People are entitled to hold private conversations in pubs, provided they don’t offend staff and make them feel “unsafe”, Government Minister Lilian Greenwood has said, as she defended Labour’s ‘banter ban’. The Times has more.
Lilian Greenwood, a Transport Minister, said it was an “exaggeration” to say that the rules in the Employment Rights Bill could threaten pubs with closure. She added it was “about getting the balance” between free speech and workers’ rights.
The equalities watchdog has told the Government that measures in Labour’s workers’ rights overhaul could “disproportionately curtail” freedom of expression and be applied to “overheard conversations”.
Ministers have proposed that employers must protect workers from being harassed at work by “third parties” such as customers or clients. If they fail to do so they could be sued.
Lord Young of Acton, a Conservative peer, has tabled a number of amendments that would stop pub and university bosses having to ensure their staff were not subject to harassment by overhearing opinions they did not agree with.
Young, the founder of the Free Speech Union, said that the way the law was drafted would mean an employee could take offence on behalf of another member of staff, even if he or she did not hear the comments made.
His amendments to the bill would exempt opinions on political, moral, religious or social matters from the law as long as that opinion was not “indecent or grossly offensive”.
Greenwood told Times Radio: “People would expect to be able to have private conversations, but that has to be done in a way that isn’t going to affect the rights of other people to work in a safe and secure environment.”
Worth reading in full.
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