A Bill has been presented to MPs to provide for a statutory definition of bullying at work and to make provision relating to bullying at work, including to enable claims relating to workplace bullying to be considered by an employment tribunal.

The new Bill also proposes to provide for a Respect at Work Code to set minimum standards for positive and respectful work environments and to give powers to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to investigate workplaces and organisations where there is evidence of a culture of, or multiple incidents of, bullying and to take enforcement action.

Rachel Maskell, Labour and Co-operative MP for York Central, presented the private members’ bill and has received cross-party support.

The TUC reports that bullying is the second biggest workplace issue. Some 29% of workers will experience workplace bullying at some point, and one in 10 has experienced it in the past six months. Academia backs those figures up. That lack of access to redress and justice explains why 53% of those who are bullied never report it.

Bullying costs UK businesses £18 billion a year, and according to the Health and Safety Executive, over 17 million working days are lost each year due to work-related negative behaviours such as bullying. Sometimes bullying is corporate, embedded in the culture of an organisation. Sometimes it is peer on peer, where workers are left out, denigrated publicly or privately, and targeted or ignored.

Without protection, many workers will leave their employment. Without a route to an employment tribunal, people depend on the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 or a claim for constructive unfair dismissal following resigning from work. The time and thresholds for such claims are high, the applicant first having to resign, and they would also be required to have two years of employment.

While employers have an implied duty to provide a safe working environment, the absence of legislation makes this difficult to enforce or address harm. Many workplaces have policies, but ultimate restitution is yet to sit with the tribunal, since bullying is not a legal concept, while discrimination and harassment rightly are.

ACAS has, within its code of practice, set out a definition. Any definition would require a subjective test—what is its impact—fettered by an objective test of the behaviours being offensive, malicious, intimidating or humiliating. As ACAS has more recently determined, this does not have to be a repeated act, but could be. Such tests provide for a robust threshold for a claim. The Bill seeks to extend the ACAS code of practice to promote positive workplace behaviours.