Employment Rights Bill (Ninth sitting)

Peter Bedford Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th December 2024 Public Bill Committees

We are also worried about the burdens of the third-party harassment provisions on pubs and the hospitality sector. They already have to contend with increased employer’s national insurance contributions and with the possible loss of small business rate relief; there is now a risk that they will have to become responsible for some form of policing. I am not referring to areas that I have already spoken about, such as sexual harassment, which should absolutely be cracked down on, criminal forms of racial abuse, abuse of someone’s sexuality or whatever it might be; I mean areas that get into the realms of free speech. There are some jokes that may be told in pubs and are probably not funny, but do not stray into the very serious categories that I have spoken about. It will put a burden on pub, restaurant or bar owners to somehow police that which most of us, under a reasonability test—but not guaranteed under a reasonability test—would call more innocent banter.

[Mr Peter Bedford (Mid Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. On the point about the hospitality and pubs sector, on which I held a debate in Westminster Hall a few weeks ago, there is real concern about this part of legislation, in particular about freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Does my hon. Friend agree that one consequence of the legislation might be that industry take actions beyond those intended? For example, people might self-censor beyond what could be seen as an off-colour or offensive joke, because they are scared that they could be held liable later for not protecting their employees. My hon. Friend gave an example, but another one is a comedy club, which would be conscious of and concerned about who they invite to entertain because of the perception that some of their staff could be offended, and the reasonableness of how that could be interpreted in the context of harassment. Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a concerning unintended consequence of the legislation?

[Greg Smith]

My hon. Friend is right that there needs to be greater clarity about that which is already covered in criminal law—sexual harassment, direct racial abuse or abuse to someone on the basis of their sexuality, which clearly has to be actioned under criminal law and it must be ensured that the perpetrators are brought to justice—compared with satire or cutting jokes. Those are things that do not stray into the criminal, but perhaps some people might be offended by them, for whatever reason.

There are quite a lot of comedians openly talking about whether comedy is in fact becoming a thing of the past in this country. They are finding themselves unable to tell jokes that, while not going into the criminal, do risk offending some people. If that ends up shutting down comedy clubs or open-mic nights in pubs, it would be an unintended consequence that I cannot imagine the Government would want to bring about.