A September 2025 YouGov survey for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust found that one in five workers often or sometimes feel at risk of violence at work. 31% of respondents said they had experienced at least one incident in the past year.
Recent reports of abuse and exploitation of women working for organisations owned by Mohamed al Fayed – including Harrods – have brought this issue to the public eye recently.
And these are not isolated incidents. A 2023 TUC poll found that that three in five women have experienced sexual harassment, bullying or verbal abuse in the workplace; and the Government Equalities Office survey in 2020 found that 29% of those in employment said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment in their workplace or workplace environment in the previous 12 months.
Such findings demonstrate that workers are not adequately protected from sexual harassment and violence in the workplace.
The law simply isn’t robust enough to safeguard employees from harm.
Changing the law
We’ve made that case to the UK Government over and over through our amendments to legislation, drafted with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and Rights of Women.
First drafted to amend the employment rights bill and now adjusted for the crime and policing bill, our amendments edit the Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 to provide:
- Clear, actionable duties for employers to protect workers from violence and harassment at work, including risk assessments, policy development, and training for all employees.
- An enforceable health and safety framework on violence in the workplace, under the oversight of the Health and Safety Executive, and with guidance provided for employers in collaboration with relevant bodies.
In short, they would implement what expert organisations and workers’ unions want: to make the spectrum of harassment and violence – from sexual harassment to physical and sexual abuse and stalking – a health and safety issue in the workplace.
Too many examples
However, UK Government ministers have continually defended current arrangements – whereby the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regulates harassment, and the police handle complaints.
But to call this “robust and comprehensive” is to ignore the countless examples of workers harmed in their workplaces and failed by the status quo.
These examples include McDonald’s workers, who said they still faced sexual harassment in early 2025 – two years after a BBC investigation found widespread sexual harassment and abuse across the franchise. Over 700 current and former workers were preparing legal claims at this time – citing harassment, assault and discrimination.
An agreement with the EHRC, as per current legislative arrangements, was evidently insufficient to protect staff.
And at the BBC, eight current or former staff were stalked by former BBC radio presenter Alex Belfield, who was also sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment for harassing four people online.
Going to the police does not prevent abuse and violence from happening in the first place.
It even happens inside the government. In 2023, 60 senior women came forward with allegations of sexual assault, harassment and abuse within the Ministry of Defence.
The status quo does not protect workers.
Harrods
Harrods employees were also endangered by a failure to hold employers to account.
Over 400 women and girls have come forward with accounts of abuse and exploitation within organisations owned by Mohamed Al Fayed, including Harrods, Fulham FC, and the Ritz in Paris.
Accounts include rape and attempted rape, and date as far back as 1987.
The press reported allegations of sexual misconduct and assault by Fayed against Harrods staff from 1995.
But despite this, and despite around 21 women reporting his crimes to the police between 2005 and 2023, Fayed continued to operate with impunity.
And as more and more survivors come forward with details of his abuse, the true scale of those crimes is coming to light.
In fact, French police have recently launched an investigation into sex-trafficking by the Harrods owner, targeting Fayed’s Ritz Hotel in Paris.
Survivor group No One Above has created a map of where employees were taken by Fayed and abused – suggesting extremely organised abuse to the point of domestic sex trafficking.
That workers were able to be subject of such abuse is unfathomable, and unforgivable.
All stakeholders, from the Home Office to the police, have a duty to investigate fully the severity of crimes by Fayed, including that of domestic sex trafficking, and help bring proper justice to victims and survivors.
More accountability
But this case also makes it clear that the law as it stands allows wealthy, resourced employers to evade real accountability.
The fact that a workplace that facilitated the abuse of workers can run a compensation scheme for those who experienced that very abuse, and can silence recipients of that compensation, is evidence enough that something urgently needs to change.
That is not justice. That is not accountability.
Meagre reprimands by the EHRC, and retrospective investigation by the police did not make the workplace safer for victims and survivors at McDonald’s, the BBC, nor in Harrods and the Ritz.
We need preventative measures that penalises employers that do not make their workplaces safe from gender-based violence of all kinds, including physical and sexual abuse.
The UK Government needs to wake up and listen to our arguments, which are not party political, but drawn from the experience of expert organisations on the frontline, workers unions, and victims and survivors themselves.
We cannot allow more workers to be put at risk. The UK Government must act.
Our amendments to the crime and policing bill offer the first essential step toward creating safe workplaces for all.
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