It’s great to see our latest research briefing gain significant traction in the media (GB News, GB News, Telegraph, Times).
We’ve been investigating the chilling effect on workplace free speech of the B Corps movement, which counts nearly 2,000 companies operating in Britain among its members. (You can read our report here).
The movement originated with B Lab Global, an American non-profit set up in 2006. It now has branches called B Labs all over the world, including the UK.
To become a B Corp-certified company – a kite mark provided by your local B Lab, a bit like becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion – the directors must go beyond maximising profits and commit to serving ‘people’ and the ‘planet’.
That sounds benign and well-meaning, but certification involves a company changing its Articles of Association to include a commitment to meeting social and environmental targets, both internally and externally. For instance, the B Corps framework assesses a company against B Lab’s principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion – or JEDI, for short.
Among other things, that means making a commitment to ‘racial justice’ and Net Zero and that, in turn, can lead to employees or customers who don’t share those values being penalised – a good example being Nigel Farage’s defenestration by Coutts, a B Corp-certified company.
The Free Speech Union is concerned that the B Corps phenomenon is accelerating the adoption by British companies of contentious political ideas like critical race theory and gender identity ideology.
We know from experience that this ideology is often enforced with authoritarian zeal.
What is particularly worrying is that B Lab UK, the British arm of this movement, is lobbying for a new Act of Parliament that would mean British businesses have to comply with this ideology and impose it on their employees and customers – even their suppliers.
If UK law is changed whereby all British companies have to incorporate B Corps principles into their operations, the Equality Act 2010 might have to be amended to dilute workplace protections for employees’ speech rights, so that certain beliefs – such as a belief in the reality of biological sex – would lose their ‘protected’ status.
