Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting)

Alison Hume Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

Let me just finish this point. I am trying to deal with a real-life scenario that should not be happening, but does. What does the doctor or nurse do, under the Bill? Do they refuse to treat the patient? Some would argue that perhaps they should, but the reality is that that is not what they are there for. They are there to heal, treat and support that patient who has got into a stupid predicament.

[Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)]

Will the shadow Minister give way?

[Greg Smith]

I will just finish this point. Both hon. Ladies know that I will give way.

Where would the test come? What should the NHS, as the employer, have done to prevent that situation? What is the overall outcome in that scenario? Where does the reasonableness test fall? I repeat that I am not excusing the behaviour; I am putting it forward as a test to the provisions in the Bill, as a situation in which the employer—ultimately the national health service or perhaps the Health Secretary—would find themselves.

[Greg Smith]

I hope that the hon. Lady is right, but part of the test that the amendment sets for the Government is whether it will work. Is it clear? Will it put the protections in place that everybody wants to see? There is a question mark over whether they will work.

The NHS A&E environment is an example with which we are probably all familiar from our postbags. Constituents write to us about situations that they have witnessed or been in themselves, particularly on a busy Friday or Saturday night or in the Christmas season when there are lots of parties and lots of people probably having far too much to drink and sometimes getting themselves into unacceptable situations. There might not be the staff to double up; the patient might be abusive to all of them. It is unacceptable, horrible and wrong, but it is sometimes the reality. Where does that leave the senior doctor or nurse on duty, the chief executive of the trust, and ultimately the Secretary of State or the permanent secretary to the Department of Health and Social Care? Where does the test actually leave them, and what more can be done to make the legislation work?

The hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby has been waiting patiently to come in.

[Alison Hume]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for giving way. I refer the Committee to my declaration of interests and my membership of Unison and the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain.

The NHS has zero-tolerance policies, in common with the police service and any other service that deals with these difficult situations. They are good employers that have things in place. The shadow Minister spoke about employers not thinking about situations and being innocent. I draw his attention to their responsibility to employees who were innocent, but have lost their innocence as a result of unwanted sexual harassment or worse.

[Greg Smith]

I do not disagree with a word that the hon. Lady says. The NHS, like every employer, is right to take a zero-tolerance attitude to any form of harassment against its employees, customers, patients or whoever else happens to be on its premises at any time.

I accept the hon. Lady’s point about innocence. My A&E example was not so much about sexual harassment or worse criminality; it is all horrendous criminality, in my view, but there are other criminal laws that can and should be used to bring perpetrators to justice in that space. My example was more about abusive behaviour in the form of verbal harassment from a patient who is drunk or high on drugs. It is still horrible, it is still wrong and it still needs action, but what happens? The zero-tolerance policy, all of a sudden, becomes a poster on the wall rather than real, live action there and then, as that drunk patient makes unacceptable remarks of whatever nature to the nurse or doctor. The test is whether the words in the Bill before us—as opposed to other, potentially even more stringent or stronger legislation that is already on the statute book or that may yet need to be passed—will have a better effect.

[Alison Hume]

I think the Bill will do that, because it will strengthen the employers’ responsibility to take all reasonable steps.

[Greg Smith]

I hope that the hon. Lady is right. What my colleagues and I seek, through our amendment, is to test that. I do not think that anyone will criticise any Member of this House, on either side, for trying to properly road-test any legislation that comes before us and check whether it will have the effect that the Government seek.

Amendment 131 is topical, given the intervention that the hon. Member for Chippenham made about higher education. It would exclude higher education institutions and hospitality providers from some of the duties in the Bill, not around criminal behaviour—it would not exclude them from legislation that should rightly be used to challenge sexual harassment, for example—but around free speech. Employers may end up being overly cautious with respect to protecting free speech, as they will be worried about claims being brought under this legislation. That would lead to free speech debate and challenge being eroded. In the case of higher education, those are the very institutions at which free speech, challenge and rigorous and robust debate should frankly be taking place, and where wrong and unacceptable ideas can be knocked down robustly and firmly through the medium of intellectual debate.