Equality Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, give this innovatory and powerful Bill a warm welcome. I am in good company, not only with most of your Lordships’ House but also because the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles, has just published a report saying the same thing. During the sessions of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights I came to the conclusion that a Commission for Equality and Human Rights was the way forward for our public services. This also stems from my experience as a civil servant and as a member of the Immigration Complaints Audit Committee. I know that my former colleagues and others worked hard and conscientiously administering public services, but there was not a culture of entitlement and respect for human rights. The very word ““entitlement”” was regarded as suspect, a bit strident, a bit stroppy, a bit dissident; and ““human rights”” were thought of as something foreigners failed in. There was a culture of dealing honestly, and there was a culture of safeguarding national funds, taxpayers’ money, against fraud and erroneous claims. Fairness—equity—came into it as well. I found those admirable. But they do not add up to the total of what is required in public administration. There are services where all members of the public are treated equally disrespectfully. The values of dignity and respect will be left out of the system, drawn on only ad hoc, and then only if the administrator is that sort of a person, if a human rights culture is not promulgated within the public service. Equity without respect is chilly, just as justice without mercy is hard. It all needs to be more human. As Professor Richard Sennett says:"““Modern institutions are bad at dealing with individuals who are ordinary—at according them respect even though they are nothing special””." He adds:"““A sweeping transformation of the institutions of everyday life is necessary if this Parliament””" —our Parliament now—"““is serious about fostering a culture of respect””." The Commission for Equality and Human Rights can be the agent of that transformation. For any noble Lord who is uneasy with abstractions, may I suggest that ““entitlement”” and ““rights”” are the concepts we use to systematise our ideas of dignity and respect for other people. The Human Rights Act, an enduring monument to this Government, advanced these ideas. Its implementation achieved, for instance, a guarantee of the right to life for one Mr Burke and through him every other elderly patient in hospital; childcare benefit for a severely disabled son, which enabled a mother to return to work; and next of kin status for same-sex partners. But all those people had to go to court to obtain their rights. The Human Rights Act had then no authoritative institutional champion to create a culture. It did not of itself create a culture; that is the task of a commission. The great usefulness of a Commission for Equality and Human Rights is that it has a framework for balancing conflicts of rights. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell referred to that. None of these rights are absolute—that is the issue—except freedom from torture. I recommend the analysis in the new book Human Rights in the Community in your Lordships’ Library on this aspect. As to the combination of equality and human rights: equality is of course only one of the human rights given quasi-constitutional status in our law. But arguably it is the most important, apart from the right to life itself. It is the right that must accompany any other right, and it is the one whose denial makes a mockery of dignity and respect for individuals. Therefore, equality should be a general interest, as my noble and learned friend the Secretary of State said. The Bill’s provision for discrimination beyond gender, race and disability is absolutely right and it could go farther, as other noble Lords have mentioned. By the same token, it is indeed a matter for regret that the Commission for Racial Equality cannot be in at the beginning of the new commission. Equality needs to be mainstreamed into a normal part of obtaining employment, goods and services to work in practice. I agree with my noble friend Lord Parekh that it should not be the preserve only of its own policy community, representative only of those affected by the particular discrimination at issue. A Commission for Equality and Human Rights could, for instance, if it included race, straightaway improve the balance of rights in dealing with Gypsies and Travellers, much criticised by the Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner in his report. But there is an imbalance between the equality powers and the human rights powers in the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said, and we shall need to tease out whether that is right in Committee. I particularly welcome the emphasis on looking to a positive future through the provisions for promotion and for agreement and conciliation procedures, rather than only castigating past offences. But I agree with others that we shall need to examine whether the commission has enough independence as well as the resources to act on that independence. Professor Gil-Robles also makes recommendations on those points, which I commend. I also hope that my noble friend can support the idea   that the power at Clause 12(2) to monitor the   effectiveness of the equality and human rights enactment should include the important international treaties to which we are signatory. I hope that the power to make codes of practice another positive and forward-looking power means making codes with evidential status so that courts can refer to them in finding whether there is a case to answer. Finally, I have one reservation in my warm welcome. It relates to Part 2, where it looks as though the important provisions to guarantee freedom of religion and belief have tipped over very far in the interests of religious organisations at the expense of freedom for individuals. I remind the House of my vice-presidency of the British Humanist Association and I hope we can ensure that the freedom not to observe a religion in obtaining work, goods and services, can be properly preserved.