Last year, the Free Speech Union led the charge against the Worker Protection Bill, a private members’ bill that would have extended employers’ liability for harassment of their employees to third parties, i.e., members of the public. Among other things, it would have meant the owners of pubs, bars and restaurant having to employ ‘banter cops’ to police their customers lest a member of staff overhear a conversation that upsets them. In effect, the Bill would have turbo-charged the Equality Act, imposing eye-watering compliance costs on owners of hospitality businesses and having a chilling effect on free speech. We succeeded up to a point and the Worker Protection Act, when it eventually received Royal Assent, only extended employers’ liability to third party sexual harassment, not any other form.
But the clauses the FSU succeeded in getting stripped out of the Worker Protection Bill have reappeared in Labour’s Employment Rights Bill. Camilla Turner in the Telegraph has the story.
Pub landlords will be turned into ‘banter cops’ under reforms to workers’ rights, business leaders have warned.
Provisions in the Employment Rights Bill mean equality laws will be updated to make employers liable for staff being offended by “third parties”, such as customers or members of the public.
The laws would introduce a legal requirement for companies and public bodies to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent harassment by third parties relating to a “protected characteristic” such as sex, gender reassignment or age.
Free speech campaigners have warned that this measure is the government’s “latest salvo in its ongoing war against free speech” and will lead to pub staff having to act as the “banter cops” who ban customers for telling “inappropriate” jokes.
Scholars also fear the legislation will also have a “chilling effect” on academic freedom as it will mean university authorities are more likely to give into calls to “no-platform” contentious guest speakers for fear of being sued.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said that staff in restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels are working in a “social environment” where “there are jokes and people are boisterous”.
She said while everyone wants to make sure their staff are protected “we don’t want to be policing our customers’ behaviour”, adding that she is keen to work with ministers to ensure “undue restrictions” are not imposed on customers. […]
The proposed laws, which were unveiled last week, as part of an overhaul of workers’ rights, will lead to a major expansion of the New Labour-era Equality Act.
The changes go significantly further than a measure in the original Equality Act of 2010, which made employers liable for third-party harassment after three separate incidents – known as the “three strikes rule”. The third-party provisions were stripped out of the legislation altogether by the coalition government in 2013.
James Murray, legal director at the law firm Doyle Clayton, said the changes announced could lead to controversial guest speakers being barred from events.
He explained: “If we think about a speaker that has been invited – say it’s a controversial gender critical speaker, like Julie Bindel or Kathleen Stock – someone might somewhat disingenuously say ‘I am an employee of this university and I find what she says deeply harassing’.
“The concern is that this will shift the balance away from free speech and universities will be more risk averse as they won’t want to be held liable for third-party harassment.”
Prof James Tooley, vice-chancellor of Buckingham University, said the Bill is “deeply worrying” and “very dangerous” for free speech on campus.
“I want to be free as vice-chancellor to be able to invite people with a whole range of views – that’s what university should be about – hearing views and being challenged,” he said.
“At the moment, I am able to stand firm and say they are coming. But if this new Bill comes in, then it is the end of my vice-chancellor speaker series.
“Given that the government has already removed other protections for free speech at universities, this is sending out a worrying message.”
Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said the proposed extension to harassment laws amounted to a “snowflakes’ charter”.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: For those that cannot get past the Telegraph paywall, the Mail has also covered the story.
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Amongst friends whose views I know, we adopt a form of conversation of which a transcript would read as “compliant” but the tone and facial expressions make quite clear that the opposite is meant.
“Of course we all believe that there is no difference between men and women other than the way they are classified at birth.”
Is there no end to this madness.
I am becoming harassed, alarmed and distressed. I feel abused threatened and insulted by our own, lol, government.
Even the threat of such a Law has caused me to become fearful
I am thinking of making a complaint to the Police as HMG is clearly committing an offence under S4.A of the Public Order Act 1986.
I am with you al the way on that. I have been offended by the global warming narrative for the past 2 decades, since the point I actually sat down and thought through the concept of a climate tipping point, which actually had me worried for a time.
When I realised that there are a plethora of natural, scientifically logical checks and balances that would mitigate this claimed disaster then I have pulled up anybody I heard making ludicrous, doom laden claims.
Why stop with pubs, though? I was at the bus stop the other day and there were people talking ungrammatically. I was so offended that I had to roll on the floor like a child and scream about my “rights” being violated. This has to stop – and it’s up to this completely mad government to protect me.
Clenching your fists and stamping your feet keeps your clothes cleaner. Have you seen the state of the pavement around bus stops?
I thought that was how Free Gear always looked smart but now I find he just chucks the old ones in the bin and Alli buys him new ones. Must be another reason he always looks like he is weeing himself and stamps his feet when he is asked a question.
Personally, I’ve seen sheep that are made of sterner stuff than these pitiful wet blankets. I can’t begin to tell you how many take to social media and film themselves having an emotional meltdown because somebody in a shop ”misgendered” them. But anyway, I have more respect for sheep than these crybaby wimps;
https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1845164045441151294
Sheep are indeed wonderful animals.
With mint sauce
Even that!
I think I have upset my golf club’s Secretary by commenting on the use of the genetive apostrophe inappropropiately. I pointed out that it was used 3 imes on an email about the progress of the new Club Committee and it offended me to such an extent that I had to email him immediately. I have received no reply and fear that I may be personna non grata but I still won my Seniors match against a neighbouring club, which I hope will mitigate his hurt feelings.
