My Lords, I apologise for not having been in the House in March to speak in the Second Reading debate on this Private Member’s Bill. I am afraid I was out of London for the day, but I can see from the record that my noble friend Lady Blake did a great job from these Benches in giving our strong support to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and to the Bill.
I was keen to lend support to the Bill then, as I am now, partly because I am a veteran of the Equality Act 2010 and I participated in the debates about why we put these clauses into that piece of legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, possibly did not like it at that time—2009 and 2010, when we were discussing it—either. I can remember the debates precisely about this clause; we were putting provisions on the statute book then. I am also a veteran of the debate in 2013, when I was fulfilling the same shadow role that I do now, when the coalition Government, in one of their deregulation splurges, justified taking out the imposed protections as an unnecessary burden on business.
At that time, of course, our argument was that protecting people from harassment, especially in the workplace, should be seen not as a burden but as a responsibility. It is pleasing that, nine years later, there has been a change of heart by the Government, which I welcome enormously, and we now have this Bill before us. We should pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, for bringing this Private Member’s Bill to us from the Commons. I pay tribute to all the parties that have been involved in this and given it their support both in the Commons and in this place. I also place on the record my thanks to the Minister for her work in seeking a way forward.
It is important to restate, momentarily, the scale of what we face. It needs to be listened to and heard on all occasions, because workplace harassment is experienced by a minimum of 40% of women. The noble Lords who have just spoken talked about freedom of speech and burdens on business, but that has to be balanced against the right to work and not to be harassed and insulted in a detrimental fashion.
I have two questions for the Minister. If these amendments are accepted—the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, accepted that they have to be to get the Bill through—it raises a couple of questions that need to be asked. If Clause 1 is removed, how do the Government propose to deal with, or reinstate, protections for workers against harassment by third parties like customers? I say this partly as a non-executive director of one of our hospitals, where we have to deal with the harassment of our employees—nurses, doctors and so on—and we have to work out how to support them, what is acceptable, what is not acceptable and what to do about it. It is a real issue; we are not talking just about people going into shops or restaurants, or some of the issues that led to this legislation coming forward. I would like the Minister to reflect on that question.
I also want to ask a question about the removal of the word “all”. As I recall from the discussions about this in other legislation, “all reasonable efforts” is an expression that is used in other places in the legislation and in this Bill. I have always thought that that word was there as much to protect employers and others as
anything else—it is not superfluous. So can the Minister explain the implications of removing it from the Bill and what ramifications that might have for the rest of the legislation that covers this area?
I cannot promise the House that we will not return to this issue when we are in government. But I definitely give my support to the noble Baroness. I want to see the Bill, even as amended, on the statute book. We will give her every support.