Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway and Lord Pannick

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my support for these probing amendments and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her work on this issue. I strongly welcome the Government’s promise to launch the largest crackdown in history to reduce violence against women and girls. While of course the misery of experiencing violence and harassment is not exclusive to women, surveys from the TUC and others have shown that it is overwhelmingly women who suffer this abuse. I also welcome the Government’s recognition that we need a whole-system approach that places prevention and survivors at its heart. As we have heard already, every part of society has to step up if we are to achieve the goal of every woman feeling safe everywhere, and that must include action to make the workplace a place of safety for women, too.

I had hoped that we had moved on from the notion that violence against women is somehow a private or domestic matter, but let us take the practical example of the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations. This is the UK’s health and safety law that requires employers to report specific serious work-related incidents, such as fatalities and major injuries, to the Health and Safety Executive. These reports help the HSE track risks and prevent future harm, making it a vital legal duty to maintain workplace safety and accountability. But, if you look at it today, you see that the HSE website explicitly states that, while acts of violence to a person at work that result in death or a major injury are reportable, a physical injury inflicted on one employee by another during a dispute about a so-called “personal matter”, or an employee at work

“being injured by a relative or a friend who visits them at work about a domestic matter”

is not reportable. So, the HSE has no responsibility to track violence against women that happens in the workplace which is deemed to be a personal or domestic matter. I find that pretty shocking. You have to question why women’s experience of violence at work is disregarded in this way.

As we have also heard, the Equality and Human Rights Commission has responsibility for the duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment, but it is open and public that it will investigate only what it describes as “strategic cases”, as it simply does not have adequate resources to deliver comprehensive enforcement. Surely, health and safety inspectors who have the powers and ability to go into workplaces have a role to play in enforcing prevention of sexual harassment.

The UK has fallen far behind the ILO’s recommended standard for the ratio of labour inspectors to the size of workforce. In effect, the safety and welfare of British workers has been deprioritised over the last decade and more compared with other countries. But it seems that the safety and welfare of women workers have been deprioritised even more. There is an opportunity for an update and a reset. The new fair work agency and boosting the number of labour inspectors will be vital, but we must get the health and safety framework right, too. For the sake of women workers, I hope the Minister will talk to other colleagues, for sure, but also give careful consideration to the amendments before us.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I too support the objective of Amendment 348—who would not support the objective of preventing illegal violence and harassment in the workplace? I suspect that the main argument against Amendment 348 will be the burden that it would impose on employers, particularly small ones, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, made that point very eloquently.

I will briefly identify one reason why it is very much in the interests of the employer to have these duties. It is because if there is illegal violence and harassment in the workplace which causes, as it will, damage to the victim, she—and it normally will be she—will be looking for remedies, and the person against whom she is most likely to be advised to sue is not the rogue other employee but the employer. The employer is particularly vulnerable to such a civil claim if they have not, as required by Amendment 348—which no doubt can be improved in its drafting—conducted any sort of assessment to identify potential risks, have not implemented policies and procedures to eliminate those risks, and, in particular, have not provided at least basic training to all employees on the importance of these matters. So, yes, this will impose a burden on employers, particularly small ones, but it is very much in their interests to protect themselves against legal liability and to deter such action taking place.