Equality Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for explaining her concerns. In fact, this is a term that parliamentary counsel was careful to draft. It was seeking to ensure that we did not address issues where communities very deliberately live in a more segregated way. The obvious example which sprang to my mind is orthodox Hasidic communities whose way of living is not involuntary. We must be very careful about the commission trying to force integration and include communities in an inappropriate way. We have approached it by saying that we recognise that communities choose to live in a particular way and live closely together. That is for them to choose, as is right and proper. We want to ensure that, where communities are involuntarily isolated, the commission does as much work as possible to support them and integrate them as appropriate. We also want it to be clear that we do not want the commission to feel that, because a community lives in a particular way, its role is to ““meddle”” where it ought not to. So, although the term is perhaps inelegant and in many ways I can see why the noble Baroness would be concerned about it, it is specifically designed to ensure that we address only involuntary isolation. I take the noble Baroness’s point about segregated communities and the need to understand that that is something they need to consider for themselves. However, I do not think that we would address that by changing the wording of the Bill as the noble Baroness has suggested. I think that that point will become clearer as the commission operates. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.