Legislating by private members’ bill: employment law reform in the 2022–23 UK parliamentary session

This article investigates six private members’ bills (PMBs) which passed into UK law during the 2022-23 parliamentary session. They were used to enact measures originally anticipated for inclusion in a government employment bill, but which the Conservatives had abandoned. In furthering our understanding of employment law reform in the UK, through an analysis and interpretation of the six bills in question, the article asserts that the Conservative government's purposeful use of PMBs facilitated a selective and limited response to growing regulatory pressures. In so doing, the interrelationship between the PMB approach, as a legislative procedure, and the substance of the law itself is highlighted. Existing work on PMBs is largely concerned with their intrinsic characteristics as law-making instruments or their influence on electoral politics. The article adds to this literature by emphasising the Conservative government's use of PMBs to enact its employment law reform agenda, not on an ad hoc basis, but in a purposeful way, thus illuminating how such bills can act, not just as legislative instruments that government can use, but also explicitly as executive tools.