# UK ban on zero-hours contracts ‘to include agency workers’

## Zero-hours contracts

Government to expand coverage of employment rights bill, according to report

Julia Kollewe  
Tue 4 Mar 2025 03.52 EST

First published on Tue 4 Mar 2025 03.52 EST








## Agency workers will reportedly be included in a ban on “exploitative” zero-hours contracts as part of changes to the UK government’s employment bill.

Under the new rules, employers will have to offer agency workers a contract that guarantees a minimum number of hours every week, the BBC reported.

According to the BBC, the government still has to decide whether the minimum hours offered in a contract to agency workers will be based on a 12-week reference period or longer.

, in areas ranging from hospitality and warehouses to the NHS. Hundreds of thousands of them are on zero-hours contracts despite working for the same employer for years, according to the .

Unions have campaigned for the inclusion of agency workers in the ban, arguing that employers could get around the ban on zero-hours contracts by hiring agency workers instead. There are about 900,000 agency workers in the UK.

However, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation is concerned that the change should not “undermine” the flexibility that zero-hours contracts offer some people.

Big recruiters and staffing companies including Hays, Adecco and Manpower wrote to the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, saying that the new rules were “unworkable”. They said in December the rules would lead to lower levels of hiring, and more work being delayed or carried out by people taken on as self-employed.

Ben Harrison, the director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, a thinktank, said: “This reform will help ensure workers – especially those aged 16-24 who are 5.9 times more likely to be on zero-hours contracts than older workers – enter a labour market where good jobs offer both security and flexibility.

“At a time of record sickness levels, worker shortages and rising numbers of young people out of work or education, improving job quality is essential.”





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