Lucy Burton, the Employment Editor of the Telegraph, has a good piece in the paper today about how flat-out crazy the Government’s plan is to ban banter in pubs, bars and restaurants, with the head of the CBI describing them as “completely unnecessary”. Some colleagues and I in the Lords will be proposing various amendments to the Employment Rights Bill in the Lords later today in an effort to scrap the ‘banter ban’, but the Government will fight them tooth and nail. Here’s how Lucy’s piece begins:
Rupert Soames, the outspoken CBI chief, hit the nail on the head last week when he told a union chief that businesses are often confronted with what he calls the “doctor problem”.
Doctors, he explained, spend the majority of their time with just 5pc of people who are ill. Like GPs, the HR headaches employers face typically stem from a tiny fraction of staff.
His point was that parts of the looming Employment Rights Bill, which will strengthen rights for workers and trade unions, are completely unnecessary. “You don’t go and lock all 100 chickens in a coop, for the fear that one is going to go wrong,” he argued, mixing his metaphors somewhat.
A key example of the overreach of the new bill is its so-called “pub banter” ban provision, which will force venues such as pubs and universities to do all they can to protect employees from non-sexual third-party harassment. In a nutshell, it means pub and restaurant bosses could find themselves policing customer conversations and any jokes that staff might find offensive.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has already warned that the proposed rules are too broad-brush and could lead to “excessive limitations on debate”. But perhaps more importantly, there isn’t actually much evidence that this is even an issue. The ban seems to be fixing a made-up problem.
Free speech campaigner Lord Young will make this point at a Lords hearing on Monday, as the Bill continues to chug through the parliamentary process.
He will pull out a survey from last year that shows that just 0.5pc of respondents reported experiencing non-sexual third-party harassment at work in the year to March.
Policing something that appears to be a problem for just 0.5pc of workers could prove detrimental to already-stretched small businesses such as family-owned pubs and restaurants, which work in boisterous environments and don’t have hordes of HR and legal staff to support them.
Lord Young will argue in the House of Lords today that such a rule could also have a much broader impact on culture, with football stadiums becoming like libraries and “‘banter bouncers’ in every beer garden”.
Introducing red-tape to solve non-issues doesn’t feel like a driver of economic growth, either. Why are we chewing over this “Alice in Wonderland” clause, as one peer called it earlier this year, when there is so much more important stuff going on in the world?
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Lucy Burton has another piece in today’s Telegraph, this one about another amendment that Claire Fox and I are proposing to the Employment Rights Bill – hoping to speak to that one later today, too – which would amend the Equality Act so it protects all political opinions and affiliations, provided they meet a fairly broad test, not just left-of-centre political views, which is the position at the moment. This amendment would make it unlawful for employers not to employ someone – or to sack someone – because of their lawful political beliefs. At the moment, some political beliefs enjoy ‘protected’ status under the Act, meaning you cannot be discriminated against for possessing them, while others don’t – and which are and which aren’t protected is entirely predictable. For instance, a belief in anti-Zionism is protected, but a belief in Zionism isn’t. A belief in Scottish independence is, a belief in unionism isn’t. A belief in democratic socialism is, a belief in conservatism isn’t. My amendment would level the playing field.
Lord Young of Acton is to table a new amendment to Ms Rayner’s Employment Rights Bill addressing what he claimed was “a ‘two tier’ system in which, broadly speaking, Left-of-centre beliefs are protected by the Equality Act and Right-of-centre beliefs aren’t.”
The amendment will ban companies from punishing staff for discussing controversial political views at work, so long as they are legal.
The Free Speech Union, Lord Young’s campaign group, is currently aware of six cases involving Reform UK activists who have lost jobs because of their political views. Lord Young said there was “little rhyme or reason” as to which beliefs enjoy protected status and which do not.
Lord Young said: “For instance, anti-Zionism is a protected belief, but Zionism isn’t. A belief in Democratic Socialism is protected, but a belief in Conservatism isn’t.”
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press 2: Use the Free Speech Union’s template to email a peer about why they should oppose the ‘banter ban’. It only takes two minutes to fill out. Link here.
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