Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Londesborough and Baroness Lawlor

Committee stage
Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak in particular to Amendments 83 to 85, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton. Clause 20, on harassment by third parties, although well-intentioned, has triggered this batch of amendments, none of which is perfect. Most seek to damage limit the Bill or bring in exemptions.

I will focus on the exemptions proposed in Amendment 85 and declare up front a relevant interest, in that I hold a significant minority stake in a rural community pub in mid-Wales. As we have already heard, the hospitality sector is low margin and struggling with a range of issues, including shortages of staff, smoking bans, competition from supermarkets, the rise of home entertainment, big tech and social media. Pubs specifically have had a horrendous time. In England and Wales alone, we have lost 13,000 pubs in the past 25 years and, as we have heard, each and every week another 10 close their doors for the final time.

Now this Bill expects the owner or the bar manager, often on low pay and inexperienced, to take on the role of a conversation arbiter or chat monitor in case a customer says something to their drinking or dining pal that is overheard and deemed offensive by an employee. To be clear, I accept that employers should step up if their customers or clients are being offensive to their staff. Yes, they have a responsibility to their staff’s welfare and to their code of conduct, but is legislating in this way the answer? It leaves so many questions, on a subjective level, of what is offensive and what is not.

That brings me to the second sector proposed for exemption by Amendment 85: sports venues. This is where Clause 20 threatens to become unworkable. This struck me only yesterday while I was in the London Stadium, with 60,000 others, watching West Ham stumble to yet another home defeat, this time against Nottingham Forest. There was a lot of anger in the crowd and much of the language could be described as vulgar or offensive. Others would call it passionate, fruity, spiky or humorous, but these views could be heard—or, importantly, overheard—by club officials, security staff, stewards, the police, bar staff, programme sellers and burger flippers, all of whom are employees of the club, the stadium, or various contractors and subcontractors. These views, in the space of 10 minutes, included the manager’s IQ being questioned vigorously and frequently; savaging of the players and their work ethic; forthright suggestions that the referee’s assistant should book multiple appointments at Specsavers; and, finally, the referee himself being repeatedly accused of practising self-love.

I am choosing my words carefully and not quoting directly in order to meet this House’s Code of Conduct, which I respect and have signed up to, but if I did not and repeated some of the profanities I heard yesterday, I would be in trouble. Here is the thing: Parliament, as an employer, would not currently be taken to a tribunal by a colleague, a doorkeeper or a Hansard employee who found my language offensive, but that could change if this Bill has its way.

The point is that most workplaces are covered by a code of conduct or employer’s handbook that sets out the markers and helps sort most of these incidents without the need for dispute litigation, employment lawyers or, indeed, tribunals. Much of this is driven by common sense and human decency, and the mutual interest of employer and employee to ensure a productive and harmonious working environment. Clause 20 threatens to undo much of that. I ask the Minister and this Government to seriously think again.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lord Young of Acton and Lady Noakes to Clauses 20 and 21. Both noted, as have other noble Lords, the impact these clauses will have on small businesses already struggling under a juggernaut of burdens, particularly those introduced since last July.

I begin with my noble friend Lady Noakes’s amendments to Clause 21, which, as she noted, amends the Equality Act 2010. These amendments, Amendments 89 to 96, would require regulations to specify the steps an employer needs to take to prevent the harassment of an employee and to cover all forms of harassment so that, provided those steps are followed, the employer is protected from liability. This change is reasonable and proportionate, in that it would oblige regulations to specify the steps needed to protect employers from liability to claims. It is a matter of fairness and good law that a measure should be clear about the duties under it, rather than leaving it to litigation.

The measure also has precedents, such as health and safety regulations in which employers’ duties are set out. In the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 the main duties are to identify risks, assess them and reduce them. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 require employers to provide adequate lighting, heating, ventilation and workspace and to keep them in a clean condition—and so on throughout the health and safety regulations of the 1990s. As if to egg the cake, we have the HSE’s guide on the steps needed to manage risk, which sets out step by step the process for controlling health and safety risk, in line with the regulations to identify hazards, assess risk and so on.

My noble friend Lady Noakes’s amendments to Clause 21 would ensure that employers know what is required in respect of preventing harassment, which matters in itself and is germane to good law. I therefore support them.

I also support Amendments 83 to 88, to Clause 20, in the names of my noble friends Lord Young of Acton and Lady Noakes. They address what is and is not required of employers in protecting their employees; clarify harassment to exclude

“the expression of an opinion on a political, moral, religious or social matter, provided the opinion is not indecent or grossly offensive”;

exclude the hospitality sector, university settings and sports venues so the obligation on the employer does not apply; exclude indirect harassment; take account of the employee’s perception of the circumstances and whether it was reasonable to have the effect; and take account of whether it was an isolated incident. These are all important amendments that have a great deal of support across the Committee.

Noble Lords have already explained how Clause 20 could undermine freedom of speech. We are not speaking of an employer’s liability for direct harassment by a third party, such as customers or clients, against an employee. That is covered by Section 40 of the Equality Act 2010. Rather, the clause being amended has the effect of making the employer liable for what third parties say when speaking among themselves, and which is then overheard by an employee. This might occur in a bar, restaurant, shop, the foyer of a cinema or theatre or on public transport. Customers in a restaurant or a bar might be discussing the latest immigration figures, the likelihood of yet more unsustainable migration into the country, the shortage of housing, schools and hospitals, ever longer waiting lists for a place or a bed, or an inability to understand English. To hold an employer liable for a private conversation among customers overheard by an employee is wrong. It would bring the law into disrepute.