In his 200th Employment Law Brief, published in NLJ this week, Ian Smith revisits the distant past of 1999 when he wrote his first column, the year of the Employment Relations Act, which was heavily criticised for its ‘Henry VIII’ powers. He recalls concern about the potential explosion in the size of the law due to all the detail being left to statutory instruments. Smith fast-forwards to his 100th column in 2009, when preparatory work was being done on the Equality Act. His column was concerned with three cases which have resonance today.