The Government consulted nationally on the design and scope of the power, including the use of revenues, and published its response on 10 September. The Government has engaged with the tourism and hospitality sectors throughout the consultation process.

The decision whether to introduce a visitor levy will be for local leaders, and the impacts of any levy will depend on local decisions. This is an important principle for devolution and democratic accountability. Where a Mayor chooses to take forward a levy, they will need to consult on specific proposals, including how any revenue should be invested, and consider the impacts for their area. Following consultation, we expect Mayors to publish a summary of consultation responses, a final prospectus and an impact assessment.

With over one million young people not in education, employment and training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. The Government is investing an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years into the Youth Guarantee and the Growth and Skills Levy.

This investment will support almost one million young people and create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn, including through expanded network of Youth Hubs, earlier intensive support in Jobs Centres through a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, additional work experience and training opportunities, a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and £2,000 apprenticeship hiring payment for employers, and a fully funded six month job for long-term unemployed 18–24-year-olds.

We also recognise the crisis of participation that Alan Milburn has so clearly laid out in his interim report. We will use this interim report to continue to build our reforms and look forward to final recommendations in the Autumn.

The government's Employment Rights Act 2025 is tackling one-sided flexibility partly through a right to guaranteed hours, where the number of hours offered reflects a qualifying worker’s working hours during a reference period.

The government has published a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of the zero hours contract measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025. This includes consideration of the potential impact of the right to guaranteed hours on employment for different types of roles or groups in the labour market.

The government is consulting on these measures, and will consider responses before finalising regulations and implementation.

With over one million young people not in education, employment and training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. The Government is investing an additional £2.5 billion over the next three years into the Youth Guarantee and the Growth and Skills Levy.

This investment will support almost one million young people and create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn, including through expanded network of Youth Hubs, earlier intensive support in Jobs Centres through a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, additional work experience and training opportunities, a £3,000 Youth Jobs Grant and £2,000 apprenticeship hiring payment for employers, and a fully funded six month job for long-term unemployed 18–24-year-olds.

We also recognise the crisis of participation that Alan Milburn has so clearly laid out in his interim report. We will use this interim report to continue to build our reforms and look forward to final recommendations in the Autumn.

The government recognises that temporary work can help young people, including those not in education, employment or training (NEET), to gain valuable experience and enter the labour market. Through the Youth Guarantee, the government is expanding access to work experience, training and employment support to help more young people move into work. For example, several Youth Guarantee Trailblazers are connecting young people who are NEET with work placement opportunities to help them gain the experience they need and develop the skills to get sustained employment.

The Employment Rights Act preserves flexibility for genuinely temporary work, including through limited-term contracts. The government is consulting employers, trade unions and wider civil society to ensure the right to guaranteed hours works for businesses and workers.

The Department publishes workforce information on a monthly basis that includes agency headcount. This can be found here for July 2024 onwards and here for the years prior.

The Department employed 71 agency staff in 2024, 59 in 2025 and 38 so far in 2026

Individual departments are responsible for recruitment decisions and selecting the best methods to meet their objectives, including the use of internships. The Cabinet Office runs the Fast Stream Summer Internship Programme offering placements across government. The Cabinet Office does not hold a list of all internship programmes centrally and has no plans to collect this data.

The total number of civil servants on a temporary contract, including those on casual contracts, is published quarterly by Office for National Statistics (ONS) as part of their quarterly public sector employment statistics and is available at Table 8 of each release:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/publicsectoremploymentreferencetable

Umbrella companies are a type of employment intermediary that engages workers on behalf of recruitment agencies and end client organisations. Although many umbrella companies operate diligently, others are used to facilitate non-compliance including tax avoidance and fraud.

From 6 April 2026, recruitment agencies are responsible for ensuring that Pay As You Earn and National Insurance contributions obligations are met when they choose to use an umbrella company to engage a worker. Where these obligations are not met, HMRC will recover underpayments from the recruitment agency. If there is no recruitment agency involved in an arrangement with an umbrella company, this responsibility will fall to the end client organisation. The rules apply regardless of the sector in which workers are engaged.

The new rules are intended to drive behavioural change in the temporary labour market, increasing the amount of assurance undertaken by organisations that use umbrella companies to force non-compliance umbrella companies out of the market. This change is forecast to protect around £2.7 billion across the scorecard period up to and including 2030-31.

It is right that organisations that choose to use umbrella companies to engage workers should take steps to make sure that they are compliant. HMRC has published extensive guidance to support organisations that use umbrella companies to undertake assurance checks.

Umbrella companies are a type of employment intermediary that engages workers on behalf of recruitment agencies and end client organisations. Although many umbrella companies operate diligently, others are used to facilitate non-compliance including tax avoidance and fraud.

From 6 April 2026, recruitment agencies are responsible for ensuring that Pay As You Earn and National Insurance contributions obligations are met when they choose to use an umbrella company to engage a worker. Where these obligations are not met, HMRC will recover underpayments from the recruitment agency. If there is no recruitment agency involved in an arrangement with an umbrella company, this responsibility will fall to the end client organisation. The rules apply regardless of the sector in which workers are engaged.