Well God forbid anyone who isn’t Christian would be traumatized by overhearing someone reading some English literature out loud which makes references to Christianity. Maybe we should all go to the pub with ”Trigger Warning: I’m about to open my mouth!” written on a hat. Just more censorship on steroids pushed by pathetic woketards;
”They are the acclaimed works of medieval literature that tell the story of a religious pilgrimage to one of the most important cathedrals in all of Christendom.
But to the astonishment of critics, a leading university has slapped a trigger warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales – because they contain ‘expressions of Christian faith’.
Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said: ‘Warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith. The problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics.’
Historian Jeremy Black added: ‘Presumably, this Nottingham nonsense is a product of the need to validate courses in accordance with tick-box criteria. It is simultaneously sad, funny and a demeaning of education.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13953897/Woke-Nottingham-University-Geoffrey-Chaucer.html
Imagine the fuss if anyone in their English department ever reads Milton.
I take it from this remark that it a “trigger” to see someone in Muslim dress in the street, which consequently should be banned. The recent shouting in the London marches triggers me completely as presumably every bit of this is illegal. Strangely His Majesty’s plod does nothing, but if an Englishman opens his mouth he is sent to jail. As a Christian in a Christian country, (Fid Def on coins), Charlie needs to sort this out very quickly. Two tier comes nowhere near the correct description of a Country where racism against the indigenous population is permitted and even encouraged by the “Government”!
This sounds to me remarkably like a form of State Censorship, Authoritarianism and Coercive Control.
Not that our kind, caring and definitely not Two-Tier Government would do anything so dreadful.
Won’t these Banter Bouncers also be employees? Don’t they deserve protection from the offensive conversations they patrol? Presumably, landlords could sue themselves if they’re subjected to offensive conversations!
Excellent!
How about this Pub Landlord as a ‘banter cop’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HcB6ZrCLEY
So what happens when the one Jewish customer in a pub is offended by a group of Muslims making a crude antisemitic Joke and wearing t-shirts that read “From the River to the Sea”? Will they get barred from the establishment? Or is this “acceptable” offense?
Proper Muslims don’t drink, but they could be there talking over some tea. It seems to be rare to see this in pubs, probably because it would cause severe violence in many rather good ones! The LAW has nothing to do with it.
“The Worker Protection Bill” just passed is now being superseded by Labour’s new “Employment Rights Bill”???
Isn’t there any kind of quality control for Parliamentary laws, weeding out such pointless repetition?
I think we should have a clean slate, wiping out all laws, especially those originating during our disastrous enslavement to the EU, and starting again from scratch, limiting each law to no more than a ONE PAGE DOCUMENT, and making a maximum number of 100 laws on the books at any one time.
Mankind survived perfectly well for millennia without hundreds and thousands and millions of “laws” regulating their daily lives. So can we.
Yes, the “quality control” are supposed to be the opposition and the backbenchers but as we all know the opposition is always weak and the backbenchers might as well be shouting into the void. For example, the kinds of new “laws” that were churned out during the so-called pandemic were fast-tracked into effect through the parliamentary loophole of the “statutory instrument”, which is meant to be a last-minute tweak to the main body of a new piece of legislation, but in fact entire new laws were passed in this way. The “Coronavirus Act” was one of these (weird, there was never a Flu Act!) So quality control is often just absent, and bits and pieces just get added and taken away at a whim, which is why the statute books are a labyrinth of Articles, sections, sub-sections, clauses and sub-clauses.
Plus, even Parliament only ever get a say in what happens to proposed legislation when it suits ministers to let them.
Brilliant idea.
Probably 10 laws might be adequate, say the 10 Commandments? If keeping to them you are unlikely to break many of the 10,000 dross ones. Unfortunately many of those in Government seem quite happy to break all 10 some days, and a slightly lesser number all the time!
Yup, I think you wouldn’t be far off with that. Trouble is people who go into politics seem to want to fiddle with things – and people seem to expect them to do so.
Yet more garbage from a crap “government”, it is what it is, control, censorship, and time people seriously bloody woke up and started fighting back, surely against my human rights?, well works for a certain element of society!!.
I’m sure even universities will see sense when bar,cafeteria ,coffee shops and other safe spaces takings are down
Why not extend this to the House of Commons, Lords, the subsidised bars and restaurants? Indeed, why not every single public place? Where does it all end? Banter Police at every conveyor belt in Sainsbury’s (not that they have many running)? Thousands of Banter Police at concerts and football matches.
In fact, the Banter Police would need Banter Police because they are also employees and must be protected. Funny how Labour do not seem to be suggesting that Antisemitic protests calling for all white people and Jews to be murdered require Banter Police.
Can you imagine a debate in the Commons following these rules? There would be a very long silence, which would stop anything happening, which would be a good outcome!
I wonder if the Deputy Prime Minister, a well-known thief and bung taker, has taken note of this? After all, her well documented mode of banter generally consists of calling anyone remotely Tory C___s and claiming they all look at her legs – have you actually looked at her legs? Stupendously bandy. The country as a whole needs protection from her thieving, bung taking gob.
Incidentally, the most documented spout of gobshiteness from her was in a Bar at the Commons. How many Banter Police will Westminster require?
It would need a few thousand, but it is the penalty that needs to be discussed. How about being sent to France in a very unseaworthy plastic boat with a duff engine on a stormy night? That would soon sort everything out.
Don’t forget that Ranting is also an electoral fraudster by being registered to vote at both her homes and therefore should be banned from public office for life.
Isn’t this the sort of dogma that started in the 30’s?