{"id":2675,"date":"2025-09-18T06:36:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2025-09-21T08:05:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T07:05:37","slug":"the-end-of-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/?p=2675","title":{"rendered":"The End of Times?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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University HR departments are facing the end of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longstanding practice has been to lie, dissemble and cover up. This reduces most victims to pulp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a small minority of cases, the victim takes external action. Then an insurance policy protects senior managers against legal claims. Cases are settled with costly payouts, legal bills and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). These practices fostered a long-standing culture of impunity, allowing senior figures \u2014 heads of house, departments, faculties schools, senior administrators and HR business partners — to do what they want. They could act without fear of reputational, career or financial consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This rotten era is ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Employment Rights Bill<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Universities are partly covered by existing legislation on Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) or confidentiality clauses. But, the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill<\/a> (including its provisions like Clause 22) will extend protections more widely. Any confidentiality \/ non-disclosure clause in a contract between an employer and a worker that prevents that worker from making an allegation or disclosure about harassment, bullying or discrimination will now be void. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This applies to current and former workers and current and former NDAs. We will be able to find out what has been hushed up in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For students, it’s more complex. Students are generally not \u201cworkers\u201d under employment law unless they also have a contract of employment, so Clause 22 likely does not<\/em> directly apply to them in their capacity as students. However, the Freedom of Speech Act (2023) does apply to students in sexual misconduct & harassment cases, as well as offering broader protections to criticise universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Duty of Candour<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The \u201c<\/em>Hillsborough Duty of Candou<\/em>r<\/a>\u201d (sometimes called \u201cHillsborough Law\u201d) isn\u2019t yet in full legal force, but the Government has committed to introduce it. It is now receiving a lot of press attention. The proposal stems from the calls after the Hillsborough disaster<\/a> to impose a legal duty of candour on public bodies & public servants: i.e. a requirement to be open, honest, and co-operate fully with inquiries, investigations, etc., and to not mislead or obstruct the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new proposals will certainly apply to public servants, councils and the police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This ground breaking bill will make the whole country a more truthful and just nation. (Bishop of Liverpool)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Universities in England are generally public institutions in many respects (especially the publicly funded ones), but whether that automatically makes them \u201cpublic authorities\u201d under a given statute depends on the legal definition in that statute. If the new law defines \u201cpublic body\u201d broadly, universities will be included. If the definition is narrower (e.g. only certain types of governmental functions, or only the civil service, police, local authorities), then universities might not be included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We should contact our MPs and insist that UK universities are included in Hillsborough Duty of Candour Laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Properly implemented, this legislation could be transformational. It’s absolutely typical of the UK’s public institutions (including the universities) that those at the top spend most of their days lying to protect each other and the institution’s “reputation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University HR departments are facing the end of times. Longstanding practice has been to lie, dissemble and cover up. This reduces most victims to pulp. In a small minority of cases, the victim takes external action. Then an insurance policy protects senior managers against legal claims. Cases are settled with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2707,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/21percent.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}