by Toby Young, Conservative Home
In the House of Lords earlier this week, I tabled various amendments to Clause 20 of the Employment Rights Bill – or, as I prefer to call it, the ‘banter ban’.
Clause 20 will amend Section 26 of the Equality Act to make employers liable for the “harassment” of their employees by third parties, i.e., members of the public. If it goes through unamended, employers will have to take “all reasonable steps” to protect their employees from being “harassed” by their customers and if they fail to do so they could be sued in the Employment Tribunal.
There are so many good reasons to oppose this clause, it’s difficult to know where to start. But before we get to them, it’s worth clarifying that it won’t impose a duty on employers to protect their employees from third-party sexual harassment. Employers are already liable for that, thanks to the Worker Protection Act 2023.
Let’s begin with this: where’s the evidence that non-sexual third-party harassment is a problem in Britain’s workplaces?
For that, we have to turn to a fact sheet produced by the Office for Equality and Opportunity and the Department for Business & Trade published last year, which says: