It has been an incredibly busy few weeks in Parliament. On the 20th of October, I passed my Private Member’s Bill into law, creating a new duty for employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace.
I introduced this Bill in July 2022 with the support of the Fawcett Society and the wider Alliance for Women, after the government committed to supporting this duty for employers in 2021.
My Bill requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, instead of putting the onus on individual employees to report incidents. It was clear that laws to prevent harassment in the workplace were in dire need of transformation.
A TUC report found that 79% of women did not report sexual harassment at work. This is why we need to place the responsibility on employers to prevent harassment in the first place. Only then can we begin to change the culture of workplaces.
While debate and negotiation over my Bill in Westminster has taken considerable attention, I still stood up for my constituents at every turn. Last month a constituent who commutes from Bath to London got in touch with my office to highlight that their regular route was set to double in price, with no announcement or indication from the train companies of why this might be.
In the House of Commons, I demanded to know why the Government allows such wide variance in fares, and what it would do to make pricing decisions on rail transport more transparent.
This past weekend, I attended several memorial events for Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. I planted a cross in the Westminster Garden of Remembrance to honour Bath Normandy veteran, Stan Ford. He was a survivor of the D-Day operations in June 1944, and awarded the Legion d’Honneur.
I then accompanied Stan at GWR’s ‘Routes of Remembrance’ tribute, where we dedicated wreaths of poppies which were carried from Bath to London and laid at the War Memorial in Paddington Station. I also joined many of Bath’s war veterans at the Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday.
This was a time of great reflection for me, and it is vital that we never forget the ultimate sacrifice so many have made for our lives today.
While we remember the hope brought by the agreement to stop fighting on Armistice Day over a hundred years ago, we must keep in mind all those lost in ongoing conflicts across the globe. Like many people in Bath, I have felt great distress over the last month seeing the horrific suffering of civilians in the Middle East.
I called on the government and the newly appointed Foreign Secretary to be on the side of peace when approaching the conflict in Israel and Palestine. I urge them to heed my party’s calls for an immediate bilateral ceasefire in Israel and Gaza.
