Equality Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 77:"Page 4, line 7, leave out paragraph (d)." The noble Lord said: I wish to move this very modest amendment in my name. In doing so, I really want to comment on the meaninglessness of the Bill as a whole. It has a spray of adjectives which has all the effect of confetti. There is very little meaning. It is not entirely relevant, but I feel obliged to say how much I sympathise with the Minister, who—if I may put it in unusual terms—has been landed with this awful baby by its true father, the Lord Chancellor, who is not visible at all. He will not, I believe, take any part in the Committee stage, but perhaps he might do us the favour of appearing occasionally during the Report stage to defend his child, and to attempt to invest some of the clauses with the shadow of meaning. I regret that my noble friend Lord Ferrers is not in his place, because he is of a similar mind to me. Whereas I want to leave out subsection (1)(d),"““promote awareness and understanding of rights under the equality enactments””—" although any one of these could conveniently be left out as far as I am concerned—he wished to leave out the next line,"““enforce the equality enactments””." There does not seem to be an awful lot of difference. Do the Minister or the noble and learned Lord the   Lord Chancellor have their eye on a possible chairman? The chairman will have to make something of this Bill and give himself some real meaning before he wields the terrible powers with which he will be invested. The clause starts with the words:"““The Commission shall, by exercising the powers conferred by this Part””." Those powers, in Clause 14, amount to publishing, researching, educating, advising, arranging for a person to do anything, and acting jointly with, co-operating with or assisting a person doing anything. I cannot help feeling it could all have been put more briefly. There was a moment the other day when I was frightened that this Bill was going to be an instrument of oppression. At the moment I have gone to the other extreme. I think that it is an absolute nothing, a complete nimbus, an absence of anything except cloudy rubbish. I hope that the noble Baroness will endeavour to invest it with some meaning, in which case I shall listen with rapt attention. Meanwhile, I beg to move.