Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Workplace Bullying

Crispin spoke for the Conservatives as part of his fronbench duties within the shadow DTI team.

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): I thank the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey) for securing the debate on such an important issue. I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham), who has specific responsibility for such matters in the Conservative party, for his absence. At present, he is a member of a Standing Committee, so responsibility for responding to this debate has fallen to me. However, there is no harm in widening our expertise and understanding of the issues that have been raised during such an excellent debate.

When I first knew that I was to take part in the debate on behalf of the Opposition, I was asked why I was participating in a discussion about the conduct of the Government Whips Office. When the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Caton) referred to "us and them" gang culture and lousy management practices, I thought that we were beginning to reach the kernel of the issue. It is easy to make a light-hearted remark, but that should not distract us from the seriousness of the issue raised by the hon. Member for Bristol, West.

The central question is whether legislation is the appropriate framework to pursue the problem. The hon. Lady and her supporters are of the view that that is the case. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) asked whether the courtroom was the appropriate forum for the battleground in respect of bullying. The hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Lyons) said that employers and trade unions wanted to deal with the problem. He said that 38 per cent. of calls to trade unions concerned bullying and that 75 per cent. of such cases resulted in specific health effects, either mental or physical. That provides ample evidence, which is also mentioned in the UMIST study and elsewhere, about the widespread nature of bullying in the workplace. The central point is that bullying must be dealt with by everybody—employers and trade unions. We must decide whether tackling it through additional legislation is appropriate, because legislation is already on the statute book.

We must first define bullying. There is no official definition, although various suggestions have been offered. The one in the UMIST study is probably as good as any. It states:

"We defined bullying as a situation where one or several individuals persistently over a period of time perceive themselves to be on the receiving end of negative actions from one or several persons, in a situation where the target of bullying has difficulty in defending him or herself against these actions. We will not refer to a one-off incident as bullying."

That definition emphasises the negative, persistent and long-term nature of the experience.

Workplace bullying is a widespread problem. We have heard evidence of the trauma that it causes. It damages businesses and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) made clear, the climate in which people work, especially in the public sector. The UMIST study suggests that bullying is more widespread in the public than in the private sector and several of the cases to which hon. Members referred appear to confirm that.

The hon. Member for Bristol, West did not mention one area of the private sector to which the UMIST study referred. The dance profession is an example of a profession or recreation in which bullying has taken place. Hon. Members who have learned to ride or sail will know that instructors in those activities tend to be extremely firm because of the danger that is sometimes involved and that firmness could turn into bullying.

On a wider scale, our armed forces are in action in the Gulf. The military have had to recognise the problem of bullying in training, when officers try to create a resilient work force prepared to put their lives on the line. They have to operate on the most extreme end of what is, in a sense, the workplace. Officers face the difficult task of developing resilience through training without overstepping the mark with actions that could be perceived to be bullying. Such work involves facing difficult issues.

A study by the London chamber of commerce published in 2000, estimated that bullying cost industry £2 billion a year. It identified 19 million working days lost per year because of abuse, which often resulted in accidents and mistakes, increased sick leave, lost productivity and higher recruitment costs. Causes of the problem included autocratic, insensitive and even abusive management styles, high work loads, unsatisfactory relationships and rapid changes. A survey in 1999 by Personnel Today and the Andrea Adams trust found that 82 per cent. of respondents identified weakness in management as the prime reason for bullying, which seems to be supported by testimony from the public and private sectors that we have heard in this debate.

The problem is serious and widespread, but we should question whether more legislation is likely to solve it, given that previous legislation has failed adequately to do so. We should also question whether the extra burden that such legislation would impose is justified, especially for small businesses and the public and voluntary sectors. Large, private sector employers with adequate resources can and do use cost- benefit analysis to underpin a business case to tackle workplace bullying. However, it is not certain that small businesses would have adequate resources to carry out similar analyses should legislation require them to do so.

It is self-evident that bullying is counter-productive for any organisation or company. It is fair to assume that a company in which bullying is a significant problem will be less profitable and effective than competitors that have proper policies and look after their people properly, which must be a great incentive for companies to do the right thing.

Several UK companies already have serious policies in place to deal with workplace bullying. Indeed, about 6 per cent., including Rolls-Royce, Littlewoods and British Telecom, have specific anti-bullying policies. That is welcome, and reflects my belief that the best place to deal with the problem is in the workplace. It is important to create a culture in which bullying is seen to be unacceptable. Firms should be encouraged to deal with the problem by paying careful attention to the way in which they conduct their business.

I sound a note of caution to any firm considering taking action: it should recognise that employment rights also cover those accused of bullying, not only the employee who is being bullied. We must also recognise that, although in many instances it is clear that bullying is taking place and must be dealt with, in other instances, accusations of bullying might be used to disguise inadequate performance. Mr. Richard of the Institute of Directors has suggested that any legislation automatically faces difficulties. He said:

"How would you distinguish between times when people do need to be criticised and encouraged to do better, and those when people are being treated in an unacceptable fashion?"

I have already alluded to professions in which that boundary is difficult to identify.

Bullying is an emotive issue that must be dealt with. I support measures that aim to tackle bullying in the workplace and that raise public awareness of its existence. If a company has a well-publicised anti-bullying policy, it can learn to recognise and minimise the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury referred to a case involving Salisbury district council. He made overwhelmingly clear the requirement for independent adjudication of bullying within the public sector. Why such adjudication is not already taking place on a voluntary basis within the public sector frankly escapes me. Such organisations are the very ones that should have developed personnel procedures to deal with bullying problems.

We should all aspire to the universal adoption of good practice. It is likely that people work best under good conditions. Ways of dealing with bullying present particular problems for small businesses, which comprise nearly 99 per cent. of businesses in the UK. They employ 44 per cent. of the private sector work force and generate 37 per cent. of our nation's output. They also create virtually all the new jobs in the economy.

A great deal of new regulation has been introduced into employment law over the past few years. Last year, more than 4,642 new sets of regulations were introduced in the UK, which amounts to one every 26 minutes for every working day. The IOD say that the recurrent annual cost of employment regulations introduced in the past five years could be as much as £6 billion, with those costs rising as new regulations come into force. Although it may be possible to find valid reasons for each new regulation, the cumulative total is undermining the enterprise culture. It is worrying to note that Britain has fallen from ninth to 19th in the world competitive league. That should give us pause for thought before we reach for the legislative or regulatory rule book.

Faced with such facts, I worry that further legislation, however worthy its aims, could be damaging to business. The problem of bullying is real to business because it loses its competitiveness, but balancing that problem with the complexity of introducing more targeted legislation that has not succeeded in the past poses difficulties. Ways of dealing with bullying are difficult to identify and I am not able to provide an over-arching solution. However, I welcome the attention that the problem has received, and I note with interest hon. Members' contributions to this debate, especially the Swedish example.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol, West on raising the issue and on her persistence in obtaining this debate. In the end, we must make people in all work forces—both management and workers—aware that the problem is widespread and must be dealt with. People will then begin to deal with it because it is a matter of simple justice and decency.

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