Equality Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 114:"Page 9, line 18, at end insert ““, and" ““(c)   may enter into arrangements with the Office of Fair Trading for the purpose of undertaking a market investigation, where the Commission has reason to believe that discrimination is occurring within a market”” The noble Baroness said: This is a probing amendment to try to ensure that the CEHR—like the existing equality commission—will have powers to conduct investigations into unlawful acts of discrimination or harassment within a given market. To carry out an investigation into a named person, the CEHR must have reasonable suspicion that an unlawful act of discrimination or harassment has taken place. I would argue—and I am grateful to the CAB for its help here—that a rather less intrusive process would be to undertake a market investigation which would not be investigating unlawful acts per se but, rather, equality of access to goods and services within the general framework of equality enactments. The CEHR would be able to investigate a broad range of practices and suppliers that constitute a market for the   purpose of competition and consumer legislation. The commission should therefore be empowered to undertake investigations of unfair discrimination in markets through joint investigations with the Office of Fair Trading. That could, for example, take place through a ““super-complaint”” process under the Enterprise Act, a market investigation or a reference to the Competition Commission. The Enterprise Bill gives the OFT a formal duty to accept and review super-complaints from designated consumer bodies. It is clear from the legislation that this duty may be extended to certain specified sectoral regulators. Therefore, I would argue, there is an opportunity for the new commission to become involved in that process. A ““super-complaint””, as defined in Section 11(1) of the Act, is a complaint submitted by a designated consumer body that,"““any feature, or combination of features, of a market in the UK for goods or services is or appears to be significantly harming the interests of consumers””." In broad terms, I gather, a ““feature”” may be any conduct by firms or consumers, or the structure of the market, or any aspect of that structure. A super-complaint can therefore concern any commercial activity. It does not concern the activities of a particular company in that market, but rather features of the market itself. The contention of the amendment is that unfair discrimination can potentially constitute a feature of the market. The obvious case is disability, where service providers are systematically failing to make reasonable adjustments, many of which are entirely cost-free, so that those products are effectively inaccessible to disabled consumers regardless of their purchasing power. Here, clearly, discrimination would occur in the whole market. A market investigation would be able to identify the barriers to making reasonable adjustments and would be able to tackle the issues in a constructive way, rather than relying on individual or class legal actions to achieve change. The amendment would enable market investigations to become a mechanism for tackling such discrimination. The other type of market investigations are those referred by the OFT to the Competition Commission. Is there any reason why the CEHR should not also be involved in the process when issues of discrimination come into play? I look for an assurance from the Minister on how the CEHR will work with the OFT and other consumer bodies, such as citizens advice bureaux. I beg to move.