The Prime Minister is facing a revolt over “draconian” laws that will allow retail workers, bar staff and doctors to sue their employers if a member of the public offends them at work.
According to The Sunday Telegraph:
New harassment rules on the brink of becoming law will enable medics to sue the NHS if a patient insults them, allow bar staff to take legal action against landlords if they are offended by drunk punters, and let baristas take coffee shop owners to a tribunal if they overhear offensive remarks made by customers.
Senior Tories warn the proposed law will lead to an explosion of litigation and force business owners to run their establishments like a “police state”.
A Whitehall source said ministers were “sleep walking” into a “big expansion” of the Labour-era Equality Act, which Mr Sunak had previously blamed for enabling “woke nonsense to permeate public life”.
The row will come as a major embarrassment to the Prime Minister, who has been seeking to position the Conservatives against “woke” policies that are unpopular with many business owners and working-class voters.
Tory backbenchers accused the Government of “taking their eye off the ball” by supporting a “mad” Private Member’s Bill, sponsored by two Liberal Democrat parliamentarians, on course to become law within weeks.
The Bill was waved through the Commons without a vote during a Friday sitting when most MPs were back in their constituencies.
Ministers are under pressure to ditch or gut the legislation, with backbenchers warning that purported “freedom of speech” protections added into the Bill will do little to save employers from crippling litigation.
The Worker Protection Bill will make employers liable for staff being harassed by “third parties” such as customers or members of the public. It introduces a legal requirement for companies and public bodies to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent this.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said establishments that “serve the public can expect to run a police state in their business”, while Sir John Hayes, the chairman of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs, said it had “sinister implications”. Another Conservative MP, Craig Mackinlay, said he believed the change was “draconian”.
Lord Frost, the former Cabinet Office minister, described the Bill as a “woke, socialist measure” that would “have a chilling effect on every conversation in a workplace”.
Lord Strathcarron, a Tory peer who runs a publishing firm, said bookshops could be put off inviting authors such as JK Rowling to give talks, “on the off chance that one of the author’s fans might be wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘Woman Equals Adult Human Female’, knowing that an employee could sue for hurt feelings – real or vexatious”.
