Proposals to save millions of pounds by overhauling employment tribunals could undermine equality and discrimination laws.

The government wants to pull a veil of secrecy across ‘protected conversations’ between managers and workers that deal with issues like poor performance and taking retirement.

Many of these one-to-one unguarded talks form the basis of equality and discrimination cases before employment tribunals – and around a third of cases are upheld at the hearings, according to employment tribunal statistics.

Business secretary Vince Cable wants to remove anything said in these conversations as grounds to take a case to a tribunal.

He also wants to double the time an employee has to work for an employer before making a tribunal claim from 12 months to two years from April.

Other proposals included shortening the consultation period for redundancies from 90 to 30 days.

The government reckons the changes will deliver over £10 million of savings and benefit employers by £40 million.

A Business Department spokesman said: “We need to make the system simpler for employers and employees. This package will make it easier for businesses when taking on, managing and letting go their staff, while also being fair to workers.”

The unions disagree employment law is restricting growth and blame the state of the economy.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Reducing protection for people at work will not save or create a single job. It’s not employment law that is holding firms back, it’s the tough economic climate and the problems many companies are having getting the banks to lend to them that’s to blame.

“Research from the OECD shows that there is no link between regulation and economic output – German employees have much more protection at work and their economy is the strongest in Europe.”

Another union leader believes the proposals are a charter for bullying employers to sack workers they do not like.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: “This agenda is being driven by the CBI, who want the balance of power in the workplace tilted even more against the ordinary worker.

“These changes will make it harder for hundreds of thousands of workers to bring cases of victimisation, unfairness and bullying at work. This will just sweep abuse under the carpet.”