Lovely people, the HMRC – completely above criticism in all respects, I have always thought. Just wanted to put that out there in a way obviously wholly unrelated to this week’s news that the Revenue has launched over 12,800 “probes” into misuses of Coronavirus support schemes. The majority of these relate to the CJRS furlough scheme, but as if to prove that there is no such thing as a free lunch even in a restaurant, over 400 of them concern alleged abuse of the eat-out-to-help-out scheme which flowered briefly last year and then withered as infection rates rebounded.
The headlines on this leave a lot unexplained. What is a “probe”, for example, and does HMRC genuinely have the spare manpower to run nearly 13,000 of them on top of its day job? It does also seem clear that these enquiries will not be the last, but are merely the most obvious so far. In addition, as the CJRS continues towards its expiry in September, further instances of error or fraud may still be turned up, especially as the government contribution starts to wind down. Claimed losses to fraud or error of over £3.5 billion represent a whopping target for the Treasury (though it has expressed the view that recovering a third of this in the next two years would still be a result), so we can assume that this represents the start of a pretty long and serious game by HMRC. Remember that it was a requirement of the CJRS that records be kept for a full five years. In relation to the resources question, the government has reportedly invested £100 million and considerable credibility into a specialist Coronavirus fraud task force which already has over 1,200 staff looking into alleged fraud and mistakes in relation to Coronavirus support measures. This is not going to be one of those political initiatives launched to lots of fanfare and headline and then quietly shelved or soft-pedalled when something newer and shinier appears. Continue Reading
In our webinar last week we touched on the existence of a largely unique remedy for whistleblowing dismissals, the concept of interim relief, more recently and lucidly known as a contract continuation order (“CCO”). Time did not permit a full rehearsal of the ins and outs of this potentially devastating employee tool, so here is a little more detail.
Squire Patton Boggs Summer Associate Taylor Hamel summarizes guidance recently released by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission relating to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Discrimination.
In our webinar last week we looked at the law around whistleblowing with particular reference to how what is now quite an old legal concept may be used for the best or worst of reasons by employees returning to the office. The good faith airings of concerns around gaps in the employer’s Covid precautions must be welcomed, but we anticipate considerable resistance in other quarters to a return to full office-based working, and little puts a spoke in the employer’s wheels on that front quite so effectively as a health and safety-related complaint. After all, there is little that is definite in the precautions that any given employer must take, merely all those that are reasonably practicable. As the issue of reasonable practicability is to some extent a matter for the eye of the beholder and the risk from covid so obvious if proper precautions are not taken, it is rarely difficult for an employee to claim that something more could be done or have been done and therefore that the employer is in breach. Is that a grievance, an objection under Sections 44 or 100 (see 
Squire Patton Boggs Summer Associate Sydney Finley summarizes a recent opinion from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit addressing an employers’ obligation to provide job-sharing as a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Squire Patton Boggs Summer Associate Gabrielle Martin summarizes substantial changes to Illinois’ Freedom to Work Act included in recently-passed legislation which will impose significant new requirements and limitations on the use of non-competition and non-solicitation covenants in Illinois.