Equality Bill [HL]

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for having to say something about law. The amendment is not necessary. Almost a quarter of a century ago, this problem arose in the context of action by the Commission for Racial Equality. It wanted to investigate Hillingdon London Borough Council in the belief that the council might be discriminating on racial grounds in providing housing for the homeless at Heathrow Airport. There was a judicial review, and it went all the way to the House of Lords. That was under identical provisions, which were written in by Quintin Hogg MP—as he then was—when the legislation was originally passed as a safeguard of individual freedom. The provisions that are there have impeccable and necessary origins of that kind. When the case came to the House of Lords, Lord Diplock, for a unanimous House of Lords, in 1982 appeal cases, for those who want to look it up, said:"““This state of mind, which corresponds with the civil burden of proof, is one which must be reached by the commission in the course of the full investigation in order to justify the service of a non-discriminatory notice  . . . To entitle the commission to embark upon the full investigation””," that is, to get over the threshold:"““it is enough that there should be material before the commission sufficient to raise in the minds of reasonable men,””—" in those days women were forgotten by some Law Lords—"““possessed of the experience of covert racial discrimination that has been acquired by the commission, a suspicion that there may have been acts by the person named of racial discrimination of the kind which it is proposed to investigate””." Putting that in simple language, they were saying that when you carry out a full investigation you have to be able to establish what you are saying on the civil burden and standard of proof on the balance of probability, but before you embark on the investigation the threshold should not be so high as to stultify the commission in being able to embark on the investigation. What is necessary is a reasonable belief, but nothing more than reasonable belief. That has stood for a quarter of a century as the standard. I am not aware that it has ever been abused, and it seems to me that it meets very much the spirit of what has been said by the noble Baroness.