The new rules are intended to drive behavioural change in the temporary labour market, increasing the amount of assurance undertaken by organisations that use umbrella companies to force non-compliance umbrella companies out of the market. This change is forecast to protect around £2.7 billion across the scorecard period up to and including 2030-31.

It is right that organisations that choose to use umbrella companies to engage workers should take steps to make sure that they are compliant. HMRC has published extensive guidance to support organisations that use umbrella companies to undertake assurance checks.

Umbrella companies are a type of employment intermediary that engages workers on behalf of recruitment agencies and end client organisations. Although many umbrella companies operate diligently, others are used to facilitate non-compliance including tax avoidance and fraud.

From 6 April 2026, recruitment agencies are responsible for ensuring that Pay As You Earn and National Insurance contributions obligations are met when they choose to use an umbrella company to engage a worker. Where these obligations are not met, HMRC will recover underpayments from the recruitment agency. If there is no recruitment agency involved in an arrangement with an umbrella company, this responsibility will fall to the end client organisation. The rules apply regardless of the sector in which workers are engaged.

The new rules are intended to drive behavioural change in the temporary labour market, increasing the amount of assurance undertaken by organisations that use umbrella companies to force non-compliance umbrella companies out of the market. This change is forecast to protect around £2.7 billion across the scorecard period up to and including 2030-31.

It is right that organisations that choose to use umbrella companies to engage workers should take steps to make sure that they are compliant. HMRC has published extensive guidance to support organisations that use umbrella companies to undertake assurance checks.

The Youth Jobs Grant is specifically targeted at young people because of the risk of lifelong scarring impacts of extended unemployment at a young age and to support the Government’s commitment to reducing the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

The Youth Jobs Grant is designed to help employers with the early costs of hiring eligible young people. The first payment will not be made until after we’ve had confirmation through other sources that the young person has been employed, and the final payment will not be made until after several months of employment to encourage retention. As with all our employment programmes, we will monitor delivery to ensure the Grant is being used as intended, which is to expand opportunities for young people who need help to enter the labour market.

We estimate there are 200,000 young people eligible for the Youth Jobs Grant now, and we expect to support 60,000 young people with this over three years. We are also expanding the Jobs Guarantee to a wider age range, from 18-21 to 18-24, to create more than 35,000 extra subsidised jobs. This brings the total to be supported through the scheme to over 90,000 in the next three years.

The Youth Jobs Grant is available to employers in all sectors across Great Britain. The roles supported will depend on employers’ hiring needs rather than sector specific targets. We expect more take up in sectors that traditionally recruit young people, such as retail, hospitality, health and social care, logistics and construction, alongside opportunities in growth sectors including digital, engineering and green technologies.

The purpose of the Grant is to help young people into work by reducing the upfront costs of hiring, and it has been designed using evidence from previous schemes in the UK and wider international practice. As with all new programmes, we will monitor delivery and evaluate outcomes, including employment sustainment, once the scheme is in operation.

Further practical details on how employers will claim the Grant will be set out in guidance ahead of the scheme launching.

The government has published a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of the zero hours contract measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025.

This analysis includes consideration of increases in labour costs and effects on flexibility for micro, small and medium-sized businesses, and identifies the sectors most likely to be affected by the measures.

The Fair Work Agency (FWA) will build on the data currently collated and published by existing labour market enforcement bodies.

The Secretary of State is required to publish annual reports that assess the extent to which enforcement functions have been carried out in line with the three-year enforcement strategies. These will assess levels of non-compliance and set out how the FWA will measure its performance. Both the annual reports and enforcement strategies will be laid before Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly and will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny in the usual way.

The government will consult on the details of the measures to end exploitative zero hours contracts to inform regulations. Decisions on the circumstances in which regulations might place the duty to offer agency workers guaranteed hours on the agency or another intermediary in the supply chain, as opposed to the end hirer, will depend on the outcome of this consultation.

The government understands that what should be considered reasonable notice will differ depending on different sectors and circumstances. Regulations will specify how much notice should be ‘presumed reasonable’ as well as other factors that should be considered when determining whether the notice was reasonable or not, as opposed to setting a single notice period to be deemed reasonable in all cases. Decisions on these regulations will depend on the outcome of the forthcoming consultation on the details of the measures to end exploitative zero hours contracts.

The definition of the hours threshold and the length and frequency of reference periods will depend on the outcome of the forthcoming consultation on the details of the measures to end exploitative zero hours contracts.

We have considered international examples of employment rights in developing this consultation. Many countries have taken steps to restrict or prohibit zero-hours contracts altogether. For example, New Zealand and Norway have banned their use, while Ireland allows them only in limited circumstances, and both the Netherlands and Finland require employers to offer contracts on equivalent terms to workers who regularly work a consistent shift pattern.