The Minister will answer about what the Government are doing on impact assessments, but the impact on small businesses is that they have to think a little bit about harassment in their industry. That will vary from business to business. Some small businesses are not public facing. The impact in a small café will be different from that in a small office, because of interactions with the general public, but I do not think it is unreasonable to ask a small café or a small bar to think about what they can put in place to deal with someone coming in and abusing or harassing staff.
Again, if somebody comes in and is abusive, these provisions will not necessarily be triggered, because the abuse and unwanted conduct has to be related to their protected characteristic. I know from closing up a number of Christmas parties when I worked in hospitality that people get a bit out of hand. That was not harassment under the Equality Act; it was because people were drunk and disorderly, which is a separate antisocial behaviour issue. There are different channels to deal with that. We are talking here about specific cases where there is abuse of people because of a protected characteristic. Those are very narrow circumstances where people have to think about what kind of policies they have in place.
The hon. Member for Chippenham spoke about how MPs would not operate in similar circumstances. We would not, for example, be alone with individuals in a private room. It is appropriate to have policies in place where we try to think about some of the circumstances.
This proposal does not use the word “requires”, and it does not say that every single step has to be taken—it mentions “all reasonable steps”. That is part of the tribunal, and there will be guidance to set out some examples of things that employers can do to take reasonable steps. It is really important that we do not create a two-tier system where we say that small employers do not have to deal with these issues, because actually it is often in small and medium-sized enterprises that some of this bad behaviour takes place.
I gave an example last week. I went to my boss and said, “I have just been groped by a midwife and was told, ‘I’m going to show you a thing or two’”. When I said that I was only 15 years old, my boss said I should enjoy it: “You are a bloke. Go back in there. Toughen up.” That is not acceptable. Actually, a reasonable step in those circumstances would be the manager saying, “Alex, why don’t you go and work in another part of the business for the rest of the week? Work on the bar this evening, rather than in the function.” It is about having a policy that deals with those kinds of incidents in the workplace. There are different steps that businesses can take.
Let me move on to the argument around free speech, which the Minister talked about at great length. I have set out how some of his arguments do not apply in this instance as this provision is about specific incidents of harassment under the Equality Act. A point that the shadow Minister might have raised that would perhaps have been more legitimate is cases where two protected characteristics are in play. A lot of the free speech cases that have made the press have engaged with two. For example, in some cases someone has expressed their religion, but that might be opposed to someone expressing their sexual orientation; or people have expressed protected views on gender-critical theory, but others have a protected characteristic of a different gender identity.
Those are difficult cases, which can go all the way to the Supreme Court. What is important to note, however—this is where the shadow Minister could have gone, to give us a stronger discussion—is that if we are at the stage where the Supreme Court has to give an opinion on these things, no tribunal in the land will say, “Well, an employer should reasonably have seen that and therefore taken reasonable steps to avoid such scenarios happening.” No, this is the exact example of where tribunals will take “reasonable steps” and say, “What is reasonable in these circumstances for these employers?”
Having represented the NHS for a number of years as an employment lawyer, I should point out that the A&E example that was given unfortunately did not make any sense. First, the NHS operates a zero-tolerance approach. In several instances, policies are in place where individuals can withdraw their support for someone if they are being abused in the workplace. Scenarios and planning are in place to make sure that everyone is looked after, without people being subjected to harassment in the workplace.
To sum up, “all reasonable steps” does not mean that an employer has a duty to stop something altogether. We have to be sensible. There is no point scaremongering so that individuals think this will have a broader impact, closing all comedy clubs and stopping people making jokes in the workplace. That is not the case. This is about specific examples of harassment under the Equality Act—that has to be unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic, creating an offensive, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment. These are specific examples. It is important that we extend this to third parties, given all the evidence we have heard, and I encourage everyone in the Committee to support the legislation.