The Women and Equalities Commission (a parliamentary committee) has produced its report on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace.
Its recommendations are:
• a mandatory duty on employers to protect employees from sexual harassment in the workplace, enforceable by the EHRC and punishable by fines
• a duty for public sector employers to conduct risk assessment for sexual harassment, and take steps to mitigate any risks
• reintroducing third party harassment, so that employers are liable if they have failed to take reasonable steps to prevent others harassing their staff
• extending sexual harassment protection interns and volunteers
• extension of the time limit for bringing a claim to six months, with the clock paused while any internal grievance process is going on
• enabling tribunals to award punitive damages in sexual harassment cases creating a presumption of costs, so that employers will ordinarily have to pay the employee’s legal costs if it loses a sexual harassment case
• limiting the ability to use confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements to ‘government approved’ standard clauses
• making it a professional disciplinary offence for lawyers (and, in certain circumstances, also a criminal offence for the employer and the lawyer) to propose the use of a non-approved confidentiality clause
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