The General Election is only a few days away, and to my eyes at least it feels like quite a while since we had two such fundamentally different manifestos and "visions of the future" proposed by the Labour and Conservative parties. 

However one of the areas in which they appear to occupy common ground is in relation to the challenges posed by the new technology and business models of the "gig economy". High profile court cases involving the likes of Uber and Deliveroo have brought employment laws relating to worker status into sharp focus, and prompted a number of different labour and tax related reviews. The Conservative Party's manifesto pledges to ensure that people working in the gig economy will be "properly protected", albeit that the detail will not be decided on until the Taylor Review of the labour market has delivered its final report. Labour adopts the same stance, but its manifesto goes further and gives some early indicators of the changes it would make to employment laws.

Regardless of which party wins the general election, it seems likely that we can expect reform in this area in the near future, with the ramifications being felt much more widely than just a handful of big app based businesses. This issue of our Retail and Consumer newsletter gives an overview of some of the drivers for change in this area. We also take a look at a recent ECJ decision on comparative advertising.

This month's articles

The "Gig Economy" – Under Attack?

The growth of a new business model where workers are doing short - term work has led to what has become known as the "gig economy". Read more in our article looking at recent developments in the area in our article here.

Considering Comparative Advertising

A recent decision by the European Court of Justice has provided advertisers with guidance on "comparative advertising", a popular method of advertising in the UK. For more information, please find our article here.

AG advertising update

In this edition of our Advertising Update, our commercial team discusses topics such as the Gambling Commission's first fine, the rise in UK advertising spend, and changes in advertising methods such as Adidas stepping away from TV advertising and LinkedIn beginning a targeted marketing approach, plus much more, click here to read the full article.

Competitive Edge

The European Commission has recently published their final report on their e-commerce sector inquiry. The Competition team has written a piece on the key impacts of this, which you can find here.

Events – watch this space…

• A jointly branded research piece with Retail Week looking at the key emerging markets in the sector and how businesses are exploiting the opportunities available. Release date September 2017. Launch event to follow.
• GDPR Event – September 2017 – our data experts will look at the GDPR and what businesses need to do by when to ensure compliance.

If you are interested in knowing more at this stage, please contact Katie Brown. 

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