Pizza Hut under fire over call centre redundancies

Supporters of mandatory severance pay said it was time to align our severance pay model with other developed economies. But Employment advocate Danny Gelb said compulsory redundancy would increase costs to business "by stealth".

Small Business Voice chief executive Max Whitehead said small and medium-sized enterprises should be exempt from compulsory redundancy pay laws, as in Australia.

He said a mandatory regime would have destroyed small firms during the recession — but said he was "horrified" to hear of staff who had worked at big firms for almost 20 years getting no redundancy pay.