Labour's ‘pub banter' ban is fixing a made-up problem
Rupert Soames, the outspoken CBI chief, hit the nail on the head last week when he told a union chief that businesses are often confronted with what he calls the 'doctor problem'.
Doctors, he explained, spend the majority of their time with just 5pc of people who are ill. Like GPs, the HR headaches employers face typically stem from a tiny fraction of staff.
His point was that parts of the looming Employment Rights Bill, which will strengthen rights for workers and trade unions, are completely unnecessary. 'You don't go and lock all 100 chickens in a coop, for the fear that one is going to go wrong,' he argued, mixing his metaphors somewhat.
A key example of the overreach of the new Bill is its so-called 'pub banter' ban provision, which will force venues such as pubs and universities to do all they can to protect employees from non-sexual third-party harassment. In a nutshell, it means pub and restaurant bosses could find themselves policing customer conversations and any jokes that staff might find offensive.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has already warned that the proposed rules are too broad-brush and could lead to 'excessive limitations on debate'. But perhaps more importantly, there isn't actually much evidence that this is even an issue. The ban seems to be fixing a made-up problem.
Free speech campaigner Lord Young will make this point at a Lords hearing on Monday, as the Bill continues to chug through the parliamentary process.
He will pull out a survey from last year that shows that just 0.51pc of respondents reported experiencing non-sexual third-party harassment at work in the year to March.
Policing something that appears to be a problem for just 0.51pc of workers could prove detrimental to already stretched small businesses such as family-owned pubs and restaurants, which work in boisterous environments and don't have hordes of HR and legal staff to support them.
Lord Young will argue in the House of Lords today that such a rule could also have a much broader impact on culture, with football stadiums becoming like libraries and ''banter bouncers' in every beer garden'.
Introducing red-tape to solve non-issues doesn't feel like a driver of economic growth, either. Why are we chewing over this 'Alice in Wonderland' clause, as one peer called it earlier this year, when there is so much more important stuff going on in the world?
Cash-strapped companies are freezing hiring and sacking staff, while millions of Britons are still not working. Sickness is fuelling a worklessness crisis that incurs a huge cost to the economy. More men are giving up on work than in any other G7 nation. At a lunch last week, a group of recruiters were bemoaning the enormous amount of challenges facing the sector.
Notably, nobody brought up offensive customers as an issue. There is a disconnect between the issues the Bill is trying to tackle and the real issues facing businesses, with Soames complaining that the Government has not been listening to business concerns.
Ministers say the reforms will boost the economy by raising living standards and creating more job opportunities. In reality, cash-strapped businesses are cutting jobs, hiring people on temporary contracts and thinking twice about taking a chance on those with patchy CVs.
Labour is doing itself no favours by pledging to combat a problem that barely exists and setting off a lot of huffing and puffing in the process.
A huge amount of unnecessary attention has been thrown in the direction of this so-called pub banter crackdown. On the one side we have union chiefs arguing that those critical of it are just protecting 'their right to be offensive' – and I agree that 'banter' is often just a veil for rudeness – while on the other, critics insist that the clause will simply encourage people to 'sue for hurt feelings'.
This is a valid concern, given that there were almost 50,000 employment tribunal cases waiting to be resolved at the end of last year. A hazy rule around overheard conversations could cause claims to snowball even further.
To be fair to Labour, this isn't a totally out of the blue or novel idea. It was only in 2023 that Rishi Sunak was facing a Tory revolt over plans to introduce a law that would allow shop assistants, bar staff and doctors to sue their employers if a member of the public offended them at work.
The same arguments were rolled out at the time, with senior Tories warning that the proposed law would lead to an explosion of litigation and force business owners to run their establishments like a 'police state'.
Ministers decided to let the idea fall by the wayside after the legislation triggered a huge outpouring of Tory anger.
Knowing all the arguments, Labour had the perfect chance to do more research to work out whether this law is really needed and pin down exactly what the issues are. When deciding that the legislation was needed, the party could have crafted a more precise law to avoid the kind of controversy Sunak's ideas triggered.
Alas, ministers appear to have done none of this.
I don't suspect they are actually trying to stop respectful debates about controversial issues taking place in pub gardens, but rather ensure that anyone who feels hurt by overheard 'banter' at work isn't ignored.
But it's not a pressing issue, so let's move on to the stuff that really matters.
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