LABOUR'S HOLIDAY PLAN LEAVES SOME QUESTIONS UNANSWERED

UPDATED 16 MAY 2017

Labour's Manifesto promises new Bank Holidays - one for each of the four nation's Saints Days. They will be in addition to existing statutory rights.

Every worker in the UK is entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid statutory leave. For full time workers that is 28 days. There are also eight scheduled public holidays - normally called Bank Holidays - in England and Wales, nine in Scotland, and ten in Northern Ireland. Employers can include these public holidays in the 28 days leave their workers are paid for. If they do that then those workers have 20 days (or 19 or 18) that are free to take when they choose. In many jobs people have to work on public holidays. In which case that day can be taken at another time.

Labour plans to introduce four new UK public holidays on the Saints' Days of the four home nations. They would be

• 1 March, St David's Day (Wales)
• 17 March, St Patrick's Day (Northern Ireland)
• 23 April, St George's Day (England)
• 30 November, St Andrew's Day (Scotland).

Labour's Manifesto is clear - "These will be additional to statutory holiday entitlement" (p.47). So they will be on top of the 28 days already given by law (a law which implements an EU Directive).

These four new public holiday would apply throughout the United Kingdom. However, Scotland already has St Andrew's Day as a public holiday and Northern Ireland already has St Patrick's Day as one. So Labour's plan appears to add three days to public holidays in Scotland and Northern Ireland and four in England and Wales. The Manifesto does not mention this problem.

Questions
In Scotland and Northern Ireland will there be an extra day's leave to allow for the fact they already have their Saint's Day as a holiday?

Will these four Saint's Days fall on the precise day or the following Monday as public holidays generally do? In Scotland and Northern Ireland the holiday does fall on the Saint's Day but if that is a Saturday or Sunday they fall on the next Monday. Will Labour do the same?

Easter Sunday can fall on any date between 22 March and 25 April. What will happen in years when one of the Saint's Days falls on the same day as one of the Easter public holidays?

Finally
Will the new public holidays, two of which which fall just before and just after Easter in most years, increase pressure to bring into force the Easter Act 1928 which fixes the date of Easter Sunday as the Sunday following the second Saturday in April, which would fix it between 9 April and 15 April, safely away from 17 March and 23 April.

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16 May 2017