I almost choked on my cornflakes when I read that the Prime Minister had said he would slash red tape and ‘rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment’ as part of a bid to persuade global business executives to invest in UK plc. Is this the same Keir Starmer whose government has just published an Employment Rights Bill that will tip a wastepaper basket full of red tape over employers’ heads? I know all governments pledge to ‘free up’ British businesses and then smother them in new regulations, but this wins first prize.
Employers will be liable if they fail to protect employees from overheard conversations, but also T-shirts, badges and lapel pins that prove ‘triggering’
The focus of my ire is Clause 16 of the Bill, which will turbocharge the Equality Act by making employers liable for any ‘harassment’ of their employees by ‘third parties’, i.e. members of the public.
I know what you’re thinking. If that means bosses will be liable for third-party sexual harassment of their workers, what’s not to like? After all, we don’t want waitresses getting their bottoms pinched by predatory male customers. But employers are already on the hook for this, thanks to the Worker Protection Act passed by the last government. In its first iteration, that piece of legislation also sought to make employers liable for all forms of third-party harassment, but that was limited to just sexual harassment after a successful rebellion in the Lords. But now, Freddy Krueger-like, the clause has sprung back to life. To understand how burdensome it will be, it’s important to grasp how broad the definition of harassment is under the Equality Act. According to the Employment Tribunal, it includes conversations that might have the effect of violating the dignity of an employee who just happens to overhear them. In 2018, the tribunal awarded damages of £1,000 to a former assistant at the law firm Shoosmiths, who was offended when she overheard a colleague say ‘struggling immigrants should go back to their country’. The tribunal found that it was ‘reasonable’ for her, an immigrant herself, to be upset by the remark, even though it wasn’t directed at her.
That means employers will be liable for damages if they fail to protect employees from similarly vicarious harassment by members of the public – not only overheard conversations, but also T-shirts, badges and lapel pins that prove ‘triggering’. So publicans will have to employ ‘banter bouncers’ to eavesdrop on customers and ban them for ‘inappropriate’ jokes. Hotel receptionists will need to be ready to summon security if someone walks in wearing a T-shirt saying ‘Woman = Adult Human Female’. Football clubs will deploy CCTV so they can eject any fan shouting ‘Are you blind?’ at the linesman, given that it could offend a partially sighted steward.
One way that companies can limit their liability at present is to force their workers to undergo unconscious bias training and the like – hence the emergence of a multi-billion pound ‘diversity training’ industry since the Equality Act was passed. This enables firms to tell a tribunal they took ‘all reasonable steps’ to protect their employees from being harassed by their colleagues. Who knows: owners of pubs, bars and restaurants may try something similar when the Employment Rights Bill becomes law, insisting that no one can enter their premises unless they can prove they’re DEI-trained. In future, anyone hoping to enjoy a night out will need a woke ID card – although customers with pink hair and a nose piercing may get a free pass.
But it won’t just affect the hospitality and sports sectors. Free speech campaigners like me are constantly having to point out to university administrators that the Equality Act doesn’t require them to protect their staff from visiting speakers – often a reason for no-platforming gender-critical feminists such as Helen Joyce. As the equality barrister Akua Reindorf said when reviewing Essex University’s policy on supporting trans and non-binary staff (which committed precisely this error): ‘In my view the policy states the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be, rather than the law as it is.’ But the Employment Rights Bill will amend the Equality Act to make it how Stonewall would like it to be and poor Joyce won’t be able to set foot on a campus again.
I’m tempted to call the new Bill a ‘snowflakes’ charter’, but really it’s a gold-embossed invitation to cry-bullies to persecute anyone whose views they disagree with. Overnight, those places we think of as refuges from the woke witch-finders patrolling the workplace will be forced to become ‘safe spaces’. This is the real meaning of Starmerism: not a stripping away of petty rules and regulations, but the extension of them to every nook and cranny of our lives.
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