Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting)

Jon Pearce Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Smith]

I am building up to my wider point. To skip ahead, there will be circumstances where, even within the reasonableness test—I understand that test—something so unexpected and unforeseeable happens that the employer could not in any way have planned a protection for their employees around that. Despite that, the employer might find themselves challenged in a tribunal or, worse, some form of criminal investigation about why they did not take reasonable steps against a totally unexpected and unplanned-for eventuality. I accept that, in most cases, there are practical steps that could be put in place to prevent harassment of any sort, but there will be times where that reasonableness test could fall over and someone could find themselves in a very tricky spot, unable to account for why they did not prepare for the totally unexpected.

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

I refer the Committee to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and my membership of the GMB. The hon. Gentleman is making the point that it would be impossible for an employer to reasonably avoid something so extreme and out of the ordinary, but that would actually fall directly in the test, because the tribunal would look at whether it was reasonable for the employer to have put in arrangements, procedures or preparations to avoid a likely, foreseeable scenario. His concerns are completely misplaced, because no employer could reasonably avoid a situation that was impossible to avoid.

To go back to the fundamentals, as the hon. Gentleman said, we and employers should be taking all appropriate and reasonable steps, because 40% of women in the workplace suffer sexual harassment. These measures are reasonable in and of themselves, so I put it to him that he is worrying about something that is covered by the test.

[Greg Smith]

In many respects it is my job to be worried, to properly kick the tyres and to understand the operability of what the Government are trying to achieve. I certainly take the hon. Gentleman’s point on sexual harassment, and there is very clear criminal law in place that is probably more appropriate to bring perpetrators of such heinous crimes properly to justice. My concerns about the reasonableness test are less about that which can and should be pursued through criminal legislation; they are more about other forms of very subjectively tested harassment, as well as some points that I hope to make about freedom of speech. Hopefully, the hon. Gentleman will reflect on and understand those concerns when I get to that point.