Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Sarah Russell and Wera Hobhouse

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Russell]

I could talk about NDAs at some length, but I do not have time to today. They are definitely problematic, and they are definitely concealing the extent of the problems that women suffer when they announce their pregnancies.

The second element I like in the legislation is the improvements to the right to request flexible working. Those on the Conservative Benches have questioned why we would do this. The answer is that the term “part-timer” is still a term of abuse in this country. While that is still something that people say fairly regularly within workplaces and popular parlance, we still have a problem, so this legislation should help to improve that.

Conservative Members have talked a lot about clause 17 and the third-party harassment elements, and it is worth getting into some of the detail. The defence for an employer for failing to protect their staff from third-party harassment is taking all reasonable steps to prevent that harassment from occurring. Employment tribunals have been interpreting the meaning of “reasonable” for a long time, and in a discrimination claim there is essentially a three-part judiciary: a judge with legal experience, someone with employer experience, and someone with employee experience—sometimes from a trade union, but sometimes from elsewhere. When they talk about “all reasonable steps”, it is only reasonable steps; it is not every single step in the entire history of the universe that anyone could ever dream up or imagine.

[Wera Hobhouse]

The hon. Member is speaking powerfully. Does she agree that this amendment is being used by the Conservative party to condone something offensive and despicable, and that they are trying to defend the indefensible?

[Mrs Russell]

I completely and utterly agree with the hon. Member. Actually, a lot of what is coming from Conservative Members is scaremongering. A lot of those discussing this behave as if employees with unfair dismissal rights were unexploded bombs. All the people I represented did not want to bring tribunal claims; they just wanted to have been treated fairly and reasonably in the first place. They were typically extremely destressed by their experiences, and for quite a lot of them, their mental health had deteriorated substantially in the course of what they had gone through. I do not think that when people have unfair dismissal rights a little bit sooner, they will all be rushing to employment tribunals the moment that something goes slightly wrong in their workplace. What most people want to do every morning is get up, go to work, do a decent job, get paid for it and go home. That is what we will continue to see after this legislation passes: that most employers want to look after their employees perfectly reasonably, and most employees want to do a perfectly decent job.