When you see this on the page you will not notice the difference between the character and the encoded character, the browser will interpret it for you as the same character. So this should not be necessary, it is only done when inserting the values so that the character does not match the separator in the server behavior.
This issue is logged as a bug but I have no ETA on a fix release. If you have this code on your page after an update is released and applied it should not make a difference.