Employment Bill [HL]

That is a fair point. When an employment Bill comes forward, people take the opportunity to get into it items that are perhaps not otherwise covered. I accept the argument that these amendments do not necessarily logically fit into these provisions in the Bill. Nevertheless, we feel that these are important issues. This amendment is trying to get at the point that quite often when someone is at home because he is involved in a grievance or disciplinary procedure because he has not come to work, it is because some form of bullying in the workplace has made him stay at home. We have no pride of drafting in this amendment, but we think an obligation should be put on an employer that when an employee has stayed at home, and as a result may be involved in some form of disciplinary or grievance procedure, there should be an obligation on the employer to carry out a risk assessment. This is not necessarily the logical place to put this in the Bill, but when we are faced with the 28th piece of employment legislation since 1997, we want to seize the opportunity to add little bits when we think they might be useful.