many years before.