by Julian Mann
To the Lord Bishop of Winchester, the Right Reverend Philip Mounstephen:
Dear Bishop Mounstephen,
You were at the forefront of championing freedom of religion and belief internationally when as Bishop of Truro you led the independent review into the Foreign Office’s support for persecuted Christians worldwide in 2019. I am writing to ask you to work with Lord Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union (FSU), to safeguard freedom of speech generally and particularly Christian evangelism in this country.
The FSU, of which I am a member, describes the chilling impact of clause 20 of the government’s Employment Rights Bill on freedom of speech in the leisure sector:
“Clause 20 amends section 40 of the Equality Act 2010 to impose a legal duty on employers to ‘take all reasonable steps’ to prevent their employees being ‘harassed’ by third parties, meaning they could be sued by their employees in the Employment Tribunal if they do not do enough.
That may sound reasonable, but the Worker Protection Act 2024 already extends employers’ liability under the Equality Act for third party sexual harassment and of course any form of physical assault is a crime, so the ‘harassment’ here would be verbal. Among other things, it would include conversations between customers or members of the public that are overheard by employees – not directed at them – and which they find offensive in virtue of one or more ‘protected’ characteristic. Not just their own. Under this new law, employees will be able to take offence on behalf of one of their colleagues. Given that we live in an age in which some are hyper-sensitive, the implications for the hospitality sector of turbo-charging the Equality Act in this way are mind-boggling.
What ‘reasonable steps’ will a publican be expected to take to protect his or her staff from overhearing conversations between customers that might upset them? Will it be sufficient to include a notice on the wall warning customers to keep their opinions to themselves on issues like trans rights, mass immigration and the Israel-Palestine conflict? Or will publicans need to go further and employ ‘banter bouncers’ to eavesdrop on customers and eject anyone for saying something ‘inappropriate’ or ‘problematic’?
It seems extraordinary that this government, which claims to be ‘pro-growth’, is about to impose additional compliance costs on a sector that’s already on its knees. According to the Campaign for Real Ale, 37 pubs close every week in Britain. There is little doubt that this new law will accelerate that rate of closure – and those that remain will be sanitized ‘safe spaces’ in which no one dares express a controversial opinion or tell a joke.
Expecting employers to police the speech of their customers in this way will have a hugely chilling effect on free speech. The same fearful atmosphere that prevails in so many workplaces since the passing of the Equality Act, with people looking over their shoulders before whispering what they really think about a controversial issue, will be extended to the venues people go to in their leisure time.”
But you and I as Christians wanting the salvation of eternal souls through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ would be concerned about another potential impact of this legislation. When I was a vicar, our village church in South Yorkshire hosted a parish mission in 2012 with a team of ordinands from Wycliffe Hall theological college in Oxford. We held events in two of the pubs in the parish in which members of the team shared their Christian testimonies. What would have happened if this law had applied then and a member of staff had found the Christian proclamation offensive?
We had the permission of the landlords to hold the evangelism events in the pubs in the parish. But surely landlords would be deterred from allowing such Christian proclamation on their premises under the new law? Furthermore, would not landlords be under pressure to police bar-stool conversations in which counter-cultural Christian truths were being aired?
Please would you play your part in the House of Lords to prevent this draconian, neo-Marxist assault on Christian freedom of expression and proclamation in our country?
Yours sincerely,
Julian Mann