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WATCH: Claire Fox BLASTS Labour for 'being careless' with free speech
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Apr 16, 2025
Baroness Claire Fox has launched a scathing attack against Labour, accusing the party of being "careless" with free speech in its Employment Rights Bill.The crossbench peer told GB News the legislation would "sanitise where we have our most important conversations" and damage people's capacity to speak freely.READ THE FULL STORY HERE
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to block this so-called banter ban in Labour's workers' rights overhaul
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when new laws return to Parliament later this month. And under this law, pubs could ban customers speaking about contentious beliefs
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whatever they are, such as transgender and religious topics. And worst of all, football fans on the terraces could be stopped
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from shouting things such as, are you blind? And other choice words at referees
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Now, under Angela Rayner's workers' rights reforms, this could mean football fans are shown the red card
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Let's speak now with Baroness Claire Fox, who is no doubt involved in this pushback
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against free speech clamdowns. Baroness Fox, this happens all the time. It seems astonishing that people might get perscus
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on the football terraces. I find it so galling that they're using the excuse
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of workers' rights to introduce this. That really annoys me. There are some good bits of this bill. There's lots of it that are terrible, by the way
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But to focus on this, what they're doing is they're not downright banning it
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They'd say, no, no, you're over exaggerating, Martin. What are you talking about
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But what they're doing is they're saying that everyone who works in a public facing organisation should be protected from third parties who might harass them verbally
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i they might overhear things which the harassment in this instance is just simply offensive ideas that you don like And therefore the employers the bosses of the pub or the football ground could be sued by that worker
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if they complain that they've heard something. Now, I don't know about you, and you're in the heart of Westminster there
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but there's great celebration going on at the moment because of the fantastic win by Four Women's Scotland
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So you can imagine all these women are piling off to the pub
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and the clubs to celebrate tonight that they have won a victory
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for the state of the bleeding obvious, which is that sex is biological, women are women
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trans women are not women, etc. Now, if they went into a pub after this bill would be passed
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with that amendment in it, the pub owners would be sort of going around going
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shh, everyone, don't say that, because we've got a sort of trans-inclusive member of staff
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who might take offence. And so it's going to sanitise where we have our most important conversation, some people might say, which is the informal public realm
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When we chat with our mates, when we row, when we say all sorts of things, but people can overhear
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And as you say, the football grounds and, by the way, the university sector, where we've already had plenty of cancel culture going on
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This is just another example where the government aren't attacking free speech, but they're careless about free speech
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They don recognise that this is going to damage our capacity to speak freely It an absolute disgrace And I really worried about it but we going to do our best to fight back And Claire Fox right now the Americans J Vance
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they're all zoning in on Britain's death of free speech, free speech being a part of a free trade agreement
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It seems incredible that football fans could be criminalised, but let's face it, some fruity things get said on the terraces
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Have you ever been down the Millwall? Crikey! Everyone there would end up getting showing the red card
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There'd be nobody allowed back in. I'm afraid the sad news is that they already are being
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So it's just another thing to add to it. I mean, if you actually look at the football behaviour orders
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and all sorts of chants are now banned and people have been banned from their football grounds
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for basically being football fans and being a bit lively. And I think that the thing that I really can't stand
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is it's layer upon layer of this attempt at sanitising the public square
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And they basically think that if we're left on our own to chat, to talk
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that effectively we're going to say things which might be offensive to a particular viewpoint, a particular worldview
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And the irony of them using the workers' rights bill on this is
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who do they think go for a pint and have a moan and a whinge
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It's workers. So you go for a pub if you work I don know you work as a fire officer fire service you go from the NHS and you moaning about what happened during the day I mean that who goes to these places It letting off steam on the football terraces Are there bin men or whoever right
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And they don't want to feel that on their days off, in their leisure time
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they're being spied on. And the problem is the onus is on the owners of these establishments
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who be risk-averse, isn't it? Because they're going to wander around listening in to conversations
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and if somebody's having a you know they've just watched you Martin
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on GB News and they start talking about small boats crisis and they've got a few things to say
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on immigration but somebody in the bar staff might be offended by it, they're going to come and say
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keep the lid on that, we don't want that kind of conversation around here, this is legal
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conversation, nobody is harassing any member of staff if you actually physically harassed
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or directly attacked a member of staff because of, you know, if you call them racist names or anything
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you should be banterized. I agree with that. That's different. But this is not
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what they're trying to do. And I think that hopefully there's enough
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of us in the Lords to mount an assault on this, to embarrass
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the Labour Party that says, after all, it wants to win over the odd
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Red Wall vote. They're going to lose them unless they do something about this
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We have to leave it there. And ironically, in a debate about free speech
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I must apologise for a fruity word there that Baroness Claire Fox used
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Isn't this an irony, Claire Fox? I'm even censoring you. A slap on the wrist
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