Labour will do what the Tories won’t – tackle sexual harassment at work

Labour’s Anneliese Dodds and Angela Rayner explain how the party intends to tackle workplace abuse of women before it even starts

Anneliese Dodds and Angela Rayner with Sir Keir Starmer (Reuters)

In recent years, public life has been rocked by horrific allegations of sexual harassment. Powerful men found abusing young women and hiding in plain sight for years, with attention turning to their horrific acts in recent weeks.

But such high-profile cases are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the experiences of millions of women in workplaces the length and breadth of Britain. As visible women in public life, women come to us all too often with their stories of how sexual harassment has ripped away their confidence, ruined lives and destroyed careers.

And we know from the government’s own data that nearly a third of women in employment have endured some form of sexual harassment in work over the last year.

That’s millions of women every single day being threatened, harassed, and humiliated. Millions of women who do not feel safe to go to work and being forced to change jobs while over 40 per cent of perpetrators see no sanction. Justice denied, and victims let down.

We have seen countless examples where the victim of harassment is the one to pay the price, not the perpetrator. We hear about it every day. The woman discouraged from reporting harassment by a senior member of staff and threatened that she wouldn’t be able to keep her identity confidential. Another forced out of work with stress due to the trauma of seeing her harasser every day.

For these women the situation is intolerable. It’s not good enough to place all the responsibility for dealing with and reporting harassment on the victims, rather than on the employers. Everyone should be able to go to work safe from sexual harassment, knowing their employer has taken steps to create a safe working environment.

It’s not sufficient to take action against sexual harassment after the fact. We need to create workplaces that are free from harassment in the first place. That’s why the next Labour government will introduce a stand-alone legal duty requiring employers to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment.

Labour’s legal change will not make employers liable for things they cannot control – they will only become liable if they fail to take steps to stamp out sexual harassment at their workplaces before it starts. The crucial difference here is a shift towards prevention before an incident of sexual harassment has happened, rather than merely action afterwards.

When it comes to sexual harassment there can be no grey areas. Labour remains fully committed to protecting workers from harassment by third parties, including customers and clients, and we will consult to define the circumstances and boundaries to ensure employers protect their employees from sexual harassment in all its forms.

Even the government admits that the onus is currently too heavily on the victim to painfully recount an incident to their employer. But four years on from their consultation on tackling workplace sexual harassment, the Tories are still dragging their feet.

So Labour will do what this Tory government won’t and properly tackle sexual harassment at work. But that’s not all. We’ll make misogyny a hate crime, toughen sentences for perpetrators of rape and stalking, and halve the level of violence against women and girls. Women subject to debilitating symptoms of menopause at work will also get the support they deserve.  And we will empower women entrepreneurs.

Too many women have their future stolen away from them. The next Labour government will fight for every woman in this country to have the bright future they deserve.

Anneliese Dodds is the shadow secretary of state for Women and Equalities; Angela Rayner is the shadow secretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing, Communities & Local Government