A pub landlord has hit out at the proposed changes to the Employment Rights Bill, which could clamp down on free speech in British pubs.
MPs voted through the Bill including Clause 18, which covers harassment related to all protected characteristics (excluding pregnancy, maternity, marriage and civil partnership), alongside sexual harassment.
The Free Speech Union warned the move is a “dangerous escalation in speech policing”.
Discussing the potential impact on GB News, pub landlord Kate Stewart slammed the changes and warned the legislation will “stop the banter” in British boozers.
Stewart hit out at the potential changes to the Bill, which would make pub landlords ‘woke compliance officers’
Getty / GB News
Stewart explained: “The pubs are the last bastion of free speech, where people can come, socialise, sit with their friends, say what they want and have a little laugh. I am not a social worker, I am not a babysitter – I am not about to go and say to people ‘you’re not allowed to say this’, we can’t do it, it’s an impossibility.
“What do they want us to do? Go and put adverts out for banter bouncers and woke compliance officers? It’s an absolute joke. I don’t know about people coming in on boats – get me on a boat and get me out of here!”
Highlighting the depletion in pub business across the country in recent years, Stewart stressed that if landlords are now forced to remove customers from their public houses, it will be the “final nail in the coffin” for their establishments.
Stewart said: “We’ve got no customers as it is. By throwing people out the pub for having a bit of banter, it’s just going to be the final nail in the coffin for pubs.
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“Where is this going to stop? Are they going to do this to taxi drivers if somebody says something in the back of their cab that isn’t politically correct? It’s just going on and on and on and it’s going to close pubs, they are going to be absolutely finished.”
In a firm demand to the Government, Stewart urged Labour to “leave the pubs alone” as this move is “going to kill them”.
She added: “When you give someone alcohol, you get a loose tongue anyway, everyone gets a little bit excited, a little bit jokey. That’s what has always happened for hundreds of years in pubs.
“It’s just another money grabbing thing, so you can be fined and they can have more jurisdiction.”
Stewart told GB News that the move is the ‘final nail in the coffin’ for pubs
GB News
Emphasising Labour’s latest attack on free speech, Stewart warned that the legislation will “lose British culture” and policing free speech is “not what British people are about”.
She concluded: “We live in a country of free speech. That’s what this is, we are losing our whole culture. This is not what British people are about, especially here up north. We love banter, that’s all we do.
“We love a little bit of banter and that’s what it is, it’s going, it’s dying. Our culture is going.”
