Employment Rights Bill

Lord Strathcarron Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the four maiden speakers and congratulate them on their speeches. Meanwhile, like some of us here today, I was in the other place yesterday afternoon listening to the Chancellor’s Statement and her quest for growth. Yet here we are today in this Chamber, debating the Second Reading of a Bill of which certain parts are absolutely guaranteed to regulate the life out of any growth that she wants and the country needs.

Leaving aside the economic damage that those parts of the Bill will cause, we also need to consider the societal damage that will be done by Clause 20 in particular and its effect on free speech and life’s moments of enjoyment, which we currently take for granted and which are now under threat. To illustrate this, I will give an example from my own work experience.

I publish about 50 books a year and the marketing of each one requires my employees to come into contact with the general public—those whom the Bill calls “third parties”—at book launches and other sales events. To take a typical example of a book launch in a bookshop, the bookshop would host two categories of third parties: first, say, 50 of our own potential customers, and then a further 50 of its own from its mailing list. Apart from the bookshop staff, I would typically have three or four of my own employees there to help. In terms of the Bill, this detail is important: they are my employees, but even though they are working on someone else’s premises, they will still my liability.

Now, to avoid the consequences of the Bill, should I and the book shop request that our guests not talk to staff, or even to each other, in case a member of staff overhears them about any subjects relating to protected characteristics, even if what they say is perfectly legal? I ask your Lordships: after seeing such an invitation, one that discourages any form of legal sociability, would any of us go to such a cold-water event?

This might sound fantastical, but it is not fanciful. It is all right here in Clause 20. The result in this instance is that the risks are untenable and therefore the event will not happen. We will have given up another harmless pleasure to satisfy the whims of the ever-changing latest version of groupthink. Then again, in a wider context than this, would Waterstones, for example, risk arranging another in-store book signing by JK Rowling, Kathleen Stock or Helen Joyce, on the off-chance that one of the author’s fans will arrive wearing a T-shirt saying, “Woman=Adult Human Female”, knowing that their employees could sue for hurt feelings, real or vexatious.

Widening this out still further to cover all hospitality events—I am also a trustee of a national museum that stages events throughout the summer—the only practical way for any host to mitigate these dangers is to pass the potential liability on to organisers or promoters. Would either really want to take this on, bearing in mind that no one involved in staging an event has any idea who the third parties coming to the event will be? Are they up to date with the current thing—the latest protected characteristic they must not talk about? Are they courteous and even sober? Do they have English as their first language? Any encounters between so-called third parties and employees are totally beyond the employer’s control, yet, in this Alice in Wonderland world of Clause 20, the employer will be responsible for these interactions, no matter where they happen and even if they are totally legal in themselves.

I urge the Government to have a massive reality check about the foreseen and unforeseen consequences of Clause 20 as the Bill progresses.