Welcome to our latest Coffee Break in which we look at the latest legal and practical developments impacting employers

Proposed reforms to harassment laws: an update

The government is currently supporting a Private Members' Bill – the Worker Protection (Amendment of the Equality Act 2010) Bill – through Parliament which will:

• make employers liable for harassment of their employees by third parties;
• introduce a positive duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent the sexual harassment of their employees; and
• make provision for a compensation uplift in sexual harassment cases where there has been a breach of the employer duty.

These proposals reflect some of the commitments made by the government in its response to a consultation on sexual harassment in the workplace in July 2021. However, the bill has attracted media attention in the past week over the extent of proposed obligations relating to third party harassment, with the government reportedly under pressure from some members of its party to quietly drop it.

What do the changes mean?

The bill creates new legal liabilities for employers by treating an employer as harassing its employee if the employee is harassed in the course of their employment by third parties (such as customers or clients) and the employer fails "to take all reasonable steps to prevent the third party from doing so".

When the Equality Act 2010 was originally enacted, it included provisions which made employers liable for sexual...

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